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Democratic Musical Chairs? Romania's Post-1989 Electoral Geography

2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 15; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13562576.2011.625224

1470-1235

Aurelian Giugăl, Ron Johnston, Ştefan Constantinescu,

Eastern European Communism and Reforms

Abstract Abstract Romania is one of a number of states that experienced a rapid shift to representative democracy after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In a well-known model of electoral developments in newly emerging democracies, Flint and Taylor have identified a characteristic volatility of support for political parties between elections because of their failure to meet popular expectations, which is accompanied by a volatile electoral geography. The experience of Romania over its first six elections since its 1989/90 transition to democracy fits the first part of that model: no party elected to power won the subsequent election and there has been considerable change in the structure of the party system. This has not been parallelled by comparable volatility in the country's electoral geography, however, which remained remarkably stable over the first five of the six elections: the last election in the sequence so far—in 2008—saw the geography change somewhat, however, consequent on the decline of strident, populist Romania nationalism and a decline in support for parties built on the communist foundation. Notes All of the data are taken from the returns published by the National Institute of Statistics. More than 92 per cent of Romania's Hungarians live in Transylvania; their percentage of the local population ranges from 85 per cent in Harghita County and 74 per cent in Covasna County to 23 per cent in Sălaj and 17 per cent in Cluj Counties. The PRM and PDG did enter into a coalition for the 2009 European Parliament elections, however, when both Tudor and Becali were elected MEPs.