The Eroding Force of Informal Rules: Romania Between Democracy and Europeanization

Democratization was meant to deliver a better quality of governance in the context of increased accountability mechanisms, but the experience of the past thirty-five years has provided a mixed track record of institutional consolidation. European integration has led to an ample record of reforms and civil society groups have championed numerous watchdog initiatives, but poor institutional capacity remains a reality in Romania. The mainstream argument is that institutional consolidation has been undermined by distortive phenomena such as corruption, patronage, and clientelism. The consolidation led by the European Union (EU) has impacted the quality of institutional processes only when coupled with financial conditionalities, that is, only when institutional processes were directly involved in EU-funded programs. In contrast, the Romanian public administration did not undertake consolidation of its own. The duality between the local practices and codes of conduct and the formal compliance with international requirements translated into a superficial institutional consolidation. In the absence of a systematic domestic effort of institutional reform, the gains accumulated over the past decade will continue to stand on a foundation of sand.