Toward a New Public Administration Model in Romania: The Challenges of Designing Coherent Public Administration Reforms

Constantin Marius Profiroiu¹

, Călin Emilian Hințea²

¹Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania

²Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

ⓒ Copyright 2024 Graduate School of Public Administration, Seoul National University. This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Received: Jun 17, 2024; Accepted: Aug 29, 2024

Published Online: Sep 30, 2024

Abstract

Reforming public administration in Romania has been a continuous challenge over the past decades, and the traditional model of public administration has been reshaped through various horizontal and vertical reforms. The problem is that these reforms have lacked coherent theoretical and practical trajectories. From the fall of the Communist regime in 1989 until Romania’s accession to the European Union, the new public management (NPM) paradigm predominantly influenced the public sector. Since 2007, no single model of reform has gained centrality, resulting in a mix of elements that have included NPM, the neo-Weberian state, and new public governance. This study explored and clarified the challenges that Romania has faced in designing reforms to enhance institutional efficiency and professional consistency.

Keywords: Romania; reform; new public management; neo-Weberian state; new public governance; institutional efficiency