The Business Civil Society and its Impact on Romanian Public Administration

The reform initiatives of the past two decades in Romania are praiseworthy, and the incontestable fact is that the state of the economy and the government is significantly better now than at the dawn of the 1989 Revolution. The Europeanization of the public administration is partially successful, especially in the capital city and a few other urban centers. There are a number of ongoing, successful public administration reform initiatives throughout the country, some of which I have outlined in previous chapters. This continuous work is vitally important and necessary to improve customer/citizen services, agency design, increase efficiency, and modernize the Romanian public administration. In the concluding chapter of this volume, I would like to attempt a modest theoretical contribution to the Romanian public administration reform dialogue, not from a traditionalist bureaucratic perspective but rather from a libertarian, free-market, somewhat postmodern public administration theory. My conceptual approach will be that current traditional public administration reform initiatives ought to be complemented by the revitalization of the civil society, individual responsibilities, and voluntary initiatives.