Characteristics of the Reforming Process in the Romanian Public Administration System

This paper aims to analyze, starting from the case of Romania, the degree to which public administration reform contributes to the reduction of corruption. In this paper, which has its own methodology, the level of corruption is estimated and a series of factors that can contribute to its reduction in a certain time interval are determined. The analysis of the public administration reform process was realized by using a representative survey conducted in May 2007 at the public administration level. A two-phase sampling technique was used to build the sample, which included 971 civil servants from central and local public administration. The reforming process of the central and local public administration Romania is analyzed with regard to the civil service reform, the decentralization process and fight against corruption in the public administration. Eight statistical variables were defined in order to analyze these aspects. Most of the variables used in this study reveal significant differences at the level of the four types of public administration institutions. Nevertheless, the analysis shows that the intensification of the reform process at civil service level leads to the reduction of the level of corruptionadministrative reform,corruption,performance,transparency,pressure of political system,decentralization

Econometric Models used for the Corruption Analysis

The article conveys a series of features of the public administration by using some econometric models. In order to estimate the parameters, we used a series of data registered from a illustrative sample of civil servants. With the aim of analysing the corruption, there are used various regression and simultaneous equation models. The corruption level is analysed depending on a series of factors such as the political system pressure, the administration transparency, the quality of the civil servants’ job-related relationshipscorruption, public administration, regression models

Ranking National Innovation Systems According to their technical Efficiency

AbstractThe purpose of this study is to measure and compare the performance of the National Innovation Systems using the information available in IUS 2011 database. In order to fulfill this purpose, the variables describing the innovation process included in this database are used to estimate the technical efficiency of the EU27 Member States as well as Croatia, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey.Thus the efficiency of the decision making units represented by National Innovation Systems is estimated using a nonparametri c frontier model: data envelopment analysis (DEA). Statistical inference for DEA estimators is based on bootstrap, a very well- known resampling method. Ranking the countries provide an interesting insight into the innovation system classification

Shakespeare’s Spatial Metaphors of Central and Eastern Europe: Transpositions of Poland, Hungary and Russia in Measure for Measure

Inspiré par la géocritique et les études littéraires sur la spatialité, cet essai analyse la spatialité discursive équivoque représentée par les allusions aux pays d’Europe Centrale et de l’Est (Pologne, Hongrie et Russie) dans la pièce de Shakespeare Mesure pour mesure. La littérature de voyage et les textes géographiques de l’époque (par Ierome Turler en 1575 ou George Abbot en 1599) décrivent le Commonwealth de Pologne-Lituanie comme un gouvernement démocratique, mais marqué par des dissensions civiles. D’autre part, les pays mentionnés dans la pièce de Shakespeare fonctionnent comme espaces transgressifs et « transpositionnels » qui suggèrent l’existence de lieux de libertés distants, situés aux marges de l’Europe de la première modernité, c’est-à-dire à la fois à l’intérieur et à l’extérieur de l’Europe. Plutôt que s’inspirer du thème conventionnel de translatio imperii, la pièce laisse deviner une certaine instabilité sociale et politique, présente des espaces de rencontre ambivalents, et convoque plusieurs champs de possibles aussi transgressifs les uns que les autres. Toutefois, aucune de ces localités périphériques ne sont représentées par Vienne, lieu central de la pièce, parce que ces pays sont des espaces trompeurs et leurs frontières sont tracées par la rumeur, l’illusion et l’imagination. La scène jacobéenne est l’endroit unique où ces métaphores de transposition d’espace convergent, contestant l’idée selon laquelle existeraient d’un côté des démocraties fondées sur les libertés civiques et de l’autre des régimes autocratiques. La pièce de Shakespeare interroge une conception eurocentrée des droits civils et des politiques ayant cours à l’ouest et propose une perspective géopolitique équitable.Drawing on geocriticism and spatial literary studies, this essay discusses the ambivalent discursive spatiality represented by allusions to the Central and Eastern European countries of Poland, Hungary and Russia in Measure for Measure. While travel and geography texts of the period by Ierome Turler (1575) and George Abbot (1599) describe the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania as democratic rule, but marked by civil dissension, the countries alluded to in the play function as transgressive and transpositional spaces suggesting distant liberties at the margins of early modern Europe, at once in it and not in it. Rather than engaging conventionally in the translatio imperii theme, the play suggests submerged social and political instability and ambivalent spaces of encounter, negotiating among several realms of possibility and being marked by transgression. None of these peripheral locations, however, are represented within the centrality of the play’s Vienna because they are deceptive spaces whose borders are drawn by means of hearsay, delusion, and imagination. The Jacobean stage is the unique place in which these transpositional metaphors of space converge, challenging ideas of democratic rule and civil liberalism, in counterpoint to autocracies. The play questions the Eurocentric understanding of civil rights and politics and gestures towards a non-aligned geopolitical perspective

THE MENTAL AND THEATRICAL MAPS OF SHAKESPEARE'S ROMANCES: A ROMANIAN PERSPECTIVE

The paper surveys the spatial co-ordinates that frame the imaginary geography of Shakespeare’s romances, which map out a conventionalised visual representation of an increasingly fragmented world, torn apart by religions, political, linguistic, social and cultural differences. How do these particular plays address and paraphrase the English Renaissance drama’s interpretation of the world beyond English shores and of the others that inhabited those spaces? If the romances emphasise final union through initial dislocation and dissension, do they typify a particular Jacobean interpretation of topography and stage world? Inspecting briefly the reception of Shakespeare’s romances in Romania during the past decades, the focus will shift on the reversed cultural perspective, by examining the way these plays contributed to the formation of individual and group identities in an equally antagonist social and political milieu.artículo examina los componentes relativos al espacio propio de una geografía imaginaria de los romances de Shakespeare, que trazan la representación de un mundo fragmentado por diferencias religiosas, políticas, lingüísticas, sociales y culturales. ¿De qué manera estas funciones parafrasean y se acercan a una interpretación de un mundo detrás de las costas inglesas y de los “otros” que habitaban estos lugares? Si los romances apuntan hacia una reunión final a través de la dislocación inicial y las dimensiones. ¿De qué manera estos tipifican una interpretación particularmente jacobea de la topografía y del mundo escénico? Aunque trata principalmente de la recepción de los romances de Shakespeare en Rumania durante las últimas décadas, el argumento parte también de una perspectiva cultural inversa, explorando las maneras en que los romances contribuyeron a la formación de las identidades individuales y de grupo dentro de un ambiente político y social igualmente antagónico

Epitomes of Dacia: Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania in Early Modern English Travelogues

This essay examines the kaleidoscopic and abridged perspectives on three early modern principalities (Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania), whose lands are now part of modern-day Romania. I examine travelogues and geography texts describing these Eastern European territories written by Marco Polo (1579), Abraham Ortelius (1601; 1608), Nicolas de Nicolay (1585), Johannes Boemus (1611), Pierre d’Avity (1615), Francisco Guicciardini (1595), George Abbot (1599), Uberto Foglietta (1600), William Biddulph (1609), Richard Hakluyt (1599-1600), Fynes Moryson (1617), and Sir Henry Blount (1636), published in England in the period 1579-1636. The essay also offers brief incursions into the representations of these geographic spaces in a number of Shakespearean plays, such as The Merchant of Venice and Othello, as well as in Pericles, Prince of Tyre by Shakespeare and Wilkins. I argue that these Eastern European locations configure an erratic spatiality that conflates ancient place names with early modern ones, as they reconstruct a space-time continuum that is neither real nor totally imaginary. These territories represent real-and-fictional locations, shaping an ever-changing world of spatial networks reconstructed out of fragments of cultural geographic and ethnographic data. The travel and geographic narratives are marked by a particular kind of literariness, suggesting dissension, confusion, and political uncertainty to the early modern English imagination

Hamlet, or about Death: A Romanian Hamlet directed by Vlad Mugur (2001)

This essay looks at the 2001 Romanian production of Hamlet directed by Vlad Mugur at the Cluj National Theatre (Romania) from the perspective of geocriticism and spatial literary studies, analysing the stage space opened in front of the audiences. While the bare stage suggests asceticism and alienation, the production distances the twenty-first century audiences from what might have seemed difficult to understand from their postmodern perspectives. The production abbreviates the topic to its bare essence, just as a map condenses space, in the form of “literary cartography” (Tally 20). There is no room in this production for baroque ornaments and theatrical flourishing; instead, the production explores the exposed depth of human existence. The production is an exploration of theatre and art, of what dramatists and directors can do with artful language, of the theatre as an exploration of human experience and potential. It is about the human condition and the artist’s place in the world, about old and new, about life and death, while everything happens on the edge of nothingness. The director’s own death before the opening night of the production ties Shakespeare’s Hamlet with existential issues in an even deeper way than the play itself allows us to expose

Memory of Earth and Ocean: Territories of Shakespeare’s Islands

Drawing on the definition of territory as “a word, a concept and a practice” (Elden, The Birth of Territory 7), as well as Dennis Cosgrove’s association of global spatiality and “bounded territoriality” (Mappings 20), this essay examines Shakespeare’s metaphoric island territories in the Mediterranean, the Aegean and the Atlantic as forms of spatial literary practice, incorporating an area of knowledge, activity and experience. Involving human agency, but also symbolic jurisdiction ruled by Shakespeare’s name, the metaphoric territories of Shakespeare’s islands are both inclusive and divisive, utopian and dystopian, and they can produce unique associations in the minds of those who listen to their dynamic sounds and see their distinctive images. Rather than being merely geological sites suitable for preserving the memory of earth and ocean, Shakespeare’s dramatic island territories are constructed and mythologized places, which expose a meta-theatrical condition that speaks about the changing sense of self shaped by space. Shakespeare dramatizes the intricate interplay of the island’s material and metaphorical meanings, with the possible implications in suggesting territorial nationalism, but also interiority. These theatrical islands (Crete, Cyprus, Rhodes, Colchis, Venice, the Canary Islands)—seen from the symbolic “island” of England’s territory—are metonymic substitutions that allow the performance of geography, anchored in its representation of theatrical specificity. They elicit multiple inversions of traditional notions of territoriality, demonstrating the permeability of island borders through ambivalent temporality and spatiality.À partir de la définition du territoire comme « parole, concept et pratique » (Elden, The Birth of Territory 7), et de l’association que Dennis Cosgrove établit entre spatialité globale et « territorialité délimitée » (Mappings 20), cet article examine les territoires métaphoriques des îles shakespeariennes de la Méditerranée, la Mer Égée et l’Atlantique comme figures littéraires de spatialité où fusionnent savoir, activité et expérience. Comme ils impliquent l’intervention humaine, mais aussi la juridiction symbolique autorisée par le nom de Shakespeare, les territoires métaphoriques des archipels shakespeariens sont à la fois inclusifs et facteurs d’oppositions, utopiques et dystopiques, car ils ont le pouvoir de susciter des associations singulières dans l’imaginations de ceux qui écoutent leurs musiques ou contemplent leurs paysages. Loin d’être seulement des sites géologiques propices à la préservation de la mémoire de la terre et de l’océan, les territoires dramatiques des archipels shakespeariens sont des construits mythifiés qui révèlent, par le théâtre, la manière dont l’espace modifie la perception que l’on a de sa propre identité. Shakespeare met en scène les rapports complexes qui se nouent entre la réalité géographique des îles et leurs acceptions métaphoriques qui suggèrent une forme de nationalisme territorial tout en interrogeant l’intériorité de l’être. Ces archipels théâtraux (Crète, Chypre, Rhodes, Colchide, Venise, les îles Canaries) – vus depuis « l’île », symbolique du territoire anglais – opèrent comme substituts métonymiques qui permettent d’ancrer la géographie dans la représentation théâtrale. Ils donnent lieu à de multiples inversions des notions traditionnelles de territorialité et montrent comment leurs frontières sont affectées par des temporalités et des spatialités ambivalentes