Search

This special issue provides a much-needed occasion for reflection on Bulgaria and Romania's integration into the European Union (EU) and subsequent Europeanization. Reflection and empirical examination are much needed to put both countries' records and development in a broader comparative perspective in the context of current studies of democratic backsliding, Europeanization and politicisation of European integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For much of the post-Cold War period the most important foreign policy priority for Bulgaria and Romania was framed by the aim of 'returning to Europe'. The goal to integrate in the European and Euro-Atlantic structures was so pervasive that it dominated the domestic, but more importantly, the foreign policy agendas of the two countries. Securing membership of the European Union (EU) and then preparing for it raised a large number of challenges for the foreign policies of Romania and Bulgaria. Following accession, Bulgaria and Romania have been forced to reframe their strategy, as their main foreign policy goal had been fulfilled. In this context, the article examines the way Romania and Bulgaria's foreign policy priorities have evolved since 2007. The focus is on analysing the contribution of the two countries to EU foreign policy and accounting for their lack of initiative and activism in this policy area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Romania's criminal prosecution of corruption is a controversial topic. While advocates praise the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) for its increasing results, critics voice concerns over the abusive and excessive manner how the fight against corruption is conducted. Is Romania's anti-corruption battle an impressive success or rather a worrisome excess? The article aims to resolve this controversy by assessing anti-corruption activity conceptually and empirically. First, an evaluation scheme of anti-corruption activity – the anti-corruption evaluation chain – is developed, which distinguishes between three stages: 1. Input (capacity), 2. Process (fairness, reasonableness) and 3. Output (results). Second, each dimension is measured empirically by relying on a new set of quantitative indicators and qualitative empirical evidence (e.g. analysis of ECHR judgments, interviews with magistrates). The findings indicate that Romania's fight against corruption has resulted in the augmentation of capacity (e.g. human and financial resources), the acceleration of results (e.g. increasing number of indicted, prosecuted and convicted persons) and aberration from the principles of fair trial and reasonableness, i.e. proportionality. Overall, Romania's criminal prosecution of corruption has derailed into an over-zealous struggle for a 'noble cause' which itself has violated individual rights, the principles of fairness and proportionality, procedural integrity and the rule of law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article belongs to a forthcoming special cluster, "Contention Politics and International Statebuilding in Southeast Europe" guest-edited by Nemanja Džuverovic, Julia Rone and Tom Junes. Massive protest waves, mainly led by younger citizens, appeared during the past years in Romania. Gubernat and Rammelt provide an analysis of the production of meaning by the "Romanian street" as a collective actor. They argue that "Vrem o ţară ca afară! (We want a country like abroad!)" became the leitmotif for important parts of the Romanian protests of the past eight years. For so doing, Gubernat and Rammelt analyze the discursive underpinnings and the constructed frames in recent protests in Romania. Their demonstration synthesizes a social phenomenon that appeared during the Roșia Montană protests of 2013, continued with the Colectiv protests of 2015 and was reconfirmed during the 2017–2018 anti-corruption protests: the dichotomy between the discursive appropriation of the West, as a benchmark of progress and social modernization and the "self-racism" manifested in these movements. The use of Frame Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis for the study of these waves of protests enables them to show how the Western hegemonic discourse on state-building provides the cultural conditions for social action as well as it enables mobilizing agents to frame national discontent. "'Vrem o ţară ca afară!' Redefining state-building through a pro-European discourse in Romania" concludes that recent protests in Romania reproduce Western ideals of modern state and politics through a value-based discourse around the idea of belonging to Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of extensive research dedicated to the rise and development of fringe populist political parties in Eastern Europe, little attention has been paid to the organizational determinants of their electoral performance. This article aims to fill this void in the literature and analyzes the extent to which particular types of leadership and party organization could influence the electoral performance of three political parties from Bulgaria, Republic of Moldova, and Romania. The qualitative analysis is conducted for the period 2012–2015 and uses a combination of primary (party statutes) and secondary sources (party histories, electoral databases, and literature). The results indicate how the existence of underdeveloped party organizations has a negative influence on the electoral performance, while strong and charismatic leaders are an insufficient condition for ensuring survival in the political arena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the potential of fake news to produce effects on social media engagement as well as the moderating role of education and government approval. We report on a 2x2x2 online experiment conducted in Romania (N=813), in which we manipulated the level of facticity of a news story, its valence, and intention to deceive. Results show that ideologically driven news with a negative valence (rather than fabricated news or other genres, such as satire and parody) have a greater virality potential. However, neither the level of education nor government approval moderate this effect. Additionally, both positive and negative ideologically driven news stories enhance the probability that people will sign a document to support the government (i. e., potential for political engagement on social media). These latter effects are moderated by government approval: Lower levels of government approval lead to less support for the government on social media, as a consequence of fake news exposure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many elections around the world, voters choose between politicians who differ not only in personal background and policy promises, but also in their history of dishonest electoral conduct. While recent literature has begun to investigate the conditions under which voters punish electoral malfeasance, we know relatively little about whether they penalize different forms of illicit activities carried out by politicians differently. In this paper, we present the results of a candidate choice experiment embedded in a survey fielded prior to the 2016 Romanian local election. We asked voters to choose between two hypothetical candidates, randomly varying several attributes, including different illicit electoral activities. We find that citizens tolerate some forms of political malfeasance less than others depending on how much that malfeasance infringes on voters' autonomy. Informational campaigns carried out by prosecutorial agencies also affect how much voters punish different illicit exchanges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of European Review of Public Law is the property of European Public Law Organization and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of European Review of Public Law is the property of European Public Law Organization and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Romania faced one of the most dramatic transitions from authoritarian communism to become a democracy and a member of the North-Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU). The backbone of building a democratic society has been civilian control of the military. This article briefly describes the norms and institutions of democratic control of the intelligence services in Romania and assesses how the mechanisms of democratic control have worked in practice after almost three decades of reform. We argue that many of the post-1989 reforms have been only superficial implemented and monitored, particularly after Romania joined NATO and the EU. The article concludes that the democratic control of intelligence in Romania is an unfinished business. There are structural shortcomings embedded in the process of democracy consolidation that need to be addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The union of 1600 under Mihai Viteazul, the Revolt of Horea, Cloşca and Crişan from 1784, Tudor Vladimirescu's Revolution from 1821, the Revolution from 1848 and the Little Union f rom 1859, under the ruler Alexandru Ioan Cuza, are moments in history that expressed loud and clearly the centuries-long desire of Romanians everywhere: The Great Union, made in 1918, whose Centenary we are celebrating this year. This article deals with all these events preceding the union of 1918, in the context of the times and the unionist propaganda promoted by those who wanted, more than anything and with great sacrifices, to fulfill the ideal of unification of all Romanians under one name: Romania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When democratic norms and principles are challenged by fraud and abuse, the role of electoral protests usually consists in expressing the civil discontent, reprimanding political authorities and nevertheless re-enacting the confidence into the democratic order. The most recent electoral uprisings from Romania in 2014 and Moldova in 2016 during the presidential elections made no exception. By using theoretical opportunity structure framework, this article seeks to provide a comparative analysis of these two episodes by focusing on the following aspects: a) the civil society's reaction to the tensioned political environment; b) the deficient organization of the elections and the accusations of fraud as incentives for the social mobilization both domestically and abroad, namely by the diaspora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The figures of the Romanian postwar exile belong to the groups of exiles from to the old democratic formations, as well as to active groups of naţionalist orientation. But what is distinguishahle from the perspective of postwar exile in general, is a common direction, that of communism fighting and liberation of the countries found under Soviet influence. It can be said that most of the exiles from Eastern Europe have pursued, regardless of their political orientation, the same objective they have embraced by trying through different means to "awaken" Western Europe to reason in front of the Soviet expansion. Beyond these themes, the historical act of December lst 1918, representing the Great Union of the Romanians, without forgetting the Unification of Bessarabia and Bukovina with Romania, was celebrated annually by the Romanians in exile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Etymologically, but also hermeneutically, it is precisely the quality of the symbol to bring together things or beings from other regimes of existence (whether ontological, cultural, or political different regimes). Thus, we can say that by bringing together, in one political body, all Romanians in historical provinces separated by different governments (especially through the persons who exercise the leadership), but identical by language, belief and elements of culture, the Great Union from 1918 is a symbol of the political identity of'Roman ia as a modern state. In other words, identity is built around symbols that have, among other qualities, the ability to express the durability of a thing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 25 May 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation will come into force in all the Member States of the European Union, replacing the Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data and, additionally, in Romania, the Law no. 677 dated 21 November 2001 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and the free movement of such data. This paper intends to analyse the regulation's provisions regarding the public authorities and bodies of a Member State, in order to discover how Romanian authorities should envisage to organise the processing of personal data. We shall reveal the steps that have to be taken by the respective entities of the State. Among the most important steps, we consider it essential to designate a data protection officer. Having in view that the European regulation expressly provides that those entities must designate a data protection officer, in this paper we shall emphasize what are the tasks, the role, the responsibilities, the qualities of the data protection officer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Separation and balance of powers is one of the fundamental principles which is a fundamental element of the rule of law in any contemporary. The recognition of this principle does not imply that even public administration authorities must have a rigid behaviour, and that they are not allowed to have and exercise a discretionary power, a right of appreciation. However, the exercise of such power or right must be within the limits of that principle and, implicitly, of the principle of legality. Nowdays, we can observe that any public authority, as well as those in the sphere of public administration, tries to force the limits of its discretionary power, or such a behaviour could affect the correct and constitutional functioning of the rule of law. This article is intended to be only an initial approach to identifying the constitutional aspects relevant to the proposed theme by using methods such as comparative or systemic method. Thus, we want to identify those constitutional mechanisms that constitutional legislators have established to prevent overcoming the limits of this discretionary power. Later, through other articles, we will have the opportunity to identify the risk factors that arise in such situations, as well as possible solutions to reduce or even eliminate these factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Romanian society has, as a national objective, a public administration outside the political influence and the recruitment of competent and performant public servants. One of the instruments to realize this objective is, no doubt, the legal status of the public servants. This study is aimed to identify and analyse the elements of vulnerability witch the Law 188/1999 concerning the public servants and the project of the Administrative Code contain, from the perspective of the political influences. The main issue of the study is to be aware of the institutions, procedures and factors witch make fragile the legal status of the public servants, allowing, by example, the political parties membership of the public servants or their recruitment in absence of a national competition, organised by an entity specialised in the development of the public function in Romania. The project of the Administrative Code brings remedies only in part for the existing problems, while amplifies others. O very difficult, actual and vulnerable matter is the policy of salaries of public servants, in the context of the Decision n. 794/2016 of the Constitutional Court. The research has an explicative, but also a critic character. Also, solutions are offered in order to increase the degree of accomplishment of a competent, transparent and political neutral administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aims to analyze the current state of evolution of Romanian administrative law. Although the title presents itself as an interrogation, we do not want- it would be a naivety if we do- to give answers. The study focuses mainly on the following aspects: false modernity of administrative law; the "attacks" from other branches; conserving constants and defining traditional elements; the effect of Europeanisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main goal of the paper is to understand how substantive representation of minorities works through ethnic parties and what the relationship between substantive and descriptive representation is in this specific case. Focus on the traditional understanding of substantive representation is common when analyzing the representation of minorities and marginalized groups, but only a few studies look at the substantive representation of national minorities from a constructivist approach, and even fewer are centered on Central and Eastern Europe. The paper argues that besides ethnicizing their demands, representatives of minorities have a wide array of strategies to achieve their goals. Using the parliamentary representation of Hungarians in Romania as a case study, I show that the strategies chosen in ethnic claims-making are context-dependent: ethnicizing messages are used only in specific cases, while de-ethnicization is applied in debates thought to be important for their community. These are part of a bargaining process that help representatives to achieve their goals. Thus, the paper broadens the debate on substantive representation and has implications in coding, as most of the studies addressing the issue assume that descriptive representatives, in order to provide substantive representation, must ethnicize their demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study seeks to delineate the highly convoluted relationship between (rock) musicians and the state in late socialist Romania (1975–1985). By investigating extensive archival files originating from the Securitate records, Agitprop branches, and the ideological committees of the Romanian Communist Party, we examine how the Romanian regime employed its mechanisms of creative control and how it made sense of Romanian musicians’ attempt to navigate them. First, such intricate mechanisms ranged from rewards and penalties in order to ensure ideological compliance, to repression by means of surveillance, recruitment, and harassment. Second, in our exploration of the margins of consent and dissent, the relationship between musicians and the state fluctuated between one of duplicity (that proved beneficial for both entities) and (symbolic) resistance (through collective and individual forms of dissent). Successful dissent came mostly from abroad, while, domestically, musicians were much more rigidly controlled; without being able to articulate coherent forms of dissent through their music, musicians challenged the Securitate through issues of morality. Music also led to the formation of subcultures—csöves and punks—which practiced anti-proletarian rituals of dissent. Thus, this research throws considerable light on broader sociological debates, such as the role of musicians in totalitarian settings, the hidden mechanisms employed by the state, and the ongoing literature concerning the configuration of subcultural movements in the Eastern bloc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to report on the cultural identity of Romanians after Romania's admission to the European Union as described by Romanians themselves, especially in light of the trending unofficial appropriation of the term "European" to be synonymous with European Union status. A semi-structured survey was conducted that included twenty-two adult Romanians, Romanian being defined by holding Romanian citizenship. The data was then coded according to social science methodology to categorize emerging themes and aid in analysis. The analysis revealed four prominent themes that give insight into specifically the political landscape of Romania through Romanian cultural identity after Romania's admission to the European Union. Issues of concern for participants were the metaphorical marginalization of Romania politically and economically within the European Union and problems of corruption, but contrasted with a strong overall commitment still to staying within the European Union and simultaneously maintaining good relations with their non-European Union neighbors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language planning and control have played a prominent role in attempts of nation building in contemporary Romania, a nation-state formed in the early 20th century by binding together provinces that were previously part of multi-national empires. As a long-lasting process, language control stretches throughout many historical periods. In communist and postcommunist era, it has largely interfered with the political logic of both socialist internationalism and post-socialist democratic citizenry. More recently, under the impact of the European Union's expansion to the East and Romania's integration to it, language control has switched from severe limiting minority languages to a fair acceptance of reasonable compromises with the official dominance of Romanian as national official language. Although Romania acknowledges several minority languages, the article focuses on the usage of Hungarian language, the most important minority language in Romania. The aim of the article is double. On one hand, it analyses political negotiations over the status and corpus of the Hungarian language, by assessing the importance of language policies in the broader context of the processes of historical reconciliation and neighbourhood policies between Romania and Hungary. On the other hand, it deals with the political cooperation between Romanian and Hungarian political parties in Romania during the democratic postcommunist transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is part of the conceptual debates on national or regional/ local dimension of the political culture arguing for the classical approach which identifies political values, attitudes and behaviors relevant to the national type of community. The case study, which actually supports the idea of the existence of a national political culture, targets the post-communist Romanian society and is based on the results of a quantitative sociological research. The aim of the paper is to show that the Romanian social space is quite homogeneous on those value, attitudinal and behavioral orientations that define political culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current article demonstrates how during transition from a totalitarian system to democracy in Romania, democracy could be shaken by the fact that the Government takes on Parliament's attributes regarding its powers to legislate. In other words, the Parliament becomes an "annex" of the Government. Normally, one could assume that, by virtue of the cooperation and solidarity between the Parliament and the Government, the more solid the parliamentary majority is, the less the Government would need to interfere with the law-making process of the Parliament. But the same solid majority in the Parliament could also be a guarantee that an Emergency Ordinance adopted by the government remains in force without even being democratically debated in the Parliament. The ordinances with potential to divide the society are not passed through the Parliament so that they cannot be challenged by the opposition or by the Presidency at the Constitutional Court. Thus, at the 28th anniversary of the transition of Romania from communism to democracy - we can observe an increase in government power in the field of direct regulation. The Parliament is also actively involved in this "game" by not contesting this transfer of duties. The paper analyses and compares the number of Emergency Ordinances and simple Ordinances adopted by the Government and the number of laws adopted by Parliament and the context in which they were passed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article compares the legal norms of civil law of the Republic of Kazakhstan and Romania. The basic concepts, principles of organization of the civil law branch are investigated. Similarities and differences of legal norms are considered, proceeding from the methodology of comparative jurisprudence. As a result of the analysis, conclusions are drawn concerning the possibility of using progressive norms in the field of the investigated branch of law in the modern national legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article develops a typology of political strategies of coming to terms with the past as a theoretical frame of reference against which it assesses the transitional politics of memory pursued in Romanian post-communist society. It argues that after an initial ‘elusive’ strategy based on a politics of amnesia gave way to a confrontationist stance promoting a politics of anamnesis, the communist past was both politically criminalised and symbolically demonised. The article concludes by arguing that the failure of the ‘mastering the past’ paradigm epitomised by the 2006 Tismăneanu Report needs to give way to a ‘normalising’ paradigm of remembering Romanian communism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effectiveness of the process of halting the phenomenon of tax evasion lies above all in the ability to remove the very causes that produce or favor offenses that run counter to tax laws, knowing that only the removal of the effects is not and can not be as effective as eradicating the causes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the mix of non-programmatic strategies used by politicians to gain voter support in contemporary Eastern Europe. We use a mixed-method design that combines survey-based experiments and qualitative research in a paired comparison of localities in Romania and Bulgaria. Our article documents that the mix of clientelistic strategies differs across localities with different turnover rates. In both Romania and Bulgaria, we find that the use of clientelistic strategies that politicise state resources is higher in localities with long-term political incumbents. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyses the clientelistic behaviour of governments and provides new evidence that politically aligned localities are favoured by the central government in the allocation of public funds. It focuses on the case of Romania, an ex-communist, developing country, where this issue represents a controversial topic, being strongly criticized by the media, but, until now, never analysed in a rigorous scientific manner. I use a sharp regression discontinuity design and a new data set on reserve fund transfers and subsidies allocated by the central government to localities, as well as data on the outcomes of local elections, focusing on close electoral races. I find, for some specific years, a strong alignment effect in the case of reserve fund transfers, indicating that the central government provides more transfers to localities led by mayors who belong to one of the parties forming the government coalition. However, this is not the case for subsidies, were I find no alignment effect, the main reason being that, compared to reserve fund transfers, the allocation of subsidies follows a more complex and less discretionary process, requiring also the approval of the Parliament. I argue that the allocation of public funds to localities is used by the central governments as a tool for gaining political capital, as local mayors play a very important role in influencing electoral outcomes, at the expense of a balanced regional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-communist transition is usually studied through the combination of domestic and foreign factors, structural or agency-based, with the foreign agency most often being associated with the politics of powerful international actors, such as the European Union or the United States. Notwithstanding the role of these actors, which is substantial, this study turns its attention to a missing ingredient in the international diffusion of norms, the peer country reference. In this case, a particular post-communist nation acts as preferred reference to another nation that needs peer models in its quest for economic, political and social development. This study presents Romania as a peer reference for Bulgaria, by analyzing Bulgarian media from the early 1990s until 2015. The Bulgarian elite and public are responding to events in the northern neighbor, in order to emulate positive models or to avoid post-communist transition traps. Both right-and left-oriented politicians are using Romania in order to move Bulgarian politics in one direction or another. Constructed ideas about Romania thus become part of Bulgarian political life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the idea of “recuperative memory” with respect to the process of coming to terms with the past after the fall of the Romanian Communist regime in 1989. Its method is to examine the mechanisms used by recuperative memory in order to re-appropriate the past and emphasize the inherently mediated and multifaceted nature of this process. Using various examples from oral testimonies, autobiographical writings, literary works, and cinema, the paper argues that the role of recuperative memory is not only to facilitate the process of coming to terms with the past, but also to offer the material necessary to sustain a viable politics of memory. This entails providing a platform for the intergenerational transmission of memory and knowledge for those who did not live under the Communist regime, filling in this way the intergenerational gap, despite the lack of political class engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]