Problems of Post-Communism

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“Save Romania” Union and the Persistent

Populism in Romania

Dragoș Dragoman

To cite this article: Dragoș Dragoman (2020): “Save Romania” Union and the Persistent Populism
in Romania, Problems of Post-Communism, DOI: 10.1080/10758216.2020.1781540

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10758216.2020.1781540

Published online: 02 Jul 2020.

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PROBLEMS OF POST-COMMUNISM
https://doi.org/10.1080/10758216.2020.1781540

“Save Romania” Union and the Persistent Populism in Romania

Dragoș Dragoman
Department of Political Science, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Sibiu, Romania

ABSTRACT
The electoral success of the “Save Romania” Union (USR) in the 2016 parliamentary elections sheds new
light on the rising populist parties in Romania and offers a new perspective on the Romanian political
environment, showing how a new party succeeded in adapting to widespread populist expectations.
USR managed to emerge as an important player by reviving old populist themes but in a more radical
manner. The party continues to emphasize an anti-elitist orientation combined with a strong anti-
corruption campaign, adopting a flamboyant political style based on permanent confrontation, verbal
attacks, and extensive accusations.

Like other countries of Central and Eastern Europe during the
post-communist transition, Romania has witnessed the rise of
right-wing populist parties (Dragoman 2016). These parties have
not always been confined to the fringe of the political space.
Following Romania’s accession to the European Union (EU) in
2007 and the lifting of European conditionality, populists in
power between 2008 and 2012 (Dragoman and Ungureanu
2017) reshaped the political system by challenging both the
institutional framework built during the post-communist transi­
tion and the established parliamentary parties. This challenge
was mainly driven by populists’ propensity toward direct
democracy, their contestation of other political parties or insti­
tutions that mediate representation, and, as in other countries of
the region, their use of referendums as a means of emphasizing
popular legitimacy and helping with agenda-setting (Gherghina
2019; Van Eeden 2019). The overall effect of populism in power
was the emergence of a political environment imbued with
populist claims and promises, which generated a populist race
among competing parties.
This Romanian case study aims to focus on both theore­
tical and empirical grounds by examining the emergence of
a new populist party, the “Save Romania” Union (Uniunea
“Salvați România”—USR). The case presented here reveals
a new feature of populism in Central and Eastern Europe,
namely its ability to cope with varying demands by the logic
of recombining useful elements and strategies. In the long
run, recombinant populism is both a strategy for responding
to increasing populist demands and a catalyzer of populist
discourses and actions. In this political environment, estab­
lished parties are forced to compete and challenge the recom­
binant populists by addressing the issues at stake and by
partially adopting populists’ discourses and style.
The emergence of new populist parties in a competitive
populist environment marks a difference from countries in
the region such as Poland and, especially, Hungary, where
populists have managed to remain in power for longer periods
of time and to be reconfirmed at the polls (Bozóki 2008;
Kotwas and Kubik 2019). The emergence of new parties, as
in the case of USR, is an opportunity to analyze the overall
correspondence between supply and demand in parliamentary
elections by focusing on the strategies put in place by USR to
adapt much more closely to electoral expectations. This
demand focuses on more radical action than what was imple­
mented by populists who were in government between 2008
and 2012, by raising the general stakes, as in the case of USR’s
proposal for harsher penal measures against the allegedly
corrupt elite. That is why the article focuses on the round of
general elections held in 2016 and the rise of USR. The party’s
agenda, its anti-establishment rhetoric, and the range of its
political actions can serve as an example of the new political
environment, where quick mobilization of protesters in the
streets through social media, as well as the pressure put on
other political actors, is to be seen as an adaptation to elec­
toral expectations. The Romanian case examined here is con­
sistent with other cases of populist parties in both Western
and Eastern Europe that use anti-establishment rhetoric as
a response to electoral expectations (Van Kessel 2015).
The Romanian case sheds light on the constant and
repeated changes in populist party formation as populist
parties and candidates respond to latent demand from the
electorate. Unlike Polish and Hungarian case studies that
focus on the political trajectories of populist parties in
power, the Romanian case entails the evaluation of
a political environment and a reservoir of populist actors
competing to more closely adapt to populist expectations.
This is important, because USR, unlike its predecessors, is
evolving in a social and political environment marked by
consistent on-line activism and quick off-line mobilization
in a new framework of protest politics (Pop-Eleches 2010).
In this changing populist environment, the political strategy

CONTACT Dragoș Dragoman dragos.dragoman@ulbsibiu.ro Department of Political Science, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Sibiu 550324, Romania.
© 2020 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
2 D. DRAGOMAN
for coping with electoral expectations is very important. The
article intends therefore to focus on the origin, evolution, and
strategy of USR for responding to populist demands. From
a theoretical point of view, USR is to be seen as the vehicle for
recombinant populism, similar to what happened in Poland.
With the combination of populism with other symbolic ele­
ments, such as nationalist or religious ones, the political
culture in Poland helped to increase the legitimacy of populist
movements and parties that successfully combine various ele­
ments in a captivating message (Kotwas and Kubik 2019;
Shields 2015). In Romania, USR is to be seen as adapting to
the populist environment by recombining the salient issues of
anti-communism and anti-corruption in a general anti-elitist
approach. By doing this, they address two of the most sensi­
tive issues in Romanian politics, the first being the very sig­
nificant political cleavage from the early 1990s around the
issue of partisan orientations regarding transitional justice,
while the second issue is a powerful political weapon in the
positioning against the governing elites. The fight against
corrupt elites in power is an opportunity to embrace a more
anti-establishment attitude, which bears on USR’s anti-elitism.
In its recombinant strategy, an anti-corruption orientation
against elites in power and some elitist approaches and atti­
tudes are not incompatible. This goes hand in hand with the
party’s willingness to not let itself be limited by the more
conventional classifications of established parties as having
political right-wing or left-wing orientations.
The article is divided into several sections, aimed at intro­
ducing and defining the concepts of populism, and especially
of recombinant populism, and at exemplifying the theoretical
category of recombinant populism by emphasizing the
Romanian case. The analysis of USR focuses on two dimen­
sions, namely origin and party organization, as well as on
attitudes (especially those displayed by political elites) and
political ideology. Deriving from those dimensions, the
impact that USR has on other parties and on the political
system is also evaluated. In order to set up this investigation,
we first focus on the USR party manifesto, trying to identify
a repertoire of relevant political, economic, social, and judicial
issues and policies. Second, we focus on press releases, and
especially on party public statements, that are relevant for
USR’s positioning with regard to other political competitors,
and especially toward right-wing competing parties. By adopt­
ing this research strategy, we intend to echo previous studies
of other populist parties, both East and West. One is Dan
Diaconescu People’s Party (Partidul Poporului Dan
Diaconescu—PPDD), which unexpectedly rose in voting pre­
ferences in Romania’s 2012 general elections (Gherghina and
Miscoiu 2014), but we also consider studies of British left- and
right-wing populist parties and the way that party manifestos
have been used in order to distinguish populism and analyze
degrees of populism (March 2017).
Recombinant Populism and the Populist
Environment
Populism has become a widespread political phenomenon,
sometimes thriving at the margins of the political system,
sometimes managing to accede to power and affect both the
left and the right wing of the political spectrum (Di Tella
1997; Kriesi 2014; Mudde 2010; Mudde and Kaltwasser
2012). As emphasized by numerous scholars, the term is
used in a variety of ways. However, the core definition of
populism, if there is such a definition, includes a claim for
direct democracy, an appeal to the “real,” sovereign people,
and support for charismatic leaders who channel social dis­
content against the “corrupt elite,” conceived as rigged against
ordinary people. The “corrupt elite” is (allegedly) eager to
deprive the sovereign people of their rights, values, prosperity,
identity, and voice (Albertazzi and McDonnell 2007; Jones
2007; Mudde 2004). Although it is not the only definition
given to populism, the ideational definition given by Cas
Mudde (2004) is the best suited for describing the ideology
and repertoires of action used by USR. According to Mudde
(2004), populism is to be viewed as a set of ideas, as a “thin-
centered” ideology that considers society to be divided into
two separate and antagonistic groups, namely “the pure peo­
ple” and “the corrupt elite.”
This is an important point to make, because frequently,
right-wing populists embrace nationalistic and xenophobic
attitudes that turn into what is easily labeled as far-right
political radicalism (Mudde 2000, 2007). Alongside other
issues that have become relevant, such as radical regionalism
and opposition to taxation, racism and xenophobia have
combined within the framework of New Populism, which is
now a telling indicator of important changes in West
European politics (Taggart 1995). While some of those parties
have managed to enter the government, as in the Netherlands,
Italy, and Austria (Aichholzer et al. 2014; Akkerman 2012;
Conti and Memoli 2015), in other cases parties have managed
to seriously influence the public agenda, forcing established
parties to take actions that they would not have taken other­
wise, as in the case of the UK Independence Party and its
influence over Brexit (Clarke et al. 2016).
In the Romanian case, there is no connection between the
current populism and racism and xenophobia. Despite USR’s
anti-elitist and anti-establishment attitudes and values, there
is no evidence that the party embraces the Western pattern
underlined by Paul Taggart (1995) in West European politics.
For example, USR does not use the Roma issue in order to
gain votes, despite that fact that anti-Roma attitudes have
previously been used by populist parties and leaders
(Dragoman 2014a).1 The recombinant populism advanced
by USR is mainly based on the ability to use what was a key
cleavage during the first stages of the Romanian political
system, namely anti-communism, in combination with more
recent elements triggered by the populist environment, such
as anti-elitism and a mission to speak for the “real” people.
The latter elements are to be noted in the anti-corruption
discourses that largely define the more recent political devel­
opments in Romania. The recombinant populism in Central
and Eastern Europe, not only in Romania, sheds light on the
ability of populists to redefine and recombine existing and
novel political and social resources (Shields 2015; Varga
2014). They have been able to successfully promote ideas
that originate on opposite ends of the political spectrum, as
is the case with Ataka in Bulgaria (Ghodsee 2008). They have
been especially boosted by mass communication, despite their

lack of what used to be regarded as classical organizational
and political structures, and by their skills in self-mediation,
especially via social and online media (Gherghina, Miscoiu,
and Soare 2017; Pirro 2015; Wodak and Krzyzanowski 2017).
USR in Romania, and its counterparts in other Central and
Eastern Europe countries, continue to promote a populist
orientation that has gained ground since the successful
European Union accession. With external constraints pertain­
ing to the EU accession negotiations lifted, populists started to
put under pressure and overtly contest the previous status quo
that had facilitated the EU integration. They put a brutal hold
on the consensus regarding key issues such as obedience to
the rule of law, respect for constitutional stability, and support
for good governance within the framework of economic lib­
eralization (Krastev 2007). They didn’t hesitate to limit media
freedom or to undermine the professionalism of civil servants
and replace them with obedient and helpful, yet unqualified,
new public servants (Bozóki 2008; Jasiewicz 2008). Moreover,
when faced with ideological constraints raised by economic
liberalism and its social consequences, right-wing populists
have managed to recombine ideologically and derive advan­
tage from contestation.
From this perspective, USR is to be seen as a product of the
changing pattern of political participation in Romania, with
protest and social media activism replacing more traditional
forms of participation and boosting electoral visibility, as is
the case in other countries in the region (Lipinski and
Stepinska 2018). Moreover, USR is also to be seen as
a source of populist contagion from radical to mainstream
parties, through its efforts to gain electoral ground by raising
the political stakes and pushing competing mainstream parties
to adopt more radical attitudes. The radicalization of main­
stream center-right parties seems also to have happened in
Western Europe, although it has remained limited in scope
and mostly affected the level of rhetoric only, whereas in
Eastern Europe populists have managed to gain power and
influence public policies, for example in the case of penal
populism (Boda et al. 2015). Although penal populism—that
is, urging toughness against criminals—is more obvious in
Hungary or Poland, it can also be observed in Romania with
respect to pushing anti-corruption measures as a way of
increasing populists’ popularity. This authoritarian tendency
is related to what Mudde (2010, 1167) defines as radicalism, as
being in opposition to liberal, or constitutional, democracy.
Radicalism challenges the liberal basis of procedural democ­
racy, namely the positive value of pluralism, and the constitu­
tional limitations on popular sovereignty. By their radical
attitudes and political claims, populists from USR pushed
forward the political agenda of earlier populists and put
pressure on the established parties, especially the competing
parties on the right side of the political spectrum.
Defining USR as Political Vehicle for Recombinant
Populism
Our attempt to define USR and describe its political action is
expressed in terms of origin, organization, ideology, and atti­
tudes toward the political system. From a theoretical point of
view, USR is an example of a party’s successful adaptation of
PROBLEMS OF POST-COMMUNISM 3
its political offer to the populist expectations among the
electorate by means of recombinant populism. This feature
is exemplified by its high capacity for synthesizing the two
most salient cleavages in Romanian politics, namely anti-
communism and anti-corruption, to produce consistent anti-
system and anti-elitist orientations. Whereas in the 1990s
anti-communism was the most powerful weapon of the oppo­
sition (Cesereanu 2008; Stan 2002, 2012; Stan and Turcescu
2005) against the Social Democracy Party (Partidul
Democrației Sociale din România—PDSR) and the first post-
communist president, Ion Iliescu, a former communist appa­
ratchik, in the populist era anti-corruption became the domi­
nant argument (Uslaner 2010) inaugurated by the Democratic
Liberal Party (Partidul Democrat Liberal—PDL) and
President Traian Băsescu in 2004.
The definition of USR as a recombinant populist party is first
driven by the capacity for recombining past and present relevant
ideological issues, in this the case anti-communism, the most
salient cleavage of the early 1990s, and the more recent highly
relevant issue of anti-corruption. The recombinant populism
affects the way USR is to be defined as populist in terms of
ideology, party origin, and organization. The environment
USR adapts to affects the evolution of populist parties. For
example, USR is not racist or xenophobic, thus differing from
the model underlined by Taggart (1995) in West European
politics. In fact, xenophobic populism ended in Romania in
2000 with the defeat of the presidential candidate from the
Greater Romania Party (Partidul România Mare—PRM) and
the effect of the European conditionality that framed EU and
NATO accession. Moreover, USR moved from being a single-
issue party, initially appearing as a civic platform aimed at
“saving Bucharest” or opposing gold mining, to being
a populist party responding to the increasingly populist environ­
ment. Although the party displays a clear anti-establishment
position and sometimes elitist approaches, largely due to its
consistent urban and educated electorate, its position as challen­
ger in a highly populist environment pushes it toward more
radical political attitudes.
The difficulty of clearly labeling USR as populist according
to classical definitions is to be found in other political sys­
tems. As emphasized by Mattia Zulianello (2019), an increas­
ing number of populist parties are no longer at the margins of
the political system. As they become integrated into national
political systems, their interaction with established parties
tends to alter clear-cut distinctions. From this perspective,
USR is closer to what Zulianello defines as “valence” popu­
lism, namely the propensity of the party to avoid a positional
character, thus making it difficult to label them as either right-
wing or left-wing parties. Such valence populist parties pre­
dominantly compete by focusing on non-positional issues, for
example, anti-corruption, increasing transparency, democratic
reform, or moral integrity, while emphasizing anti-
establishment motives (Zulianello 2019, 3). The emphasis
put on competence and performance, as non-positional issues,
largely defines USR, in addition to the range of political issues
enumerated by Zulianello. In fact, the recombinant populism
really means adopting anti-establishment attitudes by making
appeals to relevant past and current issues such as anti-
communism and anti-corruption.
4 D. DRAGOMAN
This remarkable recombinant capacity is also to be assessed
in the light of party origin and organization. Although USR
originated in a civic movement, therefore rather emphasizing
nonhierarchical organization, the party managed to build up
a regular party structure, relying on regional branches and
local bureaus located in every county and in all the major cities,
gaining thereby at least the organizational image of a more
structured party. The party has even managed to overcome
a crisis related to the election of a presidential successor. In
October 2017, USR elected a new president, replacing the former
president and founder of the party, Nicușor Dan, who decided to
leave the party in June 2017. This capacity for surviving its
leader, which was not the case for PRM, points toward
a greater organizational flexibility, specific to its initial civic-
oriented scope, but also to the ability to connect to the demand
side of Romanian politics. As mentioned earlier, USR started as
a civic platform willing to address sensitive issues in Romania.
One of the most sensitive issues for the last twenty years has been
the commercial exploration and exploitation of the Roșia
Montană gold mine. Before getting elected in 2016 as USR
senator, Mihai Goțiu was one of the most prominent activists
for stopping the industrial exploitation of the gold mine, which
entailed the use of harmful cyanide components.2 Back in 2013,
activists and ordinary citizens gathered in the streets of the large
cities and managed to stop, after months of protests, parliamen­
tary approval of the permit for industrial exploitation.
The second sensitive issue is that of widespread corrup­
tion, often linked to the tragedy that occurred in
a Bucharest-based nightclub.3 Back in 2015, 64 young people
died in a fire at the “Colectiv” rock club, due to inappropri­
ate procedures and facilities for evacuation in case of emer­
gency. A high level of emotion spread among civic activists
and ordinary citizens who placed the blame on widespread
corruption in the granting of permits for the operation of
music clubs, restaurants, and hotels, as well as for other
private or public buildings. Confronted with mass rallies of
indignant people, the prime minister from the Social
Democratic Party (Partidul Social Democrat—PSD, formerly
labeled PDSR) was forced to resign. In fact, however, anti-
corruption as a relevant political issue did not begin with the
fire in the “Colectiv” rock club. It had been heavily empha­
sized by Traian Băsescu and by PDL in the 2004 presidential
and parliamentary elections, and became the pivotal element
in making the difference between two former communists,
the PSD prime minister Adrian Năstase and Traian Băsescu
himself (Pop-Eleches 2008). It was the failure of the anti-
corruption campaign during President Băsescu’s two terms
that fueled the fury of the people in the streets in 2015.
Despite the anti-corruption rhetoric, Băsescu had secured
official positions for Elena Udrea, his favorite companion,
from which she and her husband were able to profit. As
minister of regional development and tourism, for example,
Udrea had access to EU funds, while her husband had
extensive business interests. Băsescu’s brother would be sen­
tenced for connections with organized crime (Mungiu-
Pippidi 2018). Disillusioned voters thus were drawn to
USR, an outsider party, in the hope that an anti-corruption
discourse would be followed by proper measures instead of
empty rhetoric covering up high-level corruption.
Both issues shed light on the new social context, the era of
cognitive mobilization. Even the harsh dispute at the top of
the party that ended in the eviction of USR’s founder could be
effectively counterbalanced by the party’s consistent presence
in new media. The importance of using social media drama­
tically increased with the profound changes in the participa­
tion style of Romanian citizens, who seem to have run
through stages in the development of participatory actions,
passing from more classical actions such as voting to more
unconventional forms of protest (Stoica 2012). By using new
media, USR has successfully attracted a favorable electoral
following, generally younger, more educated, urban voters,
living in the western provinces of Romania, especially in
Transylvania, as shown by the exit polls conducted for the
European Parliament elections in May 2019.4 By connecting
to new networks of social activism, by using internet cam­
paigns, Facebook posts, and quick mobilization by means of
text messaging, USR gained visibility on social media, partially
transferring the dissatisfaction expressed by protest into
favorable votes at the polls. The immediate effect is that the
party increased in voting preferences from the general elec­
tions in December 2016 (Dragoman and Zamfira 2018) to the
European Parliament elections in May 2019, with the electoral
score of the party moving from 8.9 percent to 22.4 percent.
The period was marked by episodes of massive street rallies
against the PSD government, with hundred of thousands of
people voicing opposition to various PSD policies.
In terms of ideology, USR members initially tended to
dissolve partisan loyalties and rational orientations toward
various political programs, labeling USR as an alternative
movement, not a political party. Acknowledging the complex­
ity of the political issues at stake, in the months that followed
its astonishing electoral success in local elections in Romania’s
capital city of Bucharest, USR managed to formulate a list of
defining political, social, economic, and cultural issues. A
decade earlier, PDL had positioned itself non-ideologically,
confronting PSD by emphasizing anti-corruption issues
(Brett 2015, 63; Dragoman 2013). However, the economic
crisis that swept Romania beginning in 2010 forced PDL to
adopt a clearer neo-liberal position. In the case of USR,
analysis of the policy objectives stated in the party manifesto
shows a concern for political issues specific to both right and
left sides of the political spectrum. This sort of display of
ideologically neutral positioning is characteristic of populist
parties, which generally promise everything for everybody.
Such parties entered the political competition in Central and
Eastern Europe by using the public discontent with pervasive
corruption and economic difficulties to advance anti-
establishment attitudes (Abedi 2004; Bågenholm 2013a,
2013b; Hanley and Sikk 2016). For USR, reducing bureau­
cracy and supporting entrepreneurship and industrial clusters
are presented alongside objectives such as improving living
conditions in the countryside, increasing public spending in
the health and education sectors and raising salaries for tea­
chers and health care personnel, and reducing the bureau­
cratic burden of the central government. Moreover, the
willingness to avoid clear-cut ideological positioning, which
is specific for “valence” populist parties, is clearly stated in the
party manifesto as a means of getting rid of a “left–right

positioning that generally divides the electorate and misrepre­
sents the legitimate hopes of the citizens.” That is why USR
“focuses on the real needs of the people and not on the
narrow agenda of interest groups or on the literature defining
obsolete ideologies.”5
The manifesto is important for a qualitative analysis aimed
at evaluating the populism expressed by USR. Whereas quan­
titative content analysis is best suited for comparing series of
manifestos from one or several countries, the qualitative
aspect of the content analysis used here helps identify the
use of populist ideas and the way actors and contexts are
constructed. The indices used here are inspired by the analysis
of British parties’ manifestos done by Luke March (2017). The
indices used by March relate to the ideational definition of
populism that he borrows from Mudde (2004, 543), meaning
that populism is to be viewed as a set of ideas, as a “thin-
centered” ideology that considers society to be divided into
two separate and antagonistic groups, namely “the pure peo­
ple” and “the corrupt elite,” and stresses that politics should
be an expression of the general will of the people. The indices
used by March (2017, 287) are people-centrism, anti-elitism,
and popular sovereignty. As emphasized by March, people-
centrism is operationalized by way of positive references to
a homogenous people, anti-elitism by negative references to
homogenous elites, and, finally, popular sovereignty by invo­
cations of “power to the people.” The last element, emphasizes
March (2017, 288), is essentially about the operationalization
of the first two, namely the specific mechanisms and policies
whereby people can be empowered and the elite dispossessed.
In the case of USR, people-centrism is emphasized by the
use of “the/our people” and “the/our country.” In this way,
USR’s electorate is identified with the people and USR speaks
for the people through a two-step identification logic. On the
one hand, the people are at the heart of party’s concerns. On
the other hand, it is USR that is challenging the established
elites who are rigged against the people. The examples that
follow are relevant for the logic of identification. “We
[Romanians] live in a wealthy country, with hard-working
people, yet many people still suffer deprivation.”6 “Our
young people will invent the future by building up a cleaner
and more prosperous country.”7 “Ordinary people suffer
when democracy is foiled […] and living standards drop. It
is our duty to stop those people who run the public admin­
istration [i.e. the mayor of Bucharest]. It is our duty to remove
the evil and replace it with the benefit brought in by compe­
tent and honest people, like those from URS ranks.”8 And this
is why “USR is at the forefront of the fight against the current
political elite […], is those who brought the message of the
people to the political stage, being active in Parliament or in
the streets, […] those who give hope to Romanian citizens.”9
As stressed above, the obstacle populists must overcome in
order to transform the context are corrupt elites, because people-
centrism is accompanied by profound anti-elitism. In the oppo­
sition between “us” (those speaking for the pure people) and
“them” (the corrupt elite), the elite is depicted as made up of
powerful landlords, gatekeepers who dispose of the public
wealth, impostors and politruks, rigged against ordinary people.
This is a reference to the establishment as a whole, pointing out
that “all politicians who have ruled Romania served in the first
PROBLEMS OF POST-COMMUNISM 5
instance their own personal and group interests.” We
(Romanians) dispose of sufficient money, but it is “stolen or
wasted by corrupt politicians.”10 Moreover, “even when the
money is not stolen, incompetent bureaucracy serves to waste
public money.” Thus, bureaucracy may be as harmful as theft
and corruption. Disposable public money, such as National
Development Funds, automatically turns into corruption at the
hands of local elected officials. By putting an end to such funds,
stopping funding development through such mechanisms, USR
intends to fight the corruption of the political establishment.
That is why USR poses as “the only party that does not dispose of
a local political clientele.”11 Adopting a two-round (run-off)
electoral system instead of the first-past-the-post majoritarian
electoral system currently in place, according to the party, means
“fighting against corruption and removing local landlords from
public money, a chance to get rid of such toxic people, who are
consolidated in power.”12
The empowerment of the people, through a bitter fight
against an “obsolete, clientelistic, and authoritarian political
model put forward by other parties during the post-
communist transition,” is a goal taken on by USR. The party
“intends to fight in order that Romanian people gain access to
resources, education, and prosperity.”13 The empowerment of
the people is to be accomplished, according to the USR
manifesto, by controlling local government through partici­
patory budgeting, but also by putting pressure on elected
officials. Two of the most salient programmatic measures
that USR intends to put into practice are reducing the number
of MPs and banning corrupt officials from public office.
Whereas the latter, a salient issue of penal populism, is to be
seen as a radicalization of persistent populism, the former is
a proposal initiated by PDL and used by former president
Traian Băsescu in 2009, when he initiated a popular referen­
dum that accompanied his reelection to office (Dragoman and
Ungureanu 2017). Anti-elitism and popular sovereignty com­
bine now in the USR manifesto as an alliance of the two most
salient issues in Romanian politics. The recombinant popu­
lism expressed by USR, as a form of adapting the political
offer to populist expectations among the electorate, may be at
the heart of USR’s increasing electoral success.
For many post-communist intellectuals and civil society
activists in the early 1990s, anti-communism largely meant
fighting against former high-ranking communist party mem­
bers who had managed to convert their previous political
capital into both political and economic capital. As was the
case in other post-communist economies, the conversion of
former party members into entrepreneurs was a key feature of
the transition period (Stark and Bruszt 1998), when those
people enjoyed an advantage due to their organizational
experience and network resources (Stoica 2004). With no
effective transitional justice measures against the top commu­
nist party members and former agents of the secret police who
had supported the communist regime (Stan 2011), anti-
communism was for almost two decades the essential cleavage
in Romanian politics. Given the corruption associated with
communist party membership (Ivlevs and Hinks 2018) and
the networks that were carried over from the previous infor­
mal economy (Völker and Flap 2001), anti-corruption came
to replace anti-communism in the process of recombinant
6 D. DRAGOMAN
populism. Whereas the actors remained almost the same, the
accent was put on the corruption of the new elites rather than
on their former communist origin.
Corruption, moreover, has become an especially salient
issue in East Central Europe since the accession to the
European Union (Grigorescu 2006). Whereas fighting corrup­
tion in practice is a difficult task (Hein 2015), for populist
parties, anti-corruption is an opportunity for fighting the
same war against established political elites with the new
weapons of anti-corruption discourse. With the erosion of
PDL and the end of Traian Băsescu’s two terms in office in
2014, the anti-corruption rhetoric was strongly endorsed by
USR. The failure of former populists in power in tackling
corruption, expressed by the numerous cases of high-level
corruption under legal investigation beginning in 2015,
paved the way for the expression of a strong anti-corruption
movement arising from the civil society.
The attitudes expressed by USR in relation to the political
system derive from its ideology. Fighting against inefficient
and corrupt elites involves major contestation with other
actors and actions. That is why USR made a practice of
challenging many of the newly adopted laws, norms, and
other regulations in the Constitutional Court. USR did this
with regard to the internal functioning statute of the Chamber
of Deputies, the Administrative Code, the new Penal Code,
and various laws in the realms of education, economy, and
environment. Other forms of contestation have included
criminal complaints formulated by USR against the gendarm­
erie, and repeated demands for the resignation from office of
several ministers from the ruling government. The logic of
contestation enforces the irrationalism of populist expecta­
tions and helps to mobilize the frustrated middle class
(Schmitter 2007). By favoring a populist rhetoric in anti-
corruption issues (Mungiu-Pippidi 2018), USR is in line
with the current televised-style justice, with live coverage of
police arrests, and an extensive list of (sometimes unfounded)
accusations against MPs, mayors, and other politicians. By
depicting the Parliament as the expression of an obsolete
and irresponsible elite, rigged against ordinary people, USR
raises the expectation that, with no parliament, direct democ­
racy would be a suitable way to solve numerous, and usually
very intricate, political and social issues.
Although the contestation may seem to be the specific political
action of an opposition party, the more radical rhetoric used by
USR points toward increasing populist expectations. Evolving in
an environment imbued with populist expectations, USR had no
option but to raise the stakes of political actions directed against
established elites. Deriving from the effort of recombining past
and present salient cleavages, fighting corruption turned into
a more radical movement. Anti-corruption, anti-elitism, popu­
lism, and anti-parliamentary attitudes have combined with
a radical proposal from the 1990s, the call for anti-communist
lustration. With USR, anti-corruption acquired the toughness of
lustration. The initiative “Ban All Corrupt Officials from Public
Office,” put forward by USR, aims at amending the Constitution
to provide that persons who have been convicted of any kind of
crime and sentenced by a court to a term of imprisonment would
be banned from running in all types of elections (for local and
county councils, as well as for the Chamber of Deputies, the
Senate, or the Romanian Presidency).14 Although specific provi­
sions restricting the right those who have been convicted to be
a candidate or to vote exist in other constitutions, what is impor­
tant here is the projected intensity of the populist initiative. Its
intensity goes beyond any limited motivation by including in the
array of reasons for banning convicted officials all types of crimes,
with no distinction as to their penal or social weight. The will­
ingness to punish already convicted people arbitrarily and
severely, with no discrimination as to their fault, points toward
a broader phenomenon, namely penal populism. This is advocat­
ing harsher, tougher measures against perpetrators of crimes,
a feature of populism that has recently influenced penal policies
in East Central Europe (Boda et al. 2015).
The penal initiative put forward by USR is part of the same
effort to recombine salient populist issues in response to an
increasingly populist public environment. By extensively
using the image of the Palace of Parliament on its banners,
flyers, and internet site, USR is waging a struggle against the
Parliament as a political body that intermediates representa­
tion. In a tense political context, USR officially labeled the
governing coalition and its parliamentary majority as “gov­
erning by convicted officials who endanger the security of all
citizens,” and called on citizens, political parties, labor unions,
and civil society organizations to join the protest aimed at
forcing those who “endanger the future of Romania to step
down.”15 In line with the penal initiative, USR asked for
a nationwide referendum to strengthen the anti-corruption
campaign and the fight against previously convicted
officials.16 Raising the stakes of the political contestation,
USR has accused the Constitutional Court of being subordi­
nated to the governing coalition and of endangering, by its
own decisions, the independence of the judiciary.17
The radical initiatives and actions emphasized here describe
the ideology and the attitudes displayed by USR in opposition to
the political system. Embedded in its core political orientation,
they may explain the success of a newly created party rooted in
the civil society, with a strategy of adapting the supply side more
closely to the demand side of Romanian politics by recombining
past and present salient issues. This recombinant strategy strat­
egy evokes the USR’s initial openness—it was originally called
“Save Bucharest” and was formed with the purpose of “saving”
the capital city from corruption, inefficiency, and irresponsive­
ness—to attracting civic activists without regard to their ideolo­
gical orientations. From this perspective, USR seems to have
adopted what may be called a “centrist populism” (Ucen 2007).
By adopting this centrist and rather non-ideological position,
USR managed to attract the sympathy of those voters seriously
concerned about the issue of corruption, similar to what PDL
had done earlier in the populist fight against elite corruption
(Brett 2015, 63). The erosion of PDL and PPDD made room for
USR to replace them while addressing issues that had been
partially neglected or abandoned, recombining them in a very
appealing message.
Persistent Populism in Post-Communist Romania
Members of the “Save Romania” Union are not the only
populists in Romanian post-communist politics. In order to
identify its specific ideology and range of political action, we

first need to place USR in a long-term perspective. This
perspective is important in understanding populism because
it relates to the overall functioning of the political system in
Romania. In fact, populism was not only a set of values and
a repertoire of political action, but a constant political envir­
onment, only slowly tamed by the willingness of almost all
political parties to work for Romania’s accession to NATO
and to the European Union (Pop-Eleches 2007).
This needs to be integrated into the context of the forma­
tion of the party system in Romania, where the first stages of
the process proved to be critical. As emphasized by Herbert
Kitschelt (1992), those stages are crucial in that they set the
stage for the initial interaction between competing actors. In
those stages, actors, resources, and the rules for getting those
resources distributed are to be firmly established. It is an
important feature of the Romanian party system, that popu­
lism—combined or not with nationalism and xenophobia
largely inherited from the last decades of the communist
rules—was to become a powerful political environment.
Moreover, another argument put forward by Kitschelt
(1995) is that programmatic parties, those based on the high­
est capacity for coordination among party supporters and
leaders and demanding the greatest amount of information
and cognitive skills among voters, are easily surpassed by
charismatic or clientelistic parties. Whereas the former face
difficult tasks of building an organizational structure and
articulating collective goals, the latter involve not much
more than an unstructured mass of people rallying around
a leader (Kitschelt 1995, 449).
Unsurprisingly, for many years following the fall of the com­
munist regime, PRM was an important actor in the political
arena. Founded in 1991 and expressing anti-Western, xenopho­
bic, racist, and radical attitudes, PRM was one of the most critical
parties concerning Romania’s accession to the EU (Sum 2010),
and only later changed its political position and verbally sup­
ported the integration. With its xenophobic and anti-Semitic
orientation (Pop-Eleches 2001), PRM forged a populism largely
indifferent to ideological content, successfully mixing right-wing
and left-wing elements, ethnic nationalism and collectivism
(Mungiu-Pippidi 2001), expressed in the discourse of its leader,
Corneliu Vadim-Tudor. For a brief period of time, the party was
part of a governing coalition with PDSR.
The PDSR itself, seen as the post-communist successor
party in Romania (Pop-Eleches 2008), managed to maintain
its power between 1990 and 1996 and to partially bridge the
anti-communist divide by using a nationalist rhetoric largely
inherited from the previous communist regime. It is worth
remembering that the latter phase of the communist regime
was imbued with nationalism (Verdery 1995), in an attempt
to boost the legitimacy of communist rule while ordinary
people were confronted with severe economic shortage. This
combination of Leninism and nationalism (Chen 2003) was
one of the main legacies of the communist ideology and
strongly influenced the first decade of post-communism,
with illiberalism and populism mixing with Romanian nation­
alism in the ideology of PRM and the political action of its
allies, including PDSR (Gallagher 2001). In the aftermath of
the 1989 revolution, the first Romanian president and PDSR
candidate, Ion Iliescu, largely used a mix of populist and
PROBLEMS OF POST-COMMUNISM 7
nationalist discourses as a way of overcoming the discontent
related to slow democratization and Westernization; this has
led many scholars to question the revolution itself by calling it
an “unfinished revolution” or even a “quasi-revolution”
(Siani-Davies 1996; Tismaneanu 1993, 2014).
Following the defeat of PDSR in the 1996 general elections,
and a liberal-conservative government between 1996 and 2000,
populism slowly began to fade away in face of the legal, social,
and economic constraints triggered by the Association agree­
ment with the European Union and the technical negotiations
for full membership in the EU (Schimmelfennig 2007). Despite
an outburst of populism in the 2000 presidential campaign,
when the PRM candidate was defeated in the second round of
elections, PRM was evicted from the political arena and has
failed since 2008 to pass the electoral threshold for gaining
parliamentary representation. Nevertheless, PRM left behind
a large array of populist themes and a personal and charismatic
leadership style, based on constant accusations and vocifera­
tions, which some successor parties tried to imitate. This ideo­
logical indifference turned out to be very successful for PRM as
an anti-system party, a lesson learned by subsequent populist
parties, which tried not to be limited by strict ideological
constraints.
With the effective conditionality of the EU (Schimmelfennig
and Sedelmeier 2004) accession lifted, new populists emerged.
Instead of the xenophobic discourses specific to PRM, PDL
emphasized state modernization (King and Sum 2011), and
managed to win the 2004 and 2008 elections. Once in power,
and especially after Romania’s accession to the EU in 2007, PDL
resembled other populist parties in East Central Europe. They
seriously challenged both the democratic institutional frame­
work built during the post-communist transition (Levitz and
Pop-Eleches 2010; Zielonka 2007), and the less radical, estab­
lished political parties. They overtly contested the democratic
consensus built during the EU pre-accession period concerning
the rule of law and the independence of neutral bodies such as
constitutional courts and regular courts of justice, central banks,
and mass-media regulatory bodies (Ganev 2013). In the name of
the people, they replaced the previous status quo with political
arbitrariness, partisanship, and abuse (Krastev 2007; Rupnik
2007). They challenged the established parliamentary parties as
well as all other liberal democratic institutions that mediate
representation (Bugaric 2008).
Forging a solid alliance with their former party leader,
Traian Băsescu, who was elected president of Romania in
2004 and reconfirmed in office in 2009, the populists from
the PDL turned against the political bodies that intermediate
representation, especially the Parliament (Dragoman 2013,
2014b), sparing no effort to try to weaken the legislature
and consolidate the executive power by engaging in institu­
tional crises (Gherghina and Miscoiu 2013). Populists made
proposals to substantially revise the electoral law (Marian and
King 2010) to change the legislative–executive balance of
power and the size and structure of the legislature, namely
by reducing the number of MPs and shifting from a bi-
cameral to a uni-cameral legislature. In order to impose
their will, populists used referendums that paralleled regular
elections, channeling their popularity at the polls into argu­
ments for institutional change (Gherghina 2019).
8 D. DRAGOMAN
The PDL’s decline came in 2012, after a serious economic
crisis that swept Romania beginning in 2010 brought severe cuts
in wages and social benefits. The party’s crushing defeat in the
2012 general elections paved the way for a reconfiguration of
populism in Romania. New parties quickly gained ground, such
as the New Generation Party (Partidul Noua Generație—PNG)
and Dan Diaconescu People’s Party (Partidul Poporului Dan
Diaconescu—PPDD). PNG had gained media visibility in the
2008 general elections in the person of its leader, Gigi Becali,
a wealthy businessman, but failed to win electoral support.
PPDD mobilized enough electoral support in 2012 to win the
third-highest number of seats in Parliament (Gherghina and
Miscoiu 2014). However, following a legal inquiry that led to
the conviction of Diaconescu in 2015, the party failed to survive
its leader and its MPs found refuge in the ranks of other parlia­
mentary parties. By contrast, USR managed to survive the repla­
cement of its former president and founder, Nicușor Dan, who
decided to leave the party in June 2017.
The electoral defeat of PDL and the dissolution of PPDD
created an opportunity for a fresh start for grass-roots popu­
lism, in an environment imbued by populist expectations,
including promises for economic recovery and a rise in sal­
aries. USR brought a fresh anti-elitist ideal and a more boldly
anti-system orientation. It had been formed by civic activists
who refused to adopt a given ideological orientation, in order
to challenge the political establishment. Initially located in the
capital, where the so-called “Save Bucharest” movement won
a quarter of the votes in local elections in June 2016, USR
became a nationwide political movement in August 2016 and
successfully ran in the December 2016 general elections.
USR and Its Impact on the Romanian Political System
The emergence of USR in 2016 as a key component of the
opposition to the left-wing Social Democratic Party, which
had won the parliamentary elections, put serious pressure on
the established parties, but especially on right-wing competing
parties. We will use here several examples of USR political
initiatives in order to assess how USR impacts the political
system, mainly by triggering the radicalization of other poli­
tical actors. In the general populist environment, it was not
necessarily the electoral performance in the 2016 general
elections, but USR’s successful strategy of adapting to popular
expectations, that forced the other parties, and especially
right-wing parties, to adapt.
Facing a steep decline in electoral preferences (from
30.64 percent in the June 2016 county elections to 19.45 per­
cent in the November 2016 parliamentary elections), PNL was
confronted with a political crisis, facing a general populist
environment from both the left and the right wing of the
political spectrum. The more radical political style promoted
by USR forced PNL to adopt a similar style for its political
actions. The explanation we favor here is a state of populist
contamination that affected the established right-wing parties
in a quest for political support for the European and presi­
dential elections, both scheduled for 2019. The anti-
corruption campaign used by USR put serious pressure on
its rival parties, forcing them to adapt. On the left side, PSD
was forced to take action. Following the defeat of the party in
the European elections and the conviction of its leader, Liviu
Dragnea, the new party leaders partially endorsed the accusa­
tions of corruption that put the party at electoral risk of
severe defeat. On the right side, USR formulated numerous
demands to Klaus Iohannis, the Romanian president, to take
action against the governing coalition. Although Iohannis was
the elected president of Romania, and as such, according to
the Constitution, is supposed to perform a mediator role,
balancing the divergent interests in society and working
alongside other political actors in order to find
a compromise, it should be noted that Iohannis had become,
in November 2018, the PNL’s official candidate for the pre­
sidential elections scheduled for December 2019. Putting
pressure on the president thus meant attacking PNL as well
as increasing USR’s electoral chances. Moreover, the convic­
tion of Liviu Dragnea, the leader of PSD, removed him from
the presidential race, lifting a serious concern for right-wing
parties in the presidential elections. Any judicial decision
against Dragnea on accusations of corruption would make
a political comeback impossible for the PSD leader, in the
context of a referendum for banning corrupt officials from
public office. This is an important issue, since right-wing
parties feared a possible action of the PSD government to
grant an amnesty for charges of corruption. It is worth men­
tioning that a similar fear for PSD actions that could have
limited the independence or the capabilities of the judicial
system to fight against corruption triggered high emotion in
January 2017, with people in the streets of Bucharest and
other major Romanian cities putting pressure on the PSD
government and forcing it to step back.
The demands formulated by USR that we focus on here reveal
USR’s strategy of putting pressure on rival parties. The first
radical demand was for President Iohanniss to preside over all
regular meetings of the Romanian government, on the grounds
that the PSD government would otherwise decide on an amnesty
for those politicians found guilty in court for corrupt activities.
Let us emphasize that during the presence of the president at
regular government meetings, no legal decisions are adopted.
This provision aims at ensuring that the president is informed
about the current political issues at stake, but does not propose
to effectively turn him into a prime minister. If legal decisions
were adopted during governmental sessions presided over by the
president, it would mean a solidary responsibility shared by the
government and the president, which is not intended by the
Constitution. The permanent presence of the president at the
head of the government would obliterate the PM’s legal powers
and make the meetings ineffective.
Under pressure, and despite the odd situation that would
be generated, President Iohannis announced his willingness to
attend the government’s meetings.18 In fact, he attended only
the first part of the government meeting held on
December 20, 2018, while the second part was headed by
the prime minister. The prime minister’s strategy of splitting
the meeting—with the first part, presided over by the presi­
dent, dedicated to official communication between the two
parts of the executive, and the second dedicated to discussing
and adopting clearly defined policy measures—showed that
requiring the president’s attendance would be largely
ineffective.

The second radical demand was to initiate a national referen­
dum to ban corrupt officials from public office by amending the
Constitution.19 Following a nation-wide campaign, USR in 2018
collected more than 800.000 signatures from citizens supporting
the initiative and sent the initiative to the Constitutional Court for
validation.20 If approved, the initiative would then enter the
regular parliamentary procedures for a vote. Only if it passed
would a legal referendum for amending the Constitution be
initiated, with approval depending on the majority of popular
votes and attainment of a required threshold for voter participa­
tion. With only one tenth of the votes in Parliament, USR has little
chance of passing a bill to launch the citizen initiative. The appeal
made to President Iohannis demonstrates the way USR applies
pressure, since a president is not able to hold a referendum to
amend the Constitution. As stated in the Constitution, the pre­
sident does have the right to hold national referendums, but only
for the purpose of popular consultation on certain problems of
national interest. Moreover, even if the USR’s initiative were to be
validated by the Constitutional Court, and then met the threshold
of participation and won the majority of votes cast, referendums
are still just public consultations, and are not legally binding. They
do not automatically become laws, or legal acts of parliament.
Former president Traian Băsescu twice used his prerogative to
hold referendums in the course of his struggle against the
Parliament. The first, in November 2007, was on the issue of the
two-round majoritarian voting system (TR, run-off system) for
electing members of parliament, and the second, in
November 2009, was on reducing the number of MPs and the
number of chambers in the Parliament. None of these changes
were enacted into law by the Parliament.
Under pressure, President Iohannis did hold a referendum
that accompanied the European elections on May 26, 2019. The
president did not fully accept the USR initiative on banning
corrupt officials from public office, however. Instead, he sought
the people’s opinions about two issues. The first would prohibit
the government from issuing emergency ordinances in the area
of penal sanctions and the organization of the judiciary, and
expand the range of political institutions that are entitled to
challenge at the constitutional court the emergency ordinances
issued by the government, now limited by the Constitution to
the People’s Advocate (Ombudsman) alone. The second would
prohibit the granting of amnesties or pardons for corruption
offenses. Both issues were largely supported by the citizens,
which was reflected in the electoral scores for both PNL (27 per­
cent) and USR (22.4 percent) and attracted European attention.
However, the attempt made by PNL and USR to turn the
popular consultation into a legal initiative to amend the
Constitution with a legally binding referendum was rejected by
the Constitutional Court.21 As stated by the Court, amnesty and
pardon of corruption offenses cannot be banned. This would
exceed the limits of constitutional review, since the people can­
not rule by referendum to determine who is eligible for amnesty.
Only the Parliament is entitled to decide, by issuing a law, who is
subject to amnesty.
As was the case with earlier popular consultations through
referendum, whether validated or not, they have been invoked
by populists to prove that they were speaking for the people.
The strategy adopted by USR was to put pressure on President
Iohannis, as the official candidate of PNL, but also on other
PROBLEMS OF POST-COMMUNISM 9
parties. A referendum held by the president is not legally
binding; the Parliament still has to decide whether to act on
it, just as for any regular parliamentary initiative. The pre­
sident can initiate a revision of the Constitution, but the
initiative has to be supported by a qualified majority of MPs
and only then submitted for popular consultation through
a constitutional revision referendum. The past reluctance of
Parliament to turn referendums into laws is used by populists
to pinpoint Parliament as the expression of a corrupt, arro­
gant, and obsolete elite, rigged against ordinary people. The
Constitutional Court, too, has been accused by USR of being
an expression of the corrupt political elite, making impossible
the transposition into the Constitution of the popular will as
expressed on May 26, 2019.22
Conclusions
From a theoretical point of view, USR’s recent success
demands that attention be paid both to the way new populist
parties emerge and to the way a political system is shaped by
permanent contestation and political radicalism. Following an
astonishing performance in the 2016 local elections in
Bucharest, USR became a parliamentary party in the 2016
general elections. This steep advance in electoral preferences
would be completed by the success in the 2019 European
elections, when USR became the third party according to
the number of votes cast. The findings of this research con­
tribute to investigations of the emergence of new populist
parties (Gherghina and Miscoiu 2014), but also introduce
a new feature, namely recombinant populism. Although
USR’s ideology and repertoires of political action are products
of a lengthy populist discourse and practice in Romania, its
electoral success is also a result of a political innovation.
USR’s success mainly relies on its ability to recombine old
and new populist themes, in this case the ability to reconnect
anti-communism, specific to the first stages of post-
communism, with current anti-corruption campaigns, mixing
the most salient political issues from the post-communist
transition in a solid anti-elitist and anti-establishment orien­
tation. In this way, USR continues the tradition of former
populist parties, and especially the legacy of PDL, which was
in power between 2008 and 2012. With the erosion of PDL,
USR became a successful actor by adapting to a new social
and political landscape, where on-line activism nowadays
complements rapid and effective off-line mobilization.
The party’s radical attitudes, deriving from their demands
for direct democracy, are directed against incompetent and
corrupted political elites, but also against parliamentary
representation and other political bodies that intermediate
popular representation. USR’s political style, based on per­
manent contestation, verbal attacks, and extensive accusa­
tions, has forced other parties, and especially the right-wing
parties, to adapt to the changing political environment.
USR’s impact on competing parties reveals the limited level
of party-system consolidation and the de-democratization
ongoing since the 2007 EU accession, with the radicalization
of parties competing in a thicker populist environment.
USR’s access to power would be a test for both the party
and the political system. Governing responsibility might
10 D. DRAGOMAN
force the party to partially moderate its views, as happened
in Bucharest when the party became part of the city council.
Addressing concrete policy issues may also force the party to
adopt a clearer ideological position and integrate the range
of established parties, with all the consequences that derive
from this, including electoral accountability. This is
a plausible outcome, taking into account USR’s capacity for
organization and transitioning from a civil society initiative
to a parliamentary party. Future research will be needed to
investigate the way the electorate responds to such
a transformation, taking into account the overall context in
which parties are competing in a thick populist environment,
seeking to best satisfy populist expectations with the most
appropriate populist supply.
Notes
1. The Romanian president Traian Băsescu (2004–2014) was sum­
moned to the Romanian National Anti-Discrimination Council in
May 2007 after a public argument in which he insulted a young
woman reporter by calling her a “filthy Gypsy.” http://www.bbc.
co.uk/romanian/forum/story/2007/05/printable/070521_basescu_
jurnalista.shtml, accessed May 6, 2020. He was summoned again
in November 2010 for insulting Roma people with an accusation
that they “generally live by thievery.” https://www.agerpres.ro/
justitie/2016/04/01/basescu-pierde-procesul-cu-cncd-si-trebuie-sa
-plateasca-600-de-lei-amenda-pentru-declaratii-la-adresa-romilor
-09-44-50, accessed May 16, 2020.
2. https://www.usr.ro/2019/02/06/mesaj-usr-de-ziua-rosiei-montane-
vom-duce-lupta-pana-la-capat-si-o-vom-castiga/, accessed July 31,
2019.
3. https://www.usr.ro/2018/05/18/uniunea-salvati-romania-cere-psd
-sa-respecte-memoria-victimelor-din-colectiv/, accessed July 31,
2019.
4. https://www.edupedu.ro/cat-de-educati-sunt-alegatorii-partidelor
-politice-pnl-psd-alianta-usr-plus-sondaj-ires-facut-in-ziua-
votului/, accessed July 31, 2019.
5. https://www.usr.ro/carta-valorilor/, accessed January 17, 2020.
6. https://www.usr.ro/programe/transparenta-totala/, accessed August
2, 2019.
7. https://www.usr.ro/programe/invatamantul-performant/, accessed
August 2, 2019.
8. https://www.usr.ro/2020/01/16/romanii-trebuie-sa-aiba-sansa-sa-
voteze-oameni-competenti-si-de-buna-credinta/, accessed January 17,
2020.
9. https://www.usr.ro/carta-valorilor/, accessed January 17, 2020.
10. https://www.usr.ro/program/lupta-cu-furtul-si-coruptia/, accessed
August 1, 2019.
11. https://www.usr.ro/10-prioritati/#fond-de-dezvoltare, accessed August
1, 2019.
12. https://www.usr.ro/2020/01/16/romanii-trebuie-sa-aiba-sansa-sa-
voteze-oameni-competenti-si-de-buna-credinta/, accessed January 17,
2020.
13. https://www.usr.ro/carta-valorilor/, accessed January 17, 2020.
14. https://farapenaliinfunctiipublice.ro/expunere-de-motive,
accessed September 13, 2018.
15. https://www.usr.ro/2018/06/23/cand-nedreptatea-devine-lege-
rezistenta-devine-datorie/, accessed September 14, 2018.
16. https://www.usr.ro/2018/07/09/avem-nevoie-de-un-referendum-
pe-justitie/, accessed September 14, 2018.
17. https://www.usr.ro/2018/07/13/usr-cere-ccr-sa-respecte-
recomandarile-comisiei-de-la-venetia/, accessed September 14, 2018.
18. Romania Insider, “Romanian President Iohannis plans to attend
each Government meeting,” December 19, 2018, available at
https://www.romania-insider.com/romanian-president-attend-
government-meeting/, accessed on January 13, 2019.
19. https://www.usr.ro/2019/02/14/usr-ii-cere-presedintelui-iohannis-
referendum-pe-justitie-1-milion-de-romani-vor-fara-penali-
functii-publice/, accessed February 22, 2019.
20. https://www.usr.ro/2019/02/12/initiativa-fara-penali-functii-
publice-ajuns-la-ccr/, accessed February 22, 2019.
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Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
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