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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 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]

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]

Despite our relatively broad and robust understanding of street level bureaucracy in a Western context, this area of inquiry remains somewhat understudied in an Eastern European context. This is particularly problematic for Romania, where poor educational stock, weak accountability mechanism, and rather frail media make front line bureaucrats' behavior disproportionately critical to public service provision. This article partially fills this void and brings a much needed overview of street-level bureaucracy in Romania. Relying on recent survey data collected from 407 front line workers, the study covers four key public administration services (taxation, consumer, environmental, and labor protection) and street-level bureaucracy, describes demographics, values, work environment, and attitudes towards rules and citizens. It shows that Romanian front line workers are relatively willing to bend and break the rules if their organizational goals demand so, and that they enjoy important levels of discretion and work autonomy. These bureaucrats also depict high levels of organizational commitment, low levels of uncertainty tolerance, and high power distance. The article concludes with comments and implications for future research in policy implementation at the front lines. [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]

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]

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]

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]

The positive role of the European Union (EU) in the democratization process in post-communist countries has been amply documented. The pre-accession conditionality was to a large extent the tool used to enhance adoption of norms, and implementation of policy. In this context, it is less clear what happens after countries join the EU and conditionality is no longer an option. This article seeks to provide an answer by analysing how the EU can influence democratic governance after accession of a new member state. In particular, it focuses on the reactions of EU actors in two institutional conflicts (the 2007 and 2012 presidential impeachment referendums) in Romania. The main findings indicate how EU leverage on domestic politics remains possible, though the effectiveness of involvement, monitoring and evaluation of respect for democratic principles depends on a complex interaction of international and domestic actors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Though vilified as instances of “parliamentary putsch,” no-confidence censure motions remain significant constitutional tools through which the opposition can challenge the government in Romania, and publicly underscore its policy ineffectiveness in certain areas of activity. An overview of censure motions debated in the Romanian parliament from 1989 to 2012 reveals that center-left cabinets faced fewer challenges than their center-right counterparts, anti-communist forces were less skilled in articulating criticisms against cabinets, not all adopted motions led to cabinet removal, and motions became increasingly complex over time. Two motions adopted in 2009 and 2012, tabled by the center-left opposition against center-right cabinets, turned these parliamentary tools into powerful censure instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper approaches the engagement of successive Romanian governments with service delivery by third sector organisations and uses policy discourse to assess governance practices associated with collaborative service delivery. The topic is approached by a theoretically-informed qualitative analysis of policy documents spanning a decade. Results point out that the most important subjective factors shaping collaborative service delivery in post-communist Romanian are the conditionality of EU accession and the polarisation of policy-making in key sectors. The paper identifies three stages of cooperative service delivery in Romania, each characterised by a specific mix of governance elements. It shows hierarchical and market governance discourse to be prevalent as compared to the network governance discourse, with policy consequences in the area of co-operative public service delivery in Romania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the National Strategy on Social Inclusion and Poverty Reduction (2014-2020) of Romania. The strategy was elaborated by experts from World Bank and it is currently the object of public debate and of a Government Decision proposal. The importance of studying this strategy derives from the multitude of social groups affected by the poverty level in Romania with impact both on individuals and the society. The study focuses on analysing the priorities, objectives and measures established by the strategy. We investigate its feasibility and the opportunity of implementing them relative to the real needs of Romanian society, based on a series of official documents from national and international institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of e-government services increases the performance of the public sector by using ICT to deliver information to citizens, businesses, and public agencies. This article examines the development of e-government in Romania and compares it with the other EU countries. The indicators comparison is based on the seven e-government survey reports performed by the United Nations between 2003 and 2014 on 193 countries. The conceptual framework of the survey expresses a holistic view of the e-government development index (EGDI) and has three main dimensions: online services availability, telecommunication infrastructure, and human resource capacity. The UN global e-government ranking was intended to offer a performance rating of national governments relative to one another. Romania is ranked as a high-EGDI (between 0.5 and 0.75) country in 2014 worldwide with and EGDI value of 0.56315. Otherwise, among the EU countries, Romania is one of the low-ranked countries regarding the e-government development index in all the seven surveys. There are many opportunities for high-EGDI and middle-EGDI countries to continue e-government development. Considering EU strategies, investments in IT infrastructure, in education, and continuous transformation in online public services, there can be a considerable improvement of e-government in Romania and the other EU countries as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, the accounting harmonization in the public sector has become a key problem in the accounting world. The need for harmonization is generated by the globalization process, both in the private and public sector. This is the reason why the awareness of international bodies for public sector accounting harmonization is significantly raising. The aim of the paper is to compare the information disclosed by the Romanian legal framework to information disclosed by IPSAS 1 - Presentation of Financial Statements, in order to determine the extent to which Romanian laws took the provisions of this standard that is considered by researchers a significant point of modern accounting. The authors try to establish the extent to which the central Romanian regulations have taken the main provisions from IPSAS 1. The purpose is to discover the similarity degree between these two regulations. This study is useful for the authorities empowered to publish regulations because it helps to determine the most important omissions from IPSAS 1 and find the best solutions for improving the future legislation, in order to be as close as possible to IPSAS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this article is to assess the relationship between transitional justice and democratization in post-communist Eastern Europe since the fall of communism in 1989. The analysis is focused on the role of lustration and the opening of communist secret police files in encouraging accountability and promoting the rule of law. An overview of these developments in the countries of the region -- including Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia -- emphasizes the different approaches undertaken in dealing with the abuses and crimes committed by previous non-democratic governments. These differences are examined in relationship to three interrelated variables: (1) the exit mode from communism; (2) the nature of the communist regime; and (3) the politics of the present. The second part of the article provides an extensive analysis of the Romanian case, whose specificity lies in its violent and abrupt exit from communism. The unfinished reckoning with the past in Romania leads us to two main conclusions. First, the nature of communist elites and the opposition to them are of equal importance in understanding how the politics of the present shapes the way in which the past is addressed. Second, in the absence of any real possible reconciliation through public exposure -- at least symbolically -- of those involved in repression, delayed transitional justice is ineffective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past five decades there have been regionalization bills in Europe, more or less successful. The representative ones for the subject in question are those elaborated in Francophile and Francophone countries such as : the Bill concerning the Regionalization of France (April 27th 1969) ; The Egmont Pact, Belgium (May 24th 1977) ; the Regionalization of Poland, coordinated by Jerzy Buzek (January 1999) ; the Bill regarding the Regionalization of Romania (2013). In 2013 Romania, the division of the national territory in eight regions has some objectives that seem to be taken from the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. The Gaullist pattern of regionalization and the manner in which it operationalizes the sharing of competences between regions and departments, the common elements between the current Romanian political scene and the Belgian Egmont Pact, the supremacy of some cities that are apparently more insignificant to the detriment of others according to the Polish model, all these represent problematic aspects that demand pertinent solutions within the project of regionalization of Romania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper examines the impact of the EU on party competition in post-communist Romania by testing Robert Ladrech’s model for the Europeanization of Central and East European party systems. It argues that, although it certainly holds true for a variety of post-communist cases, Ladrech’s model has a very limited explanatory power in the Romanian case after accession, for two reasons. First, the post-accession period has seen further institutionalization of the party system through the gradual disappearance of the extreme-right from within the ranks of parliamentary parties, and through increased competition between established parties on the centre-left and the centre-right of the political spectrum. Second, there has been little change in parties’ stances on European integration. Thus, Romanian formations’ consensus on the benefits of EU membership has continued to exist in the period after accession, while conflicts over the EU’s socio-economic acquis, such as those emerging in Poland and the Czech Republic, have failed to materialize. The main explanation for this situation is the fact that Romania continues to be subject to monitoring in the form of the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism, which has essentially extended the EU’s conditionality into the post-accession period. Given continued monitoring by the European Commission, the distinction between the impact of the EU before and after accession is therefore less clear-cut in Romania’s case than in the case of other post-communist EU member states. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In Romania the access of women to political decision making remains very low (around 10% women in Parliament). The main arguments used to explain this state of affairs are the following: the „communist feminism“ (a contradiction in terms) which impose total obedience towards the state and a completely false and forced political empowerment of women which led to a arduous reverse after 1989 (Miroiu 2004;Vinkze 2006); the transition anti-socialist speech that militated in favor of the return to „normality“, understood as traditional patriarchy (Rueschemeyer, 1994), the gender-developed inequities of transition (Vincze 2006; Miroiu 2004, 2007); the lack of time as a citizenship resource (the double burden) (Lister, 2003). Even tough, what meanings do women attach to their status of citizens and how do they take part at political actions, in the context in which compelling structures, like patriarchy, the communist legacy and post-communist transition are overlapping their daily experiences, remains under studied in Romania. In order to fill this gap, in my paper I will present the result of a field work research (qualitative method - interviews and focus-groups) focused on the way in which women live and experience citizenship, with accent on the perception and signification of their political participation. My arguments will be developed based on a constructivist approach which underline the relations and dependencies between agents (that give meaning to the social roles they play - in my paper women from a region in Romania, Hunedoara county) and structures (mainly the patriarchal one). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three countries in Eastern Europe, Poland, Lithuania, and Romania, hosted secret detention sites for the benefit of the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA’s) interrogation program from about 2002 to 2006. All three countries initially denied with indignation these allegations. In the past five years, Poland moved toward prosecution as a result of a Supreme Court decision ordering declassification of documents, which resulted since 2008 in an ongoing prosecutorial investigation likely to indict the former Interior Minister and possibly others. While Lithuania’s parliament identified plans for a site, it claimed to not know whether it was used, and prosecution was aborted. Romania’s secret prison became the host not only to second-tier, high-value detainees of the CIA, but after Poland shut down its site, to the most dangerous detainees, who were tortured in the basement of the National Security Archives Building in Bucharest. Romania’s three governmental branches continue to deny that it ever collaborated with the CIA or that such a site even existed. This essay analyzes this variation in the domestic responses of these three countries, as well as other CIA collaborations with Bosnia, Kosovo, and Macedonia. It argues that international pressure was a necessary condition for domestic political processes, especially in the legislative and judicial branches supervising executive actions. However, the strength of the latter two branches, along with the type of political class and civil society, will explain the strongest reform process in Poland, the medium-range response in Lithuania, and the nonresponse of denial by Romania. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the relationship between the urban cultural landscape of Bucharest and the making of post-socialist Romanian national identity. As the capital of socialist Romania, central Bucharest was extensively remodelled by Nicolae Ceauşescu into the Centru Civicin order to materialize Romania's socialist identity. After the Romanian “Revolution” of 1989, the national and local state had to deal with a significant “left-over” socialist urban landscape which was highly discordant with the orientation of post-socialist Romania and its search for a new identity. Ceauşescu's vast socialist showpiece left a difficult legacy which challenges the material and representational reshaping of Bucharest and constructions of post-socialist Romanian national identity more broadly. The paper analyzes four attempts to deal with the Centru Civic: developments in the immediate post-1989 period; the international architectural competition Bucureşti 2000; proposals for building a Cathedral of National Salvation; and the Esplanada project. Despite over 20 years of proposals central Bucharest remains largely unchanged. The paper thus deals with a failed attempt to re-shape the built environment in support of national goals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Migration is not a new phenomenon, it means there are always in different ways, and became a global affecting the majority of the countries on the world map. The aim of this research is to study the phenomenon of migration, and how it is reflected in public policies. After 1989, with the fall of the Communist regime in Romania, migration has become a worrying phenomenon, up to 15 percent of Romania's population, leaving the country and then emigrating to the country such as Israel, Turkey, Italy, Hungary, Germany, Spain etc. Permanent migration grew rapidly in the first years after the revolution, dropping further, due to the difficulties to obtain a long-term residence and work permit in the host countries. However, temporary migration has evolved very dynamic, requiring an economic analysis of possible positive or negative externalities of this phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting with the mid-1990s, the present contribution deals with the discussion in the German press of the eastward expansion of the European Union. The author deliberately chose to focus on two new members, the Czech Republic and Romania, in order to demonstrate that the recurring leitmotifs and narratives of the debate can be traced back to the semantics of specific possibilities of how to describe social space and its dynamics. Three paradigmatic notions of social space are evaluated and their consequences for describing and assessing "old" and "new" regions of the EU analyzed. In the media debate, however, these notions have always remained implicit, never have they been named, never has any reflection been voiced about them. Also striking is the fact that they have been used in the same sense by papers of differing political orientation and that there has been very little change over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The manuscript analyzes negative developments in Bulgarian and Romanian politics in the aftermath of the two countries’ accession to the European Union, with a special focus on the worsening corruption problem, the destabilization of previously coherent normative frameworks, and the reversal of processes of state building. It also explores the main characteristics of a novel form of elite behavior, post-accession hooliganism, which began to emerge as soon as Bulgarian and Romanian political leaders felt strong and confident enough to disregard the demands of their West European counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article illustrates how the growing complexity of regulations regarding party funding in post-communist Romania is paralleled by practices employed by political parties in their attempt to gain increased access to state resources. Our document analysis indicate that political parties managed to exploit the weaknesses of the increasingly complex legislative framework. A cyclical process takes places: parties use the existing flaws in the legislation on party funding to indirectly obtain and exploit state resources for their (electoral) purposes, an improved law tackling those shortcomings is passed, but political parties are able to identify other flaws and use them to gain financial benefits. To make the case, we assess comparatively the evolution of legislative provisions and practices employed by political parties over two decades. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Supporting the integration of Romanians wherever located within the communities they belong to, their participation in political decisions in the country where they are established. Efforts will be made by the Romanian Government to strengthen relations with Romanian organizations abroad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I am going to concentrate on a particular aspect of the social capital, namely the institutional and interpersonal trust. My aim was to prove that the trust toward different types of institutions follows a specific internal structure. My further goal was to identify the correlations between the different socio-demographic categories and the types of institutions which these categories tend to trust or distrust. I find this approach relevant due to the fact that in a relatively new democratic country the changes and the acceptance of the changes both on institutional and interpersonal level can play a key role in legitimizing the current economic and political system. For my analysis, I rely on the data from the European Value Survey (EVS), where the latest wave, which includes Romania, was completed in 2008. The main finding of my analysis is that the trust in institutions - at least in Romania -- as perceived by the population, does have a coherent internal structure. I succeeded in identifying five main types of institutions which share a similar variance of trust. I also managed to pinpoint a few of the variables that have a significant explanatory value regarding the institutional and general trust perceived by the Romanian population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, high sovereign debt and austerity policies have coincided with regime-changing popular uprisings. Nicolae Ceausescu's Romania was no exception. Why, when faced with a sovereign debt crisis in the 1980s, did his regime choose to pay its foreign debt as early as possible, at the cost of economic recession and dramatically compressed consumption? How did these choices relate to the regime's failure to survive the end of the decade? The article argues that while exogenous shocks shattered the economic bases of the regime, it was the ideas with which the regime understood development and interpreted the crisis that shaped government policy responses in the 1980s. When the price of oil and development finance went up abruptly in 1979, the low energy efficiency of Romanian industry pushed the country into a situation where debt levels became unsustainable. Committed to a view of development that blended nationalist and Stalinist ideas, but with a focus on policy sovereignty, Ceausescu diagnosed the crisis as evidence that debt-financed development and policy independence were incompatible. Consequently the regime decided to pay off foreign debt through a mix of austerity, import substitution, and export-led accumulation of dollar reserves. By the time all debt was paid off in 1989, the regime's economic sources of legitimacy were exhausted. In the external environment of 1989, this policy regime change contributed to political regime change even in the absence of an organized civil society. In addition to casting a new light on the causal mechanisms of the Romanian revolution of December 1989, the findings of this article contribute to emerging scholarship that stresses the nexus between debt-induced economic crisis and popular uprisings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Approximately 32 nations currently use reservation of legislative seats for minority voices, whether by race, ethnicity, language, religion, or territory. Romania has among the most extensive and complicated arrangement of reserved seats, with 18 different ethnic minorities currently provided special parliamentary representation. This paper addresses two key political issues: how is it determined that there exists a valid ethnic minority deserving of recognition with a reserved seat? What are the political consequences from the broad allocation of reserved seats? The paper understands a reserved legislative seat as a distributive good over which rival claimants assert contested title. The state has incentive to avoid controversial choices although this is not always possible. Incumbent interests have incentive to restrict competitive entry without appearing to violate the principles of open inclusion. As seen through the Romanian case, the regime consequence from this dynamic tends to be clientele politics, in which minority organizations emerge segmented, dependent, and relatively powerless, yet simultaneously satisfied that they can guarantee by means of state subsidies the foundations for group identity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article is the first systematic exploration of the leadership selection process in the Romanian party system. We use process-tracing and qualitative tools, using data from party statutes and documents of the national conventions. We focus on the parliamentary political parties throughout the entire post-communist period. The analysis shows that nothing has changed at the level of centralization of decision, and inclusiveness with the members’ involvement remaining marginal in all parties. The competitiveness of the internal elections presents a more diverse and dynamic picture. We propose a novel typology for cross-case comparisons that illustrates the association between informal decentralization and increased competitiveness. Second, we advance explanations for the persistence of the “exclusiveness” status quo that take into account intraorganizational, institutional, and exogenous factors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the political aspects of national minority identity by analyzing the discourse of the political representative of the Hungarian minority in post-communist Romania (the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania). Political discourse (party programs, parliamentary debates) and document analysis are used to illustrate two levels of discourse: symbolic and substantive. The article shows that elite discourse has shaped the political role and claims of the Hungarian minority, which influenced the minority nationbuilding process, as well as the content of the diversity accommodation framework in post-communist Romania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artists are the first ones to react to their environment and to articulate a protest. Recent Romanian contemporary art questions the way communism is remembered or forgotten and the manner in which the postcommunist society was organized. This study uses the approach of politics and the arts to analyze both institutions and artistic discourses in Romania after 1989 in order to show how an artistic space is rebuilt after a dictatorial experience. The conclusions show that artists interrogate the “reconstruction” of democratic institutions and discourses on solid communist bases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since early 2000, the European Union (EU) recognized the importance of curbing corruption and began to require that candidate countries adopt and implement anticorruption strategies prior to accession. Given Romania’s long struggle with corruption, it was required to adopt more anticorruption strategies than any other candidate to date. The present paper will elaborate upon the degree to which the EU was able to influence domestic political will, identify and discuss lessons learned from Romania that may aid the EU in future enlargements, and evaluate whether the ‘carrot’ approach was more effective than the ‘stick’ approach in propagating domestic political will. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As historical evidence shows, there are multiple roads to such different forms of capitalism as "traditional commercial capitalism" and "political capitalism." And, following Weber, not all of these forms can trigger the long term stable economic growth associated with Western rational capitalism. Although previous sociological analyses have improved our understanding of post-socialism, they have generated more controversy than theoretical convergence. This is because, I contend, many sociological studies have neglected the political and historical aspects involved in the construction of markets in the former communist bloc. In this paper I discuss the features of political capitalism in post-communist Romania, a case that has been infrequently addressed by mainstream analyses of Central and Eastern Europe. Specifically, I analyze the rise of political capitalism as an effect of Romania's communist and post-communist political-institutional histories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the legal aspect aspects of regulaiong moral damages before and after the communist regime in Romania. Furthermore, the article specifically argues about the normative acts which regulate moral damages after Communist Regime in Romania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of party building in the CEE democracies was intimately linked to formal and informal aspects of colonising State resources. While party regulations became more articulated, Romanian parties have taken advantage of an intricate arrangement of private and public resources for guaranteeing their financial survival. Hence, our paper aims at providing a general overview of the Romanian parties' financial (re)sources over the last decade. Within this context, party's members assumed a peculiar role, acting both as legitimacy providers and means of economic survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper "Typology and Planning of the Tourism Regional Development in Romania" presents a succinct approach of the general conceptual background of regional science, context in which have developed also the theoretical elements on the typology and planning of the regional economic growth. In the paper is presented the typology of regional development of tourism in Romania, in the form of touristic regionalization or zoning of the country, as well as some of the typological groups made in the specialized literature for Romanian tourism. Also, the paper presents a theoretical delimitation of the concept of regional development in tourism and some of the plans/programmes that include the Romanian regional tourism development, too: Regional Operational Programme 2007-2013, National Development Plan 2007-2013 of Romania, National Rural Development Programme 2007-2013 and Master Plan for the Development of National Tourism 2007-2026 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the decision-making process in public institutions at local and county levels in Romania according to the features of several theoretical models presented in the literature, namely: rational comprehensive approach, incremental approach, rule following approach, mixed scanning approach and garbage can model. The analysis is based on the findings of a research conducted at national level on a representative sample of public institutions. The sample included top level civil servants and public officials working for County Councils and Local Councils from county seats, municipalities, cities and communes. A questionnaire was drafted to ask the respondents to rate their perceptions with regard to several characteristics of the decision-making process in public institutions. The findings indicate a limited rationality bounding the decision-making process in the analyzed institutions, which is constrained by the budget, legislation and procedures. Further researches are required to better understand the decision process on particular domains and with regard to specific characteristics of some policy issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the role of thwarted voters and newcomers in setting the result of the December 6th, 2009 presidential runoff in Romania. For this purpose it employs panel survey data from the Romanian Election Studies, collected across three waves: pre-election, between the two rounds, post-election. Initially, it draws a picture of the main evolutions in turnout and vote between the first and the second round, with a special emphasis on vote transfers and risks associated to turnout and pro-winner overreporting. Then it analyzes the thwarted voters and their rationalities of making secondorder electoral choices in the presidential runoff. The influence of campaign developments and long-term party/candidate preferences is assessed. Finally, the article investigates the profile of newcomers (people only voting in the runoff) and the mechanisms of political mobilisation in their case. A special attention is given to how newcomers make the electoral choice in the presidential runoff and to the influence of the campaign developments on that choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though taken for an important asset for democracy, the political participation changed dramatically in Western democratic contexts, over the last decades. In Switzerland, for instance, it moved from political party activism to new forms of participation, as protest activism. It is acknowledged today that by moving from conventional to unconventional forms, the political participation managed to bring in large social categories that were previously excluded, especially women. What happened in Romania during the last couple of decades? Political participation is there as uneven as it generally was in the '50's, in Western contexts? Does protest in Romania differ from Western protest, especially from the Swiss case? Whereas Western protest is largely acknowledged as the continuation of participation by other means, is this the case in Romania? Or could we take protest in Romania more likely for a contestation of democratic legitimacy? The overall conclusion of this research is that protesters in Romania are very similar to their Swiss counterparts and that they are by no means a threat against the still unconsolidated Romanian democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes the dynamics of electoral participation and its predictors in Romania, using both official data on turnout and post-electoral survey data. The turnout in the Romanian parliamentary elections has declined by over 50% in the last 20 years of democratic reconstruction. However, turnout decline is unevenly distributed, being more dramatic in the last decade especially in the urban areas as well as among younger cohorts of voters. The decline of turnout in parliamentary elections is also accompanied by a shift in the importance of the predictors of voting. The analyses of electoral participation and its predictors suggest that voting in the Romanian parliamentary elections has become the attribute of a minority of citizens who still feel closer to a political party, are interested in politics, trust the political institutions and leaders, ideologically place themselves at the extremes of the left-right axis, and of those who are more exposed to mobilization attempts both because they live in smaller communities in the rural areas which are more easily controlled by local political leaders and because they are part of social networks that are influenced by political parties or politicians. This is the "hard core" of a generally apathetic electorate which is unconfident in the efficacy of elections as a tool for producing social transformations, a public which is becoming less and less demanding with the politicians after the subsequent disappointments with the democratic governance after 1989. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]