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In this paper I presented the life and activity of the liberal politician Tiberiu Moșoiu. He was a model, a mentor for many liberal political people and not only that. it has a recognition both in the country and universal recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the 1914 Crown Council, which decided to keep Romania neutral in 1914, former Conservative prime minister Petre Carp offered his succinct and direct opinion about the direction of Romanian foreign policy in the opening days of the Great War. He admonished the Council that, if Romania wanted to remain among the 'civilized states' (statele civilizate) it had to follow Germany and Austria-Hungary into war immediately. The idea of 'civilized states' that dominated the remainder of the Crown Council was not merely an intersubjective social construction. It was a legal term of art in fin de siècle international law that could be applied in the real world. It was only the legally-civilized states that enjoyed the full panoply of rights, privileges, and protections under international law. This is a study of how Romania's policy-making elite, and Ion I. C. Brătianu's government, in particular, confronted the challenges of 'situational sovereignty'. It asserts that, during Romania's two-year Period of Neutrality (3 August 1914–17 August 1916), Brătianu initially used bilateral conventions as both a method to establish recognition of Romania's status (or at least a guarantee of territorial integrity) and as a litmus test to determine which (if any) foreign powers recognized Romania as a legal equal. Although he was able to achieve a short-term victory of having an equality clause inserted into the August 1916 political convention with the Entente, it is unclear if that clause could have been durable. Ultimately, Brătianu was trapped between a desire to secure Romania's recognition through international agreement, but confronted with the reality that Romania's lack of recognition as a legally-civilized equal meant those very conventions could be unenforceable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Romania's opposition to the attempts of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) in the early 1970s to adopt a common trade policy towards the European Economic Community (EEC). The article covers the period between 1969, when the CMEA embarked on negotiations regarding the deepening of the intra-bloc cooperation and integration, and 1 January 1973, which is the date marking the end of the derogations that the Eastern European states received with regard to the implementation of the EEC's Common Commercial Policy. The article focuses on Romania's reasons and tactics of opposition, but it also outlines its views with regard to the EEC, in general, and the CMEA-EEC relations, in particular. Corroborated by findings involving studies in other Eastern European archives, this article will help to create a better understanding of the CMEA debates on integration, on the CMEA-EEC relations, in general, and on Romania's opposition to the CMEA's intended common policy towards the EEC, in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increasing number of electoral systems is being introduced which seeks to combine single-member districts with a proportional allocation of seats according to parties' national vote shares. One such system, that differed in its key features from many others, was introduced in Romania in 2008 and used in that year's general elections, when it performed reasonably well. It did not at the next elections in 2012, when an unforeseen consequence of a coalition winning more than half of the votes cast was that a number of 'overhang' seats was allocated to each house in the bi-cameral parliament, representing some 20 per cent of the total number of elected members. The system was then abandoned and replaced by the previously-used proportional representation system. This paper describes the system and its operation at the two elections, discussing the reasons for its introduction and later abandonment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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After the outbreak of the First World War, Italy and Romania have adopted position of neutrality. Given to the fact that the both states were linked to the Central Powers through the Alliance treaties, the interest of the Romanian and Italian governments, not to remain isolated in front of the pressures of Austro-Hungary and Germany was mutual. The declaration of the neutrality of Italy prompted the Romanian government to act the same. Thus, Romania declared its neutrality, on 21 July/3 August 1914. The common position of the two states, the Romanian-Italian collaboration from the period immediately following the declaration of neutrality, by concluding agreements, in September 1914 and February 1915, have postponing the signing of the Alliance treaties, by Italy (April 1915) and Romania (August 1916) with the Antanta and their war against the old ally, the Central Powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immediately after the parliamentary elections in December 2016, the Social Democratic Party wants to amend the criminal legislation and pardon through an revolting ordinance, which caused a third wave of protests in post-December Romania. The core of the protests was made of social activists who held the position of network nodes, had previous experience and acted as rallying coagulant factors in the January-February 2017 events. In the present study, we focused our attention only on the online community: Corruption kills (in Romanian: Coruptia ucide), this being the oldest and most active in the Romanian social media. We wanted to show to what extent the representatives of this community managed to: a) increase the number of fans (involved) who supported the cause of the anti-corruption protests; and b) how Facebook was used as an interactive communication tool for users between January and February 2017. The Corruption Kills Community was perceived as a powerful tool of organization and rallying in the 2017 protest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the communist era, Radio Free Europe (RFE) was Romania's favorite radio station. This paper analyzes the role of RFE in everyday life in the strictly controlled Romanian communist state by looking at the broadcasts of RFE's Romanian Department, their audience, and their impact. Drawing largely on the RFE archives at the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives (OSA) and the former secret police files at the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives (CNSAS), it investigates how radio waves mediated and channeled information while preparing people to embrace political and cultural change. The paper focuses on the circulation of knowledge, media confluences, and human agency. The rituals that developed around the secrecy which governed the listening process, the personal requests, attitudes, and opinions expressed in letters to RFE, and oral and written testimonies, coupled with the disproportionate and, at times, extreme reactions of the communist state, together reveal the carving out of individual spaces that allowed for the preservation of the "self" during Nicolae Ceausescu's dictatorship. At such critical historical moments, the connection became visible. Through an analysis of recent media representations in which RFE figures, such as Cold Waves, this study also looks at how RFE shaped personal memories of communist times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is part of the special cluster titled Political Parties and Direct Democracy in Eastern Europe, guest-edited by Sergiu Gherghina. The relationship between political parties and referendums has been receiving increased attention in the literature. While most research has focused on the challenges faced by political parties, little attention is dedicated to the ways in which they can use referendums to serve their purposes. This article analyzes the seven national-level referendums organized in post-communist Romania between 1991 and 2012 and shows how referendums were not used primarily as a means to reflect citizens' opinions on policy issues. Instead, they were primarily used as electoral strategies for legitimacy purposes or to augment the popularity of the initiators or main supporters. In isolated instances, they were oriented against other competitors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Romania4 is a unitary state and constitutional democracy5 organised under the principle of the separation of powers between the three branches of government -- legislative, executive, and judicial -- and the checks and balances between them. Since its creation in 1862, the Romanian Parliament has traditionally been a bicameral legislature, except during the communist era, a period during which it only had a single house. The desire to put an end to the top-down policies that characterised the communist era was an impetus for Romanian voters to return the legislature to its former bicameralism by recasting the Romanian Parliament as a legislature composed of two houses, the House of Representatives and the Senate.6 Senators and representatives are elected to four-year terms by universal suffrage in free, secret, and equal popular elections. Both representatives and senators are elected via the same voting mechanism, that is, by partylist proportional representation.7 The manner in which the two houses are organised and function, as well as their funding, is set out in the Constitution and in a number of legislative and regulatory texts. In a first part (1), this article will analyse the rules for creating, implementing, and auditing the budgets of the two houses -- which are the result of a patchwork of laws and regulations governing the Romanian Parliament -- setting the stage, in a second part (2) for the evaluation of the quantitative change in the two houses' budgets, as well as the different ways of overseeing their spending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses the effects of candidate gender, incumbency, and local ethnic composition on the electoral performance of ethnic party candidates in mayoral elections in Romania and Slovakia. The results of my statistical analysis indicate that candidate gender has a minimal effect on electoral performance, whereas incumbency and local ethnic composition have a large and statistically significant effect. My findings also suggest that more experienced incumbents do not outperform less experienced incumbents, male and female incumbents enjoy a similar incumbency advantage, and ethnic party incumbents are able to attract voters from outside their target ethnic constituency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study highlights the main ideas that can be drawn from two notable works that focus on Romania's contemporary history, which saw the light of print at the Parisian publisher L'Harmattan. Yvonne Blondel's Journal de Guerre 1916-1917 (2001) is a genuine historical document, which describes the tribulations of the Romanian Army on the southern front, culminating in the abandonment of Bucharest and the withdrawal to Moldavia, seen through the eyes of a woman who belonged to the French aristocracy and diplomatic service. She brought her contribution in a field hospital that permanently accompanied the Romanian army. In his book, Un géographe français et la Roumanie: Emmanuel de Martonne (1873-1955) (2012) Gavin Bowd skillfully highlights the support brought by the French geographer Emmanuel de Martonne to the knowledge, understanding and support of Romania's claims to territorial unity. Romania and its century-long course (from the end of the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth) are described through the eyes of the French geographer and his French and Romanian disciples, with the entire corollary of episodes regarding the moments when the French-Romanian relations tightened or cooled off, the latter being caused by Romania's entry into the Soviet sphere of influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The moment of declaring Romania's state independence is one of the historical reference events. During this short study, the authors intended to present five speeches that reflected the most important ideas of the moment and how the national political elites had positioned themselves within the Orient-West paradigm. Throughout the texts, the arguments that under-pined the declaration of the country's independence from the Ottoman Empire were firmly resolved. The symbolic value of the arguments used demonstrated that from an ideological point of view, the Romanian political class was integrated into the system of Western European values. These elements demonstrated that the rupture of this reference space had largely been eliminated. The autochthonous political elite began this process half a century ago, but now the westernization modernization model has been referenced, which shows us that the values of the past, specific to the Eastern model paradigm, were progressively replaced by the Western modernizing ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The regulation by Government Ordinances (G.O.)/ Government Emergency Ordinances (G.E.O) of the executive power on social relations, the operation of several public institutions or authorities, codes of law or any other aspects relating to the "organic" life - which is not to be confused with organic laws, of the Romanian state does not stand as an element of novelty. On the contrary, this activity is a matter discussed on a daily basis on the public agenda. This study is nevertheless intended to present the limitations of the attribute of "law-maker" of the executive branch and to explain the constitutional mechanisms reinforced by an analysis on the case-law of the Constitutional Court (CCR) assigning the aforementioned quality to the executive, but also the situations in which this prerogative can be employed. We shall also outline the consequences of an inflation of G.O/ G.E.O. in the national "legal environment" and the overlapping of this attribute onto the basic capacity of the Parliament as "the only legislative authority", consequences that indisputably lead to a disturbance of the fragile balance between the powers and implicitly to a destabilisation of the political and institutional environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study has the following title: Role of jurisprudence on the application of the constitutional principle of equality of rights in the development of the new Romanian law. Using a Key Scheme, the following parts of the study are analyzed successively: 1. Preamble. 2. Identification of constitutional regulations regarding the constitutional principle of equal rights in the Romanian constitutional system -- selective aspects. 3. Romanian Doctrinal References on the Constitutional Principle of Equality of Rights. 4. Judicial references regarding the application of the constitutional principle of equality of rights in the decisions of the Constitutional Court of Romania. 5. Conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of sovereignty has a complex dimension, encompassing a multitude of distinct features and concepts. Although in everyday language it may be associated with "independence" or even the idea of "supremacy", we will notice that its limits do not stop here. Sovereignty, along with population and territory, is one of the constituent elements of the state. State sovereignty identifies with prerogative of manifesting itself freely and unrestrained and deciding on its affairs, both internal and external, being thus supreme and independent. Just as our freedom stops where the freedom of another begins, mutatis mutandis, the sovereignty of a state stops where the sovereignty of another begins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article advances a series of elements presented previously in our publications, illustrating the causes that led to the failure of the socialist movement in modern Romania. Practically, the Romanian socialists were grouped in two tendencies, one of them constructive-national and the other revolutionary-anarchist, influenced externally. The particularities of the society, economy, social categories from Romania, the active involvement of the Church in the cultural, social life and even the education of the Romanians, made the workers and the peasants to not become too close to the socialists, who were declaring adversaries of the religion, considered a form of medieval, and even bourgeois domination. The attitude of the revolutionary-anarchist line, presented through its representatives from the Tsarist Russia, was speculated by the liberals and the conservatives who, on one side were regulating it for the interest of their limited electorate (the vote was based on qualification), and, on the other side, they were attracting the progressive socialist elements towards these parties, throwing the image of anarchy and disorder on the radicals. The Romanian historiography, in different ages, has presented differently the image of the socialist movement from the modern Romania, leaving us, today, to attempt a unitary and objective image on it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the discovery of "population" in modern society, domination over the body has been enacted by a set of interventions which are called regulatory control, or bio-politics by Michel Foucault. From the eighteenth century onwards, bio-politics has involved any kind of intervention which acts as means for forming the population according to the wills of those with power. This has led to an era of bio-politics in which fertility in particular has become regulated in accordance with political economy. Hence the body, especially the female body, has been reduced to an economic object by detaching her identity, personal aspirations and desires. In turn, sexuality becomes a subject of economic interventions through pronatalist and/or antinatalist politics. In either way, those interventions should be methodologically regarded as instruments of bio-politics. This paper specifically focuses on pronatalist and antinatalist politics as bio-political instruments in the well-known Romanian case and the Chinese case by drawing upon the Foucauldian perspective of bio-politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a new conceptual framework for assessing transparency at the country level. It identifies three distinct interpretations of transparency: access to information; two-way communication; and predictability, or decision-making based on clear and publicly known rules. Each represents an increasingly demanding form of transparency, but all are tied to democratic accountability and the rule of law. Using the case of Romania, the article illustrates how such a framework can be employed to assess the evolution of transparency in a relatively recent democracy. Points for practitioners The virtues of transparency have been advocated by international organizations, governments, and civil society. The focus has primarily been on access to information—whether through freedom of information acts or open data. However, realizing the democratizing potential of transparency requires a multifaceted approach. This article suggests that transparency advocates should pay more attention to issues such as increasing citizen participation, opening up decision-making rather than just data, strengthening the rule of law, and fighting corruption. In other words, it argues for a more holistic discourse and practice of transparency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to present an analysis of the main contributions of Romanian sailors in the 1916 campaign, especially at the beginning of Romania's entry into First World War, namely the participation in the Battle of Turtucaia. Through this analysis, I intend to highlight those ways of applying the operative art that had a decisive contribution to the outcome of one outstanding military action on the southern front. The outcome of this action subsequently influenced the fate of the war. I have to underline the fact that the lessons learned from this joint action are today planning milestones for the joint operations of the Romanian Armed Forces, the nucleus of the principles of the joint national and multinational actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although military (and civilian) internment has become associated with World War II in the collective memory, it has a much longer and painful history. The turning point of this history took place during the First World War when, in the name of "security" in a total war, the internment of "foreign enemy" became part of state policy for the belligerent states, leading to imprisonment, moving and, in extreme cases, death by neglect or deliberate killing of hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Among these heroes, often "unknown", there were many Romanian soldiers who were taken prisoners and interned in various camps of the Central Powers; this article is dedicated to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Academician Mircea Păcurariu, the greatest historian of the Romanian Orthodox Church, noted in one of his studies1, unfortunately not published after 1989, that at the Great National Assembly on December 1, 1918, the Romanian Church was first represented by delegates as: the five bishops in service, 4 vicarious, 10 delegates of the Orthodox Consorts and the Unified Capitals, 129 deacons, one teacher from the theological and pedagogical institutes, and two representatives of the students from each theological Institute. The church was also represented by many priests and teachers of confessionals schools - elected as delegates in the constituencies. Besides these official delegates, many priests participated in the great Romanian assembly along with the 100,000 Romanians who came to voice their will for centuries to be one with the brothers from the south and east of the Carpathians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to archaeological findings and historic documents, many coins have been circulated as a form of exchange on Romanian territory, since ancient times. Thus, the Romanian numismatic heritage shows Romanian national identity and unity. Throughout time, famous personalities brought significant contributions to the realization and development of a national monetary system, taking into account the events that occurred in the past. The circumstances under which the leu became the national currency of Romania are very complex and interesting, considering that, over time, the Romanians used a lot of different coins. Among the most important historical events that led up to the leu becoming the national currency of Romania, we should mention the Union of the Romanian Principalities, the Reign of Carol I, the Romanian Constitution of 1866 and the 1867 Romanian monetary law. Furthermore, Romania fought for independence and a unified nation and the Great Union of 1918 was a great challenge for the entire Romanian monetary system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Centenary of Romania does not only mean a mere remembrance of the historical events, the causes and circumstances underlying the accomplishment of this great ideal - the Great Union, but it is a moment of balance, the year 2018 being the period in which we should have done the first serious analysis of the past 100 years to understand where we are. Beyond an objective evaluation of the political class and the achievements along this period, it is also important to make an assessment of the academic environment, of the way research has evolved in Romania, as well as an identification of the directions to be followed for the different academic research environments in Romania in order to become relevant at European level. This article aims at an objective overview of the Romanian geopolitical school from the moment of its appearance to this centenary. This objective view of ours will aim at painting a retrospective picture of the achievements of the Romanian geopolitical school, what its future will be and what should be done to make it relevant beyond the borders of our country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Great Union Centennial provides an opportunity for considering the idea of state peculiar to Romania and thus to approach this event from a security studies perspective. To this purpose, the idea of state as conceived by Barry Buzan, a prominent representative of the Copenhagen School, is presented and his views about the condition of this idea in Romania is described. Based on the meaning attributed by Buzan to the idea of state, the paper investigates the content of the idea of state corresponding to Romania by first reflecting on the possibility of reconstructing it through the writings of foreigners who visited or stayed in Romania and, secondly, by attempting to identify some of its constituents based on the memories published by James O. Noyes, who traveled through Romanian Principalities during the Crimean War, and by the count of Saint-Aulaire who, as plenipotentiary minister of France to Romania, witnessed the sacrifices and the sufferance experienced by Romanians during World War I. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Romania's entry into World War I was based on the great ideal of the Romanians of National and Territorial Unity, because until then their predecessors founded the Romanian State through the Unification of the two Principalities, and then consolidated it by winning the country's independence from the Ottoman Empire. The unification of all Romanian territories which once belonged to Ancient Dacia, on both sides of the Carpathians, involved the participation of all Romanians in a terrible war that caused unimaginable suffering. The two outstanding personalities in the realization of this century-old endeavor, the Great Union of the Romanians, were King Ferdinand I and Queen Maria. In this article we present the importance of the Romanians' effort and their faith in achieving the objectives of Romanian national unity. Furthermore, we highlight aspects that reveal the personalities of the King and Queen who made Greater Romania, as well as the essence of their major contribution to the realization and consecration of the Great Union of the Romanians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a unique data set that combines legislative behaviour data and electoral results at two elections in Romania (2008, 2012) and one in Hungary (2014), the study assesses the overall electoral value of parliamentary questions dealing with local issues. Our multivariate regression analyses illustrate that the effect of constituency questions is distinguishable from that of the overall parliamentary effort of the MPs. Constituency questions brought Romanian MPs significantly more votes at each of the last two elections. In Hungary, where the scope for a personal vote was much more limited at the analysed elections, no effect is found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnic diversity is considered detrimental to national unity, especially if ethnicity is politically mobilized: Ethnic parties in electoral competition in particular are thought to increase the salience of ethnic differences and, with it, ethnic tensions. Yet the individual links of this psychological chain have only been examined cross‐sectionally, and never together. This article employs original longitudinal survey data to simultaneously assess changes in ingroup identification, outgroup aversion, and national identification over the election period within one diverse society: Romania. While ingroup identification does increase, ethnic relations do not worsen. On the contrary, outgroup aversion decreases while national identification increases, for minority and majority Romanian citizens alike. I explain these findings with the common ingroup identity model from social psychology: Elections in ethnically diverse societies may not only increase the salience of ethnic groups but also that of the superordinate, national identity. The findings question the often assumed automaticity of intergroup threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Charter on Local Self-government is a defining document for local governments across the EU and was a guideline for developing a framework of local governance based on local autonomy, decentralization that is close to the citizens. It was especially important for Central and East European Countries as they faced the challenges of a total overhaul of their administrative systems after the fall of the communist regimes. Romania fits into this picture as a late comer to the European family, with an administrative system that transitioned slowly from a hyper centralized arrangement to one that offers significant power to local governments. After 20 years since the ratification of the Charter, local government in Romania displays mixed elements, between progressive (protection of local authorities) and conservative (consultation of authorities, financial autonomy) in relation to the charter recommendations. The current article is an analysis on the state of affairs concerning local governance in Romania using the Charter as the main theoretical framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study has the following title: Selective aspects on the evolution of the regulations regarding the judiciary in the Romanian constitutions and in the Romanian law 100 years after the great union. Using a Key- Scheme, the following parts of the study are analyzed successively, called: 1. Preamble. 2. The identification of the constitutional regulations on the judiciary in the Romanian constitutional system - selective aspects. 3. Romanian doctrinal references on the judiciary. 4. Judicial references on the judiciary in the decisions of the Constitutional Court of Romania. 5. Conclusions [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The adoption of the Administrative Code responds to a need recognized both by most scholars and by most governments in Romania, the purpose pursued being to systematize and rationalize the legal framework available in the field of public administration. Nevertheless, this normative act which is markedly important for the manner in which the public administration activity in Romania is carried out, must be the fruit of a consensus among all the political forces existing at a certain time in the state, precisely in order to produce the mentioned effects. Otherwise, there is a danger that this act will need to be changed frequently and consistently, which goes against the principles recognized at European level regarding the observance of the rule of law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of their extension in time (throughout a whole year), the Romanian protests of 2017 against the government's rules and regulations regarding the judiciary system caught the attention of the international media. Through content analysis of articles and headlines, the present paper tries to identify the representational devices used in portraying the Romanian protests of 2017 in several English and American newspapers. This study tries to suggest a typology of the representational devices to media coverage of the protests that started in Romania in January 2017. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents the internal context that led to the establishment of the authoritarian regime and also describe the unfolding of the events of February 10th/ 11th, 1938. It is also analyzed the plan for establishing the regime and, at the same time, the way that the King Carol II positioned at that moment on the Romanian political scene. Another purpose of the research is to identify the relation between the King and the Romanian political class and to observe the manner in which the Sovereign has capitalized on the authoritarian position that the new regime has offered him. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]