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Diplomatic Services Today: Between Political Decisions and Administrative Criteria

Transylvanian Review of Administrative Sciences

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Title Diplomatic Services Today: Between Political Decisions and Administrative Criteria
 
Creator NAUMESCU, Valentin; Associate Professor Ph.D., Department of International Relations and American Studies, Faculty of European Studies, Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
 
Subject foreign policy, diplomacy, poli-tics, bureaucracy, diplomatic service, Romania, reform.
 
Description As a highly specialized and relatively small sized public service (in terms of staff and bud-get), diplomacy has always been in a particular position within the administrative system of most countries. Not only does diplomacy attract the pretended ‘elites’ of the public sector’s employ-ees but also a lot of popular criticism with regard to its performances, transparency, dedication to public interest, procedures of recruitment, privileges, and sometimes moral exigencies. This paradoxical ambivalence of ‘elitism’ and public distrust coexists with variable degrees of tension between politicization and the need of effective technocracy. This article explores the concepts, delimitations and functioning of the po-litical-ideological vs. administrative components of diplomatic systems, in the wider context of the administrative paradigms and political cultures to which they belong. While the theoretical distinc-tion between foreign policy and diplomacy is way more developed in European classical approach-es, though with controversial results, the Ameri-can authors and offcials traditionally use the two concepts interchangeably. Notwithstanding this theoretical fexibility, the borderline between the political level of diplomatic representation and the professional diplomatic and consular corps is clearer and better regulated in the U.S. sys-tem than in most of the European countries. A case study focused on the reform of the Roma-nian diplomatic service, in the pre- and post-EU accession years, serves as empirical analysis of this demarche.
 
Publisher Babes Bolyai University
 
Contributor —
 
Date 2015-02-15
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
 
Format application/pdf
 
Identifier http://rtsa.ro/tras/index.php/tras/article/view/431
 
Source Transylvanian Review of Administrative Sciences; 2015: Issue No. 44 E/February; 161-179
1842-2845
 
Language eng
 
Relation http://rtsa.ro/tras/index.php/tras/article/view/431/421
 
Rights Copyright (c) 2015 Transylvanian Review of Administrative Sciences