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What are the main partisan divisions in Romania, and what accounts for them? What isthe sociological, demographic and attitudinal profile of the main constituencies in thiscountry? These are the questions that I seek to answer. I argue that political life in post-Communist Romania was characterized until recently by the existence of three majorblocs: left, right, and extreme right, and that the constituents of each of these blocs are, inone way or another, a product of modernization. The left is representing mostly ruralRomania, one that has yet to modernize. The right is a product of successfulmodernization - an urban, young, well-educated, dynamic constituency. The extremeright constituency, the voters of Greater Romania Party (PRM), emerged after thetransition from the prior regime as the side effect of a kind of "defective modernity," theprocess of rapid urbanization and industrialization imposed from above duringCommunism. As new generations of voters come of age, voters who were socializedunder very different conditions from previous generations, conditions became ripe for theemergence of a new extreme right party - the Party of the New Generation (PNG). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I use survey data to map the constituents of two extreme right-wing parties, the French National Front and the Greater Romania Party, in a two-dimensional policy space. The presence of these constituents has similar consequences for political competition in the two polities, making their politics two-dimensional. On the one hand, we have moderate left and moderate right constituencies, divided primarily by "Old Politics" economic conflicts. On the other hand, we have "New Politics" conflicts, dividing the authoritarian and xenophobic constituents of extreme right -wing parties from all other constituencies. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]