The Role of Strategic Planning within the Regulatory Framework of the CEE Countries: A Cross-national Comparative Analysis

Abstract

Countries need to respond and adapt to a number of challenges posed by new trends such as globalisation, climate change or rapid technological innovation. In order to do so, governments and public administration institutions across Europe have adopted strategic planning to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their public policies.

At the same time, strategic planning is no longer solely a domestic responsibility. In Europe, there is a growing emphasis put on strategic planning stemming both from the requirements of the European Union (especially in the form of the so-called ex-ante conditionalities the Member States need to fulfil in order to ensure effective delivery of the Europe 2020 strategy objectives through Cohesion Policy) and from the recognized need to manage public policies in a strategic way at the national and regional levels to ensure high quality regulation.

In practice, however, many countries seem to lack a functional strategic approach (OECD 2015). While theoretical literature on the topic is abundant, cross-national comparative research is scarce.

The aim of the paper is thus to contribute to the discussion on strategic planning, which is seen here as embedded in a broader context of strategic management, by comparing the data for eight Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries (namely Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia), all of which are commonly referred to as EU new Member States. The paper seeks to answer the following research questions: How developed is strategic planning in the CEE countries? What factors hinder the strategic planning development or, on the contrary, contribute to it? And are there any common patterns identifiable among the national approaches, especially concerning the democratic/participatory dimension in their strategic planning?