Abstract
Strategic planning is an excellent tool that local governments can use to increase effectiveness of the governance process. Although Romania experienced more than four decades of national planning under the communist regime, after 1989 local authorities had major difficulties in using planning as an effective managerial tool. Access to the European Union (EU) meant significant changes, including a new approach for community development, where strategic planning has an essential role. Our main objective with this research is twofold: to analyze (1) why local authorities resort to planning and (2) how local authorities use strategic planning (characteristics of the process, results, main challenges, benefits). Our analysis indicates that more than two-thirds of local authorities are motivated by the EU funding possibilities, for which having a strategic plan is a mandatory condition. Results show that authorities have limited planning capacity, with stakeholder engagement and monitoring and evaluation being major challenges. We highlight specific details of the process through two case studies meant to offer a more comprehensive understanding of the particularities of planning in Romania, at local level.
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Notes
- 1.
Part of the information contained in this section has been published in Hinţea and Ţiclău (2017).
- 2.
The semi-presidential character is given through the direct election of the President and its executive powers (which are shared with the Prime Minister). The President represents the State in international relations, is the head of the army and has “the power of appointment” for several key positions in the judicial system, while the Prime Minister (as head of Government) is mainly responsible for internal policy.
- 3.
The electoral system has changed several times after 1989. Initially a proportional vote on party list was in place until 2008. Between 2008 and 2016, the MPs were elected through direct uninominal vote; electoral law was changed again in 2016, reversing back to a list system.
- 4.
Local administration structure is mainly inspired by the French system with a Prefect representing the government and heading local “deconcentrated” services of the central Ministries.
- 5.
The reform brought about with law 340/2004 was meant to reduce the political influence over Prefects and reduce the instability usually caused after each electoral process (a change of government typically implied a change of the Prefects), however the effects were minimal.
- 6.
For local public administration, mayors are elected through a majority system in one round winner takes all, while for councils (local and county) the list system is used. At the county level, Presidents of County Councils are elected by the members of the Council (previously were directly elected by the citizens). This shift increases political party control over the Council (through the use of a list and by indirect vote for the President of the County Council).
- 7.
Law 215/2001 established five major principles upon which local public administration is organized and functions.
- 8.
The NUTS classification (Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics) is a hierarchical system for dividing up the economic territory of the EU. There are three levels of Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) defined. This category refers to regions belonging to the second level (NUTS 2, also known as NUTS II), which is largely used by Eurostat and other European Union bodies, which includes 281 regions at EU level.
- 9.
Prefect, County Councils, deconcentrated public services, academic institutions, social and economic stakeholders.
- 10.
Source: ec.europa.eu, retrieved from: https://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/regional-and-local-development-romania_en
- 11.
“Strategia de dezvoltare a României în următorii 20 de ani” available online here http://www.racai.ro/media/Strategia.pdf
- 12.
We found over 20 situations where different parts of the local development strategy of Cluj-Napoca were featuring in strategic documents of other communities, including vision statements, strategic objectives or key strategic factors.
- 13.
A lot of local political leaders feel that although these areas are important in theory they cannot produce “visible results” in a short period or “other things are more important right now”.
- 14.
The issue of low participation is highlighted in the Results section.
- 15.
Total quality management.
- 16.
Common assessment framework.
- 17.
See Results section for more details on this issue.
- 18.
A detailed presentation of how the three models were used in the quantitative survey is presented in detail in Hințea et al. (2015).
- 19.
When using the terms “documents analysis” or “analysis of strategic documents” we are referring to this process—it is mentioned multiple times in the Results section, mostly in comparison to survey results.
- 20.
By strategic plan, we refer to a general strategy that may or can include other specific sectorial strategies. These are usually large documents that cover all elements of community life including economics, social development, education, health, demographics, environmental protection, urban development, culture and so on.
- 21.
In some situations, the respective city had either an older strategy available that did not cover the 2016 onwards period, was in the process of developing/adopting the new strategy or simply did not have a strategy for the 2016 onwards period.
- 22.
The actual process involved both the consultation of each institution’s website to check whether the strategic planning document (public document) was available online followed by an online search using a combination of: name of city/county+strategy+2016. The assumption was that, being a public document, it should feature on the institution’s website or at least there should be some account of it online. In cases where this process did not turn up any result the institutions were called and asked about the existence of a strategic plan and how it can be accessed.
- 23.
As Romania joined in the EU in 2007, it benefited of two waves of EU funds, 2007–2013 and 2013–2020, in both cases, European financed projects had to be part of a bigger strategy. This is also in line with the declared reasons for use of strategic planning put forward by the authorities themselves.
- 24.
Social desirability may be contributing to such a high percentage for this answer.
- 25.
It is part of a larger effort of improving local governance and higher levels of stakeholder public participation in the policy process (NPG).
- 26.
It is part of a larger effort to increase efficiency, reduce cost and encourage competition (NPM).
- 27.
We used a five-point Likert scale from 1 to 5 where 1 = no knowledge, 5 = very knowledgeable. For each model we used five indicators. Example of indicators: “Results are defined in terms of economic viability (NPM)”, “At least one of the following elements: transparency, accountability, responsiveness is explicitly mentioned in the strategic plan (NPG)”, “Equal treatment of all citizens is explicitly mentioned in the strategic development plan (NWS)”.
- 28.
In this section of the questionnaire we tested whether the process involved either instruments, expressed values or the outcomes that could be used as proxies for each of the three models.
- 29.
In most situations the situation analysis consists of a detailed description of the community, large parts of this being occupied by descriptions of the geographical environment, natural resources, historical and cultural information about the community, without any added value or analysis of meaning in relation to the purpose of planning.
- 30.
Survey, direct talks, round-table meetings, working groups, any type of interaction through which stakeholders are involved in the process.
- 31.
This practice became evident through our case study research. In a lot of these public debates, most participants were familiar figures to the authorities, the “usual suspects” invited in order to get over the legal requirement of having at least one public consultation. Our belief is reinforced by the fact that in most cases the consultation refers to a public debate held at the end of the process, when the document is in its final form with input from outside being minimal and having little to no impact on the actual outcome.
- 32.
These institutions usually play a key role in the situation analysis phase as they hold great amounts of data in their specific field and have either regulatory or implementation responsibilities. For example, the County School Inspectorate is one such local representative of the central government which has broad responsibilities regarding local education policy and also regulation, control, enforcement and evaluation.
- 33.
This type of issue (documents not being publicly available) was encountered in less than 8% of the authorities included in the document analysis.
- 34.
All of the above potential positive effects were mentioned by 40–50% of the respondents in the survey.
- 35.
Babeș-Bolyai University, University of Agriculture Sciences and Veterinary Medicine, University of Art and Design, Technical University, Music Academy, University of Medicine and Pharmacy.
- 36.
The entire planning process was coordinated by a team which included around 6 to 8 people. The coordinating team was led by Prof. Călin Hințea while Tudor Țiclău was one of the experts involved mainly with strategic framework analysis. The main responsibility of the coordinating team was to develop the methodology, facilitate the creation of the working groups, coordinate the process, create the strategic profile based on the documents provided by the working groups.
- 37.
Each person was counted once even if they were part of more than one working group.
- 38.
First project in the list is the most important, 15th is the least important.
- 39.
World Bank document—Magnet cities: migration and commuting in Romania, 2017, available online at http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/327451497949480572/Magnet-cities-migration-and-commuting-in-Romania
- 40.
National Institute of Statistics data on education are almost always different then what the County School Inspectorate has regarding education, mostly because data is rarely shared between different public institutions.
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Hințea, C.E., Profiroiu, M.C., Țiclău, T.C. (2019). Strategic Planning in Local Public Administration: The Case of Romania. In: Hințea, C., Profiroiu, M., Țiclău, T. (eds) Strategic Planning in Local Communities. Governance and Public Management. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03436-8_4
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