Democratic Consolidation and Europeanization in Romania

Democratic Consolidation
and Europeanization
in Romania
Democratic Consolidation
and Europeanization
in Romania:
A One-Way Journey
or a Return Ticket?
Edited by
Sergiu Mişcoiu
Democratic Consolidation and Europeanization in Romania:
A One-Way Journey or a Return Ticket?
Edited by Sergiu Mişcoiu
This book first published 2021
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © 2021 by Sergiu Mişcoiu and contributors
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright
owner.
ISBN (10): 1-5275-7375-3

ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-7375-8
CONTENTS
Contributors ............................................................................................... vi
Chapter 1 .................................................................................................... 1
Introduction: The Never-Ending Story of Romanian Transition
Sergiu Mișcoiu and Ciprian Bogdan
Chapter 2 .................................................................................................. 26
Romania and its Difficult Road to Democracy
Ovidiu Vaida
Chapter 3 .................................................................................................. 62
The Incomplete Regionalisation Process in Romania and the Unfulfilled
Potential for Enhanced Growth Catalyst Structures - A Critical Analysis
Mircea Maniu and Horațiu Dan
Chapter 4 .................................................................................................. 87
The Romanian Model of Diversity Management - Prospects
and Achievements
Levente Salat
Chapter 5 ................................................................................................ 131

Translatio imperii: Romanian Foreign Policy in Transition
Ruxandra Ivan
CONTRIBUTORS
Ciprian Bogdan is Lecturer of Political Science at the Faculty of European

Studies, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca (Romania). He graduated
Philosophy and European Studies at Babeș-Bolyai University and holds a
PhD in Philosophy granted by the Faculty of European Studies of the same
university. He is mostly interested in the theoretical and political legacy of
the Frankfurt School and has recently published a book on Theodor W.
Adorno’s approach to the critique of ideology (in Romanian).
Horatiu Dan is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of European Studies

within the Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. He holds 2
doctoral degrees, one in Economics and International Business and one in
International Relations and European Studies, with his research interests
concentrating on different aspects of the European integration process and
the EU's economic policies.
Ruxandra Ivan is a Romanian political scientist specialized in international

relations and EU studies. She is Associate Professor at the Department of
Political Science, International Relations and Security Studies, University
of Bucharest, where she teaches courses on foreign policy analysis,
international relations theory and EU policies. She received her PhD in
political science from the University of Bucharest and the Université libre
de Bruxelles. She authored La politique étrangère roumaine 1990-2006
(Editions de l'Université de Bruxelles, 2009), and edited New Regionalism
Democratic Consolidation and Europeanization in Romania: vii
A One-Way Journey or a Return Ticket?
or No Regionalism? Emerging Regionalism at the Black Sea Area (London,

Ashgate: 2012 reprinted by Routledge, 2016), and Trajectoires de
transformation et d'intégration dans l'Europe du Sud-Est (with Violaine
Delteil). Bucarest: Bucharest University Press, 2016).
Mircea Maniu was for decades an Associate Professor of Economics and

Management at the Faculty of Business and Economics and later the Faculty
of European Studies, both within Babeş-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca,
Romania. He would be still involved in higher education nowadays, as a
guest teacher. He holds a PhD degree in economics and during the entire
academic career his research and publication track covered several areas,
such as: macroeconomics and economic policies, international and
comparative economics, developmental economics, territorial and regional
studies as well as managerial economics.
Sergiu Mișcoiu is Professor of Political Science at the Faculty of European

Studies, Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca (Romania) where he
serves as a Director of the Centre for International Cooperation and as
Director of the Centre for African Studies (Cestaf). He holds a PhD in
Political Science (Paris-Est University), a PhD in History (Babes-Bolyai
University), and a habilitation in Political Science (Paris-Est University).
He is permenent member and PhD tutor of the LIPHA Laboratory at the
University Paris-Est (France) and associate professor of the universities of
Lille (France), Szeged (Hungary), and Cheikh Anta Diop Dakar (Senegal).
He wrote four books, edited and co-edited 18 volumes and wrote 120
scientific articles and book chapters in English, French, and Romanian. His
main research interests are the constructivist and the alternative theories
applied to the nation building processes, to populism and to the political
viii Contributors
transition and transformation in Central-Eastern European and Central and

Western Francophone Africa.
Levente Salat is professor of Political Science at the Babeş-Bolyai

University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania and external member of the Hungarian
Academy of Sciences. His research focuses on political consequences of
diversity, ethnic politics and interethnic relations. He published 4 books,
edited or co-edited 15 and had several contributions to collective volumes
and journals, mainly in Hungarian, Romanian and English. Among others,
he co-edited A New Balance: Democracy and Minorities in Post-
Communist Europe (2003), The Romanian-Hungarian Relations and the
French-German Reconciliation (2004), Autonomy Arrangements Around
the World (2014) and Non-Territorial Autonomy and Decentralization
(2020).
Ovidiu Vaida is a lecturer at the Faculty of European Studies, Babeş-Bolyai

University of Cluj. He is a graduate in Political Science, has an MA degree
in European Studies from the University of Sussex and another in American
Studies from Babeș-Bolyai University. He is a PhD in history, with a thesis
on Christian-democracy in the European Union. He serves as editor of the
Studia Europaea academic journal. His areas of interest and publications
include Euroscepticism, politics in Central and Eastern Europe, the
Romanian political system, Christian-democracy, European Parliament
elections, political cleavages.
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION:
THE NEVER-ENDING STORY
OF ROMANIAN TRANSITION
SERGIU MIȘCOIU AND CIPRIAN BOGDAN
Over the past thirty years, Central and East European countries
have been confronted with processes of deep structural transformation in
every major aspect of governance. Transition proved long, difficult, and full
of uncertainties and obstacles. In the early 1990s, scholars such as Leslie
Holmes pointed out the existence of two processes of transition, which were
different from both a qualitative and a temporal perspective (Holmes 2001:
12-15). Firstly, there was a relatively rapid period of power transfer after the
fall of the communist regimes (1989-1991). This first stage encompassed the
mandatory elements of transition: negotiations between the communist
parties and the representatives of the opposition and/or of the dissident
groups; the restoration of political pluralism and of the fundamental rights
and freedoms; the initial separation of powers and the first free elections.
This early staged culminated with the adoption of the new constitutions that
reinforced the freshly installed democratic regimes (Bryant and Mokrzycki
1994).
2 Chapter 1
The next stage after the transfer of power varied more substantially
from one country to another and was generally labelled a stage of “extensive
transition and democratic consolidation.” It generally entailed the
restructuring of the industry and agriculture, a progressive orientation
towards the West or the delineation between the different institutional
competences and responsibilities in order to enhance their specialisation and
to prevent abuses. During this stage, two major scenarios could be observed.
On one hand, there were the countries where radical reforms had been
implemented at an early stage in the transition process and were intensively
applied soon afterwards. In these countries, the parties emerging out of the
anti-communist and dissident movements won the first free elections
organised after the fall of the communist regimes. These reformist
movements, which were most frequently liberal, Christian-democratic, or
conservative, led the ruling coalitions in the Czech Republic, Hungary and
Poland and imposed programs of radical change both in the social-economic
sphere and in the societal-political one. These measures were often
dogmatically adopted as a part of a broader right-wing program supported
by these parties and were perceived as a shock wave by many citizens of
those countries, as they extensively destabilised the pre-existing societal
structures and processes.
Besides the restructuring of entire productive sectors, the privatisation
of virtually all the industrial branches, the liberalisation of production and
consumption prices, the opening of frontiers and the liberalisation of the
employment market proved to be very costly socially and demographically
(Kramer 1995: 46). Such measures allowed for the resettlement of the
Central and East European societies in the new liberal-capitalist framework.
The formerly statist economies rapidly started to grow, becoming an “El
Dorado” for foreign investments. By the mid-1990s, in spite of the immense
Introduction: The Never-Ending Story of Romanian Transition 3
social costs, most Central European countries were definitely on the track
of democratisation and westernisation (White et al. 1993).
By contrast, there were countries where the processes of transition
were temporised or even postponed: Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, or post-
Soviet states such as the Republic of Moldova or Ukraine. There, the parties
founded on the structures of the former communist parties succeeded in
(partially) winning the elections in the early 1990s and in tempering the
processes of economic and, at times, political reforms (Waller et al. 1995:
88-95). The consensualist rhetoric undergirding the policy of small steps
directed towards transforming the state-controlled economies into social
market economies prevailed over a more radical type of discourse that
advocated immediate reforms. In Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania, the
nationalist left-wing parties, which were officially or unofficially the
successors of precursor communist parties, shaped ruling coalitions that
promoted slow reform policies and endorsed maintaining the old regime’s
structures and processes. These parties have often been described as “neo-
communist” or “crypto-communist” by the opposition parties and the pro-
Western press. The divide between anti- vs. neo- communists grew to be
very sharp in transitional Central and East European societies (Pop-Elecheș
and Tucker 2012: 102-103).
From a political-institutional perspective, even though liberal and
democratic constitutions were adopted, the way in which they were
enforced was selective and discretionary. Their very spirit was altered
through subsequent laws and through their norms of application. In
countries like Romania and Bulgaria the double lag – economic and political
– forced the liberal governments of the late 1990s to finally implement the
radical reforms. They became unpopular and by the end of the 1990s and
4 Chapter 1
the early 2000s, the former socialist parties and the nationalist xenophobic
ones had a spectacular comeback.
One of the main consequences of this was the postponement of
Euro-Atlantic integration for the South-East European states even though
the Central European countries had already accomplished that goal. Later
on, this disparity was reflected in the different capacities of these groups of
states to benefit from European integration and, especially, to access
European funding. Thus, in the Czech Republic and Poland, the degree of
absorption of the European structural funds became by 2010-2012 close or
even superior to that of the ‘old’ member states. In the same years, Romania
and Bulgaria reached only 10 to 25% of European programmes’ accession.1
Several years after the Central and East European states’ accession
to the European Union, one could reassess the theories and interpretations
of transition. To sum up, there were two major perspectives. On one hand,
there was what we may call the progressive-linear theory of transition,
consonant with Francis Fukuyama’s thesis of the “end of history”
(Fukuyama 1992). According to this interpretation, the fall of the communist
regimes in Central and Eastern Europe complied with a natural logic of
history, which had proved the superiority of capitalist liberalism over any
other type of regime (communism, fascism, religious fundamentalism etc.).
Under these circumstances, the transition of the Central and East European
countries to liberal-capitalist democracy belonged to the same inescapable
logic of history: it was an irreversible and quasi-progressive process
(Diamond 1996). Although the rhythms of reforms were clearly different,
the transition process was deemed to be homogeneous and systemic, while
1 http://www.fonduri-ue.ro/res/filepicker_users/cd25a597fd-62/rezultate/std_abs/
Evolutie.rata.absorbtie.PO.mai.2012-05.iulie.2013.pdf
observed variations were explained in terms of different cultural-historical

legacies. The proponents of this explanation admitted nevertheless the
existence of some moments of relative stagnation in transition, as was the
case in 1999-2000 or 2008-2010, when countries such as Romania, Slovakia
or Bulgaria were hit by the effects of structural adjustments and of the
worldwide economic crisis. But even these stagnation periods were seen to
be part of the linear evolution of the progressive process of transition: such
moments would represent lessons for understanding the deeper mechanism
of transition, with its winners and losers, and would strengthen the need for
better public education as regards the market economy and capitalism
(Gunther et al. 1995).
On the other hand, this linear reading of transition was challenged
by the twinned effects of the 2008 economic crisis and the European
accession of the CEE countries. Paradoxically, these two phenomena led to
national governments consolidating their positions in these countries, since
they could now use the pretext of the crisis in order to apply rather harsh
austerity measures without fearing the interruption of the accession process
by the EU institutions. The turn of the late 2000s revealed the fragility of
institutional frameworks and the inconsistency of democratic culture,
casting serious doubt on the all-progressive thesis of transition. Instead, a
second reading that explains transition as an oscillatory process, with
deadlocks, setbacks, and even overt regression periods, seems to be much
more appropriate and convincing. This nuanced and complex reading shows
that there is virtually no ultimate institutional or cultural guarantee that
could prevent an abusive (re)concentration of power. It also suggests that a
transformation of society attuned to the dogma of neoliberal capitalism
could be not just neutral but downright harmful for the long-time
democratisation process.
6 Chapter 1
In the following section, we will try to propose such a schematic

reading of transition in relation with the post-1989 developments in
Romania. We will try to stress both the common features and the specificity
of Romania’s case by revealing the most relevant tensions that emerged
during transition processes. Focusing on the alternation between progression
and cyclicity in democratisation and societal development, we will also use
a multilevel approach that understands transition as a complex intersection
between economic, political and cultural processes (Grugel 2002: 205).
Some historical premises

The Romanian “transition” is determined by contradictions and
tensions that, in a sense, have been accompanying the evolution of the
Romanian state and society since the nineteenth century. To oversimplify
the whole process, we might say that there are three major interrelated
tensions manifesting at economic, political and cultural level which
resurfaced after 1989. (1) Thus, the first tension concerns the political
economy of a (semi)peripheral country that has been constantly vulnerable
and dependent on Western capitalist economies. More specifically, because
of its marginal position, Romania’s economic policies seem to be torn
between two major strategic options: to integrate the country in the
economic and financial processes dominated by the centre and, thus,
liberalise the local economy as much as possible or to protect Romanian
economy through state intervention, allowing it, for instance, to modernise
and diversify its industrial production so as to catch up with the West.
The free-market approach was perfectly visible in the nineteenth
century. In 1829, the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia
were allowed to sell grains to Western Europe without customs barriers. The
newly born Romanian state (1859) was progressively transformed into a
major European exporter. Mirroring a larger European trend, the laissez-

faire policies adopted by Romanian authorities signalled the integration of
the new state in the “periphery” of Western economic processes (Murgescu
2011: 107).2 This position meant, however, that Romania’s exports of
agricultural goods (mostly grain) could not compensate for its imports of
more sophisticated goods coming from industrialised countries like
Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, France etc. (Murgescu 2011: 111-
114). But the free-market approach started to be questioned after the
European economic crisis of 1877-1878 when the fall in grain prices put
pressure on Romanian authorities to adopt more protectionist economic
policies (Ban 2014: 29).
The shift towards protectionism relied on a hybrid social-economic
model in which the protection of the local bourgeoisie and industrial
production (usually, advocated by liberal governments) went hand in hand
with a harsh neo-feudal system privileging the big landowners over an
impoverished peasant class (conservative governments protected the
economic interests of these owners) (Murgescu 2011: 125-127; Ban 2014:
29-32).3 Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea, an early Marxist intellectual,
called this social system in which capitalism functioned alongside strong
feudal elements “neo-serfdom.” Although there was an important land
reform in 1921, the interwar period was still caught up in the same
contradiction between low productivity agriculture (Murgescu 2011: 241;
2 Thus, according to Bogdan Murgescu, in the 19th century, Romanian Principalities

were no longer the economic “periphery” of the Ottoman Empire, but of the Western
world (Murgescu 2011: 107).
3 Murgescu states that this unfortunate economic situation was not simply the result
of Romania’s peripheral position expressed in its dependence on agricultural exports

in the capitalist “world system” (Wallerstein), but also of social and political internal
factors (Murgescu 2011: 127-128).
8 Chapter 1
Ban 2014: 32) and an emerging industry unable, despite state support, to be
competitive and dynamic enough to absorb the rural work force (Ban 2014:
33).4 After local communists backed by Soviet Union took power in 1945,
Romanian economic strategy was focused on accelerating industrial
production through state intervention alone. In the 1960s, Romanian
communists rejected Moscow’s plan to limit the country mostly to
agricultural production and embarked on an aggressive industrialisation
program instead. Despite economic improvements (Ban 2014: 49-55),
Ceaușescu’s fixation on industrial production and exports was accompanied
by the marginalisation of internal consumption (Murgescu 2011: 371)
heavily eroding the legitimacy of the regime and, thus, leading to its final
demise in 1989.5
(2) The second major tension is related to the functioning of the
political sphere as such. Because of both internal and external factors
ranging from weak institutions to geopolitical volatility, Romanian politics
was marked by the attempt to almost literally copy Western democratic
pluralism or, on the contrary, to monopolise the political sphere through
powerful leadership. In the nineteenth century, Moldavia and Wallachia
started to gradually remove themselves from Ottoman domination and adopt
liberal reforms inspired by Western Europe. In 1859, Moldavia and
Wallachia were united under the rule of Alexandru Ioan-Cuza. However, in
1866, Cuza was dethroned and replaced with Prince Karl of Hohenzollern-
4 The very embodiment of the protectionist economic strategy during the interwar
period was Mihail Manoilescu. Impressed by Mussolini, he advocated not a
bourgeois led industrial development (like, for instance, Ștefan Zeletin), but a
bureaucratic one made possible by an authoritarian regime (Ban 2014: 37-38). His
work proved to be influential in South America, especially in Brazil.
5 The focus on exports was the result of Ceaușescu’s desire to pay off Romania’s
external debts and, thus, to secure its economic independence after the oil crises of
the 1970s.
Sigmaringen, who ruled under the name of Prince Carol of Romania. In the
same year, Romanian political elites adopted a new constitution, which was
a compromise between the two dominant camps, conservatives and liberals.
Despite important limitations (for instance, the census voting, the right of
the prince to veto legislation or the refusal to give citizenship to non-
Christians targeting the Jewish community), the Constitution of 1866
featured significant progressive elements (the separation of powers in which
the legislative power was dominant, the fundamental rights of citizens such
as equality before the law, freedom of conscience, freedom of assembly etc.)
(Hitchins 2013: 30-31).6 After Transylvania and Bessarabia became parts of
the Romanian state in 1918, there was a convoluted and painful process of
negotiating the new political and social reality which crystalised in the
adoption of a new Constitution in 1923. Among its most progressive
principles was the expansion of the right to vote to all male population and
the recognition of people’s rights and freedoms regardless of their ethnicity,
religion or social class.
Although, these two Constitutions were meant to express the
principles of a parliamentary democracy based on political pluralism, in
practice, there were constant and ruthless attempts to monopolise the
political power by certain actors. Notwithstanding the absence of a genuine
political culture in Romanian society, there was also another factor
favouring this tendency: the Romanian king was still entitled to intervene in
the political process. Since both the Constitution of 1866 and that of 1923
allowed the king to dissolve Parliament, he could appoint a new government
6 The model of the 1866 Romanian Constitution was the Belgian Constitution
adopted in 1831 (Hitchins 2013: 33).
10 Chapter 1
that would organise new elections.7 Oftentimes, this political strategy went
hand in hand with that of using the state to shape the outcome of the
elections. Instead of a democracy drawing its legitimacy from an elected
legislative, the Romanian political system was constantly under siege
because the executive intervened to produce a desired legislative majority
(Hitchins 2013: 35, 416). As such, the dictatorship imposed by King Carol
II in 1938 was not an aberration, but a radicalisation of an already existing
tendency to monopolise the political process. After 1945, this tendency
became the functioning principle of the political system itself. With no
competition from other parties, communist Romania turned under
Ceaușescu’s rule into one of the most politically repressive and centralised
regimes in the Soviet bloc.
(3) The third major tension concerns the cultural process of
Romanian identity-building, which oscillated between the tendency to
connect or synchronise with Western civilisation and, on the other hand, the
nostalgic gaze at a national past in which the country had withstood internal
and external “enemies.” The 1848 Revolution coalesced the energies of
radical Romanian intellectuals mobilised by the dream to bring a quasi-
feudal society closer to the model of Western civilisation. Although the
Revolution failed, its utopian energies had a lasting impact on the process
of building Romanian identity. The young intellectuals who studied in Paris
or other European cities became the messengers of what Eugen Lovinescu,
an important Romanian literary critic of interwar period, would describe as
“synchronisation” with Western values and civilisation.8
7 Carol I, for instance, favoured the conservatives over the liberals, usually
appointing Prime Ministers from their ranks (Hitchins 2013: 42).
8 Oftentimes, these intellectuals were called pașoptiști (participants in the 1848
Revolution) or more ironically bonjouriști, as a nod to their tendency to imitate

French culture.
However, in the nineteenth century, there was a strong conservative

reaction to this process of synchronisation. Titu Maiorescu, another
important literary critic, labelled the tendency to adopt European values
enthusiastically and indiscriminately as “forms without content” (forme fără
fond), artificial constructs lacking an organic relationship with the local
tradition. The same type of criticism was deployed by the national
Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu, or by the historian and politician Nicolae
Iorga. Both of them were concerned with the possible loss of Romanian
identity (which they saw as being embodied by the rural world) under the
pressures of modernisation and adaptation to the West. However, during the
interwar period, the conservative reaction took a much darker turn with the
rise of an anti-Semitic political organisation known as the Legion of
Archangel Michael, which received the support of many young Romanian
intellectuals, from Mircea Eliade, Emil Cioran to Constantin Noica and
others (Ornea 2015: 133-148). Ironically enough, in the 1960s the
communist regime clearly favoured the conservative approach, aggressively
hailing national identity as a means of staving off foreign influences.9
From neo-developmentalism to neoliberalism

After the fall of communism in 1989, Central and East European
(CEE) countries embarked on a risky journey, the so-called “transition”
from a state-controlled economy to a market-oriented one. Trying to copy
the more successful Western economies, the only thing that CEE countries
9During Ceaușescu’s regime, there was a cultural debate between “protochronism,”

with Edgar Papu as one of his proponents, and “synchronism.” “Protochronism”
claimed that many important cultural, scientific, technological discoveries had been
anticipated or made by Romanian figures. Although most intellectuals rejected or
derided protochronist ideas, the regime enthusiastically supported them because they
provided an ideological instrument to justify xenophobic nationalism.
12 Chapter 1
had to decide about was the strategy to get there: gradual change (Slovenia)
or shock-therapy (the Baltic states, Poland or, later on, Hungary) (Aligică
and Evans 2009: 75; Ban 2014).10 Because of its highly centralised economy
and lack of connections with Western economic debates, Romania had a
rather peculiar route in the regional context (Aligică and Evans 2009).
While most of the CEE countries opted for a swift and painful change
towards a market economy, Romanian elites tried to follow what might be
called a “neo-developmentalist” approach (Ban 2014: 115). Instead of
imposing harsh neoliberal measures recommended by international
organisations like IMF (macroeconomic stabilisation through fiscal
discipline, financial liberalisation, extensive privatisation, etc.), the early
Romanian governments implemented gradual changes in which policies to
liberalise economy were mixed with policies protecting the dominant role
of the state in economy. At a closer look, however, the neo-developmentalist
approach was implemented differently. The early government led by Petre
Roman (June 1990 – October 1991) was much more liberal and imposed
austerity measures that generated a 13% fall of industrial production in 1991
alone. The next government led by Nicolae Văcăroiu (1992-1996)
integrated some liberal policies (low inflation, low deficit, selective
privatisation, etc.) within the larger Keynesian framework of a “mixed
economy” in which the state was the dominant actor (in 1996, 84% of the
Romanian workforce belonged to state companies) (Ban 2014: 141). In the
regional context, Slovenia also opted for a Keynesian approach towards
10 Agreeing with Iván Szelényi, Vladimir Pasti believes, however, that economic
transition was not shaped by the political option between gradual change and shock-
therapy, but by the interest and capacity of foreign capital to penetrate Central and
East European countries and, more specifically, Romania. Thus, the main economic
tension in Romanian transition was between foreign and local capital, with the
former gradually imposing itself on the latter (Pasti 2006: 238-239, 247).
economic transition, but the results were strikingly different: despite

enjoying economic growth between 1992 and 1996, Romanian economy
had neither the bureaucratic consistency nor the redistributive capacity of
its Slovenian counterpart (Ban 2014: 142-143). Other scholars believe that
these early gradual reforms allowing the state to remain an important
economic actor were doomed to fail because, unlike Slovenia, Romania
well-nigh lacked economic “culture” and “institutions” (Dăianu 1999: 102)
due to Ceaușescu’s extremely rigid communist regime and to incoherent,
often “populist” economic measures which had led to high inflation
(Murgescu 2010: 465-466).
However, in 1996, the social democratic coalition lost the
elections. Uncritically adopting the shock-therapy recommended by the
IMF, the new centre-right government embarked on the path of
unprecedented austerity measures and embraced the “most radical”
neoliberal policies taken in the former Eastern Bloc: it shut down or sold
most of the state-owned companies considered to be unsustainable,
introduced large social cuts, etc. (Ban 2014: 160) and encouraged a dramatic
economic setback. For instance, between 1996 and 2000, Romanian
industrial production fell by 20% (Dăianu and Murgescu 2013:12).
Although in 2000, a new social democratic coalition came to power, the
goal of joining the European Union put pressure on the local government to
impose further neoliberal measures, such as the privatisation of profitable
state-owned companies (Dăianu and Murgescu 2013:12). It also tried to
balance them against more friendly social policies. For instance, in 2003, a
new labour code favouring workers was adopted (Ban 2014: 163-164).11 In
11We shouldn’t forget that the EU itself was an important agent in imposing
neoliberal policies in Central and Eastern Europe (Vliegenthart and Overbeek 2009:
150-151). According to Vladimir Pasti, this shift was not so much the result of
14 Chapter 1
2005, after a centre-right coalition won the elections, Romania implemented

a flat tax of 16% in order to attract more direct foreign investments. It also
carried through more radical policies than the IMF or EU had demanded
from its once rebellious pupil. This strategy allowed Romanian economy to
enjoy an impressive growth of its GDP, which soon turned, however, into a
brutal reality. Because of the financial crisis of 2008, the economies of
Romania and of the Baltic states (the most neoliberal countries in the
region)12 were the most affected. In 2009, the GDP of Estonia fell by 13%,
while the Romanian one fell by 8%, largely because of their dependency on
the decisions taken by foreign capital. After 2009, Romanian economy
managed to recover by gradually returning once again to relatively high
growths of its GDP.
In any case, such an economic tendency, partially fuelled by
neoliberal policies, also exacerbated deep structural imbalances: despite
some recent measures to boost wages, the level of inequality (between urban
and rural areas or between the majority population and the Roma minority)
remains one of the highest in Europe13 while the risk of social exclusion is
political processes, but also of economic ones, since foreign capital had started to
dominate local capital in 2000 (Pasti 2006: 247).
12 Using the theoretical tools provided by Karl Polanyi, Dorothee Bohle and Béla
Greskovits identify three forms of capitalism emerging in Central and Eastern

Europe after the collapse of communism: “a neoliberal type” (Baltic states), “an
embedded neoliberal type” (Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Poland), and
“a neocorporatist type” (Slovenia) (Bohle and Greskovits 2007: 443). After 1996,
Romania could be placed in the “neoliberal” category together with the Baltic states,
reflecting thus economic policies that had generated much higher social costs than
in the other states from the region (Ban 2014: 205-206).
13 Although Romania has managed to reduce its Gini coefficient in recent years
(from 37.4 in 2015 to 33.1 in 2017), it is still among the highest in Europe. By
comparison, in 2017, Hungary had 28.1, Poland 29.1, Slovenia 23.7 (Results
available at
http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?wai=true&dataset=ilc_di12).
Moreover, Central and East European states with large minorities (Baltic states,
the second highest in European Union after Bulgaria.14 Furthermore, with

more than 3 million people living in other European countries, Romanian
migration is also among the highest on the continent. It is hard to see how
these imbalances might be addressed unless more socially inclusive policies
were adopted so as to challenge the neoliberal approach still dominating
Romanian politics.15
The elusiveness of democratic pluralism

After the bloody and highly publicised revolution that led to the
fall of Ceaușescu’s regime, Romania quickly became the black sheep of the
former Eastern Bloc. In sharp contrast with most of the CEE countries
trying, in an orderly and rather consensual fashion, to leave behind the
monopoly of the communist parties and adopt democratic pluralism, the
National Salvation Front (NSF), the new dominant political force that
emerged from the Romanian revolution of 1989 under the leadership of Ion
Iliescu discredited the country’s image abroad because of its strategy to
marginalise or even brutalise political opposition, epitomised by the events
involving miners of June 1990. Although formally adopting a pluralist
democratic system, NSF did not engage, like other dominant political
parties from CEE, in real negotiations with opposition parties or civil
groups. Instead, it tried more or less ruthlessly to silence them (Welsh 1994:
388; Grugel 2002: 202-203). The legacy of the most centralised and opaque
Romania, Bulgaria) tend to be more unequal than ethnically homogenous states

(Bandelj and Mahutga: 2010).
14 The risk of social exclusion is 31.2% in Romania (Results available at
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/EDN-20201016-2).
15 Despite the recent pandemic which has put pressure on the state to heavily
intervene to safeguard economic activities, at least at the level of political discourse,

the Romanian centre-right parties still favour a clear neoliberal approach in which
inequality or poverty are to be solved through the expansion of the economic market.
16 Chapter 1
communist system from Central and Eastern Europe was still alive in those
messy years of early Romanian transition.
In 1993, NSF turned into the Party of Social Democracy in
Romania, which stayed in power till 1996, when a new president, Emil
Constantinescu, and a new centre-right coalition, Romanian Democratic
Convention (RDC), were elected thanks to their promise to do away with
the communist legacy.16 Thus, while previous years had been dominated by
a strong party that had tried to monopolise the political scene, between 1996
and 2000, the leitmotif of Romanian politics was fragmentation and
uncertainty, given the multiple political forces within the RDC and their
allies vying for power. To this was added the social dissatisfaction generated
by the extremely brutal neoliberal measures of the new government.
Between 2000 and 2004, social democrats led by Ion Iliescu won
the elections and tried once again to monopolise the political sphere by
putting pressure not only on public institutions, but also on private media.
In 2004, Traian Băsescu managed to defeat Adrian Năstase, the Romanian
Prime Minister, in the presidential race by mixing the already familiar anti-
communist narrative with a new one: the fight against corruption. A political
maverick, Băsescu dominated the public agenda until 2014 by deploying
highly divisive strategies and discourses to control hi opponents.17 Lacking
16 The centre-right coalition supported by civil society groups (e.g., the Group for
Social Dialogue) forged the narrative of an intimate relationship between democracy
and neoliberalism (Ban 2014: 95). All that stands in the way of this happy marriage
is, of course, the communist legacy. Some authors believe that the constant revival
of the anti-communist narrative serves a clear ideological purpose: to de-legitimise
any form of resistance against neoliberal policies (Chelcea and Druță: 2016).
17 Traian Băsescu’s discursive strategy was based on a mix between “populism” and
“neoliberalism.” This was visible, for instance, in his attempt, reminiscent of

Margaret Thatcher’s strategy to defeat British labour unions, to turn the private
sector against an “obese” state that simply profited from the wealth produced by the
former. (Vesalon 2010: 207-208).
a strong, homogenous political force to back him, Băsescu used political

fragmentation while also strengthening certain institutions (the Romanian
secret services and the judiciary) in order to fight back his rivals. This kind
of political approach generated a strong counter-reaction in 2016, when the
social democrats won the parliamentary elections, after having lost the
presidential ones in 2014 against the representative of the centre-right,
Klaus Iohannis. By the all-too familiar logic “the winner takes it all,” the
new majority attempted to swiftly change laws targeting corruption and to
subordinate the judiciary system, triggering in 2017 the largest protests in
post-communist Romania. In 2019, Liviu Dragnea, the leader of the Social-
Democratic Party and widely considered to be the mastermind behind the
attempt to change anti-corruption laws was himself jailed.18
In the context of rather weak democratic institutions, Romania’s
post-communist political dynamic has been dominated by “majoritarianism”:
every winning party or coalition tends to impose its own policies, rarely
attempting to negotiate a larger consensus around fundamental values or
future development (Tismăneanu 1998).19 With the exception of some
important geopolitical goals (joining NATO and EU), Romanian political
parties showed little interest in trying to engage with their ideological
adversaries. Instead of democratic pluralism, in which ideological conflict
is balanced out by fundamental agreements, Romanian political transition
has been dominated by fragmentation and conflicts that might also partially
explain the low level of trust in democratic institutions, such as Parliament,
18 Since 2020 Romania has had a centre-right government.

19 Vladimir Tismăneanu associates this “majoritarianism” with the communist
tendency to exclude opposition and criticism, a reflex that was inherited by
Romanian social democracy after 1989 (Tismăneanu 1998). But as seen above, the
tendency to monopolise the political sphere is not specifically centre-left since it was
also used by centre-right leaders like Traian Băsescu.
18 Chapter 1
and the high level of trust in hierarchical institutions, such as the Orthodox
Church, the Romanian Army or the secret services.
From nationalism to Europeanism. And back again?

Under the strict supervision of the Soviet Union, the early years of
Communist rule in Romania were dominated by an internationalist
discourse. After Stalin’s death, the local Communist elites slowly distanced
themselves from the Soviet Union and created a new blend between socialist
and (inter-war) nationalist themes which was perfected during Ceaușescu’s
regime. Predictably, the fall of Communism created an identity void that
was filled by the only remaining ingredient: nationalism (Verdery 1993;
Gallagher 1996). The shady events from March 1990 when Romanians and
Hungarians clashed in the city of Târgu Mureș offered to the newly emerged
National Salvation Front a legitimacy boost fuelled by the fear that Hungary
wanted to take back Transylvania from Romania. Till 1996, the dominant
identity discourse was a combination of moderate nationalism, used both by
social democrats and opposition parties, and xenophobic nationalism,
epitomised by the Greater Romania Party (Verdery 1993; Gallagher 2001).
Its leader, Corneliu Vadim Tudor, used a highly aggressive language –
reminiscent of the inter-war far right discourse – targeting Hungarian, Jews
or Roma minorities (Verdery 1993). Against this type of discourse, many
intellectuals, some of them members of the Group for Social Dialogue,20
offered an equally sharp alternative: between adhering to a nationalist
ideology derived from the communist past21 and unconditionally accepting
20 The group was founded on 31 December 1989 and included important local
intellectuals such as Gabriel Liiceanu, Andrei Pleșu, and Horia-Roman Patapievici,

to name only a few.
21 In fact, nationalism cannot be related solely to Romanian communism. The
interwar period, which many local intellectuals idealise as the most prolific period
a pro-Western stance. In 1996, the Romanian Democratic Convention won

the elections with this anti-communist/anti-nationalist discourse, which
advocated total integration in the Western world and endorsed the goals of
joining NATO and EU, while also adopting the austerity policies advocated
by the IMF (Mișcoiu 2014). Thus, if the first six years of Romanian
transition were mostly dominated by a nationalist discourse in which the
others were usually to blame for Romania’s misfortunes, the next four years
were defined by uncritically portraying a Western world that was holding
the key to all internal problems.
Though the centre-right coalition paid a high price for its neoliberal
policies, the social democrats also adopted the pro-European and pro-
American discourse after winning elections in 2000. Ironically enough,
many centre-right intellectuals voted for Ion Iliescu, a former communist,
against Corneliu Vadim Tudor in the presidential elections.22 As a result of
this newly emerging consensus, Romania joined NATO (2004) and the
European Union (2007). The first cracks in this hegemony started to show
in 2016, when the Social Democratic Party led by Liviu Dragnea reactivated
some nationalist topics from the 1990s with a touch of Euroscepticism, a
recipe used much more aggressively and successfully by Viktor Orbán in
Hungary or Jaroslaw Kaczynski in Poland. For instance, in 2018, Dragnea
attempted to legitimise his government by organising a referendum meant
to define family as the union between a man and a woman. Although there
has been rather widespread conservative consensus around this topic in
Romania, the referendum eventually failed because of a low turnout.
in Romanian history, was, in fact, marked by the rise of an extremely aggressive

form of nationalist discourse.
22 For instance, Alina Mungiu-Pippidi sharply criticised Ion Iliescu but publicly
supported him against Vadim Tudor in 2000.

20 Chapter 1
During the 1990s, nationalist discourse seemed to offer a

homogenous and stable narrative, compensating for the massive social and
political dislocations (Gallagher 1996) and legitimising the state as the
dominant actor in society. The anti-communist/anti-nationalist narrative of
the centre-right intellectuals and parties tried to de-legitimise state
intervention as an expression of the totalitarian past and, instead, let the
market forces take care of social processes. Although Liviu Dragnea was
not able to create a more conservative and nationalist alternative to the
dominant pro-European discourse, other combinations of nationalism and
neoliberal policies might be reactivated by someone else in the near future,
with the Roma minority as the most likely target of such an ideological hybrid,
given their economic marginalisation and political underrepresentation.23 The
direct manifestation of this new radicalism came during the December 2020
parliamentary elections, when the newly-created Alliance for the Unity of
the Romanians (AUR) won 9%.
About this volume’s chapters

In his attempt to evaluate the level of consolidation reached by
Romania’s post-communist democracy, Ovidiu Vaida has looked into the
recent history of Romanian politics. Being aware that a citizenship culture,
as theorised by Merkel, is beyond reach and needs a longer time to be
created, Vaida focuses instead on the other three levels discussed by Merkel:
constitutional, representative, and behavioural consolidation. He relates
these levels to various political trends shaping Romania’s transition to
23Despite the ethnic tensions of the early 1990s, Romania has been rather successful
in addressing the problem of the Hungarian minority by adopting laws that allow the
preservation of its cultural identity. The situation of the Roma community is much
more complicated. The major risk, in this case, is an overlap between ethnicity and
poverty that might be manipulated by future political forces.
liberal democracy, such as the presence of a dominant party or the

presidentialisation of the political system, but he also considers the role of
local elections, the fragmentation of the local parties or the protests against
political power. Resisting the tendency to oversimplify this whole process,
Vaida concludes that Romania’s democratic consolidation is marked by
both setbacks and progress in a still volatile local context.
In their contribution to this volume, Mircea Maniu and Horațiu
Dan use other theoretical lenses to point out that the main obstacle for
economic, cultural and political development is the centralising tendency of
the Romanian state. Because it has consistently eschewed implementing
policies that would favour regionalisation, the Romanian state has missed
important opportunities. A case in point is Cluj-Napoca, the second largest
city in Romania after Bucharest. The authors apply a multilevel approach,
combining an identity, institutional and economic perspective, to Cluj-
Napoca in order to indicate the potential benefits of Romania’s
regionalisation. These, in fact, would reflect the subsidiarity principle of
European Union.
Levente Salat analyses the system for the protection of ethnic
minorities in Romania, which can very well pass for a success story and
even for a model, in spite of its turbulent post-1989 beginnings. Salat shows
the way national minorities preoccupied with their cultural survival have
received recognition and support from the Romanian state, in legal,
institutional, and financial terms. Still, as Levente Salat shows, the past
couple of years have also demonstrated the shortages and the limits of the
Romanian model. His paper explores some of the reasons which may have
spurred unfavourable developments and outlines possible ways of
improvement.
22 Chapter 1
Finally, Ruxandra Ivan uses a foreign policy analysis to describe

Romania’s progressive shift after 1989 from a communist order dominated
by the USSR to a liberal-capitalist one gravitating around the US. In doing
so, she takes into consideration two types of factors: on the one hand,
domestic and external factors (the ideological stances of government
majorities and the conditionality of international organisations, most
notably, EU and NATO), and on the other hand, psychological factors
(historical legacies, culture, and national identity). Ivan concludes that
Romania’s shift towards the West was shaped, in the first post-communist
years, by psychological motivations rooted in the historical tendency of
idealising Western culture and civilisation. However, once Romania joined
NATO and EU, the former factors – more specifically, the internalisation of
the roles imposed by these organisations – became dominant in shaping
Romania’s foreign policy.
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CHAPTER 2
ROMANIA AND ITS DIFFICULT ROAD

TO DEMOCRACY
OVIDIU VAIDA
Introduction
Romania’s recent past proves that local politics is rather

unpredictable, with many variables that are not always constant. In the
1990s, when the rule of law was, at times, optional, there occurred several
dubious events. Elections had unexpected outcomes, and governing was
sometimes a performance, instead of a lucrative and efficient action.
Nevertheless, the political system developed, the party system became more
stable, and the quality of democracy improved.
Romania was part of the largest and most significant wave of
democratisation that began in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989. What
had seemed to be virtually impossible a decade before, namely the
democratisation of the region, took just a few years to complete. A double
transition started, towards liberal democracy and capitalist market
economies. The former, also known as democratisation, developed in
similar ways, which have been scrupulously researched by scholars. Dahl,
for instance, offers a seminal description of democracy, under the name of
polyarchy. This is based on a set of normative criteria, centred on electoral
Romania and its Difficult Road to Democracy 27
rights, freedom of speech, alternative sources of information and limited

and accountable government (1989). All these elements were used by the
book by the new political decision makers or constitutional designers.
While democratisation was just an initial step, what was more
important was the endurance of democracy, the consolidation of democracy.
There is extensive literature dealing with this concept. An in-depth analysis
of it has been undertake, among others, by Schedler (1997). A widely
accepted (yet minimalist) definition regarding democratic consolidation is
offered by Przeworski, who concludes that democracy is “consolidated
when under given political and economic conditions a particular system of
institutions becomes the only game in town, when no one can imagine acting
outside the democratic institutions, when all the losers want to do is to try
again within the same institutions under which they have lost” (1991, 26).
Linz and Stepan have developed the concept further, discussing the three
dimensions of consolidated democracy: behavioural, attitudinal, and
constitutional (Linz and Stepan, 1996, 6-15).
A more detailed description is proposed by Merkel, who discusses
four analytical levels. These also work as a timeline for democratic
consolidation (Merkel 1996; Merkel 2008, 13-15).
1. Constitutional consolidation: political institutions, norms, and

structures.
2. Representative consolidation: parties and interest organisations. Both
level 1 and level 2 are decisive for level 3.
3. Behavioural consolidation: informal actors such as business groups,
military, or radical movements. The successful consolidation at levels
1 and 2 is “crucial in deciding whether the informal political actors
with potential veto power will pursue their interests inside, outside, or
against democratic norms and institution” (Merkel 2008, 14).
28 Chapter 2
4. The consolidation of political culture, or “the emergence of a

citizenship culture as the sociocultural substructure of democracy”
(Merkel 2008, 14).
The objective of the chapter is to determine how democracy

appeared in Romania, how or to what extent it was consolidated. Merkel’s
four-tier model of analysis will be employed, with a focus on the first three
ones. The emergence (and consolidation) of a citizenship culture lasts
several decades, which is not the case of Romania. The focus, more
precisely, will be on the main political institutions that were created after
1989, on accepted political norms, and on the outcomes of the electoral
system and elections. Secondly, the study will examine the types of
representative groups, emphasising the development of political parties and
the party system. Last but not least, the behaviour of different groups will
come under scrutiny, especially the street movements that challenged the
political system.
Moreover, some research questions will be raised to further deepen
the research. What are the main threats for democracy in Romania? Which
have the main political trends been since 1989? Are there any rifts that
surfaced or developed after the fall of communism?
Even though this is a fertile research area, there are few studies on
post-communism/transition in Romania. Most studies have targeted the
situation in Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. Bulgaria and
Romania have been rather unattractive to scholars, mainly due to the fact
that prior to 1996, the regime only changed slowly and the quality of
democracy was low. Romanian scholars have yet to analyse the transition
thoroughly. Most studies so far have focused on particular elements such as
elections, constitutional development or the accession to the European
Union, with few exceptions (Radu 2006, Mungiu 2002, Preda and Soare,
2008).24
As regards the topic of democratic consolidation, Cioabă (2010)
and Tănăsescu (2017) analyse the state of democratisation in Romania from
an institutional point of view. They reach the same conclusion, that
consolidation is still uncertain and that the process is far from complete. On
the other hand, Dragoman (2019) focuses on democratic consolidation from
a behaviourist point of view and discusses protest movements and civic
engagement.
This text tries to take one step further and analyse the entire period,
taking into consideration the main developments and patterns, by trying to
provide in-depth explanations involving social or economic facts. From a
methodological point of view, historical and electoral analysis will be used.
Similar events in different circumstances will be compared in order to
develop some conclusions.
Most electoral results come from the Permanent Electoral authority
website. In addition, Freedom House’s ‘Nations in Transit’ annual report
offers a numerical assessment on the state of democracy in Romania. Last
but not least, some empirical evidence comes from the author’s observations
while attending several party meetings, different party conventions or while
monitoring elections.
The text will be divided into three main chapters. The last two
follow Merkel’s model, with a focus on his first three levels. The first
chapter is a historical one. It looks at the formation of the Romanian political
system in order to identify some elements that are still relevant, more than
24A Google search looking for “sistemul politic romanesc” (“Romanian political
system”) will return no books on that topic on the first page.
30 Chapter 2
one century later. The main chapters reflect the objectives of this analysis,
namely presenting and discussing the founding patterns of Romanian
politics, structured around constitutional and representative consolidation.
Secondly, a set of less significant features will be analysed. These are not
fundamental but are characteristic for the Romanian political scene (some
are common in other ex-communist countries, too). A conclusion will try to
highlight the main finding of the analysis.
The formation of the Romania political system

Romanian modern political history started around the mid-
nineteenth century. Like in other parts of Europe, the 1848 Revolution
spread liberal and nationalist ideas such as nation, liberty, democracy,
equality or constitution in the two provinces (Moldova and Wallachia)
which had been under Turkish rule for more than a century and under its
influence for 300 years. While there were fewer combats than in other parts
of Europe, the revolutionary ideas remained on the political agenda and they
were put into practice around one decade later: in 1859, the parliaments in
both provinces elected the same person as ruler, which meant a de facto
unification of Moldova and Wallachia.
After the unification or the formation of the so-called “Little
Romania,” its first ruler, Prince Alexandru Ioan Cuza started a modernisation
process which soon was blocked by Parliament. At this point, he continued
to govern in utter disregard of Parliament, which would become a particular
feature of the Romanian political system. It is true, Cuza was in favour of
high-speed reforms, while Parliament tried to block some of them. In 1864
Cuza dissolved Parliament with the help of the army (he was a military man)
and proposed a new constitutional text.
During these years, two elements foreshadowed what would

happen in the Romanian political system in the next century. First of all,
Romanian society was and still is characterised by conservatism and lack of
dynamism. Progress in the social or political field only occurred from time
to time, so the transformation of society was not gradual. This is why, from
time to time, there were major social upheavals.
Secondly, in those years and later also, there was always a gap
between the political elite and society. Therefore, all major decisions were
taken by the elites, with little input from citizens. That was not the case only
in the second part of the nineteenth century, when few had political rights,
but also in the interwar period or after the 1989 revolution and system
change.
In 1877, Romania fought as ally of the Russian Empire against its
formal ruler, the Ottoman Empire. It became an independent state in 1878
and a kingdom in 1881. A vivid political life developed, with an influential
media, political scandals, but also with attempts at modernisation and
progress. In 1923 a new constitution was adopted, which granted voting
right for all adult males. Also, most of the land was distributed to peasants,
especially to those who had fought in the war.
Yet democracy slowly diluted itself. In 1930, Carol II, who had
abdicated years earlier, returned to Romania and took the throne from his
son. As elections lost their importance, parties and democracy became
weaker. In 1938 Carol II took over complete power, through a royal
dictatorship (Hitchins 1996, 447-452).
After the war, the communists seized power in Romania, as in the
entire region. They adopted a new Soviet-style constitution, banned all other
parties, and sent thousands of their opponents to prison. For more than four
decades, Romania was a totalitarian state, ruled by a single party and the
32 Chapter 2
communist elite. The economy was centralised and, except for some
attempts at opening the system in the 1960s, Romania remained one of the
most rigid communist countries.
Founding patterns of the Romanian politics

No round table change of system
The 1989 revolution took many by surprise. While there were
some signs of democratisation in other Central and East European countries
(see Hungary or Poland), there were no discussions on that topic at all in
Romania. When in October 1989 the Hungarian Parliament decided to end
communism and organise free elections, Romania was in the middle of
consistent preparations for the Communist Party’s 14th Congress, which was
supposed to re-confirm Nicolae Ceaușescu as Secretary General of the party
and de facto ruler of the country. The only informal discussion, among the
country’s citizens, concerned the period Ceausescu had been in power (24
years). The general opinion was that he should step down, but only to be
replaced by his son, Nicu Ceaușescu, who was the leader of the Communist
youth and of the communist organisation of Sibiu County. The first riots
started on December 15, when Laszlo Tokes, a Hungarian Unitarian priest,
was warned by the secret police that he would be moved to another county
because of his dissident positions. People gathered around his house in
Timisoara, but riots started in the city within a few days. Unrest spread
around the country, especially on December 21. The next day, the
Ceaușescus decided to leave Bucharest by helicopter, but they were later
arrested and executed. Once again, Romania’s backwardness was undone
by a quick twist of history (Durandin 1998, 367-373).
Next, Romania chose a rather curious way of managing transition.

Instead of round tables or parliamentarian ways, it was the 1989 Revolution
that sparked democratisation (Banac 1992). The communist political system
was de facto dissolved and new bodies were created. It was the revolutionary
body known as the National Salvation Front (Frontul Salvării Naționale,
FSN) that took over power and appointed a new prime minister. Even
though Romania departed from communism, there were several second
level communist leaders who occupied leading positions. The main
objective was the maintenance/distribution of power, rather than the
creation of new institutions and rules (Elster 1998, 59-60).
Even though they were dubbed “revolutionary forces,” the bodies
appointed by the FSN lacked legitimacy. To that must be added the fact that
two months after the revolution, the FSN decided to transform itself into a
political party. All these moves caused concerns, especially abroad. This
manner of seizing power, boosted by the June 1990 events, caused serious
apprehensions internally and externally.
No lustration or de-communisation
Most of the ex-communist countries tried to eliminate signs of
communism from their societies. Some of them adopted lustration acts or
took other measures in the field (Letki 2002). Nothing of note happened in
Romania, except for some demands made by the civil society. President Ion
Iliescu, himself an ex-communist leader, rejected any discussions regarding
this topic. Not even the CDR, whose leaders included former political
prisoners, could easily promote such a law. Only after being in government
for three years did the CDR-led coalition adopt a Gauck model law
permitting access to Securitate files. A special body was established to issue
papers stating a certain citizen’s relation with the former secret police. This
34 Chapter 2
was much needed in the political arena, but it took several years before the
body could receive the Securitate records. Eventually, in 2006 a
commission set up by President Băsescu worked on a statement that
condemned communism in Romania.
The effect was a lack of trust in political leaders and also the
pollution of the public agenda with endless discussion on the past. Besides
some ethical aspects that were raised, there were signs that most of the
democracies consolidated after 1990 would implement lustration (Letki
2002, 548-549).
Since, as opposed to most ex-communist countries, lustration was
not endorsed in Romania, the organisation that had replaced the former
Communist party won the first free elections. Ion Iliescu gained the
presidential seat by an astonishing 85% of votes, while his party, the FSN,
won the legislative elections, with 67%. Several ex-communist party
members remained in power, and even some less important leaders were
appointed to top positions.
The presence of a dominant party

The 1991-1992 period was important for shaping the future party
system. First of all, the FSN (later FDSN, PDSR, PSD), the party inheriting
most of the Communist structures, remained the main Romanian party for
the next decades, winning almost every election.25 Before 1992, the
opposition was confident that it could win the local elections. However, the
FSN controlled virtually all resources, especially the state administration,
25 In 1992 FSN went through a party split. One faction kept the name, while the other
had to go for FDSN (Frontul Democrat al Salvării Naționale). It is widely accepted

that the party inheriting the communist past and its structures was the FDSN, mainly
because its informal leader was President Ion Iliescu.
and it was able to nominate party members to all important positions. By

controlling the local administration, the FSN was able to win the first free
local elections and, subsequently, the next parliamentary and presidential
ones. It soon became the “party of mayors,” an important quality, bearing
in mind the specificity of Romanian society. Between 1990 and 2019, the
PSD stayed outside government for only 12 years. The only position not
held constantly was that of President of Romania. Ion Iliescu was the only
one who took the seat three times.
Table 1. Electoral results in Romania, legislative elections, 1992-2004

1992 1996 2000 2004
PDL (PD, ARD,...) % 10,2 12,9 7,0 DA
S. 43 53 31
UDMR % 7,5 6,6 6,8 6,2
S. 27 25 27 22
PRM % 3,9 4,5 19,5 13,0
S. 16 19 84 48
PSD (PDSR,...) % 27,7 21,5 36,6 36,8
S. 117 91 155 132
PNL % 2,6 CDR 6,9 DA
S. - (25) 30
PNTCD % CDR CDR CDR
S. (41) (83) -
CDR % 20,0 30,2 5,0 -
S. 82 122 - -
DA % 31,5
S. 112
Others/Minorities % 17,2 16,8 16,0 10,6
S. 13 15 18 18
Total S. 341 343 345 332
Turnout % 76,3 76,0 65,3 58,5
Source: http://www.parties-and-elections.eu/romania.html
36 Chapter 2
The dominant position led to a specific type of political behaviour:

the PSD was the leading force in a coalition in almost every case,
implementing a dictatorial style, not based on negotiations and compromise.26
Also, the dominant position and the ruling style proved to be
counterproductive: in almost all presidential elections lost by the PSD, its
candidate came first in the first round (1996, 2004, 2014) but lost in the
second round, even when he had secured an electoral agreement with other
parties.
Last but not least, a new local administration law was adopted in
2001. One effect was the decentralisation of the country. That led to the
accumulation of more political powers in the hand of mayors and of county
council presidents. The latter were labelled ‘local barons.’ The PSD, which
had won most of the seats of county council presidents, became known as
the party of local barons. They owned journals, local TV stations, and
football teams, becoming more and more influential.
The successful strategy of winning elections

through an electoral alliance
Because the PSD was the dominant party, the other parties were
forced to form alliances as that was the only way they could come to power.
As discussed later, the only times the PSD lost elections were to different
alliances, such as the CDR, the D.A. or the PNL-PDL. In almost every
presidential election (except in 2009) when the PSD candidate was defeated,
the winner was backed by a political alliance. In one case alone could a party
defeat the PSD in legislative elections: that party was the PDL in 2008. In
26The only time the PSD was not the dominant force in a coalition was in 2009.
Because this was an electoral year and due to the lack of consensual style in
Romanian politics, the PSD eventually left the coalition after just a few months.
fact, the PSD had 50,000 more votes for the Chamber of Deputies and
40,000 more votes for the Senate, but due to the curious electoral system
adopted just months before (a majoritarian system, but with a proportional
outcome), the PDL had one extra member in the CoD and two in the Senate.
Therefore, in 1991 the opposition parties noted that the governing
party was still too powerful and the only way for them to grow was to form
an alliance. In November 1991, they formed the Romanian Democratic
Convention (Convenția Democrată Română, CDR), composed of several
parties and civic associations, such as the Liberal Party (Partidul Național
Liberal, PNL), the Christian-Democrats (Partidul Național Țărănesc
Creștin-Democrat, PNȚCD), the Hungarian Party (Uniunea Democrată a
Maghiarilor din România, UDMR) and the Civic Alliance, an important
NGO, headed by the writer Ana Blandiana, one of the few dissidents during
communism.27 It was the first large alliance to oppose the governing party,
albeit unsuccessfully in the beginning. Eventually, the alliance won both
legislative and presidential elections in 1996.
The same situation occurred a few years later. After an efficient
governance, the PSD had a solid position in the polls and was the main
favourite for the 2004 elections. Despite their efforts, the PD and the PNL
were far from a winning position. Once again, an alliance was the solution,
and the D.A. alliance was born in September 2003.28 The two parties
27 The PNL and the PNTCD were established by members of the historical parties
banned by communists in 1947. Most of these people were thrown into communist
jails. It was a curious image – and not always electorally beneficial – to see that all
the leaders of these parties were 70 or older.
28 In Romanian DA means “yes.” In its political form, the D.A. stands for Dreptate
și Adevar, Justice and Truth. Besides the literal meaning of DA, the purpose of these
phrases was to point out the corruption connected to the PSD.
38 Chapter 2
avoided the large structures of the CDR, preferring the simpler recipe of a
two-party alliance (Radu 2009).
A rather unusual alliance was created in 2011: the PSD and the
PNL formed the Social-Liberal Union (Uniunea Social-Liberală, USL),
headed by both Victor Ponta and Crin Antonescu.29 According to their
agreement, in case of an electoral success, Ponta was supposed to become
Prime Minister, while Crin Antonescu was the presidential candidate of the
union.
Last in this list is the recently formed alliance between the USR
and PLUS. The roots of the two new comers in Romanian politics (Save
Romania Union, Uniunea Salvați România; Freedom, Unity and Solidarity
Party, Partidul Libertate, Unitate, Solidaritate) lie in the civil society, but
they had to adopt the same profitable solution.
As seen above, the dominant position of the PSD was the main
element behind this type of political enterprise. It was only once that
President Băsescu, rather than the PSD, caused an alliance to happen.
Whatever the reason, all these agreements were successful, except in 1992.
Another pattern, discussed later, is that these political agreements are short
term. Once they reach their objective, that is, winning elections, they stop
functioning, as the component parties try to weaken their partner(s).
The presidentialisation of the Romanian political system

While using the term developed by Poguntke and Webb (2005), I
will employ a different meaning for the case of Romania. The President is
directly elected, but has few roles. Romania has more parliamentarian
29 Some PNL party members openly opposed the new organisation, as they
considered the PSD the archenemy. Even today the move is criticised by party
members or voters.
features. Nevertheless, the most important electoral race is for the

presidential seat. In fact, one of the main tasks of the political parties is to
find/prepare candidates for the presidential elections. Usually, the party
leader is the person who has the most chances to win presidential elections
or, at least, to obtain many votes. Vice versa, while being elected as
presidents, most of them act as de facto leaders of their former parties, not
allowing them to further develop. After 2000, there was a very active Iliescu
camp in the PSD. Similarly, after being elected, Traian Băsescu had no
qualms about intervening in the PD/PDL affairs any time he felt it
necessary, and he even caused a party split at some point.
One effect of this presidentialisation trend is the fact that
cohabitations do not work in the Romanian political system. There were
three periods when cohabitation occurred in Romania and they were all
marked by endless fights between the two executive heads.30 In recent years,
the Constitutional Court had to issue decisions in several cases when the
President acted in opposition to the government and the Constitution did not
have clear provisions regulating such incidents.31 The Constitutional Court
had to decide, for instance, who would attend the European Council
meetings, as both President Băsescu and Prime Minister Ponta were eager
to attend the same meeting in Brussels (Vaida 2013). The presidentialisation
of a political system would not be that harmful, given that it works in the
UK or Germany. However, it may have a damaging effect on the developing
party systems in Romania, where parties are constructed mostly for electoral
30 The media call it “the war between the palaces,” since Cotroceni Palace is the
location of the Presidency, while Victoria Palace is where the Prime Minister is
sitting.
31 In both cases when a constitutional bill was drafted, in 1991 and 2003, the
president and the government were supported by the same party; hence, it seemed
unnecessary to discuss this aspect in greater detail.
40 Chapter 2
campaigns and the leadership is evaluated mainly for its performance in

presidential races. For instance, the PDL lost most of its vitality after being
a presidential party for almost a decade and Băsescu’s main electoral tool.
Moreover, it was the main governing party during the 2008-2010 economic
crises, and this further affected its status. Since it could not recover, the PDL
had to merge with the PNL in 2014.
Other political trends

The importance of the local elections
The local elections have set two trends in Romania. On the one
hand, the vote for the county councils is considered a good predictor for the
legislative elections, which are scheduled six months after the local ones.32
On the other hand, even though less visible, the most important vote is the
one for the mayor’s office. Once a rural and agricultural country, Romania
kept this trend through communism, when consistent urbanisation and
industrialisation process took place. After the 1989 Revolution, the trend
was somehow reversed. Over the past few decades, the percentage of the
population living in rural areas has been around 46-47%.33 Since Romania
is still a conservative society, especially in the rural area, with visible
patriarchal or feudal features, the main political role is played by the mayor.
Usually those holding the position have some tools to win the next ones,
too. The media presented several cases of patronage in which mayors had
demanded electoral support in future elections in exchange for financial
support. This system worked especially in poor and illiterate communities,
32 In fact, the electoral lists for legislative elections are solely based on the local
election results. In few other cases are other tools, such as surveys, used.
33 http://www.recensamantromania.ro/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/REZULTATE-
DEFINITIVE-RPL_2011.pdf.
where mayors could use their influence. One could argue that the constant
success of the PSD in different kinds of elections is partially based on the
fact that it has been the party with most mayors since 1992. There are almost
3,200 mayors to be elected, plus local and county councillors. Mayors used
to be elected in a two-round system, while councillors would run on party
lists, using proportional representation. Meanwhile, a PSD backed informal
coalition has succeeded in changing the electoral system for mayoral
elections into a more advantageous FPTP.
For instance, in 1992 the FSN won almost half of the mayoral seats
(1409 out of 2951), while the CDR obtained less than 250 seats. In 2008, in
the most unbiased elections, the PDL took most mayor positions in the large
cities and the first place in county council elections, which is the considered
to be the most reliable statistic for a party’s influence. The party received
28.92%, while the PSD 27.97% of the votes.34 Nevertheless, the PSD came
once again first, in the mayoral race, with 1,138 mayors. The PDL won 908
and the PNL 706 out of 3,180 mayor positions.
Even after the PNL and the PDL merged in 2014 and seemed to be better
equipped for the local electoral race of 2016, once again, it was a clear PSD
victory: 40% at county levels, 28 County Council presidents out of 41 and,
more importantly, 1,708 mayors out of 3,186, almost 54%. Second came the
PNL, with 31% at County Council level and 1,081 mayors.35 The rural-
urban divide was visible again, the liberals wining in large cities, while
social-democrats were victorious mainly in rural areas.
It is the only field where the PSD never lost. While there are no
studies going into the depth of mayors’ implication in presidential/legislative
34 http://beclocale2008.roaep.ro/documm/pdftur12_finale_last/votpart12.pdf.
35 http://www.2016bec.ro/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Comunicat-10.06.2016.pdf.
42 Chapter 2
elections, there is enough evidence to point the connection between the

number of mayors and the percentage a party or candidate would later
receive in the legislative elections.
Also, winning the mayorship of Bucharest has an undeniable
symbolical importance. During an electoral campaign, the public agenda is
loaded with news regarding this city. Due to its media exposure, the mayor
of Bucharest becomes very visible and may be propelled further: Victor
Ciorbea was appointed Prime Minister in 1996, while Traian Băsescu won
the presidential race in 2004. Also, the previous mayor of Bucharest was
often mentioned as possible PSD candidate for the 2019 elections.
Political cleavages
Romania, like other CEE countries, was in a position where the
classical cleavage theory developed by Rokkan and Lipset (1967) was less
applicable. New theories had to be developed, and Kitschelt (1995) and De
Waele (2002) offered some meaningful analyses in the field. Nevertheless,
some of the Rokkan designed cleavages could still be employed, since they
could offer some valuable explanations regarding Romania, a less
developed country from a social and cultural point of view (Vaida 2006).
Firstly, a rural-urban cleavage became visible. Romania was a
strong rural country until the Second World War, more than 80% of its
inhabitants living in villages.36 Nowadays, 45% of Romanians live in rural
areas. This is one of the largest percentages in Europe. Most of their small
plots are worked using the traditional ways, that is manually and with the
help of cattle. While this cleavage is visible in cultural and economic terms,
36Recensământul general al populaţiei României din 29 decembrie 1930, vol. IV,

Bucureşti, 1939, pp. XXXIV-XXXV.
it is also extremely influential in politics. The rural area usually votes or

used to vote for the FSN/PSD, while the urban area votes for centre-right
parties, more liberal or progressive.
Secondly, while not that influential, there is also a regional
cleavage. As a rule, people from Transylvania do not vote for the PSD, a
party with strongholds in the south and east of Romania. The cleavage is
most visible especially during the second round of the presidential
elections.37 Romania is a rather poor country, even after its accession in the
EU. Still, the living standard has been growing in the last decade and a
materialist/post-materialist cleavage is has been noticeable, especially in the
2014 presidential and 2016 legislative elections. The emergence of the USR
and PLUS and their success in the 2019 EP elections is a sign of developing
post-materialists’ views and voting interests.38
Fragmentation of parties
Parties are considered to be paramount for the good functioning of
a democracy. Strong, stable parties and a solid party system are necessary
for the proper working of a political system. In 1990, democracy was first
perceived through two elements: freedom of press and the creation of new
parties. 90 new parties had been set up by the May elections, but a large part
of the political scene was occupied by the FSN, which won almost 70% of
the votes.
37 http://bec2014.roaep.ro/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/SIAP2014_STAT_Statistica-la-
nivel-de-tara-pe-birou-electoral1.xlsx
38 In an exit-poll conducted in the student campuses of Cluj-Napoca on the voting
day of EP elections by a team I coordinated, the results were: 66% for the USR-
PLUS alliance, 16% for the PNL, the other parties having less than 5%. PSD
received less than 1%, even though it had offered some financial support to the
students since 2017 (free train passes, higher scholarship amounts, etc).
44 Chapter 2
What happened in the next decades was a particularity of the

Romanian party system, even though it could be encountered in other
countries too, albeit to a lesser extent: party splitting. There is no party in
Romania that has escaped this process. Only the UDMR has been protected,
due to its specificity.
The FSN was the first to experience this. Because it was such a
large party, composed of several factions, soon after the 1990 elections it
witnessed internal conflicts. One the one hand, the party’s informal leader
was Ion Iliescu, who could not rule it directly, since he was Romania’s
President. The de facto leader, ex-Prime Minister Petre Roman tried to take
the party under his total control and to move it in the direction of a mix
between social-democracy and liberalism. This tendency was opposed by
the “Iliescu” faction, in favour of a more nationalist and paternalist social-
democracy. In March 1992 a party conference was organised to settle the
matter. Petre Roman won the race, keeping his leadership. Right after that,
more than 100 MPs left the party and formed a new one, the FDSN
(Democratic National Salvation Front, Frontul Democrat al Salvării
Naționale). Later the FDSN/PSD went through another split in 1997, in
2009 and recently, in 2016, when ex-Prime Minister Victor Ponta was
expelled and founded a new party, Pro-Romania. The other side, the
“genuine” FSN remained more stable, yet it had to change its political
profile in 2005, when it joined the EPP despite having been a social-
democratic party. The party had its own internal troubles in 2013, when a
faction left, to form the presidential PMP (Peoples’ Movement Party,
Partidul Miscarea Populară).
Another party in power, the PNȚCD witnessed several splits, twice
after the party changed the Prime Minister. After losing power in 2000, it
lost more members, and the party was eventually expelled from the EPP and
basically disappeared.
The liberals were perhaps the most involved in such dividing
episodes. During the 1990s, there were several liberal factions active on the
political scene (Radu 2015: 203-206). Interestingly, since the PNL remained
the most stable and successful, most of the factions rejoined it after 2000.
The party had no further challenges, from this point of view, until 2007,
when ex-leaders Valeriu Stoica and Theodor Stolojan left, and in 2013,
when ex-leader and former Prime Minister Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu, not
willing to abandon the governing coalition, resigned and left with a group
of followers.
One particular aspect of the fractioning phenomenon was the
departure or exclusion of former party leaders or prime ministers. Except
for Nicolae Văcăroiu, Adrian Năstase and Emil Boc, all the other Prime
Ministers had to leave their party or were expelled at some point.39 The same
happened with numerous party leaders. A simple explanation is that after
internal elections, the new leaders usually see their predecessors as a threat.
Those unhappy with the new leadership use the former leaders as an
opposition tool. The easiest way to solve these situations and eliminate
internal crises is, therefore, to expel them. While serving as a short-term
solution for a party, all these situations created confusion and fragmentation
in the party system, with further damage to the state of democracy.
Another weakness of Romanian politics is the faulty construction
of political parties. They are top-to-bottom organisations, the grass roots
39 Most of them left after they ended their tenure. Yet in June 2017 Romania
witnessed one of the most unusual situations in the political arena. Tensions arose
between Prime Minister Grindeanu and the PSD leaders and, at some point, the
former was asked to resign. Since he refused, the PSD-ALDE coalition introduced
a motion of no confidence against its own government.
46 Chapter 2
members having little say in the party activity. Although most of the parties
claim they try to act as mass parties, they are the opposite on the
Duvergerian scheme, that is cadre parties. Leadership is rather closed, and
accession to the top position is difficult. That is why, from time to time,
especially in the last decade, parties have selected political personnel from
the civil society or business circles. Three Prime Ministers of Romania came
from outside the party system, and several ministers had NGO backgrounds,
having joined politics later. Due to all these elements, the public image of
the political party is quite low. They have the same level of trust as
Parliament, that is close to 10%, these two being at the bottom of list.40
The street protests and miners’ strikes

As mentioned above, during the transition, several second-level
communist leaders were still involved in politics. Moreover, since Romania
is an electoral democracy, political leaders, usually those elected, have
contacts with the citizens/voters only during electoral campaigns. All these
caused and still cause frustration. The easiest way to express this was
through street protests, like in the 1989 revolution. It should be noted that
there were two types of protests.
First of all, the miners journeyed to Bucharest in order to solve
different matters in a violent way. The most striking event of the early 1990s
was the anti-communist demonstration in Bucharest, in the spring of 1990,
and its suppression following the miners’ intervention. On 22 April 1990,
an anti-communist manifestation started in the so-called University Square
40 https://www.inscop.ro/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Sondaj-INSCOP-martie-2019-
Institutii.pdf
in the centre of Bucharest.41 The square was occupied for several weeks,
and there were political discourses every evening at the university balcony
next to the square. The manifestation lost its energy after the May elections.
Nevertheless, hundreds of protesters were still attending it. On 13 June, the
Police and other order forces started to evacuate the protesters, who struck
back. Street fights started. Later that day President Iliescu (who had dubbed
the protestors “punks”) asked the “responsible forces” to come and defend
democracy. That evening 4 trains carrying miners from the region of
Petroșani started their journey to Bucharest. Hundreds of miners arrived in
University Square next morning, vandalising some faculties’ buildings,
destroying educational facilities, and assaulting professors, students, and
any other passers-by who looked like “intellectuals” or “punks.” They also
attacked the headquarters of the main opposition parties, devastating the
rooms. On 15 June, President Iliescu gathered all miners in a conference hall
and thanked them for having come and imposed order (Stoica 2010).
That event had several consequences. First of all, it induced a
fracture in society that was hard to heal, even decades later. It was the first
sign that the newly elected officials still had to learn that politics also meant
dialogue and compromise. It was the start of the first wave of immigration.
Although it was not a large wave, it mostly consisted of highly educated
citizens, researchers, and university professors.42 Second, it raised the first
questions in Europe, Romania being labelled a half-democracy for several
years to come. It was an image that was difficult to change, even a decade
later. Third, the whole event was surrounded by media manipulation: at that
41 University Square has a symbolical importance for the anti-communist movement:
it was the place where street fights started on 21 December 1989, eventually leading
to a general uprising one day later.
42 http://www.revistadesociologie.ro/pdf-uri/no.3-4-1998/MARIA%20FULEA-art7
.pdf
48 Chapter 2
point, there was only one TV channel in Romania, the state owned one,
which presented the events in a distorted manner. Unfortunately, this was
not a singular pattern: over the next decades, media manipulation, especially
on TV, was constantly present in the Romanian political system. Media
influence is present in every democracy, yet its application was exaggerated
in Romania. At some point, there were 5 news channels broadcasting
nationwide, not to mention tens of local stations. These figures should not
be a problem, if we speak about decent journalism. However, slanted news
is a pattern in Romanian journalism. This model was developed in 1990 and
it was the first sign that the political elites were unable to communicate with
protesting citizens. This has happened several times since 1990. The most
recent were the protests of 10 August 2018. Last but not least, the
involvement of Ion Iliescu and other leaders was undeniable. Nevertheless,
none of them were charged. The prosecutors’ investigations started several
years afterwards, and Ion Iliescu and other persons were charged as late as
2017. The justice system was constantly interfered with by politicians
during transition.
In September 1991, the same miners that had rioted in Bucharest
one year earlier started a strike, as they were unhappy with their living
standards. Using a strategy that had worked before, they travelled to
Bucharest by train on 25 September. In the capital city they attacked the
government building. They also raided the Chamber of Deputies and the
national television station, though without causing damages inside. Their
main request was the dismissal of Petre Roman. Eventually, even though
there was no written resignation, the announcement came that the Prime
Minister had stepped down and the miners left Bucharest. This was a rather
dubious event, and even though he was not directly involved, President
Iliescu agreed with the miners’ demands mainly because he had some
disagreements with Petre Roman regarding the speed of transition. What

happened later is another feature of the Romanian political system: a
technocrat was appointed Prime Minister and the government was
supported by a large coalition in parliament: even though the FSN had
almost 70% of the votes, other parties were invited to govern as well.
During the Radu Vasile government, one of the most extraordinary
events in the transition process took place in 1999. The same miners that
had come to Bucharest in 1990 and 1991 demanded higher wages and other
financial benefits in 1998. The government started negotiations, but
eventually refused their demands. In January a group of 15.000 miners left
to Bucharest, but this time the police and other military forces blocked them.
Amazingly, the miners defeated them twice, using military strategies and
information about the movement of troops. Prime Minister Radu Vasile had
to meet their leaders and settled what was called the “Cozia Peace.” It was
a clear signal that the governing coalition was not in full control of the
armed forces and of the secret services. There were several news reports
claiming that, in fact, the miners had been manipulated. Coincidently or not,
Ion Iliescu and his allies were those who benefited from these journeys
every time. In any case, in a society in transition, with serious economic and
social problems, such actions, regardless of who benefited from them,
brought even more unrest.
It seemed that after 2000, a more peaceful period began for
Romania. Still, the economic crises that started in 2008 were doubled by an
arrogant way of governing. Therefore, a second type of protest developed:
mass demonstrations in front of governmental buildings. The first ones
started in 2012. Citizens were still dissatisfied with Traian Băsescu’s
economic measures, as well as with overall corruption and condescending
leadership styles, so social unrest broke out massively in Romania. In
50 Chapter 2
January, street protests started, fuelled by the decision to privatise some

parts of the health care system. An opponent of the proposal was Raed
Arafat, a physician of Palestinian origin, extremely popular in Romania for
having founded an emergency rescue service. Arafat and President Băsescu
waged a rhetorical battle, and mass demonstrations occurred in the large
cities. People were asking for the resignation of both the President and the
Prime Minister.43 Eventually, the latter took the blame and resigned. It was
the second Prime Minister that had resigned due to street protests in
Romania after 1989.
The next episode came in January 2017. After winning the
elections in 2016, the PSD-ALDE coalition proposed Sorin Grindeanu,
former minister in the Ponta Government and President of Timiș County
Council. While not being eligible for a governmental position, PSD leader
Liviu Dragnea was struggling to solve his legal issues. In less than three
weeks after receiving the confidence vote in the parliament, the Grindeanu
government issued an emergency ordinance which tried to regulate the
judicial area. Due to the fact that it was not included on the governmental
agenda, it clearly regulated judicial elements related to Liviu Dragnea’s
problems. Moreover, because it was adopted close to midnight, its
suspicious nature generated mass protests all over the country.44 Since
protesters acted under the #rezist label, they were dubbed “hashtags.” A few
days later, the government issued another ordinance, cancelling the first
one, but all these events had an important consequence: they set the pace of
politics in Romania for the coming years. On the one hand, while the PSD
43 https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/16/world/europe/romanians-protest-austerity-
measures.html
44 In one of the protest days, half a million citizens were on the streets;
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-38877370/romania-protesters-
demand-more
had some good economic projects, it created the impression that it was only
interested in changing judicial laws. On the other hand, an informal alliance
was created between President Iohannis, the opposition parties, and the civil
society. Afterwards, there were several other street protests in Romania, at
a smaller scale, but what they all proved was that the government was
unable to have discussions or negotiations with the protesters, to solve
matters in a peaceful way. In fact, these would draw attention to another
feature of the Romanian political system: the difficulties inherent in
attempts at consultation, negotiation, and compromise. These affect relations
not only between the government and citizens, but also between parties
within the same alliance.
Disregarding Parliament
While the most important political person seems to be the
president, the most powerful one is the Prime Minister. He or she controls
the government, all the ministers and the entire administration. This power
is even greater if the Prime Minister is also the leader of the governing party.
Due to this power, but also to the lack of organisation and projection typical
of all Romanian governments, a specific policy-making feature is to
legislate by emergency ordinances. Designed initially as a tool that could
offer a legal base for action in certain cases (earthquakes, floods),
emergency ordinances became the most convenient way to legislate without
Parliament.45 Around 100 ordinances are issued in all fields annually, even
where bills regulating an area may have already been discussed in
45 An emergency ordinance may only come into force after being submitted for
debate in an emergency procedure to the competent Chamber and after being

published in the Official Gazette of Romania (Constitution of Romania, Art 115,
para 5)
52 Chapter 2
Parliament.46 Due to this element, but also to the working style of the two
chambers, the general belief is that Parliament is rather useless. It is the last
institution in surveys testing trustworthiness (11% in 2019). For instance,
the European Parliament has a level of trust of almost 50%.47
The difficulty of working in an alliance or coalition

The creation of political alliances seems to be the best way to win
elections in Romania. Except for one situation, all other cases proved to be
successful. Moreover, in 2012, the USL won the legislative elections with
almost 70% of the votes. While being planned for both winning elections
and governing, these alliances work efficiently only for the first task.
Some episodes must be highlighted in order to have a better image
of this phenomenon. In 1992, the recently formed CDR won mayoral seats
in Bucharest and other large cities. Instead of using the winnings as a step
for the legislative elections, the PNL decided to leave the alliance. The
effect was that the alliance was weakened, but eventually the voters
tactically decided to go with the CDR, as the PNL did not pass the 3%
threshold. After the PNL returned to the CDR and won the 1996 elections,
the alliance worked somewhat better, but the liberals decided to leave again
in 2000 and soon the alliance collapsed. The same liberals formed a new
partnership with the PD in 2003. The trend was the same: the two parties
won the next year’s elections, but a conflict started a few months later. In
the end, the PD left the governmental coalition and the alliance was
dissolved. The last episode took place after 2012: having been set up in
2011, the USL won the legislative elections by 70%.
46http://www.cdep.ro/pls/legis/legis_pck.frame
47 https://www.inscop.ro/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Sondaj-INSCOP-martie-2019-
Institutii.pdf
Table 1. Electoral results in Romania, legislative elections, 2008-2016

2008 2012 2016
USL % - 58.6
S. - 273
PDL (PD, ARD,...) % 32.4 16.5
S. 115 56
PP-DD % - 14.0 -
S. - 47 -
UDMR % 6.2 5.1 6.2
S. 22 18 21
PMP % 5.4
S. - - 18
PSD (PDSR,...) % 33.1 USL 45.5
S. 114 (150) 154
PNL % 18.6 USL 20.0
S. 65 (100) 69
USR % - 8.9
S. - 30
ALDE % - - 5.6
S. - - 20
Others/Minorities % 6.5 4.5 8.4
S. 18 18 17
Total S. 334 412 329
Turnout % 39.2 41.8 39.8%
Source: http://www.parties-and-elections.eu/romania.html
When formed, the USL agreed to distribute the two important

positions to the leaders of the main parties, the PSD and the PNL. Thus,
Ponta became Prime Minister in 2012, and the alliance was supposed to
support Crin Antonescu as a presidential candidate. However, the PSD tried
to boost its influence during 2013 and to smoothly block the PNL. For
instance, in December 2013, it opposed the PNL’s nomination for the head
54 Chapter 2
of the national television, a powerful and symbolical position, even though

the audience of the network is rather small.48 In turn, the PNL rejected some
judicial bills, much needed for some of the PSD leaders with legal problems.
In February 2014, Crin Antonescu sarcastically declared that “it’s time [for
us] to join the government” and proposed the mayor of Sibiu, Klaus
Iohannis as deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Internal Affairs. The
social democrats rejected these claims and a few days later the PNL left the
governing coalition.49 Victor Ponta continued as Prime Minister, since the
UDMR had joined the governmental coalition and some liberals still
supported Ponta.50
Another similar pattern resides in the lack of cooperation inside
governmental coalitions. There may be several causes of these features, but
the simplest one is the presidentialisation of the political system. After the
2004 victory, the D.A. alliance and the coalition had some difficulties, due
to President Băsescu’s involvement in governmental matters. In 2009, the
two main parties, the PDL and the PSD, formed a coalition. This only
survived a few months, due to the fact that presidential elections were
approaching and both parties aimed to win them. After 2012, a similar
conflict started between the PSD and the PNL as they were facing the 2014
elections.
It worth mentioning a scene in which some parties played the role
of opposition-inside-the coalition. It first occurred in 1997, when the PD
48 https://www.mediafax.ro/cultura-media/rares-bogdan-isi-retrage-candidatura-de-
la-sefia-tvr-dupa-ce-in-parlament-nu-a-putut-fi-validat-11785056
49 http://stiri.tvr.ro/crin-antonescu-propunerile-pentru-noii-ministri-pnl-sunt-iohannis-
nicolaescu-atanasiu-si-busoi_40099_foto.html#view
50 A group of PNL members, headed by ex-Prime Minister Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu,
left in March 2014 and founded another party. A year later it merged with the
Conservative Party to create a new one, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats
Party or ALDE.
tried to become autonomous inside the coalition. At some point, the party
refused to attend government meetings. The CDR and President
Constantinescu were facing a dilemma: to eliminate the PD from the
coalition, even at the risk of early elections or to withdraw political support
for Ciorbea. The latter was the solution and in March 1998, Ciorbea
resigned, leaving the PNȚCD and founding a new party. Next was the Boc
Government in 2009. The coalition tried to work properly for a few months,
but the PSD took the role of opposition-inside-the-coalition later that year
(Radu 2015: 159).
Conclusions
Right after the 1989 revolution, the political system started to
transform itself by completely adopting the western model of a constitution
with rights and freedoms, by establishing political parties, and by organising
elections. Yet after decades of semifeudal regimes, of controlled elections
and totalitarianism, a genuine democratic culture could not fully develop.
Soon, it was clear that Romania aspired to be an electoral democracy, the
essential moments being the elections and government formation.
Coalitions worked with difficulty and parties did not fulfil their main
function, that of acting as connectors between the citizens and the
government.
Nevertheless, the system changed slowly. The days when miners
came to Bucharest to force the resignation of the Prime Minister are now
gone. Protests today are peaceful and rely heavily on social media. From a
historical point of view, the entire period from 1989 to today could be
divided into three periods. There were the Iliescu years, with a slow
transition and little progress regarding democratisation. The next period
would be the one during which Traian Băsescu was the president and the
56 Chapter 2
main trend setter. He consolidated the rule of law and the judicial system
became more and more independent, but his constant interference with
political parties and government decision making caused turbulence.51 This
was also the period in which Romania joined the European Union. The third
period could be called the new turn of Romanian politics. Thanks to the EU
membership (which also means that pressures will be exerted from time to
time, when the Commission considers that democracy is under threat), the
development of the civil society, the emergence of brand new parties and
the election of the more moderate Klaus Iohannis as president, the political
system is more mature and predictable even though it is far from having
reached stability and consolidation.
According to the Freedom House analysis regarding the state of
democracy in ex-communist countries, the level of democracy has remained
constant over the past decade (see Table 3).
It is also worth mentioning that Euroscepticism is not popular in
Romania. There are no Eurosceptic parties, only some voices that are
critical of the EU. Even though a Eurosceptic wave developed in CEE, it
had little effect on Romania’s politics. From a neutral observer’s view, it
seems that not much has changed in the political system after three decades
of democracy. At a closer look, it may be that today’s system is completely
different and has nothing in common with the one developed right after
1989.
51 Due to his leadership style, he was twice suspended by Parliament; he could only
stay in power after the dismissal referendums rejected Parliament’s proposal.

Table 3. Democracy score in Romania, 2007-2018
Year 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
Democracy 3.29 3.36 3.36 3.46 3.43 3.43 3.5 3.46 3.46 3.46 3.39 3.46
Score
Source: https://freedomhouse.org/report/nations-transit/2018/romania
58 Chapter 2
In terms of democratic consolidation, if we take into consideration

Merkel’s multilevel model, it appears that the first level, the
institutional/normative one is complete. Related to it, representative
consolidation is most advanced. Yet, in connection with the first level, there
are several situations where it is not institutions that are shaping the
behaviour of the elites, but the elites are trying to alter the norms. For
instance, local elites are quite influential. The so-called “local barons” can
force central institutions to bring some minor changes of laws, if needed.
There is a similar blurred connection between informal actors and level one
structures. While the institutions and norms are generally accepted, formal
and informal groups try to change them so as to fit their personal interests,
without necessarily contesting them openly.
Compared with the first decade after the fall of communism,
democracy in Romania has consolidated significantly. Still, as different
reports or analyses prove, democracy witnessed a stabilisation phase at
some point, which boiled down to stagnation or moderate consolidation. In
order to reach the objective of becoming a fully consolidated democracy, a
“defreezing” is needed, together with steps towards a more citizenship-
centred culture.
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CHAPTER 3
THE INCOMPLETE REGIONALISATION PROCESS

IN ROMANIA AND THE UNFULFILLED
POTENTIAL FOR ENHANCED GROWTH
CATALYST STRUCTURES -
A CRITICAL ANALYSIS
MIRCEA MANIU AND HORAȚIU DAN
Preliminaries
The early 2000 years witnessed a plethora of theoretical approaches

targeting the issue of regionalisation and regional development, consistent
with the tendency of interpreting space according to a paradigm that went
far beyond the strong national consistency of the Cold War era. The peculiar
case of Eastern Europe’s “return to Europe” following the events of 1989
triggered more questions than anywhere else in the world. This was due to
the variety and specificity of regionalisms, illustrating the history of the
territories involved. In most cases they worked as negative benchmarks for
entire European historical evolution. As Bukowski et al. (2003) observe,
globalisation, with its unconventional case named Europeanisation,
represents the driving force towards regional governance “from above.” On
the other hand, the accumulations in political culture, along both supra-
national and sub-national coordinates, the latter being understood as groups
The Incomplete Regionalisation Process in Romania and the Unfulfilled 63
that share specific values and norms and that are characterised by a distinct
identity, commitment, distinctness and a certain level of autonomy (Silasi
and Boldea, 2003), induce constraints “from below.” These authors believe
that any decent investigation in the area should follow at least three tracks:
institutions that can delineate the move, identity as the common-sense
ground of establishing a relevant meso-level governance system, and local
economy, seen as a basic unit of comparative and competitive advantage
within the new socio-economic juncture of the twenty-first century.
Following such a line of thought, we strongly believe that regional
de-centralisation remains today probably the most important feature of
political consistency yet to be accomplished in Romania, almost three
decades after the fall of the communist regime and more than a decade after
the country joined the EU. Moreover, if we thoroughly investigate the
territorial evolution of the country from a contemporary historical angle, we
should reach the conclusion that attempts to investigate the regional
dimension of growth and development could be retrieved from the very
inception of the modern Romanian state (Dan and Maniu, 2017). Indeed,
regardless of whether we focus on the interwar years of capitalist
consistence (1919 - 1939), on the Soviet-inspired years (1945 – 1965) or on
the period of national-communism (1966 – 1989), we can notice that
regional identity and cultural background played a significant role in
differentiating various areas of the country socially, economically and even
politically. Oddly, the historical mark of the Romanian regions was
highlighted by The Economist in an article explaining the vote pattern
during the latest electoral event (The Economist, 2018).
Focusing on the Romanian regionalisation process, it emerges that
regions belonging to empires of Western civilisation until the nineteenth
century, with stronger, more or less perennial institutions, are definitely
64 Chapter 3
liberal in a political sense and sensibly more developed economically, while

those incorporated in the Ottoman and Russian empires at that time have
fared much worse and show a higher propensity towards populism and
illiberal ways of acting. In this research we attempt to go beyond the existing
stereotypes, to identify and analyse the peculiarities of the Romanian
territorial developmental framework and, more importantly, to find out if its
diachronic evolution is consistent or not with the contemporary European
geo-political, social and economic realities. During an age when not only in
Europe but throughout the world, regions and metropolitan agglomerations
are becoming the paramount indicator of sustainable territorial development
within the contemporary post-industrial juncture (Browm, 2002), we are
firmly convinced that only a multidimensional research, with an adequate
field work of interdisciplinary consistence could provide us with an in-depth
understanding of the exact causes of both the observed central government’s
reluctance to proceed with the regionalisation process, and the most
appropriate patterns of regionalisation to be implemented.
The vantage point of our analysis is centred around the concept of
political decentralisation. In this spirit, we depart from the observations of
Mookherjee (2015), who, based on an extensive literature review, argues
that the agency issues affecting the governments of developing countries,
such as their impaired efficiency in the closing decades of the twentieth
century, were derived from earlier centralised development strategies that
had often failed to generate public policies that would be consistent with the
public interest. The fact that Romania largely completed, sometime in the
early years of the twenty-first century, the transition to an emerging
economy did not however bring an end to late twentieth-century administrative
inefficiency. Moreover, the present outlook seems to conserve, by sheer
political will, certain administrative features that definitely stem from the
feudal past of centuries ago and that are perpetuated by those in power for
their own benefit, whether they be pre-capitalist, capitalist, communist or
contemporary members of the Romanian political establishment (Caramitru,
2019).
Historical outset
Can we identify the main causes of what we believe to be a major
setback in the present-day outlook on the country’s territorial policy? This
policy has clearly engendered administrative stalemates or even a sort of
return to an over centralised past, with a biased, politically conservative
content – an outcome that could be labelled “neo-feudal.” The simplest
answer to this question would be that if one examines the main features of
the country’s administrative grid, its overall historical heritage, and its
cultural reverberations into the present, the political rationale behind the
status quo can be somewhat easily explained. But limiting the investigation
in such a manner would definitely blur the most striking angle of this issue,
namely the regional approach and the regionalisation process generally
occurring under the auspices of the EU. Though the situation of drawing EU
funds dedicated to regional development and cohesion would be a widely
observed track, always present in the media, for reasons we are trying to
uncover here, the EU patterned regional synchronism seems still far away
from the Romanian political landscape.
Having these coordinates in mind, we should state that geography
and history have played a completely different role in shaping the present-
day European framework. At least as regards its past legacy, Romania is
definitely marked by its historic geopolitical context. As Prevelakis (2001:
25-40; 41-54; 99-165) puts it, the Balkans as a whole (and it makes sense to
observe that Romania always contested the labelling of the entire country
66 Chapter 3
as a Balkan realm) are branded by “the tyranny of geography” and “the

burden of history.” These crushing liabilities are reflected, according to this
author, in a “less developed sense of territoriality.” A native of the place
would be much more strongly tied to a specific natural milieu that illustrates
his way of life than to a geographic location forged throughout history. If
the peculiarities of such a milieu could somehow be reproduced elsewhere,
migration, even mass migration, would happen even today if the prerequisites
for such a process were reached. It is obvious that under such a “feudal”
cultural pattern, the evolution of the idea of regional identity, seen through
a modern lens, was completely different here that in most West European
cases; hence, the need for a much deeper, multi-layered investigation of the
path towards this goal, in order to avoid social experiments of uncertain
finality. It is interesting to observe that some extend their assessments to
another European spaces of interest to us, thus including the non-Balkan
regions of Romania. Kundera, for instance, firmly states that “Central
Europe is a culture or a fate. Its frontiers are imaginary.” (Kundera, 1984:
33-38)
Maintaining a country into a past that is evidently not consistent
with modern democracy and efficient economy is not necessarily a typical
European phenomenon. In a series of articles dealing with the issue of
identity and how this cultural feature shapes the modern world, Fukuyama
explains how megalothymia or the desire to be perceived as superior in pre-
democratic societies, which are shaped by hierarchies, comes to collusion
with isothymia, namely the opposite feeling of being perceived just as good
as the rest of the society, even in developed societies as the American one
(Fukuyama, 2017). It is quite easy under such circumstances that a society
would slip back into a sort of “tribalism” while paradoxically craving for
more regional autonomy, mostly if not entirely for economic reasons. So,
from the start, the trend towards regionalisation seems to have been
negatively influenced. Sometimes it was demonised in less democratic
societies by the spectrum of polarisation and even disintegration, as
emphasis was laid on pre-national territorial frameworks for the sake of
more accelerated development. As noticed throughout Southeastern Europe,
here societies cannot implement successful reforms and modernise their
countries except by following established models, patterns that have proved
more or less viable elsewhere (Maniu, 2008). The fact that during the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the Romanian model was in fact
the French (over)centralised pattern plays a significant role in the present-
day outlook.
Indeed, dependency on a centre that formalised procedures for
every political, social, economic and even cultural aspect was the Romanian
pattern of French inspiration, even when the country was under the Soviet
sphere of influence. But this model stemmed from Enlightenment roots and
was predicated on national, regional and local development, the model
Romania adapted was meant to consolidate the central power and only to
delegate this central power to administrative units that were more or less
only “chains of transmission” of the directives emerging from the centre.
Interestingly, the process of less successful countries in Central and Eastern
Europe is also seen from this angle by Seidelmann (2014). The invoked
cases of Slovakia and Croatia were quite different in terms of geopolitics,
but they had the same kind of short- and long-term political setbacks in their
democratic evolution and they also experienced developmental delays when
benchmarking those countries to the Czech Republic or Slovakia. Going
further eastwards, the transition that was sometimes depicted as “Oblomov
style” in Russia inevitably led to forging a super-centralised state two
decades later.
68 Chapter 3
To a certain extent, as Neumann (2001) observes, this is a normal

outcome for societies that switched suddenly and somewhat unexpectedly
to democracy and a free market through a mimetic process of
“westernisation” that was not necessarily consistent with the historical
evolution of most of the countries in the region. Then again, how can we
explain the significant differences between these countries on overall
results, pace of development, state of democracy, civil society involvement
and corruption levels? For the case of Romania, we will acknowledge the
fact that modernisation in the industrial age occurred in three stages: the
reforms that were brought about by the establishment of the Kingdom of
Romania in the second half of the nineteenth century and lasted until the
Second World War, those of Soviet inspiration in the second half of the
twentieth century, and those linking the country to the EU from the last
decade of the twentieth century to the present. There is no doubt whatsoever,
in any of these three situations, that the impetus and driving forces of
progress were mainly exogenous, while the most significant impeding
factors were largely endogenously. It is precisely the consequence of this
type of dichotomy that we can notice when analysing the regionalisation
process in today’s Romania.
Nevertheless, admitting that exogenous factors outperform
endogenous ones in the regionalisation process, there is another angle that
really matters after a decade of EU membership. Do we see significant
progress in the process on convergence among the regions or, on the
contrary, has accession to the free market deepened the developmental gap
between regions? As Petrakos, Psykharis & Kallioras (2005) observed in
the case of the Balkan countries, not only market size, but distance,
infrastructural proximity, and agglomeration of available factors are in fact
the liabilities of all these countries when benchmarked to Western European
countries. A preliminary conclusion emerging from the study of regionalism

throughout Europe seems to indicate that small countries (assimilated to
single region ones) fared better, at least in the short run, namely during the
late 1990s and early 2000s, during the process of transition and immediate
post-transition. Obviously, these are exceptions that once more emphasise,
if necessary, the fact that larger countries such as Romania will inevitably
face a period of regional entropy before settling into a pattern that will allow
them to overcome the historical liabilities of the past (Maniu, 2011).
Exogenous regional benchmarks

In trying to identify the best procedural model in order to be able
to convey the message of “smooth” regionalisation, embedding those
economic, social, political, or other types of vectors that would allow the
country to step forward speedily and meanwhile efficiently in the salient
direction of regional welfare, but without jeopardising in any way cohesion
at country level, we can rely on a plethora of models. Following the leads
offered by UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, OECD’s sub-national
operational patterns and, last but not least, the EU’s regional policy main
tracks, we could find plenty of routines potentially applicable to the case of
Romania nowadays. To that end, we should take into consideration both de
facto and potential instruments of exercising territorial authority and
implementing policies that are sub-nationally shaped, without artificially
creating political and social counterproductive entropy. We believe that
Poland would make the best EU benchmark, for a number of reasons.
Evaluating the Polish approach as Ambroziak (2015) does, we could easily
outline the difficulty of choosing the best policies capable of toning down
political interests that raise ethical issues, while also keeping the main focus
on economic development. The most relevant aspect when we parallel the
70 Chapter 3
situation in these two countries would be indeed the political will and the
means to adopt in one case, or (indefinitely) postpone in the other, policies
that are equally positively perceived from a strictly professional perspective,
in both Poland and Romania.
At the turn of the century, before the series of crises that hit the
EU, the “Europe of regions” was perceived as the natural third level of
integration, logically following the Single European Market and the
European Monetary Union (Magone, 2003). Only such a move would allow
EU to compete with the other world clusters of development. However, a
new political rationale seemed necessary in order to achieve this, especially
as regards the new members. First and foremost would be the procedural
steps taken to “loosen” governmental grip on the regional economy and
“strengthen” the movement towards governance. By investigating how this
issue was tackled in Western Europe, we can observe that central
governments played a crucial role in “defining the problem” in economic
terms that had different national significances. Equal development
opportunities for the case of Germany, local community progress in Ireland
or the creation of conditions for necessary economic growth in UK – these
would be the watchwords of those policies, which were all valid
contextually. When it comes to affirmative action in order to push
regionalisation, there are two prerequisite conditions: sub-national boards
or other relevant decision-making bodies, and community involvement in
the process, aggregated on voluntary basis (Adshead, 2002).
The UN Sustainable Development Goals, issued in 2015, laid
specific emphasis on the role of regions and metropolitan agglomerations
throughout the world. It also revealed that during the last decade the most
developed countries had demonstrated that an approach of subsidiary
consistency paid off and that the providential state, able to cover all the
issues of a modern society, had more or less vanished (OECD, 2018). This
reality is even more present within the EU context and the progress of
European countries that focused on policies supporting regions and
development clusters was rewarding indeed (OECD, 2018). A certain kind
of progress could be noticed also in the case of Romania, as the European
Commission ascertains (European Commission, 2018). Though the
Romanian regional approach was a process politically designed not as a
natural macro-phenomenon meant to lower all the costs of transactions, but
mainly as a vehicle meant to absorb NUTS II dedicated funds, gradually the
perception of the causes of ineffective absorption rates triggered various
alarm signals. The most prominent was the fact that civil society had
become more and more aware of the importance and consequences of
having in place a true regional policy or just mimicking it.
Following the fall of the communist regime in Romania, and
throughout the transition period (1990-2006), the country was utterly
dependent on foreign investments for its development. In most cases both
investments coming from private sources and public ones were subject to
controversies regarding the strategic issue of the domestic vs foreign nature
of property. Nevertheless, the phase of quasi-autarchy that was specific to
the Romanian economy of the late 1980s was over. Even more importantly,
the mentality that such a situation was breeding had started to vanish.
Moreover, pre-accession funds of all sorts, educational schemes, the general
opening of the country, along with the freedom of travel induced a degree
of cosmopolitanism that had never been previously noticed in the history of
the country. This gradually induced a change in the (traditionally
conservative) public mood about regional issues. While the inception of
transition was illustrated by an “ethnically” flavoured attempt to approach
this issue, an attempt that triggered a strong general anti-regionalisation
72 Chapter 3
sentiment, the 2000s were the moment when common people had reached
the right level of knowledge in order to understand the economic rationale
and the necessity of positioning the country alongside the other EU states
on this matter.
It is a fact that regional policy was a tool of financial solidarity and
convergence through the reallocation of European funds in the late 1950s,
but we have to face it: as much as the economic and social reasons, or, more
recently, the environmental ones, induced a specific rationale, political
arguments were in most cases neutral if not downright counterproductive.
True, the diversity of historical backgrounds, or the different scales of
institutionalism vary not only between countries, but also within the
regional framework of many countries. There is probably no other more
difficult task for a government than that of successfully implementing
governance procedures at less than national level. Governance implies
disseminating both rights and responsibilities among stakeholders. It
consequently entails “loosening” the grip of a central government over the
economy and society. Obviously, this appears to be an almost insurmountable
challenge when facing societies with deeply rooted traditions and identities
that appear nowadays as dissonant compared to the main European trends.
The “act local” approach and further strategic inferences

Our undertaking would not make a lot of sense without inserting
an evaluation of the actions designed to overcome the situation. Is there a
perennial relevance and true social value in several “bottom-up initiatives,”
as Clement (2000) brands them, of regionalisation, in sui generis pursuits
toward a more efficient regionalisation of several local administrations of
the historical province of Transylvania? Or are they just political statements
with no further consequences? After all there are plenty of observed
unconventional ways of moving forward if there is enough political critical

mass. Keating et al. (2003) mention, studying eight European regions, that
culture and specific institutions have developed various approaches to the
process of modernisation through time. However, as they observe, territorial
economic management of the kind we are focusing on could be traced back
only to the period following the Second World War, due to the fact that the
process occurred quasi simultaneously in many countries, ensuring the
benchmarking value of the comparison. Several of the available sources
indicate that the involvement of various kinds of regional actors as
responsible stakeholders is a must and, in most cases, makes sense
(Christopoulos, 2001). That would be probably the main reasons why we
can even understand that a “new regionalism,” as Herrschel and Newman
(2002) label it, is emerging at the outset of the twenty-first century and that
both regional heterogeneity and the homogeneity of regions should be
reinterpreted from this new perspective. This is also our point in the
following lines.
According to Woetzel et al (2018), a smart city (or urban
agglomeration, depending on local legal definitions and status) uses data
and appropriate technology in order to make the best strategic decision in at
least the following areas: mobility, security, healthcare, energy, water,
waste, economic development, housing and community matters. Time
saved when commuting, less crime, especially petty crime, the avoidance of
major disease burdens, decent energy- and water-saving housing or even
long term projections concerning the best development opportunities that
should be backed by local administrators, are tasks that cannot be
accomplished efficiently but through a plethora of means, financial, human
or logistics that often exceed the possibilities of communities, even though
they are fully aware of the consequence of not keeping the pace. To a large
74 Chapter 3
respect this would be the situation of the urban area of Cluj, a metropolitan
zone of about half a million people, a strong cluster of IT and significant
value added services such as healthcare and higher education. During the
last decade, after Romania joined the EU in 2007, such clusters of
development could be spotted throughout Romania (Bako and Varvari,
2010) and their speedy growth practically changed a territorial frame of
development that spontaneously emerged following 1989 (Trăistaru and
Păuna, 2003).
What we must observe here is the spontaneity of the evolution of
the clustering process in the 2000s, a movement that came as a natural
counterpart of the de-urbanisation of the 1990s, following the rapid decline
of the industrial base of the country. But the peculiarity of the cluster
emerging in Cluj refers to the fact that failing to take advantage of the wave
of industrial foreign direct investment that fuelled other major urban
agglomerations of Romania in the 2000s (Bucharest, Timișoara, Brașov),
the development occurred on a dual pattern: on the one hand, in keeping
with historical features, local identity implied (healthcare and higher
education) as it happened in most EU countries during those years (Tudela
Aranda and Köllnig, 2015) and, on the other hand, on the profitable but also
fashionable new field of IT, which was a sort of gamble of the local business
community in the absence of the proper governmental support. It is
precisely this kind of “doing yourself’ spirit that, along with favourable
social circumstances, allowed Cluj to take off in more than an economic
sense. This further enhanced the feeling of belonging to a territorial entity
that is different from other territorial entities of the country, in the good
sense of the word. Bottom line, Cluj became a natural cluster grounded on
its proto-cluster assets and definitely not an induced cluster of the sort
public policies are forging, in most cases through massive investment. To
what extent is this experience a benchmark for today’s regionalisation

process in Romania?
Referring to the strategic inference layer of our paper, we will
introduce a blunt statement: regionalism is very much a matter of identity,
an outcome of centuries of cultural practices leading to a specific
civilisation. But just as Schimmelfennig (2001) claims, post-national
inclusion of the kind the European Union is built upon (supra-nationalism)
is grounded mainly on liberal identity, which is non-exclusive in content
and permissive in format. We believe that today Romania is facing the
challenge of allowing or not this kind of flexibility, at sub-national level, for
benefits that might seem unclear on the tactical horizon, a horizon that is
full of liabilities, but also definite long-term assets.
This discussion comes in the context in which the national state is
losing its ground to the supranational area (Păun and Corpădean, 2015).
Romania exhibits a relatively high degree of centralisation and is governed
based on a regional structure that, underneath the NUTS II umbrella (which
implies no legal capacity and mainly serves as an instrument to absorb
funding), is like the one put in place in 1968, at the climax of communism.
Although the regionalisation debate has been present in the Romanian
socio-political environment of the last decades, it has failed to advance
beyond a declarative level and periods of vivid planning have always been
followed by periods of ignorance, thus reconfirming the status quo. The first
such debate from the post EU-accession era was launched by the main
Hungarian minority party (UDMR) but was quickly discarded in the
political and civil spheres because the proposed structure was grounded on
ethnic criteria and not on economic and social premises. Later, the theme
was approached by the Boc Government (centre-right) in 2011, but no
government bill was drafted until 2013, when the Ponta Government
76 Chapter 3
(centre-left) proposed a bill that would define eight regions (including a

geographically smaller one created around Bucharest) based on the structure
of the existing NUTS II framework.
More recently, several local authorities, mainly in the western part
of Romania, have pushed more for regionalisation. They have made
statements demanding that the current county structure should be discarded
and that they should merge into several regions. They have also argued for
a reduction of the number of city halls by at least one third, arguing that
individual strategies developed by small local public administrators are
uncorrelated and a source of inefficiency, as proposed by Emil Boc,
Romania’s former Prime Minister, current mayor of Cluj-Napoca and a
brave champion of the idea of regionalisation, according to a media outlet
citing him (Poenaru, 2018). It is relevant to say that the promoters of this
administrative bottom-up approach have been unofficially welcomed by
several EU representatives, who have assessed its developmental potential,
while heavily criticising the “unlawful” move made by the present-day
Romanian government.
One of the main issues with these attempts is that none of them
seems to be based on extensive studies covering economic, social and
cultural aspects regarding the optimal outline of the new regions. Instead,
they seem to be driven by political criteria and sometimes by the
government’s attempt to gain electoral advantages (Dragoman and
Gheorghiţă, 2016). Consequently, we feel that the debate should be based
on the findings of vast research undertaken both by government institutions
and by external bodies such as universities or think tanks, which have yet to
produce comprehensive analyses. However, isolated studies have
contributed to a still frail body of research by arguing that functional
relations at the level of the settlement system must be at the centre of the
regionalisation model (Săgeată, 2015). Other studies highlight that elements

like the road infrastructure (Lie, Dumitrescu and Michaels, 2018) and the
educational system (Lie, Niculae, Dumitrescu and Dobrescu, 2016) should
not be used in order to decide on the composition of the new regions due to
their interregional homogeneity.
An element of great importance to any present analysis on the state
of the regionalisation process is the General Decentralisation Strategy
(GDS), which was adopted by the Romanian Government in 2017. It is
aimed at increasing administrative efficiency by transferring new
competencies towards the local public administration, and thus strengthening
subsidiarity, in eight fields: agriculture, culture, tourism, environment,
health, education and youth/sport. However, what is ensuing from the
document is the clear statement that the only competencies that are to be
transferred to the local level are strictly concerning the implementation of
national policies and strategies, together with the regulations in force at
local level (with the local authorities responding directly to the relevant
ministry for the way in which they exert these competencies), meaning that
the GDS cannot be interpreted as a tool promoting regionalisation, but quite
on the contrary: by explicitly limiting the transfer of competencies to the
implementation phase, it signals the reluctance of the government in this
respect.
This is confirmed by the fact that the last (and only) document on
the regionalisation topic uploaded in the press section of the official website
of the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Administration is
dated 14 November 2013. It regards the approval by the government of a
decentralisation bill that, more than five years later, has failed to produce
any effects, not even advancement along the legislative chain. Moreover,
the same website refers only (in vague terms) to the governing program for
78 Chapter 3
the 2013-2016 period. The fact that the information has not been updated in
such a long period clearly signals the lack of institutional interest in the
subject.
This perspective on regionalisation failed to propel the subject on
the current political agenda at a national level but has laid down the premises
for local initiatives that would mimic certain regionalisation features in the
context of a national legislation that has centralisation at its core. The first
such initiative, known as the Alliance of the West (AVE), was created in
December 2018. It is based on a protocol between four major Transylvanian
cities (Cluj-Napoca, Oradea, Timișoara and Arad), with economic and
social objectives, the most important concerning the development of
regional infrastructure projects that are to connect the four cities. Although
the exact instruments that are to be used to meet AVE’s objectives are still
unclear, the protocol is a first step towards devising a framework that could
partially mitigate some of the inefficiencies of the current administration.
Moreover, the creation of AVE could be seen as congruent with the
asymmetric decentralisation debate, based not on ethnic and cultural
criteria, as would be the plea of the main Hungarian-minority political party,
but on a socio-economic foundation, as asymmetric decentralisation seems
a valid solution for countries exhibiting high differences in terms of the
administrative capacity of local government units (Neamțu, 2016). This view
is consistent with the principle of considering the relevant spatial unit of
analysis by referring to similar local conditions for business development
rather than by resorting to common macroeconomic constraints (Cojanu and
Robu, 2019). This being said, we argue that even in the absence of such a
set-up, the creation of regional administrative alliances would constitute an
approach that, even in the absence of a top-down decentralisation process,
would be, at least partially, a consistent approach with the prescription to
perform decentralisation on the basis of competition between local governments

and thus limiting the scope of corruption and rent-seeking activities of
government officials (Mookherjee, 2015), with possible positive impacts on
the implementation of policies aimed at safeguarding the rule of law, a
phenomenon with a high degree of dependence on specific contexts
(Dimitrov, 2016).
As stated in the introductory remarks and discernible in this paper,
a central element of our analysis is represented by the considerations of
(Mookherjee, 2015). Based on an extensive literature review, Mookherjee
(2015) notes that the agency issues within governments of developing
countries that impaired efficiency in the closing decades of the twentieth
century are a consequence of earlier centralised development strategies that
often failed to generate public policies that were consistent with the public
interest. One solution would be performing decentralisation on the basis of
competition between different local governments, with the predicted
outcome of limiting the scope of corruption and rent-seeking (Mookherjee,
2015). On the other hand, one might argue that this type of decentralisation
would be difficult to perform without the full engagement of the central
authorities, whose officials might be exactly those benefiting the most from
the centralised setup, especially if the centralised administrative configuration
is doubled by a high degree of de facto centralisation, either formal or
informal, within the governance structure of political parties, thus strengthening
the control exerted by the political elites, a situation that partially bypasses
one of the pillars of democracy, namely that of political representation.
Conclusion
Regionalisation continues to be a hot topic in Romania, despite the
political apathy regarding the subject. It represents an endeavour that seems
80 Chapter 3
to be supported by citizen sentiments, as a higher level of trust in local is

exhibited than in central authorities (Țâra, 2016). In this context, although
the extent of the de facto decentralisation often deviates from what is
prescribed de jure (Mookherjee, 2015), regional alliances like AVE, as
previously described in this article, could lay down the premises of higher
administrative efficiency on a local level even in the absence of explicit
legal provisions aimed at genuinely enforcing the subsidiarity principle and
at ensuring the transfer of governance competencies (including
competencies pertaining to the legislative and fiscal spheres) from the
central to the local level.
As the delivery of regional public goods (Arce, 2002) becomes
more and more relevant for international comparisons and the assessment
of the quality of life is increasingly referring to its regional dimension,
ignoring the issue is counterproductive. Struggling to keep the situation
bound within a pattern of feudal extraction is a wrong policy, disconnected
from the main European trends. True, the latest illiberal tendencies that are
to be observed in the EU, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, might
be proof of consistency for the supporters of the status quo, but they should
nevertheless be challenged by an educated civil society with every available
means.
Summing up the assets and liabilities of such an approach, we may
state that it would take a significant step towards gradually generating
critical mass among the involved stakeholders. It would thus enhance the
synergy of the potential players of this process and also speed up the
Government’s legislative initiatives of this kind. In his comprehensive
Historical Analysis in Economics, Snooks (1993) claims that the role history
plays in economics, often interpreted as a dichotomy, is also due to the
progress of social sciences in general, and of economics in particular – the
most Cartesian among them. This view does but enhance, from a historical
perspective, a reality that has been so well illustrated by Weber (1978) from
a sociological perspective. The ideas of this profound analyst of the ways in
which various form of authority dominate economic life can, unfortunately,
be easily recognised as the causes of the present-day stalemate of the
regionalisation process in our country.
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CHAPTER 4
THE ROMANIAN MODEL

OF DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT -
PROSPECTS AND ACHIEVEMENTS
LEVENTE SALAT
Introduction
The Romanian minority regime attracted almost two decades of

considerable scholarly attention in the past. Addressing the needs of less
than 10% of the country’s population, the vast bulk of policy measures has
been often appreciated as a unique and rather successful model of diversity
management. The roots of the arrangement go back to the founding
agreements of the new political settlement established after the fall of the
Communist regime, which accepted the swiftly emerging political
organisation of the Hungarian minority as one of the political actors
participating in the new system’s design,52 in parallel with providing
52The participation of representatives of the Hungarian minority in the early phase

of the post-communist transition was mostly symbolical, yet it reflected the fact that
key representatives of the political elite which grabbed the power after the fall of the
Ceaușescu regime considered the swiftly emerging, effectively managed political
organization of the Hungarian minority an actor which cannot be ignored in the new
context. Starting with January 1990, the first post-Communist Government of the
country included already representatives of the Hungarian minority in the cultural
and educational ministries, as deputy-minister and state secretaries. After the first
88 Chapter 4
reserved seats in Parliament for small minorities, meant to counterbalance

the influence of the Hungarian minority. The initial provisions securing
political participation for ethnically defined constituencies, on both the
national and local level, were substantiated with further important elements
of the minority regime in the context of the country’s accession to the
Council of Europe (1993), and later to the Euro-Atlantic structures. In the
same context of accession, special attention started to be paid to the situation
and needs of the country’s sizable Roma community.
The Romanian model of diversity management consists in formal
arrangements, on the one hand, and informal practices, on the other. The
formal part includes a vast body of legislation with provisions for national
minorities, public institutions in charge with diversity management, funding
mechanisms and state subsidies for national minorities, and policies
addressing special cases/situations. Occasional minority participation in the
government, ad hoc agreements for parliamentary support provided by
minority representatives to governing coalitions and bargains for resource
allocation are informal practices which represent an important complementary
element of the Romanian minority regime (Salat and Novák 2015).
multiparty elections in May 1990, from which the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians
in Romania (DAHR) emerged as the second largest political organization
represented in the Parliament (with 7,20% share of the seats resulting from over 1
million votes earned) the Hungarians received important positions in key
commissions, including the one in charge with drafting the new Constitution. The
DAHR representatives in this Commission failed to achieve major targets (like
suggesting alternatives to defining Romania as an “unitary and indivisible National
State”), yet, managed to block an initiative which aimed at forbidding parties
organized along ethnic or linguistic lines. This success proved crucial for securing
the presence of political organizations claiming to represent the interest of minorities
in the Legislature, local politics and, occasionally, in the Executive. Many of the
policy measures in the various fields of minority protection adopted subsequently
would have been impossible without this presence. The author thanks Zsuzsa Csergő
for recommending clarifications in this regard, as well as for further useful comments.
The Romanian Model of Diversity Management – 89
Prospects and Achievements
The complex arrangements which encompass the Romanian model

of diversity management have brought important benefits both for the
country, and for the national minorities themselves. Romanian authorities
have been successful in achieving and maintaining a broad international
approval for their treatment of national minorities which has eased the
country’s accession to the NATO (2004) and the EU (2007). National
minority communities interested in cultural survival received recognition
and important support from the Romanian state, in legal, institutional, and
financial terms, which enhanced, broadly speaking, their chance of success
in seeking survival. However, the past couple of years have brought to the
fore shortages and unintended consequences of the arrangements, especially
as far as the two largest minority communities, Hungarians and the Roma
are concerned.
In the official discourse of the Romanian authorities the Romanian
model is often depicted as one of the most complex and far-reaching in
Europe. In terms of complexity, the model is outstanding, indeed,
encompassing a large number of provisions and institutional arrangements
which are rather unique in a comparative perspective. Compared to other
European models of diversity management,53 however, the Romanian way
53 Though a widely accepted typology is not available in the academic literature, the
following types of minority regimes may be identified in Europe: (1) territorial
arrangements which include (1.1.) territorial autonomies like the ones in Spain, Italy,
Finland and others; (1.2.) devolution in the UK; (1.3.) cantonal arrangements in
Switzerland and Bosnia-Herzegovina; (2) non-territorial autonomies in Denmark,
Germany, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Serbia, Hungary, Croatia, etc.; (3)
power-sharing with both, territorial and non-territorial elements in Belgium, UK,
Italy, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia; (4) language policy regimes in
Switzerland, Spain and Finland. Though religion is an important aspect of
ethnocultural diversity, and there is plenty of legislation in Europe referring to the
situation of non-dominant churches in the various countries, this dimension is rarely
tackled in the literature on minority regimes.
90 Chapter 4
of dealing with the political consequences of diversity embodies several

contradictions which require scrutiny.
This paper aims to offer a comprehensive, albeit brief account of
the Romanian model of diversity management, building on the vast
literature available to date. Complementary to the predominantly sectorial
approach which characterises the majority of the analyses published so far,
the paper argues that the Romanian model of diversity management
encompasses most of the pivotal features of a full-fledged minority regime
and yet fails to deliver as a genuine one.
After clarifying the conceptual framework, I will describe the
Romanian model of diversity management, highlighting those ingredients
which qualify this model, in principle, at least, as a minority regime. The
assessment of the regime’s impact will focus on the three categories of the
targeted minority populations: the Hungarian minority, the Roma
communities and the group of the small minorities. A critical analysis of the
Romanian model will allow me to identify those aspects that undermine its
effectiveness in minority accommodation. The analysis will identify the
missing link between an increasingly accommodative legislative and policy
framework and its often ineffective and contradictory results. The paper
concludes with brief policy recommendations.
Conceptual framework: The minority regime

The minority regime concept emerged from within the literature
on forms of cooperation in international relations, under the influence of
Stephen D. Krasner’s work on international regimes. In a research report
assessing the effectiveness of the mandate of the OSCE High Commissioner
on National Minorities, Wolfgang Zellner deploys the conceptual framework
of regime analysis, scrutinising what he calls the “OSCE minority regime.”
The OSCE minority regime is in his view “a multi-layered structure that has
developed incrementally” (1999: 8), incorporating gradually normative and
instrumental elements. The normative elements are provisions of international
law, the instrumental layer embodies implementation meetings, options for
sanctions or incentives, missions, etc.
Will Kymlicka observed, too, an increased convergence of shared
norms and standards leading to “considerable inter-organisational
cooperation on minority rights which amounts to an international regime on
minority rights” (2007: 197). William Kurt Barth defines the ‘minority
regime’ as “various international treaties, conventions, and declarations that
establish standards for the recognition of minority groups” (2008: 3-4). He
mentions the ‘UN minority regime’, which encourages, in his view,
tolerance by the nation-state, providing correctives for its radical excesses,
yet “self-determination lies beyond the scope of protecting minority
identity” (2018: 12). For David J. Galbreath and Joanne McEvoy the
institutions, mechanisms and norms within the Council of Europe, the EU and
the OSCE “constitute the European Minority Rights Regime” (2012: ix).
Building on Peter M. Haas (1992), Galbreath and McEnvoy
suggest that the positive regime consequences are largely due to the
cooperation among the European organisations which has empowered a
network of experts who constitute an “epistemic community”54 in minority
rights. In addition to the four defining elements of an epistemic community
54 “An epistemic community is a network of professionals with recognized expertise
and competence in a particular domain and an authoritative claim to policy-relevant

knowledge in that domain or issue-area. Although an epistemic community may
consist of professionals from a variety of discipline and backgrounds, they have (1)
a shared set of normative and principled beliefs (…); (2) shared causal beliefs (…);
(3) shared notions of validity (…); and (4) a common policy enterprise (…).” Haas:
“Introduction: Epistemic Communities…”, 3.
92 Chapter 4
listed by Haas, Galbreath and McEnvoy (2013) emphasise the importance

of a ‘consensual knowledge base’ and the fact that experts build their policy
recommendations on a shared set of norms which is critical for an epistemic
community to be able to cooperate in a contested policy area. The positive
impact of the epistemic community in minority rights is evident in their
view in standard setting, standard implementation, and standard expansion.
The concept of minority regime is often mentioned in domestic
contexts, too, with reference to state responses to the challenge of ethnic
diversity. The regimes of this kind emerge usually as the outcome of two
complementary developments: the dynamics of minority claim-making and
majority responses, on the one hand, and the diffusion of international
minority regimes, on the other hand. Pål Kolstø (2001), for instance,
discusses territorial autonomy as a ‘minority regime’ in post-Communist
countries which follows from the Soviet legacy. In his view, territorial
autonomy has been high on the agenda of post-Soviet national minorities
since this was the only kind of minority regime the elites of national
minorities have directly experienced in the Soviet Union, established in
1922 as a federal state. Ahmet Içduygu and B. Ali Soner (2006) provide an
analysis of the Turkish minority rights regime, highlighting its deep roots in
the Ottoman millet system. W. K. Barth analyses the diffusion of the UN
minority regime into Canada’s domestic regime on indigenous Aboriginal
groups (2008: 101-154).
For Bernd Rechel, the nature and content of minority regimes –
“policies that accommodate diversity and grant members of minorities
certain rights” (2009: 8) – are, in general, the outcome of the complex
interplay of international and domestic factors. The role of the international
factors does not confine, in his view, to the diffusion of the international
minority regimes (UN, OSCE, CoE, EP), but include the impact of the
various international organisations which may have different leverage in

different countries, kin-states, bilateral agreements, and the socially
constructed perceptions of certain kin-states or the minority groups
themselves which may hinder or foster the adoption of more favourable
policies for the respective minorities. The domestic factors include
historical legacies, path dependencies with respect to models of transition,
preferred patterns of state- and nation-building, domestic political constellation,
state capacity, public attitudes towards minority groups and minority rights,
political actors representing national minorities and the claim-making
strategies of those actors, and certain features of the minorities themselves
like size, status, political leverage, and minority rights demands. In other
words, the impact of international factors does not translate directly and
identically into policy regime outputs, the process of standard diffusion
being filtered by domestic actors and circumstances. Due to the interplay of
the several categories of determinants which may play a role in shaping
minority regimes in the domestic context, the ‘quadric nexus’ suggested by
David J. Smith (2002, 2020) proves to be an explanatory framework with
important heuristic power in the context of minority regimes, too.
An important distinction between minority policy regimes and
minority policy paradigms is suggested by Bíró and Pallai (2011). The
former term refers in their view to “patchwork(s) of policies which have
evolved historically, are often inconsistent, and are aimed at balancing state
and minority interests which change continually” (Bíró and Pallai 2011: 3).
Minority policy paradigms are, by contrast, conceptual schemata –
“interpretative structures based on internally consistent set of choices” –
which may be abstracted from the complexities of the real world and used
for scrutinising minority policy regimes, by identifying inconsistencies and
94 Chapter 4
enhancing effectiveness.55
Building on the above, the concept of minority regime will be used
in what follows in the sense of specific, more complex models of diversity
management encompassing legal provisions, institutional components and
ad hoc practices based on a common understanding of the scope and
rationale of the arrangement, shared by all interested parties: state
authorities, the public opinion of the dominant majority and the targeted
minorities. Full-fledged minority regimes require, in addition to the
normative and instrumental dimensions of the arrangement resulting from
the interplay of domestic and international determinants, unabated
discursive and deliberative performance. This is meant to ensure that all
interested and/or affected parties form an ‘epistemic community’ capable of
maintaining a consensual knowledge base regarding the minority policy
paradigm which underpins the prevailing arrangement. The indicators of
success of an authentic an effective minority regime are consolidated and
sustainable relations between the state and non-dominant minorities, on the
one hand, and between the targeted minorities and the dominant majority,
on the other hand.
55 Bíró and Pallai describe three types of minority policy paradigms: (1) the
integrationist, (2) political accommodationist and (3) constitutional accommodationist

policy paradigms. The integrationist policy paradigm targets homogenization in the
public domain, restricting ethnocultural diversity to the private spheres of life, seen
as being protected by norms of individual human rights. For the political
accommodationist paradigm public homogeneity remains an important target, yet
the acceptance of ethnic minority actors in the public life may happen occasionally,
under external pressure, or as a result of the dynamics of power relations between
the majority and minority. The distinctive feature of the constitutional accommodationist
paradigm is that it institutionalizes ethnocultural identity in the public domain, and
the structure of the state reflects diversity, according to provisions in the constitution
(Bíró and Pallai 2011: 15-20).
I will try to demonstrate below that the Romanian model of

diversity management qualifies, in principle, for being considered a full-
fledged minority regime, and yet, it delivers as a patchwork of inconsistent
policy measures, failing to provide the bases of consolidated and sustainable
majority-minority relationships. The missing link seems to be the minority
policy paradigm reuniting all involved actors in a genuine ‘epistemic
community’ of agents sharing values, norms, and objectives.
The Romanian model of diversity management

The general target of the Romanian model of dealing with the
challenge of ethnocultural diversity is represented by the 23 minority groups
officially recognised in the census, amounting to roughly 10% of the
country’s population. The 23 ethnic groups are different in size.56 This
56 In the last two, the 2002 and 2011 censuses the following results were recorded:
Nationality Census
2002 2011
Total population: Total Population:
22.628.665 20.121.641
Romanian 19.399.597 16.792.868
Hungarian 1.434.377 1.227.623
Roma 535.250 621.573
Ukrainians 61.353 50.920
German 60.088 36.042
Russian-Lipovans 36.397 23.487
Turks 32.596 27.698
Tatars 24.137 20.282
Serbians 22.518 18.076
Slovaks 17.199 13.654
Bulgarians 8025 7336
Croats 6786 5408
Greeks 6513 3668
Jews 5870 3271
Czechs 3938 2477
Poles 3671 2543
96 Chapter 4
triggers at least three distinct types of challenges for the Romanian state.
According to the official data, the largest national minority are the
Hungarians, who are well organised and represented politically. An important
part of the Romanian model of diversity management is the outcome of state
responses to their claim-making and political activity. While the policy
measures aimed at accommodating the Hungarian minority stand out both in
size and complexity, they fall short of the target group’s expectations.
The Roma community is the second largest according to the census
data, yet estimations based on hetero identification suggest that their real
number is significantly larger.57 Their interests are less efficiently represented,
due mainly to the deep internal division within the community, manifest in
dominant way of life, social status, and standard of living, which puts a
serious burden on the Romanian state and impairs the effectiveness of
policy measures aiming to improve their condition.
Italians 3331 3203

Chinese 2243 2017
Armenians 1780 1361
Csangos 1266 1536
Slav-Macedonians 695 1264
Albanians 447 no data in 2011
Ruthenians 257 no data in 2011
Slovenians 175 no data in 2011
The total number of Romanian citizens who declared national minority identity was
2.268.033 in 2002 and 2.073.439 in 2011. In the last census (2011), 18.524 persons
declared other identities than the recognized 24, and 1.236.810 citizens did not
declare any identity, which triggered critiques regarding the way the issue of the
right to identity, guaranteed in the Constitution, has been handled by the authorities
during the census.
57 The most reliable estimate is provided, most probably, by the SocioRoMap of
ISPMN: 1.215.846 (Ancheta experților locali privind comunitățile și grupările

compacte de romi din România, p. 5 available at
https://ispmn.gov.ro/uploads/04%20SocioRoMap%20brosura%20Ancheta%20%2
0%20%20expertilor%20-%2009.pdf, accessed on May 20, 2021).
The other minorities which constitute smaller sized communities

are targeted with policy measure which often exceed their needs and
expectations. This dimension of the Romanian model of diversity
management is used by state authorities in attempts to balance the failures
of Roma inclusion and the dissatisfaction of the Hungarian minority.
Though the Romanian minority regime has been widely discussed
in the literature, the comprehensive approaches are relatively rare (Horváth
and Scacco 2001; Csergő 2002; Dobre 2003; Salat 2008; Ram 2009;
Székely and Horváth 2014). Most of the works dedicated to the issue
address particular aspects of the regime, like the relationships between the
Romanian majority and the Hungarian minority (Csergő 2002; Medianu
2002; Mihăilescu 2008; Culic 2016; Kiss 2018). Within this focus on the
Romanian–Hungarian dimension of the Romanian minority regime, several
works explore, most often in a comparative perspective, the success of
ethnic mobilisation (Stroschein 2001 and 2012; Gherghina, and Jiglau 2011;
Kiss and Székely 2016; Csergő and Regelmann 2017; Kiss 2019), the
linguistic dimensions of the Romanian model of diversity management
(Csergő 2007; Horváth and Toró 2018), strategies of minority claim-making
and majority responses (Medianu 2002; Jenne 2007; Mihăilescu 2008;
Andriescu and Gherghina 2013; Kiss, Toró, and Székely 2018), etc.
The Roma dimension of the Romanian minority regime is
addressed, on the one hand, in the academic literature, in more comprehensive
analyses (Fosztó and Anastăsoaie 2001; Buhuceanu 2002; Ionescu and Cace
2006; Crețan and Turnock 2008; Filipescu 2009; Preoteasa, Cace, and
Duminică 2009; Ionescu, and Stanescu 2014), and in sectorial approaches,
often in research-based advocacy reports issued by intergovernmental
organisations or international non-governmental organisations, on the other
hand. Among the sectorial accounts, several publications provide broad
98 Chapter 4
mappings of the Roma situation (Berevoescu et al. 2002; Zamfir and Preda
2002; Sandu 2005; Horváth 2017), address the inclusion-exclusion
dynamics (Raț 2005; Cace 2007; Fleck and Rughinis 2008; Vincze et al.
2019), discuss the Roma access to education (Cosma et al. 2000; Sarău
2002; Grigore et al. 2009; Walker 2009), access to health-care services
(Cace, and Vlădescu 2004; Bleahu 2006; Schneeweis 2011), political
participation (Bleahu 2005; Mișcoiu 2006), the situation of Roma women
(Gheorghiu, and Butler 2011; Neaga 2016; Gamella 2018), migration (Nacu
2011; Toma, and Fosztó 2018; Matras, and Leggio 2018), etc.
The special treatment provided for less numerous minorities within
the Romanian model of diversity management has also been widely
discussed in the literature. The model is often included in comparative
analyses (Stoychev 2006; Protsyk 2010; Lublin and Wright 2013; Bird
2014) or addressed in more critical accounts highlighting shortages and
unintended consequences (Alionescu 2004; Călușer 2008; Gavriliu 2010;
King and Marian 2012; Cârstocea 2013, Salat and Székely 2016).
The emergence of the Romanian minority regime provides a good
example of the complex interplay of international and domestic actors
which brings about minority regimes, mentioned in the reviewed literature.
As shown in Salat and Novák (2015), various circumstances and
developments have played a role in triggering and shaping the Romanian
state’s response to the challenge of diversity after the fall of the Communist
regime: (1) path dependencies created by the Communist legacy which has
impregnated the dominant views of both the majority and minorities with
the idea of ‘titularisation’, on the one hand, and opportunity structures
controlled by ethnically defined groups, on the other hand; (2) the
organisational effectiveness and electoral weight of the Democratic
Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (DAHR), swiftly established after the
fall of the Ceaușescu regime, its claim-making strategies and sporadically

remarkable leverage; (3) the incremental diffusion of the international
minority regimes, the involvement of various international actors interested
in facilitating the country’s access to the Euro-Atlantic structures; (4) the
Romanian–Hungarian bilateral treaty drafted, negotiated and signed (in
1996) under the close scrutiny of NATO; (5) the increasingly ambitious
Hungarian kin-state policies; (6) the rather negative, socially constructed
perception by the majority of the Hungarian minority, especially after the
violent interethnic clashes of Tg. Mureș in March 1990. The arrangements
which resulted from these multiple influences are outstanding in many
regards, yet they fall short of the ideal coherence of principles and embody
several internal contradictions.
Within the broad outcome of the developments which have shaped
the Romanian minority regime, two complementary components can be
identified: a formal-institutional component resulting from responses of the
State to minority claim-making, and a set of informal practices emerged
from coalition-building rationale or ad hoc situations of majority–minority
bargaining. I will describe these formal and informal arrangements in more
detail in the next sections.
Formal arrangements
The formal arrangements can be divided into the following four
types: legislation with provisions for national minorities; public institutions
in charge of various aspects of diversity management; state subsidies
provided for national minorities; policies aiming to address special cases or
situations.
100 Chapter 4
Legal acts with minority rights provisions

According to a database, 1272 legal acts of different character –
laws, decrees and various decisions of the government, ministries,
Constitutional Court, High Court of Cassation and Justice, the European
Court for Human Rights, etc. – were issued in Romania, from January 1990
to July 2017, which contain minority rights provisions. In July 2017, 1092
of the 1272 legal documents were in force, 180 had been abrogated and 350
were court decisions of different types, application rules and methodologies.58
This large body of legislation covers, on the one hand, the obligations
assumed by Romania when the three major instruments of international
minority protection were ratified: the Framework Convention for the
Protection of National Minorities (ratified in 1995), the European Charter
for Regional and Minority Languages (ratified in 2008) and the European
Convention on Human Rights (ratified in 1994). On the other hand, it
codifies the majority response to minority claim-making, voiced mainly by
DAHR and various Roma organisations.
The most important legal documents in force have produced
effects in terms of language rights (Romanian Constitution, 2003; Law on
local public administration, 2001; Law regarding the organisation of the
judiciary, 2004; Law on the Status of Policemen, 2002; Law on the status
of civil servants, 2007; Audiovisual law, 2002, Law on the utilisation of the
Romanian language in public spaces, relations and institutions 2004, Law
on the rights of ill persons 2003, etc.), political participation (Law on the
elections for the Senate and Chamber of deputies, 2015; Law on the election
of local administrative authorities, 2015), educational rights (Law on
58The MinLex database of the Romanian Institute for Research on National

Minorities, available at http://www.ispmn.gov.ro/page/minlex (accessed on May 20,
2021).
education, 2011), legislation recognising religious diversity and providing

implicit frameworks for cultural autonomy (Law on religious freedom and
the status of religious cults, 2006), remedial legislation including restitution
of properties confiscated during Communism (Law on the approval of the
Governmental Decision 94/2000 on the restitution of premises that
belonged to churches in Romania, 2003, Law on the approval of the
Governmental Decision 13/1998 on the restitution of premises that
belonged to the communities, organisations, religious cults of national
minorities in Romania, 2003), antidiscrimination (Law on the approval of
the Governmental Decision 137/2000 on preventing and punishing all forms
of discrimination, 2002), and the right to use national symbols (Governmental
Decision 223/2002).
Public institutions in charge of minority issues

The most important public institutions in charge of issues related
to national minorities are the Department for Inter-Ethnic Relations within
the Romanian Government, the Council for National Minorities, the
National Council for Combating Discrimination, the National Agency for
Roma, the Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities, the
National Authority for Property Restitutions, the Ombudsman and
departments dealing with minority affairs within the Ministry of Education
and the Ministry of Culture.
The Department for Inter-Ethnic Relations was created in 1997 as
the Department for the Protection of National Minorities. It was reorganised
successively in 2000, 2003 and 2005. In its current form, it is subordinated
to the Prime Minister and coordinated by the General Secretariat of the
Government. It is headed by a secretary of state, includes under-secretariats
in charge of the Hungarian, German and Roma minorities (in 2004, the latter
102 Chapter 4
was transformed into the National Agency for the Roma). It has a wide
range of responsibilities, including the implementation of the Government’s
Program with regard to national minorities, elaborating and proposing
strategies or policies in minority protection, drafting and assessing draft
laws in the area of competence, monitoring the implementation of domestic
and international norms on minority protection. It is also supposed to
stimulate dialogue between the majority and the minorities, and to develop
programs aimed at guaranteeing, preserving and expressing the ethnic, cultural,
linguistic, and religious identity of persons belonging to national minorities.
The Council of National Minorities is an advisory body of the
Government, supervised by the Department for Inter-Ethnic Relations. The
Council has 19 member organisations representing 20 minorities in the
Romanian Parliament. Each member organisation delegates 3 members to
the Council. Its main functions are to facilitate the contact between the
Government and the organisations of national minorities, by forwarding
proposals to the Government and by channelling the state subsidies
provided for minority organisations.
The National Council for Combating Discrimination carries out its
activities on the basis of the Governmental Ordinance regarding the
prevention and sanctioning of all forms of discrimination issued in 2000,
and a Decision of the Government in 2001 concerning the organisation and
functioning of the council. It is an autonomous body subordinated to
Parliament, its activity being supervised by a Steering Board with 9
members having the status of state secretary, proposed and approved in a
joint meeting of the two chambers of Parliament. The Council issues
periodical activity reports.
The National Agency for the Roma was created in 2005, its activity
being coordinated by the General Secretariat of the Government. It is
headed by a president appointed by the Prime Minister, having the status of

secretary of state. The Agency is in charge of coordinating, monitoring and
evaluating the implementation of the Government’s policies aimed at
improving the conditions of Roma.
State subsidies for national minorities

State subsidies for national minorities are allocated through
governmental decisions each year and are administered by the Department
for Inter-Ethnic Relations as the main funding authority. The subsidies
provide for two types of funding: on the one hand, direct funding for the
organisations representing the national minorities in the Romanian
Parliament (for office, personnel, publications, organised events and
investment in assets needed for the organisations’ activity), on the other
hand, funding for projects aimed at improving interethnic relations,
combating discrimination and promoting diversity, carried out by
foundations and associations established by national minorities, other than
the ones engaged in political representation.59
59 Regarding the level of funding, only scarce information are available. According
to a rather singular account which is accessible to date, providing an analysis of the

1994-2008 period, the distribution of state subsidies among the various minority
communities includes large disparities. Comparing the average amount/year/person
during the mentioned 14 years results that the members of the Hungarian community
received 3 RON/capita/year, the Germans 26 RON, the Roma 6 RON (based on
census data), while small minorities were close to 100 RON or even above, like in
the case of Macedonians, with 947 RON/capita/year, and of Ruthenians, with 1794
RON/capita/year. More details are available in Mohácsek, “Analiza finanțărilor
alocate...”. Yet, it would be unjust to judge the financial aspect of the Romanian
minority regime by these data alone since the two large minorities receive significant
direct subsidies, in addition to the funding channelled through minority
organizations: the Hungarians for their extended network of educational and cultural
institutions which operate within the frameworks of the state’s public institutions,
the Roma through the various public policies and international programs aiming at
improving their condition.
104 Chapter 4
Policies on special cases

Policies aiming to address special cases include mainly sectorial
initiatives of the Romanian Government to address the problems of the
Roma communities. Such initiatives were the Strategy of the Romanian
Government for Improving the Situation of the Roma, adopted through a
Decision of the Government in 2001, the amended version of the Strategy
adopted in 2006, and the Strategy of the Romanian Government for the
Inclusion of the Romanian Citizens Belonging to the Roma Minority for the
2012–2020 period, adopted through a Governmental Decision in 2011. The
sectorial approach of these documents covers issues like access to education
and healthcare, employment, housing, child protection, promoting the Roma
culture, etc.
Informal components of the minority regime

The informal practices include the participation of the DAHR in
governing coalitions, and occasional agreements regarding resource
allocation or other collective benefits in turn for parliamentary support
provided by minority MPs to the governing coalition.
Inclusion in government coalitions

The most eye-catching component of the informal part of the
Romanian minority regime is the participation of the DAHR in governing
coalitions. The elections of November 1996 created an unprecedented
situation, as this was the first time the Hungarian organisation’s electoral
share, around 7%, was needed to consolidate a winning coalition, capable
of governing the country. Beyond the coalition-building rationale, the
decision to invite the DAHR into the government was motivated by the clear
message the arrangement was expected to send to the international

community regarding the Romanian model of diversity management.
Following the full 1996-2000 mandate spent in government, the DAHR was
co-opted again in the governing coalition in 2004, for a second full mandate,
and subsequently for a two-and-a-half year period in 2009 and for nine
months in 2014. Until 2008, the arrangement triggered mostly positive
outcomes, enhancing political stability and inter-ethnic trust, and providing,
as expected, a very favourable international image of the country’s minority
regime. However, the two sides of the partnerships – which included, on the
side of the Romanian majority, several left and right-wing parties – were
equally unprepared and badly equipped for a full-fledged power-sharing
arrangement. The DAHR elite, realising gradually that the more ambitious
objectives of its agenda were not supported by any actor on the Romanian
political scene, felt constrained to deploy more radical means: the DAHR
threatened to leave the coalition in several critical moments, which would
have triggered governmental crises. The Romanian partners and public
opinion have labelled these attempts as political blackmail. This gradually
reduced the coalition-building potential of the Hungarian organisation, yet
a complete marginalisation of the DAHR did not occur. The elections of
December 2020 created again a situation in which no winning coalition was
possible without inviting DAHR to accept positions in the Government:
since December 23, 2021, the political organisation representing Hungarians
has been co-opted into an ad hoc executive power-sharing arrangement.
When the DAHR was not a member in governing coalitions,
providing parliamentary support to the governing parties in exchange for
various benefits represented another informal role pertaining to the
Romanian minority regime. The benefits obtained by the DAHR included
resources channelled to regions inhabited preponderantly by members of the
106 Chapter 4
Hungarian community, mainly for infrastructure development, positions in

various central or deconcentrated state institutions, favourable decisions in
contested issues, such as the establishment of educational institutions or
claims with considerable symbolical weight for the Hungarian minority.
Relatively stable positions in the structure of the government, like State
Secretary in the Ministry of Education and the Department for Inter-Ethnic
Relations, held by persons delegated by the DAHR even when the
organisation was not part of the governing coalition, can be seen to be part
of comparable informal arrangements. In the Department for Inter-ethnic
Relations and the Ministry of Education similar arrangements are in place
with regard to the German and Roma communities, too.
The practice of offering parliamentary support to governing parties
is also frequent in the case of the MPs representing the small minorities. The
17 MPs form a parliamentary group which offers a significant space for
manoeuvre to any governing party or coalition. There are few situations
when the minority deputies vote against the Government’s initiatives.
Occasional compensatory measures

In addition to the restitution of properties confiscated during the
Communist rule, which qualifies as transitional justice, providing important
remedies to the various ethnic and religious communities, the country’s
post-1989 history registered an attempt at establishing a truth commission,
too. In 2006 a Presidential Commission was set up, with mandate from the
Presidency to investigate the crimes of the Communist regime. The fact that
minority experts were included in the commission and that their findings
are reflected in chapters of the Commission’s Final Report dealing with the
impact of the Communist rule on the situation of the Hungarian, German,
Jewish, and Roma minorities, may also be considered as one of the informal
compensatory measures of the Romanian minority regime.

In conclusion, the Romanian model of diversity management bears
the two most important features of a minority regime: (1) it has grown
incrementally into a complex, multi-layered system of normative and
instrumental components; (2) it is the outcome of two complementary
processes, the diffusion of international regimes and the leverage of various
external actors, on the one hand, and the dynamics of state-responses to
claim-making of minority agents, on the other hand.
Assessment of the Romanian model of diversity management

However, if we try to assess the regime’s impact, several
contradictions come to the fore. While official representatives of the State
re-iterate time and again that the Romanian way of dealing with diversity
may be considered a model for the whole Europe, and while a frequently
referred to topos of the Romanian public discourse holds that “the protection
of national minorities’ rights is above the international standards,”60
legitimate representatives of the two large minorities, Hungarians and Roma
often voice contrasting opinions. Many of the legal provisions codified in
the vast legislative output remain dead letter; implementing legally binding
minority rights are often boycotted by the competent authorities; practising
certain legal provisions of the minority rights regime can be attacked and
60 For instance, https://www.rri.ro/en_gb/ziua_minoritatilor_nationale_in_romania-

2591236, accessed on September 12, 2020. According to Traian Băsescu, President
of Romania between 2004-2014, Romania is a “model for religious and ethnic
tolerance” (Băsescu, “Romania: a model for...”, 31). In 2018, Klaus Johannis,
Romanian President since 2014, declared in an interview that Romania “presents a
model of good practices in the area of protection of rights of persons belonging to
national minorities” (https://www.caleaeuropeana.ro/klaus-iohannis-discutii-cu-
insarcinatul-guvernului-federal-german-pentru-imigranti-de-origine-germana-si-
minoritati-nationale-bernd-fabritius-romania-reprezinta-un-model-de-bune-
practici-in-domeniu/, accessed on September 12, 2020).
108 Chapter 4
prohibited through court decisions. The effectiveness of various policies,

especially those targeting the Roma communities, is often contested both by
representatives of the target-group, and international organisations. In order
to untangle these contradictions, we need to assess the situation of the three
types of minorities separately.
The impact of the Romanian minority regime on the Hungarian

minority
The outcomes of the Romanian minority regime which concern the
Hungarian minority are spectacular in several regards. The provisions
regarding political participation allow for a slowly decreasing but still
proportional representation in the Romanian Parliament (29-18 deputies and
12-9 senators), around 200 mayors and 2700-3000 local councillors, due
also to the relatively stable and disciplined electorate and the effectively
managed DAHR which has been successful in keeping its intra-ethnic
competitors at bay. This electoral performance is the Hungarian minority’s
main source of leverage in both national and local politics. The leverage and
the claim-making strategies of DAHR have resulted in a vast body of legal
provisions, on the one hand, and an extended network of state-funded
educational institutions providing Hungarian language education on
primary, secondary and tertiary level, or cultural and media institutions
which sustain a full-fledged Hungarian language public space, on the other
hand. In addition to state-institutions, the four historical Hungarian churches
(Roman Catholic, Calvinist, Unitarian and Lutheran), private media outlets
and civic organisations provide further important frameworks for the
ecclesiastic, educational, cultural and social activities of the Hungarian
minority, channelling significant subsidies from the Hungarian kin-state,
too. All in all, this complex arrangement in place amounts to a de facto
functional autonomy of the Hungarian minority in Romania.61

In spite of the complexity of the arrangement, the Hungarian
minority does not see its future secured within the frameworks of the
Romanian state. Proper institutional guarantees which could safeguard the
cultural reproduction of the Hungarian community would require, in the
view of the leaders speaking in the name of the minority, constitutional
accommodation or, at least, legally codified power-sharing.
There are several possible explanations for this curious mismatch
of realities and expectations. There are, first of all, evident operational
shortages which follow from the peculiarities of the Romanian minority
regime. Secondly, the spirit of the Romanian model of diversity
management institutionalises ethnic ranking and fuels mistrust among the
majority and minority. Third, the accumulation of sense of failure and
dissatisfaction on the side of the Hungarian minority triggered bold
interventionism of the Hungarian state, through kin-state policies which
deepen the gap between the Hungarian community and the Romanian state.
Finally, socially constructed perceptions exercise an important impact both
on expectations and the relationships between the actors. Some details of
these hindrances will be discussed in what follows.
Many of the minority rights provisions included in the 1092 legal
documents mentioned above trigger no effect, for multiple reasons. Some
of the acts remained without elaborated and approved application rules and
methodologies, or no further regulations followed which would have
allocated the necessary resources to the relevant authorities. Due to the
fragmented nature of the minority legislation – which is dispersed in a
61For more on this issue, see Salat, “The chances of ethnic…”, 125-129. It is
important to note however that no de facto arrangement can substitute constitutional
guarantees.
110 Chapter 4
multitude of legal documents instead of being integrated in one single act –

the potential beneficiaries themselves are often ignorant of the rights they
have. Some of the provisions, especially the ones referring to language
rights, are occasionally obstructed by the authorities, on grounds of not
being morally justified, or being the result of political blackmail. Recently,
certain practices of the local authorities in administrative subunits inhabited
preponderantly by Hungarians, considered by them to fall under the
provisions of the minority rights legislation regarding language rights and
the use of national symbols mainly, are attacked in courts. The binding
decisions that are issued are unfavourable to the minority and contradict the
spirit of the legislation in force.
The underlying assumptions of the Romanian minority regime do
not favour more positive outcomes. As shown in Salat and Novák (2015),
the whole arrangement is based on a binary logic of the majority–minority
relations, which encompasses the idea of ‘titularisation’, on the one hand,
reflected in privileges of the majority enshrined in the whole legal order,
and public acceptance of ethnic actors allowed to speak and act on behalf of
minorities, on the other hand. The ethnic parallelism derived from these
assumptions has had a number of critical outcomes. State ownership is
exclusive and regarded as non-negotiable by the majority; hence, the
Hungarian minority, which seeks accommodation through state-reform, is
depicted as a potential threat to the Romanian nation-building. The ethnic
division of labour also implies that Romanian political actors do not
compete for minority votes, which puts the minority political elites in
control of various opportunity structures and relieves the majority from
making any genuine effort in order to better understand and effectively
accommodate diversity.62 Due to these practices, the most consequential

informal element of the arrangement, the co-optation of DAHR in the
executive power, is not genuine power-sharing, but ‘control through co-
optation’ (Medianu 2002), and the minority regime as a whole provides an
eloquent example of ‘unequal accommodation’ (Kiss, Toró, and Székely
2018).
Socially constructed realities have their part, as well, in sustaining
and reproducing these unfavourable developments. The topos of the
‘Hungarian danger’ is consistently present in the public discourse, being
often deployed by the various political actors, including the Secret Service,
to keep the level of mobilisation in the ranks of the majority high or,
occasionally, to divert attention from unpopular measures. In a paradoxical
manner, DAHR, whose leverage and electoral success depends on the level
of mobilisation within the Hungarian minority, is not interested either in
deconstructing these narratives. The collective sense of failure within the
country’s Hungarian minority, in spite of the broad spectrum of
opportunities, is largely due to the organisation’s counter-interest in genuine
reconciliation which could yield an important part of DAHR’s raison d’être
obsolete. The impact of the socially constructed realities is evident in the
public opinion, too: starting with 1995, surveys reflect a steady trend of
mutual mistrust and refusal by the majority of the more substantive claims of
62 It is not the principle of representation through ethnic parties, per se, which is the
problem here, but the fact that mainstream parties of the majority consider the whole
problem of minority accommodation resolved by this form institutionalized ethnic
parallelism. Two equally damaging consequences follow from this: (1) the majority
considers itself relieved from any further obligation being convinced that the best
imaginable solution – based on empowerment and full delegation – is in place; (2)
the solutions are expected from an actor which is, indeed, empowered formally, but
seriously limited both in terms of competences and resources. The author thanks
István Gergő Székely for recommending clarifications in this respect, as well as for
further important comments.
112 Chapter 4
the Hungarian minority (Salat 2008; Kiss, Toró, and Székely 2018: 86-91).
The Hungarian kin-state, which may be suspected, due to the sever
demographic crisis, of having an interest in absorbing the Hungarian
minorities from its neighbouring countries, rushed to draw the conclusion
that the Romanian minority regime had failed to offer the institutional
guarantees which could safeguard the cultural reproduction of the
Hungarian minority (Salat, 2020). Numerous policy interventions followed:
the establishment, in 2000, of Sapientia University (as a response to the
Romanian authorities’ refusal to reopen Bolyai University, established in
1945 and merged into the Romanian university in 1959), the provision, as
of 2011, of Hungarian citizenship for Hungarians abroad, and the consistent
funding channelled through churches and various civic organisations. These
interventions have triggered lasting changes in the political culture and the
media-consumption patterns of the Hungarian minority (Kiss 2018). These
changes seemingly undermine any genuine effort aimed at finding ways of
more effective accommodation for the Hungarian community by the
Romanian state.
The Romanian minority regime and the Roma communities

The Romanian model of diversity management exercises its impact
on Roma communities through the general provisions of the minority
regime, on the one hand, and special measures aimed at social inclusion and
improving the specific condition of Roma, on the other hand. The latter
consist in various policies – legal instruments, institutional practices,
affirmative action and funding schemes – designed to trigger lasting
changes in ensuring the access of members of Roma communities to
education, housing, job market, health-care services, social infrastructure
and culture. In order to achieve this general aim, Roma experts and
mediators are employed in central and local institutions; special attention is

paid to the educational needs of young Roma; places are reserved for Roma
students in universities; and the rather effective antidiscrimination measures
that are in place send important messages to the society through sanctions
issued occasionally for discriminative acts or declarations of public actors
and common citizens. All in all, the size and complexity of these
arrangements cannot be underestimated. Yet, the impact of the minority
regime on the general situation of target group is, again, limited.
The Roma community is seriously disadvantaged, first of all, in terms
of political representation. Due to the existing legislation, on the one hand, and
the lack of capacity to effectively mobilise Roma electors, on the other hand,
the interests of Roma have been represented in the past two decades by 1 MP
in the Chamber of Deputies, 2-6 mayors and around 200 local councillors in
the local public administration, which is far below proportionality. In addition
to the poor outcome of the electoral provisions aiming to facilitate participation
of the minorities, the Roma representatives often result from selective co-
optation by the majority of persons with weak connections to the represented
communities, both in elected and appointed positions (Prisacariu 2013).
Second, the bold policy complex, in spite of its comprehensive
approach, has not succeeded in breaking the vicious circle which follows
from the mutual reinforcement of poverty, unemployment, school failure,
negative stereotyping and discrimination (Fleck and Rughiniș 2008).
Several assessments of the policies targeted at Roma inclusion in Romania
highlight that most of the measures were taken under external pressure, the
spirit of the necessary changes is not interiorised by the authorities, and
Roma organisations doubt the appropriateness of the deployed techniques
and instruments (Giurcă 2012). Beyond the limitation which follow from
the recognition and redistribution paradigm (van Baar and Vermeersch
114 Chapter 4
2017), the effectiveness of the otherwise well targeted policies is often

hindered by lack of proper knowledge regarding the provisions of the
existing legislation, or the prevalent majority biases of the personnel in
charge with implementation (Grigore et al. 2009).
Several accounts highlight that socially constructed perceptions
exercise negative impact both on the form and content of the policies, and the
process of implementation. The goal of the whole undertaking is usually defined
as addressing the “Roma problem” which needs specific actors and dedicated
interventions in certain locations, providing yet another example of the ethnic
division of labour in Romania. The need of breaking down boundaries, building
mutual trust and the necessity of broader involvement of the whole society and
state apparatus is rarely assumed in the policy documents.
The role of smaller communities within the Romanian

minority regime
One of the conspicuous aspects of the Romanian model of
diversity management is Parliamentary representation provided, through the
Constitutions and the electoral law, to historical minorities residing on the
country’s territory, regardless to their size. The electoral facility is
associated with membership in the Council of National Minorities and,
implicitly, with channelling state subsidies through the member-
organisations of the Council. These provisions generate a parliamentary
group with 18-17 members, with relatively modest activity associated with
minority interests, the group providing reliable support to all governments
(Protsyk 2010a).
This special treatment of the small and regionally dispersed
national minorities has attracted much international appreciation for the
Romanian minority regime. However, there are costs, also, associated with
the arrangement. The electoral facility which offers the possibility to

minority organisations to participate in elections, the reserved seat allocated
to the organisation which earns the highest number of votes (in cases when
more organisations compete for the seat reserved for one particular
minority), provided that this number is at least 10% of the number necessary
to win a regular mandate, violates a basic principle of universal suffrage:
the equality of votes cast in elections (no special list for minority electors is
deployed). Another unintended consequence of the arrangement is that an
organisation claiming to represent a certain minority which wins the
election becomes a member of the Council of National Minorities, securing
an incumbent position impossible to challenge by other organisations.
Beyond the large asymmetries among minority constituencies
which may raise concern, there are situations when the votes earned by an
organisation claiming to represent the interests of a certain minority exceed,
occasionally several times, the number of members of the respective
minority as recorded in the census. This strange outcome, made possible by
the fact that no minority electoral lists are deployed, requires both scrutiny,
and changes in the country’s electoral procedures.
Several accounts highlight a low accountability of minority MPs
(Călușer 2008, Cârstocea 2013), and ‘ethnobusiness’ has also been described
as the unintended consequence of the arrangement (Alionescu 2004,
Gavriliu 2010). Taking into account these aspects, doubts are justified
whether the arrangement is, indeed, an appropriate mechanism of minority
protection.
Discussion
It seems clear from the above that part of the contradictions and
unintended consequences described earlier stem from the conflicting and
116 Chapter 4
inconsistent interest-structures of the actors involved, far from constituting

an ‘epistemic community’, critical, as we have seen, for a full-fledged,
effective minority regime. The failure of these actors to build a consensual
knowledgebase regarding the nature of the problems to be addressed, the
acceptable scope and appropriate means, has undermined the chance to
provide for a policy paradigm on which a genuine minority regime could be
based. I will summarise in what follows some of the elements which have
contributed to this failure.
On the Romanian side, there is, first of all, a hidden conflict
between vision and declared objectives, on the one hand, and ethno-
demographic realities and political, institutional practices, on the other
hand. The prevailing constitutional order and political discourse portrays
Romania as a unitary nation-state, homogeneity remaining an important
political target for all relevant actors speaking in the name of the dominant
majority. Important aspects of the Romanian model of diversity
management – extensive legislation protecting various aspects of diversity,
parliamentary representation, executive power-sharing, policy experts
representing the minorities in various structures of the Romanian State, etc.
– are, however, at odds with the vision side of the Romanian state- and
nation-building project. Until this contradiction is not solved, a genuine
minority policy paradigm is hardly possible.
It would be a mistake not to observe that keeping this contradiction
unchallenged provides significant room for manoeuvre for the various
actors speaking in the name of the Romanian State. One aspect of this
leverage concerns the issue of agency. As mentioned earlier, the potential
for interest-articulation and claim-making of the three minority categories
discussed above differs essentially from one-another. In the case of small
minorities, talking about an agency is highly problematic: there are
communities which contest the outcome of the regime’s provisions,

claiming that the elected MP does not represent their interests, which may
be a fact, given that the number of votes cast for certain organisations
exceeds by far the size of the communities as reflected in the census. In
these cases, one could conclude that the agency speaking in the name of the
community is not a legitimate actor, but the Romanian State itself.
In the case of the Roma, the agency issue is problematic for two
reasons. On the one hand, the internal divisions of the community in terms
of traditions and form of life have undermined, so far, the chances of a
unique, legitimate structure of authority which could speak in the name of
all members of the various Roma communities in Romania. On the other
hand, the way the Romanian State deals with this situation precludes the
chances of emergence, on short and medium term, of a legitimate agency
representing all Roma in Romania, the recruitment of Roma representatives
for the various positions in the state apparatus reflecting a clear bias for
those Roma who seek integration in the institutional structures of the
dominant majority. While this preference cannot be blamed neither on the
State’s, nor on the Roma activists’ side, it is a fact that the policies
elaborated within these frames fail to deliver, integration into the Romanian
society, as these policies prescribe it, remaining an option available for a
small percentage of the Roma only. The broad ineffectiveness of the
complex policies targeting the Roma communities may follow from the fact
that both, the Romanian State and Roma activists echo the priorities of
international organisations and there is no political actor, sufficiently
representative and influential, which could initiate a public debate in
Romania regarding the policy approaches which would suit best to the
particular situation of this minority, located somewhere on the assimilation–
empowerment continuum.
118 Chapter 4
The agency issue is relatively clear in the case of the Hungarian

minority. As shown above, DAHR has been a legitimate actor since the
regime change in 1989, with a clear structure of authority which managed
to secure the overwhelming support of the electorate and succeeded in
keeping the political influence of its intra-ethnic competitors at a modest
level. The source of the problem in this case is that the claim-making of this
agency is pointing exactly to the core of the problem: the contradiction
between the vision and the political practice of the Romanian state- and
nation-building. The political elite of the Hungarian minority, confirmed
and reconfirmed in subsequent elections, holds that the particular situation
of the Hungarian minority would require a minority regime based on the
constitutional accommodationist paradigm, which equals, at minimum, with
elevating the informal part of the Romanian minority regime into its formal
arrangements. It is interesting to observe that the unchallenged contradiction
between vision and reality is keeping the two confronting actors entrapped:
the Hungarian political elite cannot take full advantage of the multiple
provisions of the Romanian model of diversity management admitting, on
the discursive level, that those provisions amount to de facto functional
autonomy, and the Romanian State cannot afford to recognise that the policy
measures in place addressing the needs of national minorities contain, in
fact, elements of de facto autonomy.
Taking all these into account, it is not difficult to understand why
the Romanian model of diversity management fails to deliver. Instead of
being a full-fledged minority regime, based on a coherent policy paradigm
reflecting the interest and values of all interested actors, it is a patchwork of
policy measures in which the interests of the Romanian State prevail.
Eliminating the various inconsistencies and contradictions regarding the
policy paradigm which lies at the bottom of the potential regime would
require genuine political interest in improving the existing arrangement and

intense dialogue among the parties involved.
Conclusion
Given its size and complexity, it is not surprising that the
Romanian model of diversity management incurs failures, in parallel with
the multiple benefits it secures both for the targeted national minorities and,
implicitly, for the majority and the country itself. The rich legislation,
dedicated institutions, financing mechanisms, targeted policy measures and
ad hoc practices give substance to the constitutional guarantees regarding
free choice, expressing, preserving and developing ethnic, linguistic and
religious identity (Art. 6). The complex architecture of the model has
evolved during the past 30 years within a dynamic of diffusion of
international standards, on the one hand, and domestic claim-making, on the
other, lacking, by and large, a consensus among interested actors regarding
the nature of the problems to be addressed, the scopes to be achieved and
the means which would suit best the efforts aiming to accomplish the target.
Part of the shortages burdening the overall performance of the
model may be addressed by continued effort aimed at a gradual and
incremental improvement of the relevant legislation and institutions. For
instance, the fragmented nature of the minority legislation could be easily
eliminated by adopting a single law on national minorities which would
integrate the provisions dispersed in the 1092 legal documents in force to
date. By extending the competences and enhancing the institutional
capacities of the National Agency for Roma, many of the sectorial failures
of the country’s Roma strategy might be mitigated. A more effective system
of representation for small minorities would not be difficult to achieve
either, without affecting minority rights provisions in place.
120 Chapter 4
Yet, addressing the core of the problems described above would

require more: abandoning the assumption that a full-fledged minority
regime can be based on a contradiction between vision and reality, on the
one hand, and on the ethnic division of labour, on the other hand. As several
aspects of the regime’s impact on the Hungarian and Roma minorities make
it clear, the most generous provisions may fail to produce the desired
outcomes if the objectives and basic principles of the arrangement are not
mainstreamed in the society, and active participation based on principal
endorsement on behalf of the majority is not required. Triggering change in
this respect may require a genuine ‘epistemic community’ of interested
actors, capable of building consensual knowledge and reaching a set of
principled beliefs regarding the minority policy paradigms which suit best
the interests of the parties involved.
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CHAPTER 5
TRANSLATIO IMPERII:
ROMANIAN FOREIGN POLICY IN TRANSITION
RUXANDRA IVAN
Transition in Central and Eastern Europe has meant a shift from

authoritarian regimes to democracies, from one-party to multi-party
systems, from state-controlled economy to free markets (that is, from
socialist systems to capitalism), and from oppression to the respect of
human rights. But what did this transition mean in the field of foreign
policy? Is foreign policy regime-dependent, meaning that its very structure
changes in case of a regime change, or is it interest-driven as the realist
literature insists – in which case, it should maintain the same structure
regardless of the type of political regime? This is one of the questions that
have sparked off a dispute, in IR theory, between the neo-realist tradition,
which maintains that foreign policy is dependent on the structure of the
international system and that domestic factors should not be taken into
account when analysing the behaviour of states, and the liberal school,
which asserts that the domestic regime can be an important explanatory
factor for the conduct of foreign policy.
This article tries to investigate the way in which transition affected
Romanian foreign policy. More precisely, it will attempt to understand the
impact of the transition process, on the one hand, upon the content (that is,
132 Chapter 5
on the orientation) and, on the other hand, upon the structure of foreign
policy. The paper will argue that while the transition in foreign policy meant
a complete reorientation from East to West, the structure of foreign policy
remained the same: the general tendency of the Romanian behaviour in
international politics is one of bandwagoning with the actors that it
perceived to be the most important in the region and in the international
system. From this point of view, it was a mere “transfer of rule” from
Moscow to Washington (hence, the title of this article). We will show that
at the beginning of the 1990s, when Russia’s weakness was not yet obvious,
Romania oscillated between an alliance with the East and one with the West,
that is, between two versions of bandwagoning. The option for a Western
orientation became firm and was assumed when it was already clear that
Russia had lost its status as a great power. Another example of
bandwagoning is the preference for the USA’s position on issues which
mark a transatlantic divide (as in the case of the 2003 invasion of Iraq or the
status of the International Criminal Court, detailed below).
Since the general subject of this special issue is CEE transition, the
analysis is focused on the period that we consider as transitional – that is,
from the fall of the communist regime until Romania’s accession to NATO
(in 2004) and the EU (in 2007). By 2007, the course of the foreign policy
orientation had been firmly set towards the framework of these two
organisations. However, as several researchers have shown, there occurred
a transformation in CEEC’s foreign policies after EU accession, which was
linked to the need of these countries to find new foreign policy objectives.
These studies are focused on the reconstruction of a foreign policy identity
– or a “self” – and show the way in which CEE states attempted to redefine
their role inside the EU by re-examining their identity with respect to
neighbouring regions such as the Western Balkans or the former Soviet
Translatio imperii: Romanian Foreign Policy in Transition 133
space (Tulmets 2014; Rácz 2011), or how traces of historical legacies older
than the communist regimes influence their behaviour (Kiss 2004; Walsch
2018). As for the Romanian case, which has not been addressed in the
studies quoted above, our contribution points to some of the historical
legacies that might prove relevant for the redefinition of the “historical self.”
However, a deeper analysis of this redefinition, which intervened after what
we consider to be the end of the Romanian transition, would exceed the
ambitions of this paper.
We will begin by briefly reviewing the scientific literature
dedicated to transitions, especially in Eastern and Central Europe, while
trying to identify studies that might be useful for our endeavour – since most
of these studies tackle domestic issues. Relevant literature from the Foreign
Policy Analysis school of thought will also be invoked, as well as certain
approaches pertaining to IR theories, in an attempt to construct a framework
for analysis that would put together transition and foreign policy as the main
objects of our research interest.
Secondly, we will revisit some important foreign policy events of
post-revolutionary Romania, trying to identify patterns that will allow us to
ascertain specific types of behaviour. Our purpose is not to offer a complete
canvas of the foreign policy events of the period – that would be an
endeavour for a historian, while the approach in this paper draws on political
science qualitative methods. Trying to find a balance between a presentation
of the facts and their analysis, we will operate a selection, pointing out only
the most important events that prove our hypothesis on bandwagoning. At
the same time, we will apply the foreign policy analysis framework to these
events, in order to assess the impact of several types of factors on foreign
policy decision-making. The stake of the analysis is to determine the effects
134 Chapter 5
of the transition process on the content and on the structure of Romanian

foreign policy.
A theoretical overview
When we tried to investigate the relevant scientific
literature that might shed light upon our subject – the way in which
democratic transition affects foreign policy behaviour of states – we found
ourselves before three main bodies of literature: transition studies, foreign
policy analysis and IR theories. Then, three questions arose, each of them
casting doubt on the usefulness of these three theoretical bodies for our
subject: Is foreign policy an object of interest for transition studies? Is
transition a relevant variable for foreign policy analysis? Has IR theory
anything to say either about transition, or about foreign policy? The answer
to all these questions is “no,” as we will show below.
A lot of political science literature has been dedicated to transition
especially during the 1990s, whether from a political (Linz and Stepan
1996), economic (Przeworski 1991) or sociological perspective (Diamond
1999). This body of literature emphasised the transformation of internal
political and economic institutions, as well as the development of a strong
civil society, as the main variables of the processes of democratic transition.
However, the conduct of foreign policy was never considered as a separate
object of study by these researchers. The transition studies which take into
account the international system assess the impact of foreign incentives or
pressures on domestic politics and on the process of democratisation, rather
than consider foreign policy in itself (Stoner and McFaul 2013). The
question whether or not foreign policy suffers structural changes in the
process of transition to democracy has never been tackled by transition
studies. Obviously, the foreign policy of CEE states has approached its
object from different theoretical perspectives that do not link it directly to

democratisation processes (research by Gheciu 2005; Ivan 2009; Tulmets
2014; Zieba 2020, etc.). These studies are useful as a basis for understanding
the link between transition and foreign policy, but they do not clarify, as
such, our research question.
On the other hand, foreign policy has benefitted from a lot of
theoretical interest ever since the 1950s, when the behaviourist turn in social
sciences led to the foundation of the foreign policy analysis school. This
school sought a middle way for the study of foreign policy, a way that would
overcome the shortcomings of both the theory of international relations
(which explained only interactions between states, at a systemic level,
leaving aside the domestic decision-making processes), and political
science (which considered only the domestic context of policy-making).
Foreign policy analysis tries to unveil the factors that influence decision-
making, and is based on an analysis of the political system as depicted by
David Easton (1965). In this approach, the decision-making process is a
“black box” receiving inputs from the environment and releasing outputs,
that is, foreign policy decisions. The stake of the analysis is to identify the
factors that influence decision-making in the “black box.” Decision-making
is simultaneously situated in an operational environment, which refers to
the reality of the domestic and external circumstances, but also in a
psychological environment, constituted by the perception of decision-
makers over the operational environment, as well by their cultural and
intellectual background and the interpretation of the so-called “lessons of
history” (Sprout and Sprout 1962; 1965; Snyder et al. 1954; Jervis 1976).
The Foreign Policy Analysis school developed, during the 1960s and 70s,
different models, lists of variables and middle-range theories intended to
explain the behaviour of states; however, it has not yet managed to propose
136 Chapter 5
a universally applicable model. Variables such as the domestic regime,

including the institutional architecture, the bureaucracy, the public opinion,
individual decision-makers, political parties, culture and national identity,
geopolitical situation etc. have been considered as relevant for shaping
foreign policy, including by the more recent revival of the FPA school
(Smith, Hadfield and Dunne 2008; Morin and Paquin 2018; Hudson and
Day 2019), but each case-study provides a different articulation and weight
of the factors that might influence decision-making. Transition as such was
not considered as a variable, but it might be eventually included in the area
of domestic factors, pertaining to the transformation of domestic
institutions. However, isolating it as a variable and determining its impact,
separately from that of other domestic factors, might prove quite a risky
attempt.
Finally, from a mainstream IR perspective, transition should not
have any influence whatsoever on the behaviour of states, which is driven
either by national interest and structural systemic determinants in the realist
approach, or by their involvement in international institutional
arrangements, in the liberal institutionalist approach.
Therefore, the three theoretical bodies that we mentioned do not
offer a model for analysing the impact of transition on the conduct of foreign
policy. Lacking such a model, we will attempt to conduct a classical analysis
of foreign policy, in order to identify the most relevant factors that
influenced decision-making. We will take into account the distinction
between an operational and a psychological environment: while the former
is constituted by domestic factors such as the political colour of different
government majorities and external factors such as conditionality of
international organisations, it is the latter, constituted by historical legacies,
culture and national identity that allows us to determine the way in which
decision-makers perceive and interpret the world and, subsequently,

Romania’s role in regional and international politics.
Historical legacies as the main drive towards foreign

policy reorientation after 1989
Retrospectively, it might seem that the entire foreign policy after
the fall of communism was directed to the inclusion of the country in
Western organisations, such as NATO and the EU, as well as to the
consolidation of a special partnership with the USA. In fact, after 1989,
Romanian foreign policy went through a period of confusion for a few years.
This was due partly to the fact that the whole domestic political system had
to be re-constructed, including foreign policy institutions, and partly to the
general instability in the international system and particularly in Central and
Eastern Europe between 1989 and 1991, when all communist regimes
suddenly collapsed, and bipolarity came to an end. However, the perception
of Russia as a major power in the system continued to perdure, and it is this
perception which heavily influenced international behaviour towards
Russia, including Romania’s behaviour. However, towards the mid-1990s,
the country decided to apply for membership in NATO and the EU. All the
foreign policy actions of the government and the Presidency were directed
towards these objectives, which were eventually accomplished in 2004 and
2007, respectively.
The first foreign policy declaration of the Romanian revolutionary
government installed on December 22, 1989 is the 9th point of the
Declaration to the Country of the Council of the National Salvation Front,
released during that very night: “The entire Romanian foreign policy must
serve to the promotion of good neighbourliness, friendship and peace in the
world, contributing to the process of construction of a unified Europe, the
138 Chapter 5
common home of all peoples of the continent. We shall respect Romania’s

international commitments, first of all those resulting from the Warsaw
Treaty...” (quoted in Iliescu 1995, I: 21).
Several themes that were specific to the discourse of the Romanian
Communist party appear in this phrase, such as peace, friendship among
peoples and good neighbourliness. The reference to Europe should not be
understood as a wink to the EU, on the contrary: Mikhail Gorbatchev is the
one who first used the metaphor of “Europe – the common home of the
peoples of the continent” in a discourse in Prague, in 1987 (Svec 1998). The
Declaration certainly does not constitute a shift from the previous line. On
the contrary, the new decision-makers are preoccupied not to irritate the
USSR. It is, in fact, a declaration of allegiance. Another ambiguous event
that took place in 1991 and can be linked to the perception of the USSR as
continuing to constitute a dangerous great power is the friendship treaty
signed by president Ion Iliescu with the USSR. The treaty contained in its
article 8 a provision that prevented Romania from seeking accession to any
alliance that might have come against the interests of the USSR (the implied
reference was NATO). This clause had been refused by the other Central
and East European countries, such as Hungary (Kun 1993: 85). The Treaty
was never ratified because of the putsch in Moscow and the later dissolution
of the USSR.
However, around fifteen years later, allegiance had shifted by 180
degrees. After fully supporting the 2003 USA invasion in Iraq, the
Romanian foreign policy discourse invented a so-called “Bucharest-
London-Washington Axis” (Roncea 2005). Thirty years later, Romania
remains, at the level of foreign policy declarations and actions, one of the
most pro-American countries in the region. How did this shift take place?
It is possible to identify, for analytical reasons, several different

stages in the Romanian foreign policy after 1989, using the main
characteristic of a certain period as a criterion. Thus, there was a first period
of confusion, during which not only its objectives, but its very orientation
was ambiguous and undecided. Then, in the mid-1990s, its two main post-
communist objectives were set: accession to NATO and the EU. After these
objectives were met, in 2004/2007, Romanian foreign policy was in search
of new ones, but seemed incapable of establishing a coherent foreign policy
line different from the one set – not in Moscow, this time, but in
Washington.
The first post-revolutionary years were marked by a return to
historical legacies as the main foundation for foreign policy-decision
making. This can be explained by the instability in both the domestic and
international operational environments. History appears as the only stable
foundation for decisions, and the perceptions of inexperienced decision-
makers in the international and regional environments are linked to the
interpretation of the pre-communist framework of political relations. This
is very visible in the discourse of the “return to Europe,” as well as in the
way Romania tackles the relations with its neighbours.
The “return to the West”

In 1824, a Romanian boyar called Dinicu Golescu took a trip to
Europe in order to find the best university for his children. He had an
experience that we now would call a “cultural shock,” discovering the deep
differences between the political arrangements and institutions in his
country and those of “the Enlightened Europe.” Later, in the 1970s, the
literary theorist Adrian Marino identified a “Dinicu Golescu complex” in
Romanian culture, which consists in profound respect, but also in an
140 Chapter 5
inferiority complex towards Western European culture (Marino 1976). The

whole discussion about Romania’s role in Europe and its links to European
culture and politics, which was at the centre of public debates during the
nineteenth century, came back to surface after the 1989 revolution.
Cultural references to the “West” during the 1990s can be
considered one of the main features of the psychological environment of
foreign policy decision-making. The intellectual atmosphere that characterised
the 1990s was focused on the idea that Romania had to return to its rightful
place among the civilised peoples of the West. As we have shown elsewhere
(Ivan 2011), this is an idea that has had a long career in Romania, dating
back to at least the nineteenth century. Admiration towards the European
cultural model was transferred to the United States during the communist
period, since the USA was perceived as the leader of the free world on the
other side of the iron curtain. For the entire period of 45 years of
communism, Romanians expected the Americans to come and save them
from the Russians (Barbu 2006). Alluding to these expectations, the
declaration of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mihai Răzvan Ungureanu,
when the agreement for the creation of American military bases was signed
in 2005, read: “Finally, the Americans have arrived!”
This cultural obsession, we might say, with the West prevented
Romanian decision-makers from pragmatically assessing several geopolitical
contexts over the past 30 years. Romanian foreign policy was conducted as
if “the West,” that is, the USA and the EU, were a monolithic bloc, sharing
the same interests all the time. However, this was not always the case, as
Steven Walt warned in 1998 and as it became visible later (Walt 1998;
Simoni 2013). Several episodes can exemplify this incapacity to understand
the shifting identities and interests of Romania’s Western partners.
Accession to NATO and the EU was treated as two-faceted single

process. The perceived superposition of the two organisations can be
illustrated by the wide use of a notion that was supposed to encompass both:
‘Euro-Atlantic integration’. The expression has a very limited circulation in
Western Europe and it usually refers only to NATO; however, this was the
buzz-word with the largest number of occurrences in the Romanian foreign
policy discourse during the 1990s and at the beginning of the 2000s. For
example, in the 2006 National Security Strategy, the word appeared 44
times on 33 pages. It is also enshrined in the 2003 Constitution, which
contains a title (VI) dedicated to “Euro-Atlantic integration.” The provisions
of article 149 in this Title are very awkward from a legal point of view: it
says that “Romania’s accession to the North-Atlantic Treaty shall take place
by means of a law adopted in the joint sitting of the Chamber of Deputies
and the Senate, with a majority of two thirds of the number of deputies and
senators.” (Constitution of Romania, 2003).
A constitutional provision on this issue was not necessary, since
NATO is a classical international organisation (that is, it does not have
supra-national elements which might have required special provisions). The
choice to put together, in the Romanian Constitution, EU and NATO
accession is a highly symbolic one, which also shows that, in the mindset of
the Romanian public and the Romanian elites, the two organisations are
inseparable, and “the West” is a monolithic bloc.
This however was to prove questionable on several occasions. In
2002, Romania ratified the Statute of the International Criminal Court,
created in 1998 to judge individuals accused of genocide, war crimes and
crimes against humanity (Law 111/2002). That same year, Romania signed
a bilateral immunity agreement with the United States for the non-
extradition of American citizens indicted before the Court. The international
142 Chapter 5
political stake of this agreement was rather high. The Clinton administration
had agreed to the creation of the ICC, while the Bush administration
reversed this policy, did not ratify the Statute of the Court, and subsequently
tried to make it inoperable. Its strategy consisted in signing bilateral
agreements with as many countries as possible in order to make sure that
American citizens would be exempted from Court jurisdiction. The
European countries contested this strategy of eluding international law and
undermining efforts for the creation of an international body of law in the
field of human rights. Romania was the only EU candidate country to sign
such an agreement, and was heavily criticised by the European Commission
and the Council. Following these criticisms, the agreement was never sent
into Parliament for ratification.
Another episode that obliged Romania to choose between the USA
and the Western European states concerns the American intervention in
Iraq, in 2003. On this occasion, Romania, together with nine other states in
Eastern Europe (Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,
Macedonia, Slovakia and Slovenia), called by the media “the Vilnius
Group,” signed a letter of support for the USA, which was criticised by
Western European countries such as France or Germany.
Historical legacies and bilateral relations

The importance of the perception of history during the first post-
communist years is mostly visible in Romania’s relations to its neighbours.
Several cases may illustrate the fact that Romania begun to build its post-
communist bilateral relations on the bases of what decision-makers
considered to be “the lessons of history” (Rosoux 2004). The most
prominent of these is the relation with the Republic of Moldova.
This former Soviet Republic declared its independence on August

27, 1991, and was recognised by Romania on the same day. By comparison,
Ukraine was recognised by Romania in January 1992, almost five months
after its declaration of independence. The Declarations of recognition issued
by the Government and Parliament emphasise the fact that Moldova is
considered a “Romanian state”:
“The Proclamation of a Romanian independent state on the territories

forcefully annexed after the secret agreement in the Ribbentrop-Molotov
Pact represent a decisive step towards elimination, in a peaceful manner,
of the evil consequences therein, directed towards the rights and interests
of the Romanian people” (Declaration of the Romanian Government, cf.
Cojocea 2000: 170).
The Parliaments also salutes the event:
“The proclamation of the Moldavian independence crowns the long and

difficult years of the battle of our Moldavian brothers for the defence of
their national identity, of their Romanian language and culture, in order to
eliminate the hardships they were exposed to during the Tzarist
domination and the communist totalitarian regime, imposed as a result of
the provisions of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, which the Romanian
Parliament declared ab initio null and void” (“Declaration of the
Romanian Parliament on the proclamation of the independence of the
Republic of Moldova,” 1991).
The bilateral relation with the Republic of Moldova was, from the
beginning, marked by a double standard: a very “fraternal” rhetoric, present
throughout the discourse of politicians, was not, in fact, accompanied by
any real steps towards reunification, since this was seen as a dangerous
geopolitical solution in the regional context. Moreover, 28 years after the
144 Chapter 5
Moldovan independence, it is the only neighbour with which Romania does

not have a bilateral political treaty, because of difficulties in agreeing on a
common language between the parties (Cojocea 2000).
A completely different rhetoric was used in the case of Ukraine.
The declaration of recognition included language that could have been
interpreted as territorial claims, since several former Romanian territories,
included in the USSR as a result of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, were now
Ukrainian (Southern Bessarabia, Bukovina, Hertza and Khotyn). The
declaration read:
“The recognition of Ukraine’s independence and the desire to develop

mutually beneficial Romanian-Ukrainian relations do not entail the
recognition of the inclusion in the territory of the newly independent
Ukrainian state of northern Bukovina, the Hertza region, the Khotyn
region or the region of southern Bessarabia, which were forcibly annexed
by the USSR and thereafter incorporated into the territorial structure of
Ukraine on the basis of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact.”
This declaration is followed by a similar one adopted in

Parliament. This certainly was not a very strong basis for the construction
of a sound neighbourly bilateral relation, and the attitude of the Romanian
foreign policy-makers clearly had consequences later on, when several
bones of contention between the two countries appeared, such as the
construction by Ukraine of the Bastroe canal, in the Danube Delta, in 2004,
or the case before the International Court of Justice on the maritime
delimitation in the Black Sea during 2004-2009 (International Court of
Justice 2009).
Other neighbourly relations were also problematic. Relations with
Hungary, for example, were tense, to the point that certain authors find that
the absence of a direct conflict between the two countries in the aftermath
of the fall of communism was almost a miracle (Linden 2000). Tensions
started to show in the 1980s, but they were also based on historical and
territorial claims over Transylvania. Part of the explanation for the fact that
they did not escalate lies in the influence of foreign factors, as we will show
in a subsequent section.
Finally, relations with Russia also seem to be profoundly affected
by historical legacies. More precisely, by a visceral Russophobia that has
existed in Romanian society ever since the nineteenth century (Constantiniu
2006) and was exacerbated by the behaviour of the Red Army in the Second
World War, when the USSR “liberated” Romania, as well as by the
instauration of the communist regime in 1946. This translates into a lack of
relations, since not much happened in bilateral relations between the signing
of the 1991 Treaty with the USSR and the signing of the political treaty with
Russia in 2003 (Ivan 2008). The text of this treaty itself says a lot about
bilateral relations, since it keeps asserting the sovereign equality between
the two parties, their commitment to respecting international agreements,
such as the UN Charter, the Helsinki Agreements, or the OSCE documents,
and their freedom to choose their security arrangements as they see fit
(“Treaty on the friendship and cooperation relations between Romania and
the Russian Federation, 2003”). In fact, most of the dispositions of the
Treaty seem to assert those rights that were, throughout history, infringed
by Russia and the USSR.
All these tendencies in Romanian foreign policy seem to point out
to an important influence of the perception of the historic past by Romanian
decision-makers. This is understandable in a context in which both the
domestic and the international environments were marked by instability: the
146 Chapter 5
domestic efforts to construct a completely different political regime, and the

restructuring of the international system in the aftermath of the Cold War.
The role of domestic factors in foreign policy decision

making
Post-communist Romanian foreign policy has been characterised
by a wide consensus of the society, political parties and decision-makers
around the major directions. Accession to NATO and the EU was widely
supported by the public opinion, as is the pro-American stance. Changes in
political majority did not usually entail a change in the direction or the
objectives of foreign policy. On the contrary: accession to the EU was
requested after a complete consensus of Parliamentary parties; the first
alternation to power, which took place in 1996, reinforced the already
existing pro-Western orientation. The second alternation, in 2000, raised
fears about the will of the majority party, considered neo-communist, to
continue this line. However, President Ion Iliescu sought to calm those fears
and to confirm his serious engagement with the Western partners by
appointing the former Romanian ambassador to the US, Mircea Geoană, as
Minister of Foreign Affairs. Throughout the whole period, very few
disagreements appeared between the government and the opposition or the
society on foreign policy issues. We will mention them below.
The first opposing voices on foreign policy appeared in 1997,
when the political treaty with Ukraine was signed, in its present form, in
spite of vociferous protests of mass-media or civic associations. Several
criticisms were brought to the Treaty, beginning with the “historical
treason” of having left Romanian territories behind. Dominut Padurean,
Professor of History at the Romanian Naval Academy, thinks that the Treaty
is “the worst and the most criminal Treaty signed by Romania in the last
decades” (Cf. Roncea 2005: 2015). Paul Nistor points out that all the public
debate around the Treaty emphasised was the problematic historical
heritage, instead of revealing the positive aspects of bilateral relations
(Nistor 2002).
In October 1998, Romania had to answer a request from NATO to
use its air bases for missions in Kosovo, for unpredictable and urgent
situations. The Romanian society was quite divided on the issue, since
relations between Romanians and Serbs were very friendly during the
communist years. The two countries had signed a political treaty in 1996 in
which they agreed, among others, that “none of the contracting parties will
allow its territory to be used by a third state for committing an aggression
against the other party and will not provide any kind of support to such third
state” (“Treaty on the relations of friendship, good neighbourliness and
cooperation between Romania and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia,”
1996, art. 7).
However, the request was not necessarily unusual, except for the
fact that it doubled the international legislation in the field of aeronautics,
which already contained an obligation to offer assistance to foreign aircraft
in cases of emergency. The US request was submitted to Parliament, where
it was supported by the government coalition (mostly right-wing) and
rejected by the opposition (left wing and nationalist parties) with 244 votes
against 160 (Transcript of the common sitting of the Chamber of Deputies
and the Senate, 1998). Half a year later, a second request comes from
NATO: to provide “non restrictive access in the Romanian air space for the
period of execution of air operations on the territory of the Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia” (Transcript of the common sitting of the Chamber of
Deputies and the Senate, 1999). More than the previous one, this request
infringed the Treaty between Romania and Serbia. During the debates,
148 Chapter 5
national interest in invoked, as well as belonging to a community of values.

However, the request was approved by 225 votes against only 21. There
were no fewer than 161 absent MPs, which shows their lack of interest in
the issue.
It might prove interesting to compare this case with the
Parliamentary debate on Romania’s involvement in the 2003 American
intervention in Iraq. There are some legal similarities and differences with
respect to the 1998-99 situation: in both cases, there was no prior Security
Council resolution to allow the intervention. Moreover, this time, it was an
American, not a NATO intervention, having therefore even less multilateral
legitimacy, since it had been denied by France and Germany. However,
consensus was almost perfect between the government and the opposition,
and the decision did not raise any debate. Participation was approved by 351
votes against 2; there were 74 abstentions (Transcript of the common sitting
of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, 2003). This foreign policy
decision inspired the famous enraged phrase of Jacques Chirac at the
doorstep of the emergency European Council meeting: “Candidate countries
(…) have lost a good opportunity to shut up” (Press Conference of Jacques
Chirac, 2003).
These examples show clearly the preference to align with
American positions when they are divergent from Western European ones.
They also show that, on this issue, the government-opposition cleavage is
stronger when left and nationalist parties are in opposition or, to put it
differently, that left parties become more pro-American when they are in
power.
The existence of a wide consensus throughout the society with
regard to the major foreign policy objectives does not allow us to assess the
differentiated impact of domestic factors such as the role of the public
opinion, the checks and balances between decision-making institutions, the

relevance of the opposition parties, or even transition itself. An assessment
of which of these factors had a greater impact than others is impossible as
long as all the actors involved converge around the main foreign policy
objectives.
External incentives and the making of foreign policy

During the first post-revolutionary years, decision-makers found in
history the most stable basis for their foreign policy orientation, since both
the domestic and international environments were in turmoil. Towards the
mid-1990s, the surprise of the fall of communism and the enthusiasm it
generated began to make room for a more predictable turn of events. Both
NATO and the EU opened the possibility to enlargement towards Eastern
Europe, setting clear criteria – more institutionalised, as in the case of the
EU, or implicit, as in the case of NATO. After a few years of oscillation,
Romania decided to apply for accession in both organisations, following a
decision made through a wide consensus of all Parliamentary parties
(Snagov Declaration 1995). Most of the foreign policy actions taken after
this moment were meant to increase Romania’s chances to be accepted.
According to the realist school in International Relations, the decision of
East European states to direct their foreign policy towards the West is a
typical case of bandwagoning: once the Soviet threat disappeared, these
countries relied on the most important actors in the system. The
bandwagoning hypothesis also applies if we consider the previously
mentioned cases of the support for the US intervention in Kosovo (1999)
and Iraq (2003), or the signing of the non-extradition treaty with the USA.
This hypothesis would completely set aside the idea that democratic
transition may have anything to do with the conduct of foreign policy, the
150 Chapter 5
latter being always motivated by the pursuit of national interest, as realist

theories maintain. However, this would be quite simplistic. A better
explanation would take into account the institutional dimension of the
impact of the external factors in foreign policy-making. We will briefly
touch two aspects of this dimension: conditionality and socialisation. Both
were approached by transition studies (Pridham 2007; Schimmelfennig
2000; 2007; Blokker 2005; Gheciu, 2005); but, as mentioned above, these
studies mainly address the impact of external factors on domestic politics
and policies, and not on foreign policy. However, it can be argued that
conditionality also indirectly impacted on foreign policy, while socialisation
transformed the identities and interests of foreign policy-makers up to a
point where they internalised the norms of the organisations they were
socialised into.
The case of external conditionality can be illustrated with two
examples: the way in which norms on national minorities, diffused mainly
by the Council of Europe, but also by the European Union, led to better
bilateral relations between Romania and Hungary; and the NATO accession
criteria which determined Romania to give up territorial claims in its
relations with Ukraine, in order to sign the bilateral Treaty before the NATO
summit in Madrid, in 1997.
The issue of how national minorities were treated in Romania
constituted a preoccupation for both the USA and the European states ever
since the 1980s (Harrington and Courtney 1991; Smith 2001). The
withdrawal of the Most Favoured Nation Clause in 1988 is linked to the bad
treatment towards the Hungarian minority, and the efforts made by Romania
after the fall of communism to get it back did not give results for the same
reason, until as late as 1993. The pressures for a better treatment of national
minorities in Romania are made especially through the Council of Europe,
which is, in 1990, the most accessible Western international organisation

for the Central and East European countries. The CoE had a strong body of
legislation on the subject – Recommendation 1201, which goes as far as to
promote collective rights for minorities, and the Framework Convention for
the Protection of National Minorities (1994). On the other hand, the acquis
communautaire does not include provisions on the rights of minorities, and
there is no single standard throughout the Union on the matter (De Witte
2000). However, this is one of the Copenhagen sub-criteria of accession,
under the ‘rule of law’ heading, without being clearly defined. European
conditionality on this matter acted by a double standard, since the norms
requested of candidate countries set higher standards for minority protection
than those existing in several EU countries. Norms on minority protection
were steadily put in place, and this also led to an improvement in the
bilateral relations with Hungary.
The signing of the bilateral Treaty with Hungary, which took place
in 1996, was, in fact, the result of conditionality. The two countries had
bitter relations during the 1980s and at the beginning of the 1990s. In the
meantime, both had embarked on a firm endeavour to fulfil the accession
criteria for NATO and the EU. While the EU criteria were clearly set after
the 1993 Copenhagen summit, NATO had only loose criteria, mentioned in
a Study on Enlargement published in 1995. One of those referred to having
good relations with neighbours (art. 71), translated into bilateral political
treaties. In its efforts to be taken into consideration for the first wave of
NATO enlargement, which was to be decided at the Madrid summit in 1997,
Romania signed a treaty with Hungary in which it made concessions with
regard to the reference of Recommendation 1201. The Treaty contains
extensive provisions on minority rights.
152 Chapter 5
A similar treaty was signed with Ukraine in 1997, a few months

before the Madrid summit. Although the Treaty did nothing more than
confirm the status quo, it was considered a historical treason by part of the
Romanian public and historians, because it accepted the loss of the
Romanian territories of Bukovina, Herza, Southern Bessarabia and Khotyn.
While Romanians usually agree on foreign policy goals, it seems that for
the first time this Treaty split the public opinion into those in favour of the
overcoming on the past, who also supported the Treaty as a means of
showing good will to NATO, and those who considered it as a historical
treason of the Romanian ideal of re-unification and of the Romanians that
live in nowadays Ukraine.
The provisions of the Treaty were rather ambiguous concerning the
disputed issues. The reference to the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact was replaced
by a very vague allusion, in the Preamble, to the “condemnation of the
unjust acts of totalitarian regimes and military dictatorship” (“Treaty
concerning the good neighbourliness and cooperation between Romania and
Ukraine”). The Parties agreed that their common border was inviolable (Art.
2) and that their relations were founded on the respect, among others, of the
Helsinki Final Act (which is the last international agreement mentioning
that borders in Europe were recognised by all signatory parties and could
not be changed forcefully) (Art. 1). Some vital issues were postponed: the
regime of the common frontier was not decided upon, and the Treaty
specified in Article 1.2 that it would be set by a subsequent Treaty (which
was only signed six years afterwards, in 2003). This also involved the issue
of the delimitation of territorial waters and the Serpents’ Island. Article 5
stated that the Parties “will sustain each other in their efforts for integration
into the European and Euro-Atlantic structures.” The most significant
provisions were those concerning the status of minorities, set out in Article
13. The Romanian side obtained an important victory through the inclusion
of a reference to the Recommendation 1201 of the Council of Europe, which
enhanced the rights of minorities. Nevertheless, the Treaty specified that
“this recommendation does not refer to collective rights and does not oblige
the contracting Parties to grant to the respective persons the right to a special
territorial autonomy status based upon ethnic criteria” (Art. 13.1).
The account of former President Constantinescu about the way in
which the issue of the basic Treaty was settled is very relevant for
understanding the influence of external factors on the signing of the Treaty:
“It all took place at the OSCE meeting (…). Before going to
Lisbon, I received a report from the SIE (Foreign Intelligence Service) on
the position that Ukraine was to take at the OSCE. They were prepared to
attack Romania, which was presented as a neo-imperialist State that did not
want to sign the Treaty, maintained a situation of instability and did not
recognise Ukrainian frontiers, unlike Poland (…) In the context of the
change of government [in Romania], Kutchma, who had enough experience,
postponed the manifestation of force in order to see our reaction in Lisbon
(…) Having this report, I asked for a meeting with vice-President Al Gore
and I insisted that this meeting should take place before Gore’s meeting with
Kutchma. And my meeting with Kuthcma was fixed after his meeting with
the Americans (…) I told Gore that we would solve the problem of the
Treaty with Ukraine on the Polish model (…) and he told Kutchma this (…)
But I told him that the condition was that privileged attention should be paid
in this Treaty to the Romanian minorities. And here, we would need
American pressures (…). This was the basis of the Treaty” (Interview with
Emil Constantinescu, 2006).
The story was confirmed by former Minister of Foreign Affairs
Adrian Severin (Severin and Andreescu 2000: 47-48). Both the European
154 Chapter 5
Union and the USA seemed interested in the development of Romanian-

Ukrainian relations, as they congratulated the two governments on signing
the Treaty.
It might seem paradoxical that a military alliance (such as NATO)
has a positive impact on democratisation; however, this impact is studied by
Alexandra Gheciu (2005) for the Romanian and Czech cases, through the
lenses of the transfer of norms in the field of civilian control over the
military. The author insists on the effects of socialisation of elites as a
mechanism used by NATO to achieve the transfer of norms. She argues that
NATO’s impact on the policies of Central and European states pertains not
to a logic of conditionality, but to one of internalisation of new values and
norms through mechanisms such as persuasion, role-playing and teaching
(Gheciu 2005: 161).
The influence of external factors over security policies might be
greater than in the case of other policies because of the special character –
having a pronounced international dimension – of the area of security. After
the Cold War, security becomes “de-nationalised,” in the sense that it cannot
be conceived only at national level, but needs international cooperation in
order to address the so-called “diffuse threats.” The regional configuration
also contributes to a higher impact of external factors during the pre-
accession period: Central and East European countries do not have the
means to impose their own preferences in a world dominated by at least
three relevant players: NATO, the EU, and Russia. In the words of Richard
Weitz, already after the fall of communism, “in the issue area of military
security, the great powers were the regime makers and the East European
countries, the regime-takers” (Weitz 1993: 378). Despite the fact that
security and defence are part of the traditional core of state sovereignty,
Central and East European states had to adapt to the institutional models of
the member-states in the two organisations for which they sought accession.
Another aspect that deserves attention is the instruments through
which the influence of external factors is exerted. Thus, it would seem that
soft mechanisms – such as socialisation or emulation are more effective than
more intrusive ones, such as conditionality (Coman 2009: 137). Moreover,
conditionality is more effective if clear rules are specified by the norm-
maker (Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2005: 12).
Beginning in the mid-1990s, the international institutional network
in which Romania became embedded got thicker and thicker. While,
immediately after 1989, Romania had few international obligations, in time
it became a member of different organisations. This brought, of course, new
opportunities and more stability, but also limits or models for its possible
foreign policy actions, as documented by theorists (Hill 2003: 159). This
might also be one of the reasons why, after accomplishing its two main
objectives – accession to NATO and the EU – Romanian foreign policy does
not seem to have a clear course, except for its constant support of the US
positions and actions.
The conclusion of this analysis is that historical heritages, as
perceived by the decision-makers, were the most important drive of foreign
policy during the first post-communist years, while international
conditionality, in its softer or harder forms, was more relevant in the later
stages of transition. This led to a complete reorientation in foreign policy,
from East to West, but not to a change in the structure of this foreign policy:
Romania bandwagons with the actor that it perceives as the most important
in the international configuration, that is, the USA. The transition in the
foreign policy area meant a mere transfer of rule in the medieval sense of
the notion of translatio imperii.
156 Chapter 5
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Democratic Consolidation and Europeanization in Romania

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Democratic Consolidation

Edited by Sergiu Mişcoiu

This book first published 2021

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Copyright © 2021 by Sergiu Mişcoiu and contributors

ISBN (10): 1-5275-7375-3

Chapter 5 ................................................................................................ 131

Ciprian Bogdan is Lecturer of Political Science at the Faculty of European

Horatiu Dan is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of European Studies

Ruxandra Ivan is a Romanian political scientist specialized in international

or No Regionalism? Emerging Regionalism at the Black Sea Area (London,

Mircea Maniu was for decades an Associate Professor of Economics and

Sergiu Mișcoiu is Professor of Political Science at the Faculty of European

transition and transformation in Central-Eastern European and Central and

Levente Salat is professor of Political Science at the Babeş-Bolyai

Ovidiu Vaida is a lecturer at the Faculty of European Studies, Babeş-Bolyai

SERGIU MIȘCOIU AND CIPRIAN BOGDAN

observed variations were explained in terms of different cultural-historical

In the following section, we will try to propose such a schematic

Some historical premises

major European exporter. Mirroring a larger European trend, the laissez-

2 Thus, according to Bogdan Murgescu, in the 19th century, Romanian Principalities

of Romania’s peripheral position expressed in its dependence on agricultural exports

Revolution) or more ironically bonjouriști, as a nod to their tendency to imitate

However, in the nineteenth century, there was a strong conservative

From neo-developmentalism to neoliberalism

9During Ceaușescu’s regime, there was a cultural debate between “protochronism,”

economic transition, but the results were strikingly different: despite

2005, after a centre-right coalition won the elections, Romania implemented

Greskovits identify three forms of capitalism emerging in Central and Eastern

the second highest in European Union after Bulgaria.14 Furthermore, with

The elusiveness of democratic pluralism

Romania, Bulgaria) tend to be more unequal than ethnically homogenous states

intervene to safeguard economic activities, at least at the level of political discourse,

“neoliberalism.” This was visible, for instance, in his attempt, reminiscent of

a strong, homogenous political force to back him, Băsescu used political

18 Since 2020 Romania has had a centre-right government.

From nationalism to Europeanism. And back again?

intellectuals such as Gabriel Liiceanu, Andrei Pleșu, and Horia-Roman Patapievici,

a pro-Western stance. In 1996, the Romanian Democratic Convention won

in Romanian history, was, in fact, marked by the rise of an extremely aggressive

supported him against Vadim Tudor in 2000.

During the 1990s, nationalist discourse seemed to offer a

About this volume’s chapters

liberal democracy, such as the presence of a dominant party or the

Finally, Ruxandra Ivan uses a foreign policy analysis to describe

Chelcea, L. and Druță, O. 2016. “Zombie socialism and the rise of

Gunther, R. and Nikiforos Diamandouros and Hans-Jurgen Puhle (eds.).

Limits of Neoliberal European Governance From Lisbon to Lisbon.

ROMANIA AND ITS DIFFICULT ROAD

Romania’s recent past proves that local politics is rather

rights, freedom of speech, alternative sources of information and limited

1. Constitutional consolidation: political institutions, norms, and

4. The consolidation of political culture, or “the emergence of a

The objective of the chapter is to determine how democracy

The formation of the Romania political system

During these years, two elements foreshadowed what would

Founding patterns of the Romanian politics

Next, Romania chose a rather curious way of managing transition.

The presence of a dominant party

had to go for FDSN (Frontul Democrat al Salvării Naționale). It is widely accepted