Romanian Public Administration Reform - Between the Modernization Aspirations and Real Possibilities of Achievement

The reform stages known by the Romanian public administration after the 1989 Revolution reflected the modifications occurred in the economic and social-political context of the state, by passing from communism to capitalism, from the planned, centralized economy, to the market economy. Today, the running of the administrative reform process is strongly made more difficult, the situation being determined, beyond the influence of the internal factors, mainly, by the repercussions of the world economic crisis, fully and directly felt at the national level, as well. Forced to adapt to the increasingly complex requirements of society and subjected to conditionings of political, economic, legal, etc. nature, at present, the public administration makes the object of an ample and rigorous reform, which aims to be implemented efficiently, with immediate benefits and long-term impact. The multiple delays and failures occurred in this process and the inexistence of unique reform models as referential for the specialists in the field, have lead to the emergence of skeptical opinions with respect to the success of this reform, supported, in the plane of objective reality, by the partial and visible failure of the process. The works attempts to demonstrate that in the current context, a successful reform should be directed towards the modernization and development of public administration, such as it is characterized by transparency, predictability, responsibility, adaptability and efficiency, identifying new means, methods or instruments for making the reform more dynamic. For this reason, the paper will emphasize, starting from the current stage of achievement of the public administration reform, and from the perspective of the need to accelerate it, the role and positive implications of consolidating the present inter-organizational network of actors involved in the reform process and focuses on the use of participative mechanisms for the purpose of involving the interested factors in the important decisions referring to them, which will lead, on the one hand, to the increase and strengthening of the citizens' role, and, on the other hand, to the consolidation of a democratic governance. From this perspective, the work develops an empirical analysis that performs a correlation between: the measures comprised in the Governing Program for the periods 2005-2008, respectively 2009-2012, undertaken for achieving institutional reform in Romania, during the period leading up to the EU accession, respectively the post-accession period; the power delegation matrix proposed by Kenneth A. Sigrist in order to ensure a successful reform of public administration; and the influence of certain factors, exogenous and endogenous to the political-administrative system, on the government's capacity to resolve the problems and to adapt to the changes in society. The correlation demonstrates the importance of the role of the network of actors and its impact on maintaining the internal consistency of reform for its efficient implementation, which ensures the stability of the public administration system before major challenges, such as the current world economic crisis.