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The purpose of this practice-oriented paper is to look at a recent, late-phase development in public administration (PA) reform in Romania, specifically the drafting of the recently adopted national Strategy on Strengthening the Efficiency of Public Administration (2014-2020). In particular, the paper focuses on the opportunities and limits of outsourcing the building of the vision underlying the strategy and the prioritization of strategic objectives. The article’s story is also placed in the broader context of agencification literature and, more specifically, the involvement of executive agencies in policymaking.

The paper describes the vision-building exercise, developed according to a script already tested in several sectoral strategy-making processes, and the objectives and procedure of the online participatory consultation by using an adapted real-time Delphi format (similarly tested in the recent past).

The paper reports on the ways in which the output of the visioning process and of online consultations may be used to enhance a strategic process already underway.

PA reform in post-communist countries has been among the most hotly debated, intensely pursued, yet seemingly elusive policy objectives of the transition and post-transition periods. Among pre-accession and then European Union (EU) member states, the need to get in and then to get involved in European policymaking provided some impetus for such reforms and also set substantial constraints, without however always adding much predictability or significantly streamlining the public sector. The paper contributes to this debate by proving an innovative method of devising a reform strategy by outsourcing the strategy-building process to an agency with the necessary know-how and experience.

Romania has experienced a dramatic transition, after 1989, starting from one of the fiercest communist regimes and trying to build a democratic regime and to join the Western institutions, such as NATO and EU. The issue of democratisation of civil–military relations ranked high on the reform agenda of both Romanian policymakers and international donors that offered assistance for transition. The main reason was – for the Romanian public – the concern that the military could seize the power and institute dictatorship, while – for the Western countries – it was the perception that the military was a pillar of a socialist state and the neo-Kantian assumption that democracies do not fight each other, so a civilian control over the military is desirable to be instituted in Eastern Europe. However, the relations between the Romanian military and its parent society present some particular features that should be acknowledged before the presentation of research results.

The reform of civil–military relations and the establishment of a democratic control of Armed Forces were important concerns for the Romanian transition, after 1989. The main reasons were related with a misperception that the military were supporters of Ceausescu's dictatorship, their involvement in the overthrow of Ceausescu's regime, in 1989, when they could have established a military control of society.

Bahattin Akşit, BA (1968), METU; MA (1971) and PhD (1975) University of Chicago. Dr. Akşit, Professor in the Department of Sociology, Middle East Technical University, conducts research in the following areas: Psycho-social aspects of disaster management; Community participation and volunteer associations; Rural structural transformations, Social change and cleavage in towns and cities; Sociology of religion and secularism; Sociology of Middle East and Central Asia; Army and conflict resolution. Recent publications are: (1) Karanci, N., Akşit, B. and Dirik, G. (2005). Impact of a community disaster awareness training program in Turkey, Social Behavior and Personality: An International Journal, 33(3); (2) Akşit, B., Karanci, N. and Gunduz-Hosgör, A. (2001), Turkey, working street children in three metropolitan cities, International Labour Organization; (3) Akşit, B. (1993). Studies in rural transformation in Turkey. In: P. Stirling (Ed.), Culture and the economy: Changes in Turkish villages. Cambridgeshire: The Eothen Press; (4) Akşit, B. (1991). Islamic education in Turkey: Medrese reform in late Ottoman times and Imam-hatip schools. In: R. Tapper (Ed.), Islam in modern Turkey: Religion politics and literature in a secular state. London: I B Tauris and University of London.

This book is a report of cross-national research on the civil–military cultural differences in democratic societies, particularly centred on the attitudes of national elites, here considered as being mainly composed of professionals.Our research is limited to the democratic countries: This limit is grounded in the consideration that the cultural dynamics, especially in civil–military relations, of countries with non-democratic regimes are completely different.The initial project, written up and published in the ERGOMAS and RC01 newsletters, was later discussed at several conferences, and subsequently elaborated in a restricted working group.Researchers investigated a sample of cadets at military academies and their generational peers at civilian universities (“future elites”). An expert survey was also employed to sample “present elites”, both civilian and military.The book is therefore a report of the cross-national research on the civil–military cultural gap in democratic societies. It is divided into three parts: the first is devoted to describing the project's theoretical framework and the methodology used in the field research. The second part, deals with the results of the research on the main survey themes. The third part is aimed at illustrating the national specificities to the reader for better understanding of the results of the cross-national comparison. Finally, the last chapter presents a comparison between the responses of the two interviewed elites, present and future, and an attempt to draw a few conclusions.