Sindicalism şi patronaj politic. Contradicţiile unei dezbateri româneşti interbelice
Syndicalism and Political Patronage: the Contradictions of a Debate in Interwar Romania

Summary/Abstract: The article surveys the general question of the interferences between trade-unions and political parties in interwar Romania. It focuses on a confederation of professional associations that represented the lower middle class and it was repeatedly accused of deriving benefits from legislative privileges obtained because of political patronage. This case of corruption is placed against the background of the discourse regarding the elimination of such practices seen as closely connected with the prevalence of bureaucratic parasitism and of politics divorced from genuine social concerns. The article shows that the political figures and the trade-union leaders involved in the case were themselves representatives of this type of discourse. They promoted it in connection with a large welter of organizations and ideological groups, developed around the corporatist project. The narrative targeting bureaucratic and political parasitism indicated the replacement of party-based parliamentarianism with a profession-based one as the cure of national ills. The contradictory relation between these ideals and the network of social relations from which their exponents emerged is taken as indicative for the nature of the social structure of Romanian at the time.

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