THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX: LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND THE PREFERENCE-HOLDERS' PARTICIPATION TO POLICY MAKING PROCESSES IN SLOVAKIA AND ROMANIA

To the communities it serves, public administration may be even considered to play the role of a true processor – receiving inputs and delivering outputs [J.M. Decleris 1992 apud Matei (2000:108)]. Some of the rules possible to apply to this input - output process are to be taken into account in this paper. More specifically, our interest heavily relies upon answering a very simple, yet debated question: how does the public administration understand to interact to its external, but national environment? In shaping our inquiry, we will use Robert Dahl’s interpretation of the democratization process (Dahl [1947] 2001; [1971] 2000) and link it to the public policy making in two of the European Union’s local administrative systems: the ones in Slovak Republic and Romania. To this end, the concept of participatory governance will become handy and further investigated as both part of the European Union’s accession criteria and as an institutional guarantee for a democratic policy making process. The content analysis of the programmatic and reporting documents of the European Union’s 5 th enlargement [with special reference to the European Commission Regular and Monitoring Reports on the Slovak Republic (1998-2002) and Romania’s accession to the European Union (1998-2004)] and of the relevant legislation in force in both countries will be employed. The authors expect as such to provide, for the time frame: 1998-2004, legal and institutional evidence of local participatory governance inside two of the democratic systems of the European Union. 2. Defining the box: Words on local government’s policy making In 1943, Public Administration Review published David Levitan’s article ‘Political Ends and Administrative Means’ 5 , where public administration was seen to be more than some tool for governors to govern, but rather, the partner in assuring a successful government. It was then argued that “a democratic state should rest not only on democratic principles, but also on a democratic administrative practice” (p.12). This section’s aim is to clarify the concept of local government while placing it against the background of a democratic policy making process.