Public Integrity and Performance of Governance. A Comparative Study for South-Eastern Europe

The studies concerning the impact of corruption on the effectiveness of governance are numerous, valorising profound approaches, based on criteria and standards related to good governance, organizational behaviour. The concepts and mechanisms specific for econometrics and statistics provide the quantitative support for qualitative analyses, substantiating public policies, in view to assure effectiveness in performance measurement. For all South-Eastern European countries, the level of development and social organization determines specific ethical behaviours. In this context, the current paper aims a comparative economic and social evaluation of the correlations between corruption, performance and economic freedom in South-Eastern European countries, including Romania. The working hypotheses turn into consideration the following issues: - corruption holds national specific character and the statistic, econometric or sociologic analyses reveal that it is stable during the time; - an effective governance leads to increasing the citizens’ welfare; - if a country is poor and the economic freedom is reduced than the bureaucratic and political system tends to be more corrupted; - the perspective of accession into the EU has led to the perception concerning the reduction of the corruption level. The above hypotheses will be completed and we shall achieve comparative analyses, relevant for the group of South-Eastern European countries. The above quantitative analyses will use both own results of the researches carried out by the authors and public results of World Bank, Transparency International and Heritage Foundation, as well as results of authorities responsible for national statistics. The comparative research is achieved on a 10 years period, comprising also the moment of accession into the European Union for some states.