A Case Study in Political Clientelism: Romania's Policy-Making Mayhem

The goal of creating a process based on rational, evidence based policymaking has not succeeded in Romania despite the existence of all formal institutions which could facilitate such a process. There is one essential feature which did not change after Romania’s EU accession: the state did not manage to gain more - in fact, sufficient - autonomy towards political parties to be able to organize itself at least at a medium level of authority as a modern policymaking agent. EU accession did not manage to improve Romania’s governance, bringing instead new resources for badly planned and clientelistic public spending.