Government at a Glance: Western Balkans was prepared by the OECD Directorate for Public Governance, as a collaboration between the Governance Indicators and Performance Evaluation Division and the joint OECD-EU SIGMA programme, under the leadership of Janos Bertok, Acting Director of the OECD Public Governance Directorate. The work was led by Zsuzsanna Lonti and Jesper Johnsøn under the direction of Monica Brezzi and Gregor Virant. The publication was drafted by Barbara Baredes, Santiago González, Alessandro Lupi, Minjoo Son, and Laura-Sofia Springare. Chapter 1 “Public Governance Fundamentals and European Integration: Towards Convergence for the Western Balkans?” was drafted by Jesper Johnsøn.
Drafting contributions and comments to data were received from Andrew Blazey, Brian Finn (Chapter 2 Public Finance and Economics); Daniel Gerson, Pinar Guven, Lech Marcinkowski, Cristina Mendes, Roula Sylla (Chapter 3 Public Employment), Andrew Davies, Timo Ligi, Bagrat Tunyan (Chapter 4 Institutions); Brian Finn, Anne Keller, Scherie Nicol (Chapter 5 Budgeting Practices and Procedures); Daniel Gerson, Lech Marcinkowski, Natalia Nolan-Flecha, Kaido Paabusk (Chapter 6 Human Resources Management); Matthieu Cahen, Gheorghe Cazan, Piotr-Nils Gorecki, Marian Lemke (Chapter 7 Public Procurement); Felipe González-Zapata, Kaido Paabusk, Mariane Piccinin Barbieri, Jacob Arturo Rivera Perez, Barbara Ubaldi, João Vasconcelos, Benjamin Welby (Chapter 8 Digital Government).
This publication is the result of contributions from a wide range of sources and expertise. We thank particularly SIGMA local experts: Nevila Como and Jolanda Trebicka in Albania; Amir Cesic and Jasmina Djikic in Bosnia and Herzegovina; Ruzhdi Halili and Valmira Rexhebeqaj in Kosovo; Ana Ðurnić in Montenegro; Neda Maleska Sacmaroska in North Macedonia and Milena Lazarevic from the European Policy Centre in Serbia. Valuable comments, input and support were received from SIGMA’s country managers: Bagrat Tunyan(Albania); Primoz Vehar (Bosnia and Herzegovina); Jesper Johnsøn (Kosovo1); Timo Ligi (Montenegro); Kaido Paabusk (North Macedonia); and Annika Uudelepp (Serbia).
We also thank Andrea Uhrhammer (OECD) and Andrew Brenner for editorial support. Zoltan Mikolas was in charge of preparing the contextual annex. The cover is an original drawing from Jeffrey Fisher.
This publication was produced with the financial support of the European Union. The opinions expressed and arguments employed herein do not necessarily reflect the official views of the European Union.