Affiliations: Lucica Matei, Ph.D, is Professor of Public Management and Dean of the Faculty of Public Administration, National School of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania | Diana-Camelia Iancu, Ph.D, is Lecturer of European Administration at the Faculty of Public Administration, National School of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania
Abstract: ‘Good enough’ governance directs attention to considerations of the minimal conditions of governance necessary to allow political and economic development to occur. This paper makes use of this definition and considers ‘good enough’ governance as being a set of minimum requirements necessary for the proper (democratic) functioning of a state. In addition, it narrows the context where ‘governance’ applies, and solely refers to the organization and functioning of the public administration system. To this end, Robert Dahl's theory of democratization will provide the appropriate framework for ‘quantifying’ ‘good enough’ governance, and will then be applied to the Romanian public administration reforms (1998–2007). The authors expect to find that during the time of reference, Romania did have the proper conditions for nurturing ‘good enough’ governance.
Keywords: governance, good enough governance, democracy, public administration, reform
