DescriptionMy dissertation addresses the fate of institutional reforms of market governance (such as laws of bankruptcy, capital markets, and concessions) and democratic governance (such as anti-corruption, civil service, and judicial reform) in Romania and across Eastern Europe. While progress has been limited in reforming democratic governance, the surprising turnaround in economic performance and institutional reforms of market governance in Romania challenges the prevailing view in the literature that communist-era managers were able to capture the state and prevent the creation of a sound institutional framework. I explain how this reversal of fortune was possible, as well as why this success has not been fully matched in the democratic governance domain, by focusing on the influence of private actors, economic and political, on the reform of governance institutions. Success in institutional reform in the market domain in Romania’s case came from a combination of economic elite change on the background of political change and banking reform that led to changing incentives of the business elite. Using data from the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS), I show that banking reform also has a strong relationship to the reduction in state capture across Eastern Europe. The mixed success in state accountability or democratic governance in the Romanian case is due to the continued incentives of politicians for state exploitation in the context of quite robust political competition in Parliament, as well as competition between the President and the Prime Minister.