Book on crisis management in transition societies presented in Chisinau

Romanian publicist Iulian Chifu presented his book "Crisis Management in Transitional Societies. The Romanian Experience”, on Friday, March 23 in Chisinau. The volume has been recently published in Stockholm by the Swedish National Defence College and the CRISMART project. Earlier, similar books on crisis management in Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Russia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Bulgaria etc., were published within the same project, which are to be followed by volumes concerning the situation in Poland, Ukraine and Moldova. Iulian Chifu says that the CRISMART theoretic model which lays at the basis of the crisis decision analysis is relevant because it allows comparing crises and, consequently, lessons which are to be learnt from both the political-bureaucracy relation, institutional-functional one and the effective way of functioning and training for a reaction in crisis situations. The author mentions that crises refer to political and economic as well as civil crises. According to the author, each volume provides a theoretical part and a new experience. The book about Romania refers to the experience of the decision-making in crisis situation where its management was more difficult because of pressure, unstable institutions, immature relations among institutions and the lack of culture in crisis decision-making and democracy. Iulian Chifu says that his presentation of the book in Chisinau is not accidental, because one of the cases analysed in the book is the diplomatic crisis between Romania and Moldova in the period between 2001 and 2002. “it is very important that we should see how the decision-making functioned in that particular crisis, the lessons learnt and the degree in which the parties got involved in the crisis, learnt from these lessons or repeated the mistakes we had once made”, the author says. The book is dedicated to political analysts, academic environment and politicians. For the beginning, the volume appeared in English. In several months, the Romanian version is to appear. The electronic version of the book can be found on the website www.crismart.org.