This book examines the meaning, structure, practices and symbolism of corruption in relationship to European Union structural funding in Romania. It offers a unique account of the complex transformations faced by post-communist societies. Despite the new legislation that effectively re-branded typical economic practices in Romanian society as ‘corruption’, entrepreneurs continue to use them in everyday interactions. The entrepreneurial culture described in the chapters is an ordinary trait of the local work routines. Rather than pursuing the singular logic of corruption, the author explores the concept of informality by focusing on the socio-historical context and the meanings embedded in the society that provides solutions to the problems. The book will appeal to students, scholars and practitioners in the areas of corruption, public policy and EU policy and politics.

This volume examines corruption and provides tools and that can be utilized to combat it and encourage development. Using Romania as a case study, the authors argue that corruption can be reduced via institutional reforms and effective civic education. Describing various causes and types of corruption, the authors explore the causes and influences that result in corruption and the current political and bureaucratic practices that inhibit social, political or economic reform. The nations of Europe, including Romania, have different civil traditions varying in their intensity, cultural heritage, scope of activity, religious or non-religious affiliation, among other factors. Western Europe has experienced over a century of modern government involvement crowding out the efforts of traditional civil society, while Romania, along with the other Eastern nations of the former Soviet bloc, experienced almost a half-century of systematic efforts by communist regimes to eradicate and control all spheres of voluntary, nongovernmental civil life. Moreover, the inexperience and immaturity of Romanian society in the early transition period after communism, particularly its so-called “entrepreneurial class,” have discredited and abused the concept of civil society, utilizing it solely for tax benefits and selfish purposes. Having had to learn the hard way about some of the key aspects of public administration often taken for granted in other countries more experienced in democratic participation, Romania has most recently made significant progress toward overcoming corruption and implementing reforms and policies that will allow it to participate more fully in the global arena.

Informal relations have been one of the major research topics of the social sciences since the 1990s. In order to allow for meaningful comparisons between different combinations of the positive and negative effects of informal relations on democratic representation, this book focuses on post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe as a particular region where formal democratic rules have been established, but competing informal rules are still strong. A broad spectrum of related analytical concepts is discussed from different perspectives and from different academic disciplines, then empirical cases of the relationship between informal relations and democratic representation are analyzed. The contributions span the whole continuum, as we perceive it, from civil society networks seen as supporting democratic representation to the perversion of democratic representation through political corruption. The final part of the book takes a closer look at corruption through four case studies from Russia.

This book addresses salient current issues in public administration research. It seeks to suggest where future research may or indeed ought to be focussed. To advocate the future routes for the development of research, this book is divided into themes, with a clear overlap between different approaches. The book has contributions that will assist students of public administration/public sector management and public policy, especially new PhD students, but will also be a useful resource for more established researchers to understand the major emerging issues within the field.

This interdisciplinary Research Agenda contains state-of-the-art surveys of the field of corruption and points towards an agenda for future research. This comprehensive work covers the main approaches to diagnosing, analysing and measuring corruption, as well as the ways to tackle it. Chapters explore top political and grassroots corruption, buying and stealing votes, corruption in relation to gender and the media, digital anti-corruption and an examination of whistleblowing and market-based tools.

Decolonial Politics in European Peripheries: Redefining Progressiveness, Coloniality and Transition Efforts is a timely contribution to the project of theorizing "Europe" through decolonial perspectives on the Left, as the European and global crisis has prompted new reflections on what it means to sit still at the European "peripheries". The book explores how the joint scholarship efforts of postcolonial and postsocialist scholars might come up with better-grounded and more detailed theoretical and methodological insights into the process of globalization, and subsequent peripheralization, if framed under a progressive and leftist perspective. The authors, many from the South-East Europe region, use a variety of analytical lenses to demonstrate how the nexus of postcolonial, postsocialist area studies and progressive developmental political thought could inspire changes in the future which are in dissonance with neoliberal and neoconservative capitalism. As the side effects of global capitalism continue to accelerate, scholars and activists in the postsocialist periphery are increasingly turning to the concept of decoloniality in the hope it might offer more options on how to begin to build up their framework. This book offers numerous examples of how decolonial theory can be applied to activist work in the fight against austerity and neo-liberalization, as well as examples of how decolonial critique can be mobilized to contest processes of Europeanization and Euro-Atlantic integration. This book will intrigue students and scholars of critical social scholarship in general, postsocialism, postcolonialism, critiques of right populism and the rise of white nationalism in Europe, as well as those studying the regions of South-Eastern Europe and Eurasia more generally. It will also interest activists, organizers, decision-makers, policy analysts, and leftists, both in the region and internationally.