Conflicting Logics? : Implementing Capacity and EU Adaptation in a Postcommunist Context
Author
Summary, in English
Secondly, it applies the theoretical framework to an in-depth study of child protection in Romania. This subsector has been exposed to very strong EU conditionality, which provides an opportunity to study the process of influence. It is concluded that child protection has emerge as an "island of efficiency". Efficiency has been induced in specialized child protection entities at the national and local level. These have had intense exchanges with EU and other international actors, but have been isolated from the state at large. This has strengthened the ability to implement some specific policies (to close large-scale institutions for children and replace these with family-type care), but has impeded implementation of more complex child protection policies (e.g. to prevent child abandonment).
The dissertation advances ideas about when a conflict between EU adaptation and implementing capacity is likely to emerge and when, on the contrary, the first may lead to a strengthening of the latter. It is argued that negative effects are related to that decision-makers respond in a defensive manner to the demands of the accession and/or that they are forced to over-simplify policy-making procedures in order to carry out necessary policy changes. This can manifest itself in that actors whose resources and participation would have been needed for effective implementation are excluded and that channels of interaction are undermined. A similar development is most likely when a government has weak policy-making resources and the changes called for in a subsector are radical. Moreover, when EU demands concern formal changes but are vague about implementation and rapid compliance is required, it is more likely that responses will be negative from an implementation perspective. This implies among others that the countries or sectors that are the furthest behind are at the greatest risk of experience this type of adverse effects of EU adaptation. The study also shows at the importance of carefully targeted EU conditionality and that domestic accession strategies are linked to overall plans of the restructuring of the state machinery and capacity-building.
Department/s
Publishing year
2005
Language
English
Publication/Series
Lund Political Studies
Issue
136
Full text
Document type
Dissertation
Publisher
Department of Political Science, Lund University
Topic
- Political Science
Keywords
- child protection reform
- Romania
- East Central Europe
- postcommunism
- conditionality
- EU adaptation
- islands of efficiency
- implementing capacity
- state transformation
- Political and administrative sciences
- Statsvetenskap
- förvaltningskunskap
Status
Published
Supervisor
- Bo Petersson
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 0460-0037
- ISBN: 91-88306-50-X
Defence date
13 May 2005
Defence time
13:15
Defence place
Edens hörsal, Statsvetenskapliga institutionen, Paradisgatan 5
Opponent
- Li Bennich-Björkman (Docent)