Republic of Moldova: 20 years of Independence and Experiments with Public Finance System

Abstract

Democratic movements, market mechanisms, and decentralization reforms have been at the heart of transformation of former USSR republics. Republic of Moldova was not an exception. The initial argument behind such fascination with these reforms stems from the idea that market mechanisms in an open and democratic society will facilitate the efficient and effective resources’ allocation, compensating for interim distributive inequities and macro-economic challenges. Such a natural experiment has been in progress for more than 20 years in the Republic of Moldova. During these 20 years Moldova experienced democracy in its infancy, democratic return of communism, and once again return to democracy and its core ideas and values. Public administration system along with public finance and budgeting systems experienced comparably abrupt changes in their development. This qualitative study of Moldovan public administration and finance frameworks will provide an evaluative description of these three distinct, but interrelated periods in Moldovan history of independence and development of public administration and public budgeting systems. Such description will allow for evaluation of the public administration and public finance systems’ developments in Moldova as well as reasons of success and failure of these reforms.