The Learning Government Research Project - Assessing policy making reform in Romania
Abstract
The project aim is to assess the efforts to improve the policy making process and their real impact at governmental level in Romania . Using examples and hypotheses drawn from the literature, previously tested in the region and other development countries, I intend to create an integrated and possibly comprehensive image of the strong and weak points of policy reform impacts , especially in relation with the activity of international organizations and development donors.
During the project, using various quantitative and qualitative methods (e.g. questionnaire based survey, in depth interviews) I will gather information on practices promoted through Technical Assistance(TA) projects and assimilated by senior official at the level of line ministries and agencies across the Government, trying to track systemic patterns of interaction and established practices of policy making. Even though the literature on the policy making process in the region is growing in precision and coverage, in Romania it is rather fragmented and unsatisfactorily clear. The research is aimed to offer the government, donors, civil society and scholars an integrated description of current state and a sense of necessary further steps in reforming the policy making process.
Research outline
1. Framing the issue of policy making reform and the role of its international stakeholders
- Policy transfer
- Aid effectiveness
- Paradigms of structural adjustments
- Public administration reform literature
2. Policy making process reforms in Central and Eastern Europe
- political context
- agenda
- main actors
- main drivers
3. IO and govt. agencies role in policy making process reform in CEE with focus on Romania
- issues
- instruments
- impacts
4. Romanian Governmental institutions and their use of assistance
- issues
- instruments
- impacts(retrieval)
5. Lessons from Romania 's policy making reform process?
- What stakeholders should do
- What government/ should do