Political scientist Mungiu-Pippidi: Seven countries representing good model for Romania on good governance

Countries such as Botswana, Costa Rica or Georgia represent an anti-corruption model by which Romania could be inspired, political scientist Alina Mungiu-Pippidi said at the presentation of her recently published book, called "In search of a good governing", in which she analyzed 200 contemporary countries, a large number of historical case studies and seven countries that have evolved towards a better governing in the last 35-40 years. 

According to the renowned writer, who is a doctor in social psychology, historical models are no longer as interesting today in establishing a successful democratic model because the conditions in which they managed to reach this state cannot be easily repeated. 

"The United States, for example, is an old case. We have successful historical cases, which are not as interesting, due to the fact that those circumstances are a lot more difficult for us to duplicate today. You can't just go and tell someone: "Denmark [another historical model, ed.n.] needs to lose the war with its neighbors, catastrophically, so that the monarch can reach the conclusion that his aristocrats lost the war because they were not educated based on merit and have no military knowledge, and then you must finally introduce a contest based on merit in the army. So this is not something that we can copy. It's been too long. The seven countries that made this happen, during modern times, are Latin America - Chile, Uruguay and Costa Rica, and in Africa - Botswana, Asia - South Korea and Taiwan and in Europe - Estonia and Georgia. In the book there is the story of how they made it happen", Alina Mungiu Pippidi said during the event regarding her work, organized on Thursday by the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration. 

The Romanian political scientist, who is an expert in public policies, said that the idea of this book has its roots in a long period of time and that her life intertwined with her research for this book. 

"The Revolution came and I realized that we are not ready for this new reality. The only people that were ready for this area of public policies were the ones that had been to the party's [the Communist party,. ed.n.] school," explained Mungiu-Pippidi. 

Later on she noticed that people are not actually progressing towards good governing and that parties that reached power were blighted by corruption. 

The book is trying to answer questions such as "why do some societies manage to control corruption in a way that they become and exception, while other societies remain systematically corrupt?".