CUPRINS nr. 123-124

ARHIVA

Partide si societate

The evolution of parties supporting government forms of patronage in post-communist Romania
 

ALEXANDRA IONASCU

The process of democratization in Romania implied the emergence of political parties and of rule of law. However, nine years after the fall of communism, the bureaucrats were still subject to the general labor code, being, in practice, hired and released from their functions by the minister in office. In this context, this article analyzes the politicization of the administrative apparatus and the new forms of patronage emerged, which registered a shift from the personalistic form in the selection of civil servants towards a strategic process, directed by political parties supporting the government in post-communist Romania. In this sense, we assist at a transformation of the patronage forms, from a political form towards a party form of patronage.

The process of democratization in Romania implied the emergence of political parties and of the rule of law. The reconfiguration of the legislative dimension touched mainly the government sphere. However, nothing has been done until late-1990s to reform the central bureaucracy. Nine years after the fall of communism, the bureaucrats were still subject to the general labor code, being, in practice, hired and released from of their functions by the minister in office. In this context, we assist at a widespread politicization of the administrative apparatus, ministers using continuous job allocation in order to obtain support in their political decisions (Gordin 2002:515). This form of patronage, which resulted from a politicized appointment process, has become a systematic procedure in post-communist Romania. The much-expected Law of Civil Servants was adopted very late in time, compared to other Eastern European countries, and it was mainly a result of European Union’s conditionality once Romania started to negotiate its accession. Nevertheless, the legal provisions adopted in order to halt the intrusion of political parties in the process of appointing civil servants did not stop the patronage. New forms of patronage emerged, which registered a shift from the personalistic form in the selection of civil servants towards a strategic process, directed by political parties supporting the government. We assist therefore at a transformation of forms of patronage from a political form toward a party form of patronage1.

Why was the civil servants law delayed in the Romanian2 case and why did the political parties avoid having such law adopted? The answer to that question can be given by acknowledging that the absence of a powerful civil society and of a privatization law transformed the central bureaucracy in a viable leverage for political parties having their interests protected, which perpetuated political patronage in order to control state resources (Barbu 1999:161)3. We will argue that even if a clientelistic tradition and the absence of a professionalized civil servants sector have an important role to play in the delay of the of the administration reform (Kitschelt 2000:858), and even if the construction of party system and the electoral provisions favor the extrapolation of political patronage (O’Dwyer 2004, Gryzmala Busse 2003, 2006), we can not understand the process of patronage without taking into account the process of institutionalization of individual political parties, trough the relationship established between the parties supporting government and the cabinets. Therefore, we claim that there is tight relationship between the process of appointment, the governmental decision-making procedures and the exercise of the patronage.

In 1999, as a result of the explicit request of the EU, Romanian Parliament adopted the functioning statute of civil servants. From that moment on, civil servants were theoretically protected from arbitrary appointments and replacements on political criteria. We will investigate how the legal provisions reconfigured the political field underlining the fact that the adoption of the civil servants law was not conducive to the disappearance of patronage rather it determined a reconfiguration in the forms of patronage. We move, in this way, from a personalized form of patronage, where the relationship with the minister in office is the main aspect of the appointment at the bureaucratic level, to a form of patronage conducted by party leaders and the party organization. We will argue that this reconfiguration of the patronage aspects is not only the result of the adoption of a law, but also the result of an institutional consolidation of political parties and their policies of Human Resources.

Therefore, we sustain that the existence of patronage on a political scene is a function of the articulation of the procedures of appointment of political actors and of the informal mechanisms of decision making. Meanwhile we consider that the form of the patronage is a result of the level of adoption of the necessary legislative framework in order to stop the clientelistic rapports in exerting patronage.

The paper will be constructed in three main sections. After a review of the relevant literature and the construction of a framework for analysis for the Romanian case, the second part will provide a brief analysis of the contextual factors. At this level, we will take into account the evolution of relationship between political parties and government concerning the strategies of nominating political actors (ministers and secretaries of state), the decision-making procedures, as well as the mechanisms of appointing civil servants. Thirdly, we shall examine how different patterns of patronage developed and evolved in the appointment of the civil servants in the central governmental structures in the last 16 years.

I. Patronage and Governmental Parties. A theoretical framework

The study will focus on the process of patronage understood as a process of distribution of favors to individuals in exchange for political advantages to those who give favors (Blondel 2002:241). However our understanding of patronage comprises also the dimension of the political control, as a form of exerting and diffusion of power at the social level. The process of patronage, conceived as logic of social exchange, as an appropriation and manipulation of resources (Roninger 1994:9) as well as a form of controlling the executive sphere of power, will be analyzed trough the process of appointment at the bureaucratic level. By bureaucracy we understand “a set of non elected, publicly founded positions of administration of central government and its branch offices” with special emphasis on heads and deputy heads of ministerial departments, as well as other staff below these levels.  These appointments are supposed to follow a professional grid, in the sense that appointment is made on a merit-based criteria (O’Dwyer 2004:523, Guy Peters 2004:86). Given the fact that the authority to distribute patronage appointments is concentrated in the hands of governmental decision-makers (Protsyk/Wilson 2003:708), we consider essential to understand the relationship established between government and supporting parties in the process of appointment. This is conducive to grasping different patterns of forms of patronage and the way they became autonomous in the political scene.

We consider that cabinets and political parties are not individual actors, but the level of analysis should be placed at the elite strata, which influence both the governmental decisions and the party organizational structure. Therefore, we consider that the relationship between the party supporting government and the cabinets is a bi-univocal one (Cotta 1996: 56-95). Parties control the recruitment of ministers and secretaries of state, but at the same time the nomination of certain actors, their selection, de-selection and their political decisions while in office have a direct impact on the party organization (Panebianco 1988:262, Blondel/Cotta 1996: 251). This interdependence between cabinets and political parties can be analyzed trough the research on the political actors nominated in cabinets portfolios. The government supporting parties control not only the appointment of political personnel, but they also monitor the process of distribution of functions in different governmental bodies (Blondel/Malova 2004:13). Therefore, the party in government holds the discretionary power to exercise patronage (Bondel 2002, Protsyk/Wilson 2003:708).

Furthermore, given the evolution of political parties toward a form of party in public offices (Katz/Mair 2002:113), the patronage function of political parties has increased over the years. Nonetheless, this process is not univocal. The governmental actors who seldom are party leaders may use their positions in the executive bodies in order to reinforce their positions at the party level. The nominations of political actors in high executive positions, by external channels of recruitment, can also modify the distribution of power within the party. The process by which ministers develop and employ their staff, as a supplier of technical expertise, constitutes a resource asset that reinforces the power of the actor at the party level (Katz/Mair 2002:124).

Maurizio Cotta shows that the control of government exercised through political parties depends on the strength of the party organization (Cotta 2000). Given the fact that the recruitment of political elites is influenced by the internal organization of the party (Putnam 1976:46), we consider that analyzing the composition of cabinets (in a large sense) could reveal the force of party organization and it could be a measure of party institutionalization. Moreover, we consider that the manner in which policies and appointment procedures are institutionalized at the governmental level can give us some insights on the relationship between political parties and government, giving us some indications as far as the preeminence of one over another is concerned.

For a better understanding of the relationship between parties that support government and the cabinets, we are going to operate a distinction between the “majoritarian” and the “consensual” forms of patronage. Using Lijphart’s categories and the relationship between parties and government, Jean Blondel finds two patterns of exerting patronage: a majoritarian and a consensual way. The consensual manner of exercising patronage has as its ideal-type the partitocratic systems. Conversely, the majoritarian one is defined by a sharp distinction between a government party or coalition and an opposition party or coalition (Blondel 2002:244). In the case of majoritarian patronage, the government apportions favors in order to reinforce the dependence of the party in government. (Blondel 2002:246).

Guidelines in Studying Romanian Party Patronage
The breakdown of communist regime in Romania was followed by a process of institutional and legislative reconfiguration. In the first years, nothing has been done to reform the administrative apparatus, while political parties were seeking to develop their own internal organizations and to recruit political personnel. The institutionalization of political parties remained dependent on the appropriation of functions in the state’s legislative and executive branches (Barbu 1999), parties being directly created or consolidated as parties in office. Therefore, establishing the nature of the relationship between the political parties supporting government and the cabinets is essential to the understanding of the developments and the existence of the forms of patronage.

The study will show that in the absence of a legal framework concerning the statute of civil servants, the governing parties have exercised a more powerful political control in the process of appointing civil servants, in a “majoritarian” form of patronage. The imposing of such forms of patronage in Romania was dependent on the process of institutionalization of political parties, and their quest for professional political personnel. At the same time, it can be argued that there is an evolution of forms of patronage resulting from the development of the political parties as well as from the reconfiguration of the legislative norms. Two different periods are to be identified in this respect. For the first period (1989-2000) it will be argued that although political parties have been entirely involved in appointing civil servants and, like in the case of political personnel, the key element for allocating these positions was not party membership, but rather, a privileged relationship established with the minister in office, encouraging moreover the perpetuation of clientelistic networks. In the second period, after 2000, the implementation of the law of civil servants, as well as the establishment of a category of specialized personnel at the level of political parties produced the emergence of new forms of patronage. This second phase is characterized by the influence of party leaders developing different strategies to bring their own representatives in the administrative structures.

It shall then be investigated if in post-communist Romania, the institutionalization of political parties and the introduction of a law of civil servants have produced a reconfiguration of the party supporting government forms of patronage, from a parochial pattern of patronage, political patronage, toward a party form of patronage.

The present study is constructed on the basis of the findings of two surveys – semi-structured interviews. The first survey on the government functioning was conducted in January - May 2005, based on semi-structured interviews with former ministers and secretaries of state concerning the governmental functioning of Romanian cabinets. The second survey conducted in January-February 2006 focused on the central actors of the administration: chiefs of the Civil Servants Agency, trade union leaders of the civil servants as well as some central administration high civil servants. The information provided by the interviews was completed by an analysis of the Commission’s Monitoring Reports, Sigma Reports, the independent centers reports as well as by insights offered by the memories published by the political leaders of the period.

II. Relationship Party and Government. The construction of a new political scene

“Unless the new authorities adopt a more responsible stance concerning the development of the civil service – restraining their visible appetite for patronage politics when it comes to public employment in the state administration – the situation created after the 2004 elections may have negative consequences.” (SIGMA, 2005:1)

In 2006, 16 years after the fall of the communism, the Romanian administration remains highly politicized. Despite of the adoption of the Civil Servants Statute in 1999, and the legislative reconfigurations in the following years, the forms of political patronage have not disappeared, but in change, they shifted from a person-based form to a party-strategic one.  In order to understand this process of reconfiguration, we asses that legal provisions adopted at the end of the 1990s are not the only reason explaining this process, and in order to a develop a more insightful comprehension of this process, we have to understand the relationship established between political parties supporting government and the post-communist cabinets. After a short contextual analysis, we are going to emphasize the relationship established between the government supporting parties regarding the politics of appointment of political personnel.

1. The Political Configuration of the Romanian Governmental Field
Nine governments have marked the landscape of the Romanian political sphere. During the mandate of the first six cabinets there is no general law adopted concerning the statute of the civil servants.

On 26th December 1989, the first decision of the Council of National Salvation Front, a body which was formed in order “to seize all the responsibilities for a provisional state structure” (Iliescu: 2004, 186), concerned the nomination of Petre Roman as a Prime minister of the first democratic government. The task of the new government was to ensure the continuity of decision-making process and to prepare the first free elections.

After the elections on 20th may 1990, and the crushing victory of a successor party (Soare 2004), National Salvation Front (a political party formed from the reconfiguration of the CFSN, winning 66.31% of seats in the Chamber of Deputies), Petre Roman was for the second time appointed Prime minister. However, powerful social movements as the riot of miners and their violent marches on the streets of Bucharest interrupted his mandate. The reshuffle of Roman’s cabinet produced a split in the major governmental party. As a result, a technocrat, Theodor Stolojan, the newly appointed Prime minister had an extended mandate lasting over a year. The second free electoral process, held on 27th September 1992, marked the victory of the main faction of the ancient FSN, now named The Social Democratic Party - PDSR. However, the victory was not clear-cut; the PDSR managed to get only 27.2% of seats in the lower chamber. Nevertheless, given the fragmentation of the political opposition, the PDSR formed the new government, and a technocrat was appointed as the head of the cabinet, Nicolae Vacaroiu. In this period of time, the administrative apparatus remained unreformed, with no clear separation between the administration structures and the political power. Perpetuating the communist procedures, civil servants were simply hired and dismissed by the ministers in office. Despite the legal initiatives to establish a civil servants code, no law has been adopted.

The first political alternation took place on 3rd November 1996. The victorious coalition, The Democratic Convention (CDR), earned 30% of votes for the Chamber of Deputies. After the electoral process, CDR joined its forces with Social Democratic Union (formed by an historic party PSDR and the other split faction of the FSN – The Democratic Party) and the Democratic Union of Hungarians UDMR, in order to form a governmental coalition. The first appointed Prime minister was Victor Ciorbea, former mayor of Bucharest, coming from the main historical party of the CDR, The National Peasants Party (PNTcd). Ciorbea resigned after 16 months, being replaced by Radu Vasile, member of the same party and the representative of an important wing of the party. The third Prime minister of this mandate was Mugur Isarescu, an independent. Isarescu was the governor of the National Bank of Romania; his mandate only lasted one year. The anti-communist alliance, which is the manner in which CDR presented itself during the electoral campaign (Preda 2002:960), considered the replacement of “red officials” as a first task therefore, in the first year of the alternation process, little had been done in order to adopt a law of civil servants that would freeze the current situation in the bureaucratic apparatus. However, even after the first year in government, and despite the existent project of a civil servant statute, the law was not adopted by the Parliament until December 1999. The statute of the civil servants, the Law 188/1999, was adopted only after the government took its responsibility in having this legislative text passed, as a result of the special request of European Union. Given the fact the year 2000 was an electoral year, the statute was still to be implemented. Nevertheless, the existing bureaucrats were, in theory, to remain in office as permanent personnel, protected by the provisions of the law that prohibited any politicized dismissal.

The eighth government of the Romanian political field was formed as a result of the second political alternation in power, which took place on 26th November 2000. The Social Democratic Pole, formed mainly by the PDSR (two small parties also adhered to this body: PSDR and PUR) won the elections with 36.61% of the votes in the lower Chamber. Benefiting also from the political support of the UDMR, PDSR (lately known as Social Democratic Party PSD) formed the cabinet. The Prime minister of the cabinet, Adrian Nastase also became head of the main government party, the Social Democratic Party. One of the tasks of the government was to develop the secondary legislation regarding the administrative reform and to modify a part of the provisions of the civil servants statute. Nevertheless, as we will argue that the emergence and the implementation of legal provisions did not generate the disappearance of the patronage.

The latest government (still in office) was elected as a result of the elections held on 28th November 2004. The government coalition, led by the liberal leader Calin Popescu Tariceanu, consists of the D.A., an alliance of National Liberal Party and Democratic Party, as well as UDMR and PUR. The current cabinet continued the process of reconfiguration of the legislation of the civil servants statute. However, the patronage forms have not disappeared; instead, they continued the emergent pattern after the adoption of the civil servant statute.

2. The Construction of Romanian Post-communist Cabinets: Appointments, Decision-making and Patronage
By studying the relationship between the parties supporting government and the cabinets trough the three dimensions – appointments, decision-making and patronage, we can distinguish two main periods, with their own idiosyncrasies.

Cabinets dominated by the parties supporting government characterize the first period 1990-2000. However, this domination does not manifest itself in the traditional form described by the literature, because of specific aspects of the democratization. This implies a match with the phenomenon of party institutionalization process. In the second period (2000-2006), we can observe a reinforcement of the governmental positions with effects upon the party organization.

A. Party Dominates Government. The appointment politics and the personalistic patronage
Political parties dominated the first democratic cabinets in the period of 1990-2000. However, the dominance was not exercised trough the organizational party channel, but rather in a personalistic manner. The procedures of appointment created the context favoring the exercise of a parochial type of patronage, with an emphasis on the creation of clientelistic networks, centered on the minister in function. The party influence on the appointment process at the lower levels of governmental power was exercised through the person who held the ministerial portfolio. The institutions’ autonomy in decision-making, together with the lack of collective governmental decision-making, allowed the minister in function to control the whole institution and therefore, given the lack of legal provisions, to conduct the political patronage as saw fit.

Three main periods that cover the period between the electoral processes can be identified.

a. The first phase, 1990-1992 can best be described as politics of coincidence between the reproduction of political elites and the continuity of decision-making. In other words, FSN leaders considered that the main objective of the cabinets was to ensure the necessary continuity and expertise in the decision-making process. Therefore, the politicization of the cabinet and the allocation of portfolios to party members was a secondary objective. In this period, we assist at the formation of cabinets with high percentage of independent ministers (32.1% of Petre Roman cabinet and 33.3% of Theodor Stolojan) because the main criterion employed in the selection of ministers was the decision-making expertise. One third of the members had a governmental experience in communist cabinets (39.3% Roman, and 28.6% in Stolojan). Besides that aspect, for Petre Roman’s cabinet, 26.92% of ministers were also members of the provisional cabinet and 34.62% were secretaries of state in the cabinet formed before the first free elections. As for Stolojan’s government, given the fact the cabinet is not formed after an electoral process, it reproduces mainly the Petre Roman’s formula, 55% of the ministers and 59% of secretaries of state maintained their functions.

What is important to note is the manner in which the secretaries of state, political dignitaries, were appointed, because the formula was applied several times in the case of post-communist governments. First, there is a process of political reproduction of secretaries of state, because 47.76% of them were also secretaries of state in the provisional cabinet. However, the principle applied in their selection and de-selection was the personal choice of the minister in function, who had a formal obligation to present the secretaries of state to the Prime minister, which, at his turn, made the legal nominations. No party-affiliation -condition was taken into account. This allowed Andrei Plesu, former the Minister of Culture to declare:

“I have dismissed 70% of the ancient ministry”, because “at that time the political life was not so politicized. There were no parties coming to say give us one secretary of state portfolio or two offices of department director.” Therefore, “I have appointed the state secretaries I wanted and that I found suitable and I fired the personnel I considered unnecessary.” (Plesu 1997:270-271).

Other government officials, backed Plesu’s declarations. One of the ministers of the period mentions that one of his top priorities was to “clean the governmental personnel, especially those having collaborated too much with the communist structures.” It is to notice that those procedures are not the effect of the independence of the ministers, but rather they represent the cabinet’s politics, because the Prime minister in function affirmed:

“I asked the ministers to act in the same manner: to employ on the level of secretaries of state and also on the lower strata, people having the same qualities: open mindedness, professionalism…Some of them were not even party members, but they understood they participated in a FSN government.”

However, this procedure was not always applied in this manner. For instance, in the case of secretaries of state who were promoted from the bureaucratic level, there were not so many dismissals in the bureaucratic area. The autonomous way of appointment is an image in fact of the government functioning and explains the construction of a culture of autonomy in the case of ministries, which will be highly appreciated until 2000. In this sense, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Adrian Nastase declared about the Stolojan’s mandate: “The period between 1991 and 1992, Theodor Stolojan iThe Prime minister in functions had an impeccable behavior. He did not interfere in the foreign affairs problems.”(Nastase: 2005). The relationship with the minister in office - who cannot only have the secretaries of state dismissed at his request, but also the chief departments and other high civil servants - gives account for a certain pattern of construction of governmental relations. The Prime minister, Petre Roman, declared that the chief-bureaucratic positions were not a problem in the process of decision-making because “they changed with the secretaries of state”. Roman also assessed that secretaries of state were replaced “when the ministers observed they blocked the reform policies.” Thus, given the fact the FSN is a successor party, the lack of a party affiliation of certain cabinet members is not necessary a reflection of the autonomy between the cabinet and the supporting party.

b. The second main phase of the government development concerned the Nicolae Vacaroiu mandate 1992-1996, formed by the conservative wing of the party after the split of FSN. The new Prime minister, former secretary of state in post-communist cabinets, but also having an experience in the governmental structures before 1989, was not a member of PDSR, however his mandate was highly controlled by the chiefs of the main governmental party. In this sense, the declaration of the first vice-president of the party, and later on Prime minister, Adrian Nastase, can explain the distribution of power between the different poles:

“Admittedly, for M. Ion Iliescu iThe Romanian elected president in 1990,1992 and 2000s was easier to work with M. Nicolae Vacaroiu when he was a Prime Minister because it was, to a certain extent, an administrator - economist, and by not having power at the party level, there were several areas, not necessarily of power, but maybe, to a certain extent, of interests, of power, of decision. There was M. Ion Iliescu at Cotroceni, M. Vacaroiu at the government, there was the party where there were M. Gherman (the president of the party) and me.”

The cabinet was formed on the principle of continuity but continuity based on socialization in institutions before and after 1989. The selection process, as presented by the Prime minister, is the following: “there were 90% independents and professionals”, “it was all balanced and very well thought and I believe that in spite of the critics, it was our experience that helped us” (Vacaroiu 1998:36-38). Even if not 90%, but 42.2% of the government were not PDSR members, the cabinet was not at all autonomous regarding the decision-making process, and to some extent to the appointment process.

Besides the fact that 40.48% of ministers were former secretaries of state in the previous governments and therefore had some direct link with the governmental party, the relationship with the political party supporting government is one of subordination. In what regards the appointment of secretaries of state, their nomination is marked by three different logics: 1. autonomy – generally the ministers in office could appoint the secretaries of state they wanted, 2. continuity – over 30.13% of secretaries of state had detained similar functions in post-communist cabinets and 3. negotiation – the appointment of secretaries of state reflects the state of negotiation with other parties in order to achieve majority in Parliament. What is essential to underline is the fact that, except the negotiation logic, which by its extent is a marginal process, the principle applied in the decision making as well as in the appointment of lower level of governmental personnel is controlled by the minister in office, but also by PDSR. Nevertheless, this control is exerted in a parochial manner. It is not the party organization or party leadership that controls this process. Instead, different ministers, registered members of PDSR or not, nominate secretaries of state or chiefs of departments. In this sense the declaration of a minister who at that time was not a PDSR member is illustrative: 

“It was not a period of political nominations and there were few secretaries of state which were not designated on the basis of consultancy iwith the minister in offices. Rather, in large majority, the secretaries of state and the general directors, the entire leading structure of the Minister of Foreign Affairs was named by me, or let us say they were named by the Prime minister at my proposal.”

The case cited is not a unique case. The minister in function named the ministry personnel, which was not necessary a party member. Nevertheless, it is interesting to notice the fact that the personnel nominated in different positions, for example secretaries of state, became PDSR members at the end of the cabinet mandate. In this manner, the party recovered the trained personnel considered loyal to the political party. In order to repay the activity of the personnel as well as their loyalty, the secretaries of state were invited to candidate on PDSR’s electoral lists on eligible positions.

Therefore, the appointment procedures also facilitated a renewal of the party personnel, and permitted the cooption of different actors acquiring a decision-making expertise. The cooption of party personnel, however, does not modify the structure of power at the party level, because the new actors were elected from those who were loyal to a certain group in the party and especially between those having some informal relationship with the PDSR. In this particular case, the patronage is the result of the conjunction of many logics of power: there is a selective incentive politics that is conducted by PDSR. This is the expression of a political control exercised by the political party and a process of cooption of those considered as being loyal to the party. Given the autonomy in the decision-making process, the relationship that the minister in office maintains with the political party is essential for the understanding of the existence and the mechanisms of a personalized patronage.

c. The last phase of cabinets dominated by the supporting parties concerns the 1996-2000 period, marking the first alternation of the Romanian scene. The coalition in government applied a strong politics of algorithm, the portfolios being distributed to political parties not only at the ministerial level, but also at the level of each office of secretary of state. Therefore, the selection of ministries was not the result of the Prime minister’s choice; instead, they were selected directly by political parties. This procedure of nomination has dominated all of the three cabinets of the period, although the other two cabinets, Radu Vasile and Mugur Isarescu reproduced to a large extent the structure of the previous ones, because the change in government was mainly the result of the contestation of the Prime minister in function. The former Prime Minister Victor Ciorbea admitted to the marginal role of the Prime minister in the selection of cabinet personnel: “No doubt I had no significant contribution in the formation of the governmental team.” In addition, another Prime minister, Radu Vasile, who acknowledged he was powerless in the process of selection and de-selection of ministers, reinforces his testimony:

“The big drama that I lived to the occasion of my mandate was that I had no strength to change my ministers. The algorithm in force for the division of ministerial portfolios obliged me to respect it while giving to a party the number of the foreseen offices, and on the other hand, constrained me to not to be able to change a minister without having the consent of the party’s leader from which the minister originated.” (Vasile  2002:148).

The same structure of appointment was followed at the level of secretaries of state. Practically, in a ministry that had a minister originating in a certain party, on the second level of power, this one was doubled by named secretaries of state and selected by the leaders of the other coalition parties. The principle of the freezing positions was applied in the case of secretaries of state who could not be replaced without the consent of the party that nominated them.

The formation of cabinets in 1996 and the years after was submitted to a process of renewal of the political class. With a notable exception, the Democratic Party, all of the parties had no governmental experience. Given the positioning of CDR’s members as representatives of the anti-communist forces, they declared themselves in favor of a reshuffle of the political elites, but also to the change of the administrative strata that were seen as loyal to the successor party: PDSR. In this regard, the declaration of Victor Ciorbea is illustrative for the political position of the parties in government:

“My first intention was to fundamentally restructure and to clean the whole governmental apparatus, as I already had done as a trade union leader and as a mayor. As a trade union leader, let me remind you that I fired over 500 former activists. As a mayor, during the first weeks after elections I dismissed all the chief departments, general directors, chiefs of services…”

Needless to say, the dismissal of the high civil servants was not only the result of a profound administrative reform, but also the result of the parties’ requirements to exercise a form of political patronage. Not only the political parties had the right to nominate and to change the governmental personnel, but also the institutional procedures and the mechanisms of appointment were impossible to apply at the administrative level without a political accord. In this sense, several declarations of the formers ministers in those cabinets show the dimension of the politicization:

“These functions are an illustration of the political clientele. One distributes functions, down to positions of directors, and not directors of agencies, but directors of territorial directions in the local administration.”

The nomination of political clientele in the bureaucratic apparatus has then embraced the form of a politicization of all governmental levels conducted by the parties supporting government. However, two important aspects have to be taken into account in order to understand the form of patronage that was adopted. The first one concerned the lack of trained personnel. The political parties that coming to power did not have the personnel detaining a decision making expertise at their disposal, and therefore, since they could not replace the actors in office, they conducted a politics of cooption of personnel, or at least they assured themselves of the allegiance of the bureaucrat in question. The second aspect we want to emphasize is that even if the coalition parties dictate the political appointment of the governmental leaders, the patronage exercised by the parties supporting government conserves its personalistic dimension. In fact, the person in office performs the politicization of the bureaucracy on a vertical axis in the ministry. As Victor Ciorbea argues:

“After two or three months when I tried to restructure the governmental structures, I found out that many of them  ibureaucratss they were already members of PD, or PNL or even PNTCD. And that was very important. The restructuring process depended on every minister, certain of them had done some replacements, others not. Excepting the level of secretaries of state and some general directors nothing has been changed.”

The new parties in government conducted a politics of politicization of the whole governmental apparatus. The structure of the top positions in the governmental sphere was established by negotiation between political parties. However, the politicization of lower positions was in the power of the minister in office and only indirectly conducted by the parties supporting government. This situation was reinforced by the fact the political parties in the coalition perceived themselves rather in a competition process and not as allies4 and by a strong tendency towards autonomy of ministries. Given the lack of consensus between parties, this process of personalization and segregation of the policies domains was assumed even by the Prime minister in office, as we can understand from the declaration of the second Prime minister in office in this period Radu Vasile: “I have allowed almost a total independence of all ministers in the cadre of their ministries, by only inferring in the decision making process in extreme cases.”(Vasile 2002:146).  In this case, we can conclude that despite all the formal conditions for a consensual form of patronage, the spirit of exerting patronage, at least in the appointment process was in a majoritarian form of patronage.

B. Cabinets Dominate Political Parties. From Political to Party Patronage
 The year 2000 marked the second alternation in government, but also the moment in which all the main parties of the political scene were represented in governmental structures, they accumulated some executive experience and succeeded in a politics of cooption of people having decision-making expertise. It is also the moment in which legal provisions, regarding the statute were civil service, were adopted and in a process of implementation. The new cabinets created after this date, are more politicized and founded based on cohesion of the party members. Even if the autonomy of decision-making procedures and the personalization of the appointments subsist, a new layer in the procedures of decision-making and in the nomination process is introduced. The fact that the leaders of the cabinets, as well as the main ministers in government have important functions at the party level, as well as the cohesion of the political actors, allows a reconfiguration of the party’s patronage. Given the fact that the new legal provisions blocked the use of a personalized patronage without the proactive intervention of the party and the party leaders, in order to adopt governmental procedures eluding the legal provisions, the role of the cabinet position in exercising the patronage has become a central one. We can thus observe a shift from the political patronage to a new phase, a strategic type of patronage, party patronage, which is applied as always in a majoritarian manner.

A. The elections in 2000 marked the second alternation on the Romanian scene. PDSR regained power and the new appointed Prime minister Adrian Nastase, vice-president of the party, became party’s president. In order to understand the shift in the balance between cabinet ministers and the party supporting government is essential to understand the principle that drafted the construction of the team in government. The main aspect that was taken into account, as Adrian Nastase declared, was the parliamentary experience of the ministers:

“The team was formed during the opposition time. In opposition, in the Parliament, I could check those which in a manner or other, at the level of committee work, the level of the parliamentary political struggle, in motions and the interventions were most effective.”

This selection procedure allowed the Prime minister to have a very good knowledge of all the cabinet members (which is rather unique in the Romanian governmental field) and to achieve certain cohesion between the governmental actors who had worked together within the Parliament. However, the appointment procedure at the ministerial level was founded on a procedure of selection by promotion, because 43.75% of the ministers appointed were having a secretary of state experience and then they beneficiated from a double advantage: the lack of visibility and the accumulation of decision making expertise. To this criterion, we can add another one: the high degree of politicization of the cabinet (Only 2.1% of the ministers appointed were not party members), almost all the ministers were prominent leaders of the party.

Nevertheless, this criterion of selection regarded only the first level of power. In what regards the selection of secretaries of state, the previous procedure of appointment was mainly preserved. It was the duty of the minister to present to the Prime minister the secretary of state he wanted and to sustain his candidacy. There are however several exceptions to that rule as the Prime minister mentioned: “in some cases I tried to double a certain minister with a secretary of state.” On this second level of power the party affiliation was not a certified criterion of selection, what counted was rather a good relationship with the minister in function. This procedure allowed PSD to coordinate a political of cooption of personnel, which embraced the same form as in the Vacaroiu cabinet a politics of positive incentives.

The cabinet’s decisions were taken by the actors in government and the Prime minister has constituted himself in the last instance at appeal in the decision making process. The principle of autonomy and personalistic decision making remained, but the centralization and the control over the party’s organization and the cabinet were unified in the same hands.  The cabinet reshuffles and the de-selection of ministers had an impact at the party level, because the de-selected ministers were recovered at the party level and given there new tasks. In this sense, Adrian Nastase commented his decision to restructure government, which allowed several changes not only at the political level of the cabinet, but also in the bureaucratic apparatus:

“I discovered that I conducted an expended structure, but I also had a pretext to make some personnel changes. It was the moment of half of the mandate when I considered that certain people had, also for other reasons, to pass to the party.”

This principle of extreme cohesion generated a very hierarchical system, in which the center of power was the cabinet. The political actors evoked the presence of Adrian Nastase at the head of the cabinet as the supreme authority in the decision making process.

In the presence of the laws Romania had to adopt in the negotiation process to EU, the personalistic patronage in its previous forms could not function without a direct and cohesive political action from the party supporting government and from the members of the cabinet. As we are going to underline, the patronage did not disappear from the Romanian field, but rather was reconfigured by a more strategic factor that implied the adoption of legal and semi-legal procedures in order to replace the former civil servants and to appoint the civil servants loyal to the PSD.

b. Before analyzing the ways of exercising political and party patronage in the process of the nomination of the civil servants, we will observe the main lines in the functioning of the current cabinet in office.

After the elections of 2004, a new government has emerged. It is the third alternation in power after 1989. The main alliance in power is constructed of two parties that also governed in 1996-2000. As in the case of the other cabinet, the algorithm is still applied in the same manner and the parties behave at some level rather that in competition and not in an alliance. However, the first main difference is that the chief of one governmental party is the Prime minister. Calin Popescu Tariceanu uses this position in order to control, to change the distribution of power at the party level, and to favor one wing to the detriment of another.

The cabinet is constructed on a principle of cohesion of the party members both from the PNL and from the PD. Besides the cohesion of the ministers originated from the same party, given the fact that the DA alliance was not formed after the electoral contest, but before, permitted to clarify the relationship between the party members and governmental representatives, but also a minimal socialization between the ministers in office. It is however very interesting to notice a phenomenon in the appointment process of the personnel. In the appointment process after 1989, the local establishment of the minister did not play an important role. The local capital started to play a minor role only in the process of appointment in the Nastase cabinet. However, the local capital occupied an important role in the nomination process of the ministers in Tariceanu cabinet. Seven of the 24 ministers present a profile that allows us to remark the role of local positioning in the nomination process. We can also observe that this process is covering all political spectrums, but this is characteristic for the Democratic Party that presents strong constituencies at the local level. At the same time, in the cadre of this cabinet, the academic trajectories seem to be replaced by the careers in the economic private sector (six of the ministers presenting such a profile).

This shift in the appointment procedures is important to note because it coincides to a shift in the focus on the discussion of the politicization of the civil servants. If until 2002, the discussion regarding the politicization of the civil service was centered on the politicization of the high civil servants in the central administration, the need to implement the reform of the administration and the transformation of political position in administrative positions at the local level, focused the discussion on the procedures of the appointment of civil servants at the local level.

III. A view from the other side: Patronage in the Appointment Process of the Civil Servants

“The political will to reform is only at a declarative level, because the billposters during the electoral campaign are still the main suppliers of human resource for the public function.” (Interview with Romeo Postelnicu the Former President of the National Agency of Civil Servants)

One of the dimensions analyzing the relationship between the parties supporting governments and the cabinets concerns the existence and the proliferation of patronage. We emphasized the fact that the way in which this relationship is founded in the Romanian case favored the reproduction of different forms of patronage that shifted from a personalistic dimension toward a more strategic form, a party form of patronage. The party institutionalization process as well as the absence of the legal provisions defining the borders of governmental actions permitted in a first phase the patronage. However, the legislatives rules, once adopted did not conduce to the dissolution of forms of patronage but rather at a reconfiguration of its forms. In this part, we propose to scrutinize the way in which the patronage was exercised in a specific case: the politicization of the high civil servants in Romania.

The analysis of patronage over the administrative apparatus is structured in two parts. In the first part, we will underpin the general forms of patronage in order to show its general characteristics regarding the process of politicization, while in the second part, we shall explore the way in which the patronage forms had continued to subsist in the Romanian context even after the legal provisions regarding bureaucracy were adopted.

Before and after the Law
The forms of patronage at the level of the appointment of civil servants were favored by the relationship between parties and government, but their specific forms were determined by the absence and then later the presence and implementation of the legal provisions. Two main periods that are superposed on those are concerned with the relationship between the supporting parties and the cabinets can be identified.

In the first phase, until the adoption of a specific law, the basic rights and obligations were established trough Governmental Decisions regarding the organization and the functioning of public institution. Therefore, each ministry determined its own set of rules and the civil servants obeyed to that rule. The recruitment procedures were also subject to general labor provisions (Lefter 1999). This allowed the human resources departments in the ministries, generally populated with the same bureaucrats over the years5, to determine who to hire and who to dismiss. However, as the Sigma report noticed, “Romania tradition held each ministry and institution i…s to truly manage its own staff from recruitment to termination of the service relationship and that this was seen as a part of a political power of the minister.”(Sigma 2002:11).  Therefore, each election period, especially the high civil servants were replaced, even if there was not a legal provision or a recognized custom regarding the reshuffling procedures of public administration after the elections. As the European Commission’s report in 1999 remarked, “the civil service at senior and middle management levels remain highly politicized.”

The Civil Service Statue passed by the Parliament in 1999 but remained largely non-implemented, so in a first phase, there was not a real change on the ground (Sigma 2002) and the secondary legislation concerning the recruitment procedures was adopted only in 2001 and most of it was never applied (Sigma 2004). There were however some modifications of a most importance because the adoption of the Civil Servant’s Statute freeze the situation in the public administration area. Art 97 of the Law 188/1999 established that the civil servants in office would fall under the protection of the law. This situation cited in the parliamentary debates created the grounds for the continuity of practices concerning the patronage, especially in the case of high civil servants. Therefore, despite the creation of a Civil Servants National Agency that had the role to survey the application of the Civil Servants Statute and despite the legal provisions, the politicization of the administrative body did not disappear and the traditional form of patronage, dictated by the minister in function still prevailed at the level of practices. As one of the former chiefs of the National Agency for the Civil Servants declared to us:

“They are hunted, at the top of the central administration, the secretary general, and the general directors. There is a true hunt. They align them and then they say: ‘You worked with the other one. You have 48h or 72h to find yourself a new job’. Sure, the things had changed and if you are intransigent you can oppose this.”

His declarations are backed also by the declarations of the chiefs of the civil servants trade unions, as Vasile Marica, the leader of the Union of the Trade-Unions of the Civil Servants. He considers that the discourse regarding the blockage created by the civil servants is used by the politicians “to dismiss the civil servants and to appoint their relatives, their nephews, etc.” For this leader “There is no separation between the administration and politics. The law exists but not the separation. Not at all, especially not at the top leading positions.” However, after the adoption and the implementation of the law, the civil servants have at their disposal a legislative cadre in order to protect their rights, and at the trade-union level, there is the possibility to obtain legal assistance in case of dismissal. Nevertheless, given the fact that those in the managerial positions, who are most affected by the politicization, have not the right to unionize (Sigma 2003:4), this procedure is not sufficient in order to combat unstatutory dismissals.

Even if the political actors and the civil servants representatives recognize to some extent the existence of political intrusion in the administrative domain, there are no clear statistics on the dimension of this politicization. The measurement techniques adopted at the level of the literature, the analysis of the dimensions of the administrative bodies (Grzymala-Busse 2006) and the resignation quotas after a change in government can hardly be analyzed in the Romanian case, due to the absence of data concerning the bureaucratic personnel, but also because the permanent restructuring of the government. Despite this situation, we can observe a fluctuation in the general number of the civil servants. For instance, in 1995, there were 130.607 civil servants, in 1996, which is an electoral year 125.145, and after the alternation in power, there were 130.344. Variations in the number of the civil servants can also be observed in the case of Adrian Nastase’s mandate.  In December 2000, we assist at a decrease of 30% of the total number of the civil servants. In March 2001, there were 115.000 civil servants, in 2002, the whole administrative body had 135.000 civil servants and in June 2003 there number of the civil servants was significantly reduced at 110.505 civil servants. This fluctuation is the result mainly of the ministerial restructuring and in the case of the Nastase’s cabinet of the modification of the Statute of Civil Servants. The scarcity of data regarding the civil servants body can only suggest the fact that in electoral years there is a tendency to reduce the dimension of the civil servant’s body in order to appoint then other civil servants.

However, it is difficult to affirm that the volatility of personnel on the bureaucratic level is the result of a direct politicization. If in the first years, where there were no legal provisions, this procedure of appointment and dismissal of civil servants was applied directly by the governmental actors, first in the FSN-PDSR cabinets, and then, it was seen as a necessity by the anti-communist camp. The introduction of a civil servant’s law changed this situation. The Nastase and Tariceanu cabinets, under the European Union’s monitoring procedures had to use other strategies in order to impose their own people in the civil servants’ positions; as a result, they exploited the flaws in the legislative cadre, the procedure of successive modification and revision of the legal provisions, as well as the delayed implementation of the law. For example, after the adoption of the Law 188/1999 there are 20 modifications made at this law since now. However, the legislative reconfiguration of the civil servants area is not closed. At the present there is not a job evaluation scheme, the evaluation procedure is based on a communist law 154/1988 but is complicated and is rather not in use (Sigma 2005) and there is no general law regulating the public employee’s payment which permits great discrepancies, within the same body.

Practical Forms of Patronage: Toward a Party Form of Patronage
In the Romanian case, we have delimited two main periods in exercising the political patronage at the appointment level of the civil servants. The first period is characterized by an assumed two fold phenomenon buttom-up (by the cooption of the administrative personnel or by the creation of a party allegiance) and top-down (by the dismissal of personnel especially in the top leading position and their replacement with the personnel loyal to the party) (Guy Peters/Pierre 2004). Even if this procedure is not integrated at the declarative level, there is in fact a tradition to consider the administrative functions as controlled by the party supporting government. The main question regards however, the exercise of the patronage after the adoption of legal provisions that protected the civil servants. We saw that the civil servants representatives recognize the existence and the persistence of the patronage even after the adoption of the law of civil servants without discrimination comparing with the previous period. We will argue that in fact the legal provisions generate a new form of patronage, because the power to conduct patronage is not situated only at the will of the minister in function, but the party in government does the manipulation of the flaws of the legal provisions. Besides the proactive attitude implied by the party’s patronage, a second dimension of change regards the domination of the forms of appointments of the people loyal to the party to the detriment in the forms of cooption. How then the governmental parties have conducted the political patronage in the appointment procedures of the administrative body in a cadre delimited by laws protecting the civil servants?

In fact, the civil servants and the civil servants representatives affirm there is not a major change after the adoption of the civil servant’s statute, that the politicization of the appointment process of the civil servants remained unchanged and that the appointment of the civil servants at least in top leading positions is highly politicized. Therefore, according to their opinion, ignoring and interpreting the law is at the origin of the perpetuation of the forms of patronage. Independent reports monitoring the professionalization of civil servants underline this procedure in the Romanian case, as showed by the Sigma’s report in 2002: “Political and personal connections are the only factor that really count when it comes to promotion and career development”; and the same report in 2005 shows that “some law provisions concerning dismissal and recruitment were not strictly applied after the current government took office” (Sigma 2005:6).

Nevertheless, even the personalized nomination process is maintained, it embraced legal form and therefore it suffered a process of adaptation and it required a proactive attitude at the governmental level in order to permit its practice. A first strategy regarded the reconfiguration of the legal provisions and the manipulation of the reconfiguration as ways to impose and to freeze loyal personnel in administrative positions. For example, in 2003 the Nastase cabinet tried to simplify the structure of the bureaucratic apparatus and to institute quotas for the leading positions. The number of director offices was reduced from 20.000 to 8000 leading positions. This allowed in practice the placement of the civil servants, which were loyal to the PDSR and who had a privileged relationship with the minister in function and to the human resources department. As a secretary of state of that period declared to us:

“The simplification formula had unpleased all the civil servants. Some remained chiefs others not. And then, of course, they had to establish who remains and who does not remain. This could not be decided only in two days if it was to apply the competence criteria, so the only criterion applied was the nepotism…The things were made only in a few days. What was the result? The best were not selected and the worst were promoted in top positions and they are the ones deciding at the present in the ministries.”

The second strategy employed in order to practice the patronage was the procedure of restructuring government, as well as the reconfiguration of the ministerial organigrams. The creation of new ministries, which recovered the activities of the ancient ones, as well as the transformation of some ministries in state’s agencies, permitted for instance in 2001 the dismissal of one third of the civil servants (Sigma 2002). The fact that the reduction of the civil servants number of offices was not a definitive measure is proved by the fact that the year 2002 is marked by a proliferation of the public appointments. We should note that the dimension of the political dismissals is unknown, because very few of the civil servants who declared they were dismissed on political criteria addressed their complaints to the courts. This allowed the officials from the National Agency of Civil Servants to declare:

“It is very difficult to implement in someone’s mind that he has to defend himself, or the Agency did not receive any complaints, we did nothing, but I cannot do something without a written complaint…When they did take action the won and they went directly to the courts. Some phoned us telling they were dismissed on political grounds. When I called the ministry, they told me he conducted a political campaign during the electoral phase.” 

That the process is bi-univocal in the sense that civil servants are not only instruments at the disposal of the political parties and that they conducted political actions in favor of the party can be sustained especially during the electoral campaign6. Besides that fact, there is a lack of cohesion at the level of the union movement of the civil servants as well as a lack of attitude regarding the politicization of the administrative level. However, if we are to believe some representatives of the trade union of civil servants in NACS at that time, there is also another reason for which there are not written complaints at NACS: the refusal of the chief of the agency to sign any written complaint which as a result, they could not be registered.

After the renewal of the bureaucratic levels, the government tried to repair the flaws in the legislation by introducing a legal provision concerning the fact the civil servant could be changed only if after the restructuring 50% of the job attributions were also modified, and there is no other post available for the civil servant in question.

By blocking this entrance of the political element in the civil servants area (partially blocked because the procedure is still applied on small scale), new other procedures occupied the center of the politicization of the administrative apparatus such the duplication of administrative with political structures, doubled by a control of the organization of contests. The last two governments have learnt to manipulate the provision regarding the contractual personnel. The law in 2003 made the distinction between the employees hired by the minister and the civil servants in order to protect the civil servants statute. The procedure was introduces lately also at the local level, the Sigma’s report in 2005 specifying the tendency to create at the local level city managers which are not civil servants, but who are going to have competencies which are superposed over the civil servants. However, this allowed in fact to doubling the competency of the civil servants who perceived their attributes as being diminished (Sigma 2002) and on the other hand to create at the institutional level the networks which can promote former contractual personnel into administrative functions (in an informal manner, the contractual personnel is well informed about the contest organization and often they worked with the examination commission members on different programs).

This political strategy is associated with a more ancient method that regards the control of the contests organized for the appointment of the civil servants. For example more than 1/3 of the civil servants were dismissed in January 2001, but given the legal provisions they were dismissed at the result of a “test of competence” in order to validate their nomination in function as a result of the application for the first time of the Statute(Sigma 2002, Ghinea 2001). However, the situation in 2001 is not unique, the control of the contests which were organized as well as the mobility between the contractual personnel toward the civil servant statute being one of the techniques employed at the level of state’s institutions. As one of the high civil servants declared to us:  “The main problem concern the fact if the contests are equitable. Honestly, at the present, in the best case scenario 30-35% of the contests are held in a correct manner, but we hope to attend in the future a reasonable level of 85%.”

There are many other procedures that are employed in order to preserve a politicized administration, such as cooption of civil servants, suspension of contracts, or the appointment of the civil servants who passed a contest on temporary functions that allows the fact for him to be dismissed after a while. We can nevertheless observe a continuous configuration and reconfiguration of strategies in order to control the administrative body.

Conclusions

The patterns of patronage exercised by the political parties in the Romanian case were subject to reconfiguration due to the process of institutionalization of political parties as parties in office and the introduction of legal provision. Even if the two phenomena are independent from each other, their chronological simultaneity determined the consolidation of new forms of patronage. The forms of patronage are modified by the relationship established between the political parties supporting governments. The appointment procedures at the political level as well as the procedures of decision-making have favored the persistence and reproduction of a political form of patronage. The adoption of legal provision under the vigilant eye of the European Union, but also, the process of the construction and reinforcement of party organization and of the party base of qualified of personnel permitted the development of a new type of patronage. The shift from a personalistic and clientelistic type of patronage, which was only based on a principle of proximity and direct relationship with the high hierarchy of the ministries, was produced. A proactive party form of patronage emerged and characterizes the Romanian political field. The shift coincides with the passage from parties that were dominating government to cabinets that take the emphasis over the parties. Therefore, these two main elements of the process of democratization determined the evolution in forms of the patronage. This situation is best represented at the level of the process of politicization of central bureaucracy, especially in the case of the high civil servants.

In the case of Romanian civil servants, the creation of legislative provisions did not stop the traditional phenomenon of patronage, but rather it transformed it. If at the practical level the civil servants remark the same politicization and clientelistic networks in the appointment and the dismissal procedures, the core of the procedure is not applied in the same manner. A new layer was introduced in exerting this patronage, because the continuity of procedures requires a proactive initiative and an organized support from the chief of the government and from the political parties in government. Furthermore, the accent in the appointment process has changed and parties in government seek to impose their own personnel and acquaintances rather than to try the cooption of the existing ones. Therefore, the constructions of forms of loyalty, as well as the structure of social exchange, have been reconfigured.


NOTES
1 Distinction introduced by Peter Mair and Petr Kopecky. For the two authors consider that we should distinguish between the political patronage and the party patronage. The first form of patronage refers to clientelistic relations and at the logic of social exchange. In opposition to this first form the party patronage is more interested on patronage as a form of a strategy of the party in order to reinforce their organizational networks in public and semi public sphere. For further details see Peter MAIR and Petr KOPECKY, “Political parties and Patronage in Contemporary Democracies: An Introduction”, Paper prepared for the workshop on Political Parties and Patronage, ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops, Nicosia, 25-30 April, 2006, p.5.
2 Romania is one of the last countries in adopting the Civil Servants Law. The other countries in the region adopted the Statute in 1992 in Slovenia, Hungary, in 1993, in 1993 in Latvia, in 1995 Estonia, 1996 Poland, in 1998 in Bulgaria. The only country adopting the civil service law after Romania is the Czech Republic. See GRZYMALA-BUSSE Anna, “The Discreet Charm of Formal Institutions Postcommunist Party Competition and State Oversight”, Comparative Political Studies, Vol.39, No.3, April 2006, p. 275
3 This explanation is also provided by Georgi Karasimenov for the Bulgarian case in order to explain the politicization of the bureaucracy. (Berglund/ Ekman/ Aarebrot (eds.) 2004: 421).
4 The Democratic Party’s members in government considered they did not well negociated their political support to CDR, on the other hand, the PNTCD members regarded the democrats as originated from a succesor party and therefore as communists. For further details see Petre Roman, Elena Stefoi, Marturii provocate, ed. Paideia, Bucharest, 2002, p.338 (The letter addressed to the president Emil Constantinescu le 8 août 1997) also Ciorbea, Liviu Valenas, Republica iresponsabililor. Convorbiri cu Victor Ciorbea, ed. Tritonic, Bucharest, 2003, p.40.
5 Several interviews suggested the fact that the human resources department plays a major role in the appointment of civil servants, and that the personnel employed in that area was remained unchanged during all the post-communist period.
6 Pro Democratia association signaled such practices during the electoral campaign and electoral processes. For further information see www.apd.ro (the reports monitoring the electoral campaigns in 2000 and 2004).

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SOURCES
REPORTS:
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2005 http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/55/40/35850904.pdf
2004 http://www.sigmaweb.org/dataoecd/41/11/34989409.pdf
2003 http://www.sigmaweb.org/dataoecd/41/10/34989438.pdf  
2002 http://www.sigmaweb.org/dataoecd/41/8/34989490.pdf
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Romania progress report 1998 http://europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/report_11_98/pdf/de/romania_de.pdf
Romania Regular report 1999
http://europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/report_10_99/pdf/en/romania_en.pdf  
2000 Regular Report on Romania’s Progress Towards Accession, 8.11.2000
http://europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/report_11_00/pdf/fr/ro_fr.pdf  
Report 2001, Bruxelles, le 13.11.2001, SEC(2001) 1753
http://europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/report2001/ro_fr.pdf  
Report 2002, Bruxelles, le 9.10.2002 SEC(2002) 1409
http://europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/report2002/ro_en.pdf
Report 2003
http://europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/report_2003/pdf/rr_ro_final.pdf
Report 2004, Bruxelles, le 6.10.2004 SEC(2004) 1200 COM (2004)657 final
http://europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/report_2004/pdf/rr_ro_2004_en.pdf

C. National Agency of Civil Servants Reports:
Report on the Management of Civil Service and Civil Servants in 2004, Bucharest, 2005.
Report on the Management of Civil Service and Civil Servants in 2003, Bucharest, 2004.

D. Other reports:
GHINEA Cristian, Managerul public nr. 1. O alegere periculoasa. Politizarea in administratia publica centrala, www.sar.org.ro/files_h/docs/advocacy_foia/10_pm1.pdf

E. BIOGRAFIES…MEMOIRES
BERINDEI Mihnea, THEDREL (2004): « Turning the page. Interview with Theodor Stolojan », Politique Internationale – Romania at the threshold of the European Union, n° 105.
CIORBEA Victor, VALENAS Liviu (2003): Republica ires­ponsabililor - Convorbiri cu Victor Ciorbea, ed. Tritonic, Bu­charest, 2003.
CONSTANTINESCU Emil (2002): Timpul daramarii, timpul zi­dirii, Vol. II et III, Universalia.
COPOSU Corneliu, ARACHELIAN Vartan (1996): Marturisiri, dialog cu Vartan Arachelian, Humanitas, Bucharest, pp. 146-163. 
ILIESCU Ion (1994): Revolutie si Reforma, éd. Enciplopedica,  Bucharest, pp.69-109.
ILIESCU Ion, TISMANEANU Vladimir (2004): Marele soc Din finalul unui secol scurt, ed Enciclopedica, Bucharest.
IONESCU QUINTUS Mircea (2004): Ce ati facut in ultimii cinci ani?, ed Masina de Scris, Bucharest, 2004.
IONESCU QUINTUS Mircea (1996): Liberal din tata-n fiu, , ed Vitruviu, Bucharest.
NASTASE Adrian, TEODORESCU Alin (2004): Adrian Nastase in dialog deschis cu Alin Teodorescu - De la Karl Marx la Coca-Cola, Nemira, Bucharest.
ROMAN Petre (2000): Libertatea ca datorie, éd. Paideia, Bu­charest.
ROMAN Petre (2002): Marturii provocate - Convorbiri cu Elena Stefoi, éd. Paideia, Bucharest.
SAVA Iosif (1997): Invitatii Eutherpei, col. Plural, ed Polirom, Iasi.
STOICA Valeriu, ALIGICA Paul (2003): Provocari liberale – in dialog cu Dragos Paul Aligica, Humanitas, Bucuresti.
VASILE Radu (2002), Cursa pe contrasens - Amintirile unui Prim-ministru, ed. Humanitas, Bucharest. 
VACAROIU Nicolae,SMEOREANU Gheorghe (1998): Nicolae Vacaroiu al 60-lea Prim ministru - Carte de interviuri de Gheorghe Smeoreanu, ed Intact, 1998.
TINCA Gheorghe (1996): De vorba cu Gheorghe Tinca, ed.Enciclopedica, Bucharest.
SAVA Iosif (1997): Invitatii Eutherpei, Plural, Polirom, Iasi,pp. 263-307.


ALEXANDRA IONASCU - doctorand in Stiinte Politice la Universitatea din Bucuresti si a Universitatii Libere din Bruxelles.

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