EIRP Proceedings (May 2011)
Covering Risks in the Public Administration – an In-Depth Analysis of the Regulatory Changes in Romania
Abstract
The paper aims at analyzing in a trans-disciplinary manner the institutional and functional changesof the public administration under crisis. The current analysis looks in depth of the financial, economic, and,more importantly, social crisis in relation to the reforms imposed by both the internal and externalstakeholders. The decision-makers have not taken into account the risk factors, triggering legislativeincoherence and instability due to the challenging and approval as non-constitutional of many such normativeacts by the Romanian Constitutional Court. The research objectives search to clear up the measures’coherence in the context of a declining public budget and a negative growth period, when the shrunk publicfunds need to be properly allocated. Therefore, the answer that our research is looking for should pertain tothe following concern: can the government’s actions be considered solutions to the problems raised by thecurrent context? The answers shall aim at both restoring the legal and economic balance, as defined in theworking hypothesis. The lax fiscal policy of the expenditures brings about an involuntary fiscal contraction inthe event of an economic downturn (Rosen and Gayer, 2010), as it was the case in Romania. Those lack ofprudence shall be addressed in our analysis, with specific reference to the already established literatureexplanations involving the decision-makers trust in the „good days shall be around forever”, which triggers abelief that the expenditures’ expansion can be permanent. Regarding the paper methodology, this study isproceeding via bibliographical research, so that the reasoning behind the paper is clearly underlined as thisresearch is actually triggered by the radical changes made by both legislatures and practitioners as a responseto crisis. Further, the manuscript makes use of direct observation and legislative analysis and extensivedocumentary research of national tax policy and statistics relevant for the timeframe 2009-2010. Further, acomprehensive analysis of several interviews made with top officials of the Romanian Central Bank and theRomanian Government is to be taken into account.
