In this article, the author examines Romanian child protection reforms during European Union (EU) accession as a case of externally facilitated modernization aimed at solving acute social problems. The data for this case study came primarily from fifty-three unstructured interviews with civil servants, civil society representatives, and EU officials. The author finds that in a similar manner to other externally driven modernization projects, the belief according to which Western institutions constituted a universal blueprint, applicable regardless of particular contexts and historical legacies, led to unintended consequences. What is more, because the reformers did not envisage that Western institutions might carry their own pathologies, they ended up replicating some of these pathologies. The study suggests that the goal of externally facilitated public policy should not be to create replicas of Western institutions but to spur local innovation that takes advantage of successful Western institutional logics.
James G. Ferguson , "Of Mimicry and Membership: Africans and the ‘New World Society,’" Cultural Anthropology12, no. 4 (2002): 551-69.
2.
Philip McMichael, Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 2004 ).
3.
Wade Jacoby , "Tutors and Pupils: International Organizations, Central European Elites, and Western Models," Governance: An International Journal of Policy and Administration14, no. 2 (2001): 169-200.
4.
Albert O. Hirschman, The Strategy of Economic Development (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1958); Daniel Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1958); and Walt W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto ( Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1960).
5.
Peter Evans and John D. Stephens, "Studying Development since the Sixties: The Emergence of a New Comparative Political Economy," Theory and Society17, no. 5 (1988): 713-45.
6.
Alejandro Portes , "Neoliberalism and the Sociology of Development: Emerging Trends and Unanticipated Facts," Population and Development Review23, no. 2 ( 1997): 229-59.
7.
Andre Gunder Frank, Capitalism and underdevelopment in Latin America (New York : Monthly Review Press, 1967); Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Academic Press, 1976).
8.
Indeed, the entire "globalization project" (McMichael, Development and Social Change), which sought to impose free markets and deregulation throughout the developing world, is as much a modernist project as import-substitution industrialization was since it promotes institutional monocropping-the universal replication of an idealized Anglo-Saxon model of economic governance. See Peter Evans, "Development as Institutional Change: The Pitfalls of Monocropping and the Potentials of Deliberation," Studies in Comparative International Development38, no. 4 (2004): 30-52.
9.
Paul Blokker, "Modernity in Romania: Nineteenth Century Liberalism and Its Discontents" (EUI Working Paper SPS No. 2003/2, European University Institute, Florence, 2003).
10.
Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994).
11.
Johann P. Arnason , "Designs and Destinies: Making Sense of Post-Communism ," Thesis Eleven63, no. 1 (2000): 89-97.
12.
Melinda Kovacs , "Putting Down and Putting Off: The EU’s Discursive Strategies in the 1998 and 1999 Follow-up Reports," in Empire’s New Clothes: Unveiling EU’s Enlargement, ed. Jozsef Böröcz and Melinda Kovacs (Telford, UK: Central Europe Review, 2001), 196-234.
13.
Jozsef Böröcz , "Introduction: Empire and Coloniality in the ‘Eastern Enlargement’ of the European Union," in Empire’s New Clothes: Unveiling EU’s Enlargement, ed. Jozsef Böröcz and Melinda Kovacs (Telford, UK: Central Europe Review, 2001), 4-50; Alex Jeffrey, "Contesting Europe: The Politics of Bosnian Integration into European Structures," Environment and Planning D: Society and Space26, no. 3 (2008): 428-43.
14.
Andrew Janos , "Modernization and Decay: The Case of Romania ," in Social change in Romania, 1860-1940: A Debate on Development in a European Nation, ed. Ken Jowitt ( Berkeley: University of California, Institute of International Studies, 1978).
15.
Blokker, "Modernity in Romania"
16.
Henry L.Roberts, Rumania: Political Problems of an Agrarian State ( Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1969), 339.
17.
Nikolas Rose and Peter Miller, "Political Power beyond the State: Problematics of Government," British Journal of Sociology43, no. 2 (1992): 173-205.
18.
James O’Connor , The Fiscal Crisis of the State ( New York: St. Martin’s, 1973 ); Ezra Suleiman , Dismantling Democratic States ( Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003).
19.
Rose and Miller, "Political Power," 198.
20.
Wendy Larner , "Neo-liberalism: Policy, Ideology, Governmentality ," Studies in Political Economy63, no. 5 (2000): 5-26.
21.
Nikolas Rose , Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
22.
Christopher Pollitt and Geert Bouckaert, Public Management Reform: A Comparative Analysis (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2004).
23.
Christopher Hood, "The ‘New Public Management’ in the 1980s: Variations on a Theme," Accounting, Organizations and Society20, no. 2-3 (1995): 93-109; Rose, Powers of Freedom.
24.
Michael Power, The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1999).
25.
Rose, Powers of Freedom , 260.
26.
Nigel Parton , "Risk, Advanced Liberalism and Child Welfare: The Need to Rediscover Uncertainty and Ambiguity," British Journal of Social Work28, no. 1 (1998): 5-27.
27.
Clare Tilbury , "The Influence of Performance Measurement on Child Welfare Policy and Practice," British Journal of Social Work34, no. 2 ( 2004): 225-41.
28.
Eileen Munro , "The Impact of Audit on Social Work Practice ," British Journal of Social Work34, no. 8 (2004): 1075-95.
29.
Ibid.
30.
Malcolm Carey , "Everything Must Go? The Privatization of State Social Work," British Journal of Social Work38, no. 5 (2008): 918-35.
31.
Peter Scourfield , "‘What Matters Is What Works’? How Discourses of Modernization Have Both Silenced and Limited Debate on Domiciliary Care for Older People," Critical Social Policy26, no. 1 (2006): 5-30.
32.
Munro, "Impact of Audit"
33.
Carey, "Everything Must Go?"
34.
Munro, "Impact of Audit "; Iain Ferguson and Michael Lavalette, "Globalization and Global Justice: Towards a Social Work of Resistance," International Social Work49, no. 3 ( 2006): 309-18.
35.
The data for this case study came primarily from fifty-three unstructured interviews with present and former civil servants, civil society representatives, Romanian officials involved in the negotiations for the EU accession, and EU officials. The article is part of a larger study on the reform of the Romanian social assistance services after 1990. The interviews took place intermittently from April 2005 to November 2008.
36.
Peter Lennon , "Mission to a predatory land," The Guardian, May 6, 1991.
37.
Richard Yallop , "The Children Who Learnt to Cry the Tears of Love," Independent, June 12, 1990.
38.
Gail Kligman , The Politics of Duplicity: Controlling Reproduction in Ceausescu’s Romania (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).
39.
Karen Fern Greenwell , "The Effects of Child Welfare Reform on Levels of Child Abandonment and Deinstitutionalization in Romania, 1987-2000" (PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin).
40.
Ronald H. Linden, "Socialist Patrimonialism and the Global Economy-The Case of Romania," International Organization40, no. 2 (1986): 347-80.
41.
Elena Zamfir , "Social Services for Children at Risk: The Impact on the Quality of Life," Social Indicators Research42, no. 1 (1997): 41-76.
42.
Monica Giulvezan , "Intre orfelinate si prejudecati" [Between orphanages and prejudice], Romania Libera, October 17, 1990.
43.
Rose, Powers of Freedom.
44.
Donald J. Savoie , Thatcher, Reagan, Mulroney: In Search of a New Bureaucracy (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994).
45.
Rose, Powers of Freedom.
46.
John Micklewright and Kitty Stewart, "Child Well-Being in the EU-and Enlargement to the East" (Innocenti Working Papers, Economic and Social Policy Series, No. 75, UNICEF, Florence, 2000), 14.
47.
David Tobis, Moving from Residential Institutions to Community-Based Social Services in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union ( Washington, DC: World Bank, 2000 ), 14.
48.
Andy Bilson and Judith Harwin, "Gatekeeping Services for Vulnerable Children and Families-A Concept Paper," in Improving Protection of Children in Eastern Europe and Central Asia: Gatekeeping Services for Vulnerable Children and Families, ed. UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre (Florence: UNICEF and World Bank, 2003), 28.
49.
For the time being, the State Secretariat for Handicapped Persons maintained control over disabled children.
50.
Alina Mungiu-Pippidi and Gerard Althabe, Secera si buldozerul. Scornicesti si Nucsoara. Mecanisme de aservire a taranului roman [The scythe and the bulldozer. Scornicesti and Nucsoara: Romanian peasant’s enslavement mechanisms] (Iasi, Romania: Polirom, 2002), 13.
51.
European Commission , "Regular Report from the Commission on Romania’s Progress towards Accession" (1998).
52.
Tiberiu Avram , "Nu putem privi pasivi cum miile de copii loviti de soarta trebuie sa dispara fizic" [We can’t look passively while thousands of unfortunate children physically disappear], Evenimentul Zilei, March 4, 1999.
53.
Rose, Powers of Freedom, 153.
54.
For example, Order 12/2004 specified the exact conditions within child institutions. Among the several hundred indicators included, the order specified that the space reserved for meals must be pleasant and family like, children must be involved in preparing the food, they have the rights to snacks outside regular meals, and all children have the right to a birthday party.
55.
European Commission, "Regular Report," 17.
56.
ANPDC (National Authority for the Protection of Children Rights), "Prezentare sistem" [Presentation of the system] (December 2009), http://www.copii.ro/Files/Prezentare%20sistem%20decembrie%202006_20073232745291.xls (accessed May 23, 2009).
57.
IMAS (Institute of Marketing and Polls), "Child Care System Reform in Romania" (Bucharest: Institute of Marketing and Polls, 2004), 47.
58.
Boryana Grigorova , "Organization and Financing of the Social Services in Bulgaria," British Journal of Social Work32, no. 8 (2002): 1103-7; Leah Seppanen Anderson, " Constructing Policy Networks: Social Assistance Reform in the Czech Republic ," International Journal of Public Administration26, no. 6 (2003): 635-63; Vesna Bošnjak and Paul Stubbs, "Towards a New Welfare Mix for the Most Vulnerable: Reforming Social Services in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia," in Social Policy and Regional Development Proceedings, ed. Zeljko Lovrincevic, Andrea Mervar, Danijel Nestic, Nenad Starc , Paul Stubbs, Marijana Sumpor, and Sandra Švaljek (Zagreb, Croatia: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 2007), 139-65; Vassiliki Sotiropoulou and Dimitri A. Sotiropoulos , "Childcare in Post-Communist Welfare States: The Case of Bulgaria," Journal of Social Policy36, no. 1 (2007): 141-55.
59.
Anpdc, "Prezentare sistem"
60.
Imas, "Child Care System Reform"
61.
"Nu mai poate fi asistent maternal orice somer" [Foster parents can no longer be random unemployed people], Adevarul, May 20, 2006; "Copil ucis de asistentul maternal" [Child killed by foster parent], Adevarul, August 23, 2008.
62.
"Aproximativ 200 de asistenţi maternali şi-ar putea pierde atestatele" [Approximately 200 foster parents could lose their licenses], Adevarul, September 30, 2008.
63.
A.E. Stefan, "Abuzul copiilor, sanctionat drastic" [Child abuse, drastically punished] , Romania Libera, March 31, 2007.
64.
Prior studies of advanced liberal governmentality have noticed this: "Professional activity in a whole range of fields has become structured by the obligation to documentation-the maintenance of information systems, registers, notes of all meetings, written statements of grounds for decision and the like-in the hope of making judgments defensible in an imagined future court case. Professionals must now act in such a way that that action might be, at some future moment, defensible in terms of the criteria and evidentiary requirements of another profession and body of expert knowledge, that of the law." Rose, Powers of Freedom, 156.
65.
Rose and Miller, "Political Power," 200.
66.
Peter Evans , "Transferable lessons? Re-examining the Institutional Prerequisites of East Asian Economic Policies," Journal of Development Studies34, no. 6 (1998): 66-86.
67.
James C.Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998).
