About the project

After 20 years of reforms of local self-government in Romania, both tiers of local government are perceived to have serious effectiveness and democratic quality issues. Moreover, local government research in Romania is still largely below the state-of-the-art and able to feed public debate with few empirical results. The project approaches in comparative context key aspects of political representation, political leadership and democratic quality at the second tier of local government in Romania. Building on studies of local political leadership from a new institutionalism perspective and the literature on the style and focus of political representation, we aim to: (a) analyze comparatively the role orientations and behaviours of officials at the second tier of local government and their linkages with personal, party-organisational, and institutional variables, in national context and cross-national perspective; (b) identify the informal rules in-use that shape leadership roles within this tier of local government in Romania and assess their impact on policy-making; and (c) contribute to the on-going debate on the democratic quality and effectiveness of this tier of government. The project will create the first high-quality body of systematic data on the values, attitudes, and behaviours of second tier officials in Romania. These issues are important for both scientific and practical reasons and are central to the comparative study of local government and politics in Europe.