The conference served as an exchange platform, which for the first time brought together some 60 participants from the region and beyond, actors from public administration, politics and academia concerned with the issues of good governance in the Western Balkans. Given the EU-accession of Croatia in July 2013, Zagreb as a symbolic venue where also lessons learned and regional perspectives can be shared seemed to be most convenient.

Agenda

Good Governance from a Cross-Sectoral Perspective

Main Objectives

The main objectives of the conference were:

1. Gaining an overview of the most important good governance research and policy projects in the region (peer exchange);
2. Discussing the “good” and the “bad “of good governance concepts, including indicators, standards, practices and regional variances;
3. Bringing together researchers and policy-makers to discuss how to build bridges between research and policy-making and how future agendas in this field could look like.

Contact

For additional inquiries write to:
Igor Bandovic, European Fund for the Balkans:igor.bandovic@balkanfund.org
and Jan Kreuels, RRPP Western Balkans: jan.kreuels@rrpp-westernbalkans.net

Background

Good governance has been a prominent topic during the last decade in the Western Balkans, a region still going through transition and aiming to join the European Union. The “good governance” concept is more or less familiar to both the research community and policy makers dealing with political and socio-economic changes in the region. This is especially due to the Europeanization process and the generally high level of international involvement in the region.

Good governance is imperative to democratic consolidation and economic development including, inter alia, respect for human rights and participation of citizens in decision-making, promotion of rule of law, poverty-reduction, fight against corruption, transparency of state-affairs. So far it has been strongly promoted and supported by the European Union with the enlargement process but also by a number of bilateral donors and agencies through their development strategies in the region.
Even though great efforts have been invested into change-processes, Western Balkans countries are still marked by high levels of bureaucracy, informal practices, corruption and lack of accountability and transparency of public institutions that are responsible for reforms running simultaneously on different levels. All this leads to a general lack of public trust.

Тhe Enlargement strategy of the European Commission 2012 identifies “good governance, the rule of law, administrative capacity, unemployment, economic reform and social inclusion” as major challenges in most countries of the Western Balkans.
Partial monitoring of governance on national, regional and local level in WB has been and is done or supported by many international actors like World Bank Institute’s Governance Matters, The Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat, UNDP Global Programme on Democratic Governance Assessments, and European Fund for the Balkans (Balkan Monitor) etc. The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) also promoted and supports this on the municipal level through its pillar: «Rule of Law and Democracy», which is one of the key areas covered by the SDC in the region .

Regular European Commission progress reports, within analyses in terms of relation between state and Union, political and economic criteria for membership, and capacity to assume the obligations of membership, is the most comprehensive set of recommendations toward good governance in the WB. Nevertheless, EU membership stresses need for locally-generated governance data. Regular EU progress reports can be perceived as external and may not necessarily be accepted by national stakeholders. Additionally, national, regional and local governments, sometimes, lack capacities to transfuse progress report recommendations into concrete improvement actions. The EU accession process can, however, both support and benefit from an endogenous self-assessment.