« Partidele au murit, traiasca partidele! » Aparitia « partidului-cartel » în România
“The Parties are Dead, Long Live the Parties!” The Emergence of « Cartel Party » in Romania

Summary/Abstract: This article pretends to check the pertinence of concepts that have been developed to explain changes in the Western party systems to the Romanian case. The analysis focuses on the concept of “cartel party” and the emergence of such political objects in the Romanian public space. The Democratic Party, chosen here as a case study, illustrates well the hypothesis that, in recent years, Romania has passed from a model of mass parties to one of catch-all parties and finally to one of cartel parties. Insisting that the concept of “cartel party” can be understood only by keeping in mind that the whole party system is subject to the same Cartesian logic, the author concentrates his attention on the evolution of the Democratic Party between the two electoral moments of 2000 and 2004, examining in detail the modalities for establishing the lists of candidates, as well as the discussion of internal reforms and organization. A significant portion of the article is dedicated to the political migration of members from the Democratic Party, a frequent practice in the Romanian political system.

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