Roxana Radu

Challenges to Local Authorities under EU Structural Funds: Evidence from Mixed Quasi-markets for Public Service Provision in Romania

The emergence of quasi�?markets – new regulatory tools to design and manage public service delivery through competition – has led to a new ecology for local authorities, who increasingly operate alongside for�?profit, not�?for�?profit and other governmental contractors for social service provision. This raises a series of challenges related to the secondary regulatory measures to correct for market and government imperfections under conditions of competition between entities with different objective functions. In shared governance systems, such as the European Union structural funds, additional tensions are generated by the double role of the public sector as purchaser and potential provider of services. This analysis presents empirical evidence from a transitional context in which quasi�?markets have been newly established, based on data from the Romanian human resource development operational programme (RO�?SOPHRD) between 2007 and 2011. These findings enhance our understanding of the dynamics of distortions created by quasi�?market environments for public service delivery in emerging economies.

Power Technology and Powerful Technologies: Global Governmentality and Security in the Cyberspace

While escaping consistent theoretization so far, the impact of ‘cyberization’ on the conduct of international relations can be more thoroughly grasped by studying the reconfiguration of global governance techniques brought about by the virtual mediums. The cyberspace remains a highly contested arena for policy-making, and its current institutional architecture is dominated by a multiplicity of tensions over who is entitled to decide on issues that go beyond the traditional functions of the state and what practices of governing are most appropriate in this context. By applying the Foucauldian concept of governmentality to investigate the global discourses of security in the cyberspace, this chapter sheds light on a shift in the rationality of governing, and brings empirical evidence of the dominant discourse(s) of security in the cyberspace in the United Nations (UN) ambit. It reveals that, despite the common acknowledgement of cyber dangers as imminent, transnational and very diffuse, an inclusive and dialectical approach to cybersecurity is not yet in place.

School-based parental involvement: a comparative assessment of predictors of satisfaction in South-East Europe

Exploring a unique region concerning educational reforms in the past 20 years, the present study empirically investigates the attitudes towards parental involvement in school life in a comparative perspective of south-eastern European (SEE) countries for the 2008/2009 school year. Based on a multiple regression model for nine different countries, the research examines the predictors of satisfaction with school–parent partnerships from the parents’ perspective in the SEE context. The 2009 Cross-National Survey of Parents provided detailed evidence of attitudes and practices in educational setups in the Balkans for a representative sample of parents with one or more children enrolled in primary or secondary education. The findings indicate that the most reliable explanatory variable for the parents’ satisfaction with ways of getting involved in school life is the attribution of school–parent roles, with effects knocking on to all the other factors, including the understanding of the need to participate and the feeling of being a stakeholder in the educational process.

E-Participation and Deliberation in the European Union: The Case of Debate Europe

Civic online participation garnered much interest during the last decade relative to the transformation of the concept of democracy in a move from representative to participatory. In the European Union (EU), both the types and the number of online opportunities for citizen empowerment have diversified tremendously with the advancement of information and communication technology (ICT). The present study undertakes an in-depth research of Debate Europe, an online deliberation mechanism initiated in 2008 by the European Commission. A quantitative and qualitative content analysis was carried out in order to examine thoroughly the contributions received from posters for the two most popular discussion threads on the English-language portal in the 2009 EP electoral year. The empirical evidence allowed for the identification of participation dynamics based on two dimensions: interactivity and rationality. Findings suggest that such moderated discussions advanced high interactivity and rationality that could provide valuable input at the EU level. While the prerequisites for a transition from micro-public spheres to transnational civic engagement exist, this is done only partially due to the lack of an adequate infrastructure to feedback opinions into institutional decision-making mechanisms in the EU.

The “Right to Be Forgotten”: Negotiating Public and Private Ordering in the European Union:

Although the Internet is frequently referred to as a global public resource, its functioning remains predominantly controlled by private actors. The Internet brought about significant shifts in the way we conceptualize (global) governance. In particular, the handling of “big data” by private intermediaries has a direct impact on routine practices and personal lives. The implementation of the “right to be forgotten” following the May 2014 decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union against Google blurs the boundaries between the public and the private, and extends the responsibilities of the latter to court-style decision making. This article analyzes the regulatory developments in this area and the implications of outsourcing of important governance practices to private intermediaries. It looks at the decision-making process for the “right to be forgotten” to illustrate the extent to which the hybridization of such procedures results in new arrangements between public and private ordering in Internet governance.

Beyond Turf Wars in Internet Governance: The Relationship between Internet Organizations and IGOs

Although numerous studies have been dedicated to the interplay between Internet entities and nation-states (Drezner 2007; Goldsmith and Wu 2006; Mueller 2010), less importance has yet been given to intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) as self-driven actors in the Internet governance space and even less attention was dedi-cated to interorganizational relations. This can be explained by the need to analyze the innovative nature of Internet entities and the subsequent reaction to “bring the state back in.” Internet governance studies have often neglected the role of IGOs in the management of the physical infrastructure of the Internet and in the enforcement of broader norms such as intellectual property rights.1 However, a structural perspective on the political economy of the creation of new markets in relation to an emerging technology such as the Internet sheds light on the collaboration between IGOs and Internet entities rather than on the competition between them. Global markets do not emerge out of private initiative only. They rely on a preexisting global institutional framework. The interplay between public and private actors redefines the role of organizations and creates new spaces for regulation. A global political economy perspective requires us to look beyond the realist and liberal accounts of Internet governance in order to grasp the relations between public and private actors and the hybridization of governance.

The Monopoly of Violence in the Cyber Space: Challenges of Cyber Security

The conceptualization of cyber security is currently in the making. In the last decade, the frequent concerns with power and control in the cyber space, coupled with attempts at diminishing the risks posed by ‘invisible actors’ to critical infrastructure while ensuring free access, have represented real challenges to the adoption of national cyber security frameworks. In spite of the wide acknowledgement of cyber threats as a global problem, limited efforts to adopt a common approach towards reducing risks were undertaken till now at the international level. With more than 26% of world’s population using the Internet as of 2009 (ITU 2010: ix), the cyber risks are growing. According to Libicki, only in the US, the “estimates of the damage from today’s cyber attacks range from hundreds of billions of dollars to just a few billion dollars per year” (2009: xv).

New Forms of Dependency in Central and Eastern Europe? Reflections on State—Third Sector Relations in Public Service Provision in Post-Communist Countries

Since the 1980s, the importance of the third sector1 has grown steadily. Complementing the changes in state governance, the new functions acquired by civil society organisations (CSOs) in the field of service delivery have redefined public-private relationships in an unprecedented way. Belatedly affected by this transformation after the breakdown of communism, the voluntary sector in the countries of Central and Eastern European (CEE) has faced a particularly interesting challenge: grown out of the dissident tradition and redefining its stance towards government during the transition period, it is now tackling the influence of EU multi-annual planning schemes, resulting in a paradigm shift in budgeting matters.

Book Proposal Digital Democracy in a Globalised World

PART I: INTRODUCING GLOBALISATION, LAW AND DIGITAL DEMOCRACY 1. Corien Prins, Setting the stage for analysing digital democracy through the lens of globalisation and global law 2. Maurice Adams, Democracy and the Democracy Debate: From City State to a Globalising Society? PART II: COUNTRY SPECIFIC INITIATIVES 3. Karsten Meijer, Dutch digital manifestations of representative and monitory democracy. 4. Koen van Aeken, Digital manifestations of representative and monitory democracy in Belgium. 5. Monica Steffen Guise Rosina and Alexandre Pacheco da Silva, Digital Democracy in Brazil: how open is the government to change? 6. Arpan Banerjee, Internet Censorship in India 7. Anne Meuwese, Popular Constitution-Making. The Case of Iceland. PART III: SPHERES, ACTORS AND REGULATORY INSTRUMENTS 8. Emre Bayamlioglu, A Critical Theory of Social Media As Public Sphere 9. Rivka Weill, Digital Democracy: Do We Want Electronic Elections and Are They Constitutional? 10. Marie-Jose Garot, European citizens‘ initiative 11. Nicolo Zingales & Roxana Radu, In search of the holy grail: democratic multistakeholder governance in internet policy-making 12. Stefan Soeparman, Civic driven open data initiatives: transparantizing the workings and performance of the State?13. Colette Cuijpers, Edemocracy; reconciling the interests of open data and data protection 14. Pedro Letai, Why can’t we be friends? Copyright and Freedom of Expression at the Crossroads of Digital Democracy PART IV: AN AGENDA FOR REFLECTIONS ON GLOBALIZATION, LAW AND DIGITAL DEMOCRACY

Educational Services Delivery at a Cross-Road: Towards a Paradigm Shift in State-CSOs Relationships in Central and Eastern Europe

Since 1980s, the importance of the third sector has grown steadily. Complementing the changes in state governance, the new functions acquired by the civil society organizations (CSOs) in the field of service delivery have redefined the public-private relationships in an unprecedented way. Belatedly affected by this transformation after the breakdown of communism, the voluntary sector in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has faced a particularly interesting challenge: grown out of the dissident tradition and redefining its stance towards government during the transition period, it is now tackling the influence of EU multi-annual planning schemes, resulting in a paradigm shift in budgeting matters. This study investigates the structural implications of engagement among public sector institutions and civil society organizations in the delivery of public education in five CEE countries. The present endeavor aims at exploring a new type of dependency between public sector and non-governmental organizations and thus adopts a macro-perspective by analyzing the civil society sectors engagement in education service delivery in the following states: Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. Additionally, there will be a reflection on the social transformation stages and the emergence of a new role for the state, as the beneficiary, the financier, the evaluator, and the decision-maker in the provision of outsourced educational services.