Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 30th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview WG10: Politico-Administrative Relations in CEE Author(s) Liviu Radu Babes-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca Romania Title The politico-administrative relations facing new challenges: crisis, the pandemic, or the climate changes File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Liviu Radu Abstract Relationships between elected politicians and career officials are one of the most sensitive areas in the study and practice of public administration. We know from Max Weber and countless other authors that the bureaucracy has a power that can provide important advantages in negotiating its positions and interests in relation to the political environment. In countries with consolidated democracies, these relations have reached a relative balance, with certain patterns of collaboration between the two types of actors. The same cannot be said of countries that are still in the process of building democracy. Excessive politicization creates problems in most of the former communist countries, with Romania being a special case. The political-administrative relations acquire a special importance in the new context created by the numerous challenges that the public administration has to face in the current period. We mention only a few: globalization, the economic crisis, the pandemic, the problem of migration, climate change, technological advancement. Most likely, these challenges will lead to changes in the structure and characteristics of the public administration, which will have to develop skills such as anticipation, adaptability, a culture of evaluation, etc. One result will be a higher level of professionalism and specialization. On the other hand, the same challenges can create different expectations among the population, changing the way it relates to elected politicians. There is already a growing dissatisfaction among citizens with the way in which political and administrative systems have provided solutions to the increasingly complex and delicate problems facing modern societies. Therefore, the political-administrative system will have to adapt, on the one hand, to the new challenges posed by the new global society, and, on the other hand, to the growing expectations of the population. At the same time, relations between politicians and career officials will probably have to undergo a significant change, as the need for politicians to receive intelligible responses that they can provide to the population will have to be accommodated with the increasingly professional and specialized approach of the bureaucracy.
