SNSPA Digital Repository
Welcome to SNSPA Digital Repository, the institutional repository of the National University of Political Sciences and Public Administration.
The repository contains research produced by SNSPA academic staff, including journal articles, book chapters, books, working papers, conference papers, and more.
Communities in DSpace
Select a community to browse its collections.
Recent Submissions
Politicizing enlargement in times of uncertainty: ’the curious case’ of blocking and un-blocking decisions on Albania and North Macedonia’s EU path
(Taylor & Francis online, 2025-10-08) Butnaru Troncota, Miruna
The main argument put forward in this article is that the overlapping crises that hit the EU over the past decade, culminating with the war in Ukraine, led to new forms of politicization of EU enlargement with ambivalent outcomes. At the theoretical level, the article sheds light on the shifting power relations and contestation within the specific context of EU enlargement policy. At the empirical level, the article focuses on the first mandate of Ursula von der Leyen’s ‘geopolitical Commission’ (2019–2024), and it assesses the forms of politicization around the decision of blocking and un-blocking the start of negotiations with North Macedonia and Albania. The article relies on selected secondary data, as well as on research interviews with officials from the two countries. The conclusions outline how the geopolitical context triggered by the war in Ukraine has both enabled and constrained EU integration in the specific case of the Western Balkans.
EUROPEANIZATION IN SEGREGATED SCHOOLS? THIRD PARTIES’ EFFORTS TO BUILD A TRANS-ETHNIC EDUCATIONAL SPACE IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
(Analele Universităţii din Oradea, Seria Relaţii Internaţionale şi Studii Europene, 2026) Horobeanu, Gorgiana-Diana; Butnaru Troncota, Miruna
Bosnia and Herzegovina’s European integration has been marked by persistent stagnation, particularly in education, where ethnic segregation endures despite decades of reforms and external support. Most analyses approach reconciliation from a top-down perspective, focusing on constitutional reform and EU conditionality, yet this overlooks the everyday realities of divided schooling. This article addresses that gap by examining reconciliation from a bottom-up perspective, by examining third-party efforts to build trans-ethnic educational spaces in post-conflict societies. The research adopts a qualitative case study design, triangulating European Commission progress reports (2018–2024), IPA funding allocations, and NGO project documentation. This approach investigates how EU support intersects with local agency and whether participatory practices foster sustainable change in a segregated educational landscape. Findings show that while national reforms remain blocked, micro-level initiatives yield tangible improvements in interethnic cooperation, with some schools integrating inclusive models into curricula. These outcomes highlight the potential of participatory education projects to complement stalled macro-level reforms and illustrate how bottomup approaches can plant the seeds of a trans-ethnic social fabric, offering both local benefits and pathways for Bosnia and Herzegovina’s EU accession.
EU’s ‘Eastern discontents’ – when ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ politicisation collide – the case of Romania in the future of Europe debate
(Taylor & Francis online, 2026) Butnaru Troncota, Miruna; Ionita, Dragos
Over the past decade, the wave of successive crises that hit the EU has tested the EU’s legitimacy and resulted in increased EU politicisation. In the period between the Brexit referendum up until the 2019 European elections, several CEE member states (such as Poland and Hungary and to a lesser extent Romania) contested the EU for breaching their national sovereignty, claiming that their countries’ values and identities are ‘threatened’ by the EU’s interference. In this article, we analyse the case of Romania’s clashes with the European Commission between 2017 and 2019 on the topic of rule of law backsliding. We analyse these discursive clashes in connection to the country’s first Presidency of the Council, as an illustration of the increased politicisation placed in the overall context of the Future of Europe debates. The empirical part is based on a chronological account of selected qualitative data about how this national-supranational ‘power struggle’ unfolded in the studied period. The findings show that in the case of Romania two forms of politicisation coincided and collided - one that was ‘bottom-up’, marked by highly polarised national politics and an East–West division and another that was ‘top-down’ - defined by the tensions inside EU’s own political dynamics between the Council and the Commission.
Lessons from Romaniaʼs EU Accession for Todayʼs Candidate States
(SSRN, 2026-08-05) Daianu, Daniel; Kallai, Ela; Lungu, Laurian
Romaniaʼs EU accession in 2007, after a decade of externally anchored reform, offers an instructive case for todayʼs enlargement candidates. This paper examines the pre-accession periodʼs reform achievements and their limits, the post-accession reversal driven by moral hazard and political economy, and sectoral outcomes across energy, information technology, public administration, and judicial reform. It then situates Romaniaʼs macro-structural trajectory — consumption-led convergence, twin deficits, and a narrowing fiscal corridor — within the broader convergence debate. Five lessons emerge for current candidates: conditionality is powerful but time-limited; fiscal institutions matter more than fiscal targets; absorption capacity is a binding constraint that must be built pre-accession; post-accession boom-bust dynamics are predictable and require a pre-emptive policy; and honest political narratives about the benefits and costs of reforms are a precondition for durable change.
Macroeconomic consequences of the war in Ukraine on Central and Eastern European economies: a SVAR analysis
(Taylor & Francis online, 2025-10-27) Daianu, Daniel; Grosu, Tudor; Neacsu, Andrei; Tanase, Andrei; Vranceanu, Radu
This paper investigates the short-term macroeconomic effects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 on the economies of Bulgaria, Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Romania and compares these effects observed in these countries with those recorded in Germany, France and Italy. The analysis relies on the estimation of Bayesian SVARs for each economy with the war shock identified using the Geopolitical Risk Index. Simulations show that, by the end of 2022, the war contributed to a rise in inflation by 0.3-0.8 percentage points and a lower GDP by approximately 0.3 percent compared to the counterfactual ‘no-war’ scenario. Our findings suggest a similar impact on economic activity and a larger impact on inflation in CEE countries compared to Western European economies. For core inflation, the results indicate a smaller impact than for headline inflation, but one that proves more persistent.