Economic and Social Policies Impacting on the Social under-Development – Case Study: Mining Restructuring in Valea Jiului

Abstract

The paper I suggest is based on the preliminary results of the research project Deindustrialization and under-development in the Romanian Transition. Individual/Collective Strategies/ Reply Policies. Case study: Valea Jiului, that will be done within the project ID- 141086 „Pluri- ?i interdisciplinaritate în programe doctorale ?i postdoctoraleIe" This project is constructed from the perspective of the social development paradigm. The modernization theories suggest the paradigm of development as modernization from an evolutionist perspective. While the communist project of social development chose explicitly industrialization as a corollary of modernization, such process of (post) modernization initiated in the moment of the communism' collapse. On economic level the transition meant also a continue and emphasized process of de-industrialization illustrated by the constant decrease of the number of industrial employees from maximum 4 millions in 1990 to 1,2 millions of employees in 2011 (data sourse: Zamfir s.s., coord. 2011). In the same time a transfer of the agriculture employees to the subsistence agriculture was registered (now the employees represent only ,2 percent of the total persons working in agriculture – MADR, 2013). The high reduction of the percentage of employed population represents a factor generating under-development and has a negative impact on the balance of the social insurance systems (pensions, unemployment, health). This paper intends to describe and analyze a special case of the communist under-development from the perspective of causes, factors and mechanisms of this process located in the region Valea Jiului. The selection of the mining restructuring in Valea Jiului is based on the fact that this represents an example of failure of the social policies aiming to reduce the effects of the transition (effects increased in the respective case exactly by the manner of implementation of certain economic policy measures).