Paper presentation at the 6th CEU Conference in Social Sciences, Budapest
Seven papers were presented in the first day of the Conference, in Panel 2 called “Are They Drifting Into Adulthood? Past, Present and Future of New European Democracies” that was chaired by Daniela Sirinic (CEU). In my paper presentation, entitled “Entrepreneurship in times of economic and financial crises. Methods of adaptation and survival,” I drew some conclusions regarding the level of adulthood of the Romanian democracy. The answer is very complex. From my point of view, it is both a “yes” and “no” answer. Here are my arguments:
- It’s a “no” at a macroeconomic level because the research that I presented showed that there is a lack of a visionary development program that would boost economic recovery. The lack of vision however is persistent across all sectors of the Romanian economy.
- The “yes” side is only partially satisfactory and applies to the microeconomic level. The Romanian democracy allows the entrepreneur to take the necessary measures to adapt the activity of the company to the new economic circumstances. However, entrepreneurs engage very little in shaping favorable public policies in the communities they belong to. They simply do not engage in participative democracy projects, in a constructive way. However, the lack of success stories of participation does not encourage them to dedicate time and effort to this behavior.
Here is the video of my presentation:
Vera Scepanovic (CEU) was the panelist who made a very thorough and pertinent critique of my paper. She gave me good insights into what I should consider in my final PhD paper. Here’s what she said:
And some photos:
