ABSTRACT
The paper demonstrates that resilience consists in both tangible and intangible institutions. Specifically, the paper equates objective resilience with administrative capacity, and argues that certain vulnerabilities of Romania's public health system are related to other vulnerabilities of the state, such as an underdeveloped fiscal capacity. Subjective resilience implies not only the resolve of population to lend credence to public institutions during an emergency situation, but also the vertical trust that public institutions create through specific policies. Therefore, the level of administrative and political development in normal times could be a predictor of a given state's subjective resilience in times of crises. Methodologically, the paper rests on in-depth case study.