The field “Governance and social capital” comprises factors, institutions and processes that are crucial to the development of society. For this reason, it is relatively difficult to choose subfields, because all elements of this field are important for society and state as a whole. The first subfield refers to government performance, focusing on the results of governance, measured by means of indicators such as gross domestic product, public deficit, social justice index, foreign direct investment, etc. [read more]
The second pillar of this field focuses on administrative capacity: it includes elements such as: number of civil servants, fiscal capacity, European funds absorption rate and use. The third pillar refers to one of the results of government activity, namely the prosperity of the population. An efficient means of exploiting (human and material) resources in governance reflects not only in good economic results, but also in the consolidation of the population’s material well-being. Finally, the fourth pillar refers to democracy and civic participation; a healthy society gives its citizens the possibility to participate equitably in governance and be consulted about public policies.
The indicators in this field aim to answer questions such as: Which are the defining elements of institutions associated with the sphere of governance in terms of efficiency and democratization? To what degree did the governments in the last decades implement public policies that resulted in an increase in citizens’ welfare? Does the implementation of public policies generate not just time-limited welfare, but equally create the premises of sustainable social and economic development? The analysis of the data offered by these indicators can give an answer to these questions, or data that can facilitate citizens’ own evaluations.
Governance interferes with all the other fields, which results in inevitable overlaps, but the analysis and the data reflect the complementarity with indicators from other fields.
Government performance
Administrative capacity
Material well-being
Democracy and civic participation
A topic intensely debated by experts and the public at large, government performance is a subfield that is difficult to operationalize, because of the complexity of the aspects it touches and the accelerated, asynchronous dynamism of the processes of governance. Within this subfield we have opted to select some aspects that express the main dimensions of the concept of government performance. Firstly, the way a government manages to control public deficit and public debt represents a fundamental aspect of governance. That is the reason why the European Union monitors the evolution of budget and the level of public debt in Member States. [read more]
Government performance is strongly influenced by the quality of public policies, as well as by the continuity of reforms and strategies by successive governments. All these aspects accumulate and reflect in the social body, in the economic and social status of various social groups, as well as in the distribution of advantages and privileges.
The Social Justice Index is a synthetic indicator in this subfield, because it reflects the cumulative effect of successive governments at social level. Finally, the level of foreign direct investment represents an important indicator economically, but also an indicator for evaluating the external trust in the Romanian economy and Romanian state.
Administrative capacity refers to the way the institutions of central and local public administration accomplish their tasks and ensure efficient communication with economic agents, social groups and citizens. Regarding the functions of the administrative system, there are several aspects that can quantify its performance: (a) the balanced, optimal structure of institutions and human resources; (b) the way they perform their specific functions (public services) timely and with a balanced consumption of (material, human) resources; (c) the way these institutions communicate and interact with social actors (tax payers, individuals, economic agents). [read more]
In summary, this subfield contains indicators that mainly refer to the organization of public administration: number of national civil servants in central public administration (main indicator), and remuneration of national civil servants in central public administration (main indicator). Secondly, we have included indicators that express the efficiency of public institutions’ activity, such as Revenues from taxes and social contributions relative to GDP (main indicator). Finally, we have included indicators that reflect the degree of digitalization in public administration, such as E-government development index, a main indicator that has been selected because the digitalization of central public administration and especially of the relationship between institutions and citizens has become a fundamental condition of institutional efficiency. Among the selected secondary indicators is: Individuals using the Internet for interacting with public authorities, because it reflects quite faithfully the state of the development of modern instruments in central public administration.
The population’s prosperity and standard of living are among the most visible effects of good governance. Material well-being can be investigated in several ways. The first refers to the size and persistence of revenue at national level. The more sensitive aspects refer to the way revenues are distributed in a society: the extent of material inequality, but also the percentage of population affected by poverty. A society with severe inequalities, even if it is a prosperous society, with a competitive economy, is not viable in the long term. Likewise, a country with high at-risk-of-poverty or social exclusion rates is a country whose government is unable to design or implement effective policies to increase citizens’ welfare. [read more]
We must mention here that Europe 2020 strategy promotes social inclusion, aiming to reduce poverty as a distinct strategy target; in terms of key indicators, the target is to have at least 20 million fewer people in or at risk of poverty and social exclusion by 2020.
The main and secondary indicators selected for this subfield highlight essential aspects, such as: GDP per capita in Purchasing Power Standards (PPS) (PPS is a conventional currency unit which eliminates the differences of price levels between member states), S80/S20 income quintile share ratio (an indicator that reflects social inequality) and at-risk-of-poverty rate after social transfers. Each of these indicators reflects one of the above-mentioned relevant aspects.
An essential component of governance is represented by the way citizens interact with various institutions of power and political actors. A democratic government supposes the existence of a partnership between state and its citizens, openness and mutual trust.
This is the connecting point between “governance” and “social capital”, defined by interpersonal trust, confidence in institutions, utility and solidarity networks, civic and political participation. There have been debates in literature about a causal relationship between social capital and economic development; in other words, increased confidence and the existence of active and dense social solidarity networks lead to increased cooperation in solving common problems, generating welfare and development. Because the reverse relationship holds true (economic and social development stimulates the development of social capital), we may assert that the influence is reciprocal. Consequently, we believe there is a natural interdependence between governance, social capital and social development processes. [read more]
For this subfield we have selected one main indicator (Party system fragmentation/fractionalization) and a series of secondary indicators. The main indicator refers to the number of parties and the concentration of political options around fundamental themes. A prominent fragmentation of the political party system is characteristic of transition democracies, which experience transition from dictatorship to democracy. Mature democratic states have a stable party system and a limited number of parties represented in Parliament.
It is competence that makes the difference!
„This project is co-financed from the European Social Fund through the Operational Programme Administrative Capacity 2014-2020“
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