Each year SIGMA produces assessment reports as a contribution to the <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/countries/strategy-and-progress-report/index_en.htm">EC’s annual reports</a> on EU candidate countries and potential candidates, as well as to its programming of technical assistance. These reports assess progress made in public administration reform by our beneficiary countries....

Both an ambitious European integration agenda and the need for Montenegro to develop national policies for a more competitive economy require a functioning policy co-ordination, a planning system with clear requirements, and proper institutional arrangements and functional capacities at the...

This paper sets out a strategy calling for a radical overhaul of the manner in which both the EU and aspiring member states define and implement what the Copenhagen criteria refer to as the “Rule of Law” in pursuit of the elusive goal of sustainability. While pointing to the limits of the...

This report examines the professionalisation of the civil service in seven Western Balkan states: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia1, Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia. In the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the civil service is analysed separately...

Estonia and Finland have centuries of collaboration, mainly between the capital areas of Tallinn and Helsinki that currently account for 2 million inhabitants and USD 76 billion in economic output. The entry of Estonia into the European Union and, since the mid-2000s, a two-hour ferry trip, have...

The Oresund is the most well-known example of European cross-border collaboration, building on the metropolitan area around Copenhagen and, across the sound, southern Sweden with the cities of Malmö, Lund and Helsingborg. Cross-border integration intensified following the opening of a...

Hedmark County (Norway) and Dalarna County (Sweden) are both rural, with the border being remote from regional centres. The total population of less than half a million inhabitants spans across almost 58 800 km², with an economic output of USD 22 billion. Efforts to support collaboration at the...

Governments are confronted with crises that may spread beyond national borders and trigger significant economic knock-on effects. Managing crises is a key responsibility for governments, which have a crucial role to play to strengthen the resilience of their population, communities and critical...

The paper was prepared by John F. Helliwell, Haifang Huang, Shawn Grover and Shun Wang in collaboration with Mario Marcel, Martin Forst and Tatyana Teplova.<P> This paper has three main objectives. The first is to review existing studies of the links between good governance and subjective...</p>

Open Government Data (OGD) initiatives, and in particular the development of OGD portals, have proliferated since the mid-2000s both at central and local government levels in OECD and non OECD countries. Understanding the preconditions that enable the efficient and effective implementation of...