engleski

A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE ON INSTITUTIONAL QUALITY IN THE SELECTED EU NEIGHBOURHOOD, ACCESSION AND CANDIDATE COUNTRIES

The focus of the paper was to examine and map the quality of institutions measured by the governance indicators and assess a degree of “institutional complementarities” and harmonization with the EU in two accession and candidate countries of Western Balkan (ACC) Croatia and Macedonia and the two European Neighbourhood countries Ukraine and Moldova, which have stated their political aspirations to integrate with the EU and started to work towards institutional arrangements to achieve that goal. Public governance institutions affect the conditions in which economic agents ; entrepreneurs and citizens interact, especially with regard to: a) the stability of political institutions and accountability of the government ; b) voice in government policy-making ; c) extensiveness of corruption and state capture d) quality of entrepreneurial infrastructure and business environment, and e) quality of public services (education, quality of research and development system, innovation system ). Among their effects, we distinct those that are affecting all citizens such as stability of political institutions, accountability of government or level of corruption with those that affect in particular entrepreneurs and investors such as business environment and quality of public services. The analyses will identify the trends of convergence/divergence in the quality of governance indicators for the selected of countries, especially having in mind the geographical focus of the FP7 project SEARCH. The analyses will also explore whether the pressure of Europeanization has provided an incentive to develop structures and institutions compatible with the other EU member states. For accession and candidate countries, the EU membership negotiations have also been an important external influence on national policies, institutions and governance structures, while the EU neighbourhood countries have been able to acquaint themselves with the conditionality and procedures for the accession.

Institutions; Growth; EU Neighbourhood countries

The study is a part of larger research for FP7 project SEARCH, the WP 5 led by London School of Economics.