Development Regions Between Joining-up and Decentralizing Reform. A Possible Solution?

Identifying anti-crisis solutions represents one of the main objectives of central and local government bodies. The rigidity of the administrative structures has as a main results the incapacity of this system to react in an active and flexible manner, to the fluctuations that are been generated by the economic environment - economic crisis forcing the state to start a complex process of administrative reform, in order to increase adaptability, quantified by expanding the capacity of reaction. Special attention must be given in time of crisis to local government, and to the local development, by making a direct connection between central and local bodies, generating a complex process of coordination that must take place between those two levels and giving the possibility to applying the concept of joined-up government at the level of metropolitan areas. From the perspective of this paper, metropolitan areas should act as a middle government, responsible for the identification and implementation of the anti-crisis measures at the local and regional level, representing at the same time the place of convergence for the decentralization process and joined-up government process. From this regard, the concept of decentralization will be presented, the author going to ascertain that financial decentralization should stop at the metropolitan area level and be aimed, on the basis of the principle of specialization (one of the establishing principles of metropolitan areas), especially at the areas of responsibility delegated to exercise by the local governments, this set of core competencies representing the area of implementation of the concept of joined-up government. The applicability of the joined-up government concept can be seen as a first measure that the administrative system can generate and implement, through a comprehensive process aimed at rethinking the operation and the organization of the administrative structures. Delegation of powers, at the level of specific organisms, can be interpreted, as an anti-crisis measures. The role of those organisms is to coordinate the implementation process of the anti-crisis policies throughout the entire region, contributing to the coherence and the effectiveness of these policies. The entire analysis regards the Romanian administrative system, local governments having the responsibility of implementing the anti-crisis government policies at the local level.