The Performance of Public Administration in Romania - A Bibliometric Analysis of Specialized Literature

This paper defines the research problem by examining how the performance of public administration in Romania has evolved in response to major institutional, technological, and societal transformations, situating the discussion within broader debates on governance efficiency and modernization in contemporary social sciences.It analyses the performance of public administration in Romania through a bibliometric approach applied to specialized literature published between 1990 and 2025.The study highlights the main research directions by analysing 244 articles from the Web of Science Core Collection database and using the VOSviewer tool to map author networks and relevant keywords.By integrating insights from recent empirical studies on administrative reform and digital governance in Central and Eastern Europe, the paper identifies how Romanian scholarship both reflects and contributes to ongoing international discussions about public sector innovation, accountability, and sustainability.The results show a concentration of research around pivotal authors who facilitate the connection of different clusters, as well as a thematic orientation focused on institutional reform, performance management, digitalization, sustainable development, and improving efficiency at the local level.The study highlights the interdisciplinary nature of the field and reveals that administrative performance is analysed from an integrated perspective, combining institutional, technological, economic, and social factors.Overall, the study's objective is to provide a comprehensive and empirically grounded overview of how research on administrative performance in Romania aligns with contemporary theoretical debates and contributes to understanding the modernization of public administration in a European context.