Romania: New Membership and Old Habits?
Romania: New Membership and Old Habits?

Summary/Abstract: Abstract. Political developments in Romania as well as the resulting deficits in transition management since EU accession raise a number of fundamental but difficult questions. Should Romania’s “old habits” be thought of as a Huntingtonian blend of the country’s pre-communist political institutions and political culture mixed with “Ceauşescuism”, that is, Romania’s exceptional type of state socialism, sometimes dubbed “sultanism”? Or should these “old habits” actually be explained in terms of an event as recent as Romania’s EU accession process – and thus be seen as a sort of “post-accession syndrome”? Or should at least some part of the supposed Romanian or Balkan exceptionalism, to which Romania’s “old habits” are often attributed, be viewed in comparison with recent trends in the political culture – that is, the democratic attitudes of the citizens and the informal rules of the political process – in West European polities? Questioning path-dependencies cannot alleviate the problems caused by the obvious flaws in Romania’s political process, but thinking through negative pan-European trends does imply rethinking stereotypes about the Balkans.

• Details
• Contents