engleski

Managing Public Affairs in South Eastern Europe: Muddled Governance

South Eastern Europe (SEE) gradually lost the significance it had during the Ancient World and can now be seen as a part of European periphery. Famous tradition of Roman law and Greek democracy has been overlaid with complex historic layers of various governance ideas, doctrines, and practices. The SEE space encompasses a narrower circle of South Slavic nations, as well as the Greeks, the Albanians, and the Romanians. While most of them experienced socialist experiment in the second part of the 20th century, the Greeks had a different development path. Within the circle of socialist countries, there is a narrower group of the countries on the territory of the former Yugoslavia. Cultural and historical ties are especially visible between those countries, but links and interdependences are wider. Certain cultural and governance commonalities can be identified in the whole South East region. The frame for governance development in the SEE countries is characterized by the Europeanization process, modernisation policy, search for national identities, and regional cooperation and learning. Despite all efforts, almost all the countries suffer from corruption, lack of political legitimacy, weak administrative capacities, etc. The chapter focuses especially on three governance processes in the region. These are the introduction of direct election of mayors and other institutions of participative democracy ; the promotion of modern human resources management and development of administrative education ; and strengthening the legal protection of citizens’ rights in their contacts with public administrations. The result is muddled governance, i.e. governance with strong reliance on the classical government with weak forms of inter-jurisdictional and third-party governance that arise when not very clear European ideas about public administration reform flow into shrinking domestic ideas on governance.

europeanization and modernization process, national identity, regional cooperation, direct election of mayors, HRM, administrative education, legal protection of citizens' rights, governance, South East Europe

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