PUBLIC POLICY ADVOCACY IN ROMANIA: WHAT MAY BE DONE?

Regulating public policy advocacy by a specific law is a decision that should be adopted based on a comprehensive evaluation of the local political, social and economic factors. A law in itself will not provide the necessary framework for exercising a professional, accountable public policy advocacy practice unless other conditions such as transparency at the decision-making level process and clear regulations about preventing conflicts of interest and corruption are also enforced in the country. Authorities need to act transparently and provide all necessary information about their decisions and available resources to any interested party and not in a preferential manner. Internal regulations should be revised in order to include clear mandatory provisions about acting transparently in all matters relating to public decisions.

The public policy advocates' level of acceptance with regard to the need of enforcing accountability and transparency rules is also of importance in order to create a civilized, effective public policy advocacy environment. Public policy advocates, the civil society, and policy makers need to be aware of how important it is to act in such a way as no longer associate public policy advocacy practices with corruption and influence peddling.

In addition to the legislation that will have to state clear rules for developing public policy advocacy activities, public policy advocates need to organize their profession by their own means and by adopting code of ethics. These codes of ethics are important as the advocacy practices do involve a certain conduct in relation to the authorities and their provisions have to be assimilated by the practitioners.

It should be emphasized that the two goals of all actions in regulating the public policy advocacy practice is anti-corruption and enhancing a participatory enriched policy making process. Keeping a balance between the two can be the key in designing an honest, reliable, working legal framework on public policy advocacy.

The question of regulating public policy advocacy in Romania has been addressed by the State institutions and discussed by the social actors in the hope of solving some dysfunctional aspects observed in the domestic decision-making process. Regulating public policy advocacy is a multi-faceted coin. Both the Romanian State and non-State actors aimed at improving the democratic character of the decision-making process, but each of them referred to a particular aspect of this issue. A general understanding could be observed among civil society organizations and decision-makers with regard to the involvement of social actors in Romanian politics. All of them emphasized the idea of participation and transparency in policy-making. However, when addressing the issue of regulating public policy advocacy, they focused on different aspects. For instance, some concentrated on the behaviour of interest groups. By adopting a narrow definition of public policy advocacy, they aimed at legitimating a new profession, that of public policy advocates. In contrast, civil society organizations consulted in this matter were in favour of a broad definition of public policy advocacy being afraid of eventual exclusion of other social actors representing particular interests. On the opposite side of the argument, the Romanian government focused on the behaviour of politicians (MPs) and civil servants working in the public administration. Therefore, the strategy to fight against corruption has mostly been concerned with the question of how to correct the abuses of politicians and civil servants in office rather than with the question on how to increase civil society participation in policy making or to correct the abuses of these actors.

Certainly, regulating public policy advocacy has been put on the Romanian political agenda as a consequence of the way in which public policies come to be influenced. But the debate was less focused on the activities of interest groups and more on their access to the loci of power. The increasing number of interest groups did not appear as a problem, and consequenty as a reason for regulating public policy advocacy.

Meanwhile, the abuses observed in the behaviour of politicians in office, who act as representatives of particular interests within the Parliamentary Assembly has been evoked many times and daily presented in newspaper articles over the last years. Analyzing the arguments of the actors involved, amongst civil society organizations discussions revolved around the role of interest groups in the decision-making process as a legitimate part of the political system.

All in all, Romania is not entirely a pecular case when compared with similar attempts at regulating public policy advocacy in Western democracies. Public policy advocacy regimes vary across Europe according to the place of the functional representation in each particular context. In some countries, regulatory solutions concern the activities of interest groups, whereas in others, for instance in the Scandinavian countries, they have been focused on the behaviour of politicains and public administration. Although in some political systems regulating public policy advocacy is a consequence of the increasing number of interest groups and of th activities conducted in order to influence policy outcomes, in the case of Romania regulating public policy advocacy is an 'opportunity structure' for the social actors to increase their legal involvement in domestic policies.

Under the pressure of civil society organizations, the Romanian decision-making process has undergone some changes. These changes are due not only to some of the requirements of the European Union in the accession process, but also to concrete demands formulated in different ways and different contexts by the Romanian interest representation organizations. Even if in the Romanian political system, the participation of interest groups in the policy making process does not represent a tradition, there are signs that as a result of the country's accession to the European Union and upon the demands of Romanian actors, the 'process of government' is changing. It is moving from a procedural version of democracy to a substantive participation in the political process. The complexity of the reforms required by the European Union generated demands both from civil society in terms of participation, and from the State in terms of consultation.