Conflicting Logics? : Implementing Capacity and EU Adaptation in a Postcommunist Context
type: CreativeWork
description: It is generally recognized that the EU accession process has profound effects on state transformation in the postcommunist applicant countries. A key problem of postcommunism has been a weak ability to implement public policy. This study explores how efforts to fulfill EU conditionality may influence implementing capacity. Firstly, it advances a theoretical framework for this purpose, focusing on how governments may respond to the demands of the accession and what effects this leaves on policy-making structures and hence on implementing capacity. The analysis of implementing capacity centers on the inter-organizational nature of policy-making. The study also investigates what changes of policy-making structures that are likely to be vital to enhance implementing capacity in the East Central European countries. It is argued that there is a potential conflict between measures needed to meet EU requirements and measures needed to strengthen implementing capacity. 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 ne…
abstract: It is generally recognized that the EU accession process has profound effects on state transformation in the postcommunist applicant countries. A key problem of postcommunism has been a weak ability to implement public policy. This study explores how efforts to fulfill EU conditionality may influence implementing capacity. Firstly, it advances a theoretical framework for this purpose, focusing on how governments may respond to the demands of the accession and what effects this leaves on policy-making structures and hence on implementing capacity. The analysis of implementing capacity centers on the inter-organizational nature of policy-making. The study also investigates what changes of policy-making structures that are likely to be vital to enhance implementing capacity in the East Central European countries. It is argued that there is a potential conflict between measures needed to meet EU requirements and measures needed to strengthen implementing capacity. 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 ne…
author: Jerre, Ulrika
language: eng
keywords: Political Science, child protection reform, Romania, East Central Europe, postcommunism, conditionality, EU adaptation, islands of efficiency, implementing capacity, state transformation, Political and administrative sciences, Statsvetenskap, förvaltningskunskap
date published: 2005
date modified: 2026-07-24T03:00:02Z
provider: University of Lund
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Department of Political Science, Lund University