Study on the Relationships between Institutions, Governance and Leadership and Regional Development Policy in Romania

The regional development in EU countries is strongly institutionalized and shaped by politics, strategies and financial allocations through the Structural Funds. In this context, factors such as institutional framework, regional/local leadership and quality of regional/local governance can play an important role in supporting the efforts of residents towards economic and social development and to mitigate the significant gap that separates the lagging regions to those developed.Good institutions, good governance and good leadership are considered by many authors as necessary conditions to support the development effort of a country or region. These three elements and the relationships between them fulfill the role of factors catalyzing entrepreneurial initiatives.This article aims to find an answer to several questions: “To what extent regional development is influenced by the interrelations between institutions, leadership and quality of governance and how this influence manifests itself? The low level of development of Romania's regions can be attributed to the low quality of regional governance? Can we talk about real decentralization and quality of regional governance in Romania's case? What aspects of quality of governance at regional level are important for development?.To find answers to these questions we used data and information on national and regional development in EU countries, the quality of institutions and governance, from different sources: official statistics EUROSTAT, European Commission reports, scientific studies, reports of international organizations on development indexes and governance indicators.