Romania

Case notes

Greater Romania Party

Greater Romania Party (Partidul România Mare, PRM) was an agrarian, nationalist and socially conservative populist party dominated by its long-time leader Corneliu Tudor. Founded in 1991 as an offshoot of the extreme nationalist Movement for a Greater Romania, it has been highly nostalgic for the Ceauşescu regime (for which Tudor was once a propagandist) and the WWII era fascist movements that allied with the Nazis (Ţurcanu 2010; Andreescu 2003, 20). Tudor was a staple of elections in the 1990s and the PRM peaked in the 2000 presidential and parliamentary elections, after which it gradually declined to obscurity.

Aside from a brief attempt to appear more moderate around 2004-05 (when it wanted to join the European People’s Party), the PRM’s radical programme has been very consistent. There were several components to Tudor’s radical right nativist politics. The first was ethnocentrism, particularly regarding his hostility towards Jews, Roma, ethnic Hungarians in Romania, and others (Ţurcanu 2010, 6–7; Andreescu 2003, 31; Gallagher 1995, 205). He repeatedly denied the holocaust (Shafir 2008, 456), campaigned to have the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania party banned (Smrčková 2012, 209), and glorified the anti-Semitic ideology of the inter-war Iron Guard militia (Smrčková 2012, 213) (OTH_ETHNIC = 3). The party was also very socially conservative, opposing homosexuality and championing the Romanian family (Norocel 2011). We have found no evidence that immigrants were a relevant target of Tudor’s nationalism (OTH_IMMIGRANTS = 1), although this is probably due mainly to the low rates of immigration into Romania at that time, and should be confirmed by further research.

Tudor was also sharply hostile to a number of foreign powers: for example decrying the “ever more violent interference of foreign diplomats accredited to Bucharest in the state of affairs in Romania” (Gallagher 1995, 207). Hungary, the EU, the IMF, and the United States (he once accused the US ambassador of assisting in the rigging of EU elections) (Shafir 2008, 457) were frequent enemies of the Romanian people (OTH_FOREIGN = 3). For a time the PRM was also the only significant anti-EU party in the Romanian parliament (Sum 2010, 19).

According to Mungiu-Pippidi, Tudor tapped into a well-established (Ceauşescu era) personality-led populist tradition essentially hostile to politicians and parties (Mungiu‐Pippidi 2001, 231). This has led to an established anti-politics populism that reaps protest votes from citizens frustrated with the political and economic system writ large (Smrčková 2012, 208; Ţurcanu 2010, 8; Busuioc 2016, 42; Gallagher 2001, 112; Andreescu 2003, 69) (OTH_POLCLASS = 3). Like other nativist parties in the region, the PRM’s economic programme is somewhat leftist (Mungiu‐Pippidi 2001, 235; Sum 2010, 21; Ţurcanu 2010, 9), advocating the nationalisation of industry and robust welfare spending (to ethnic Romanians) (Smrčková 2012, 214). While the party should still be classified as FR on LRPOSITION, it does exhibit some opposition to economic elites, particularly relating to foreign capital (Smrčková 2012, 214) (OTH_ECONOMIC = 2). Further research should confirm the degree of this.

Shafir considers the PRM to be an anti-system party aimed at maintaining the nationalist rhetoric of the Ceauşescu era in order to undermine democracy itself (Shafir 2008, 455). Tudor has frequently alleged electoral fraud after poor results (Shafir 2008, 457), and openly called for the military to lead a coup d’état against democracy in 1993 (Mungiu‐Pippidi 2001, 235). In another highly controversial incident, the party sided with highly militarised miners’ union strike (led by PRM vice president Miron Cosma) which marched on Bucharest, destroying police road-blocks in the process (Andreescu 2003, 34) (LIBDEMNORMS = 3). The party has been totally defined by the “cult of personality” of Tudor (Gallagher 2005, 295; Andreescu 2003, 32; Busuioc 2016, 42), and its decision making process is totally centralised around his leadership (Smrčková 2012, 210) (CHARISMA = 3). The PRM was once briefly in coalition government in 1992-1996. This, coupled with the fact that Tudor was an insider in the Ceauşescu regime, means that the PRM deserves a 2 for INSIDER.

Romanian National Unity Party

The Romanian National Unity Party (Partidul Unităţii Naţionale a Românilor, PUNR), founded in 1990, was an ultranationalist party based around its leader, Gheorghe Funar, mayor of Cluj 1992-2004. The party was a successor to the violent Romanian Hearth movement which organised deadly clashes with ethnic Hungarians in the Transylvania region in 1990 (Andreescu 2003, 29). Funar had a heated rivalry with the PRM’s Tudor (Sum 2010), but after the PUNR melted away he joined the PRM to become its Secretary General in 1998, taking his remaining supporters with him (Smrčková 2012, 209).

The ethno-nationalist cause formed the basis of the PUNR’s radical ethno-nationalism (Petrovici 2011, 68) (OTH_ETHNIC = 3), with which is found moderate success in early post-communist elections as “the most important ultra-nationalist party in Romania” (Andreescu 2003, 30). True to their authoritarian origins, Funar and the party repeatedly incited attacks against the Hungarian minority in Transylvania (including the Hungarian consulate in Cluj) (Andreescu 2003, 59) and instituted martial law in majority Hungarian areas of Cluj (Gallagher 1995, 213) (LIBDEMNORMS = 3). Funer repeatedly denied foreign investment in Cluj on the reasoning that “we don’t sell our country to foreigners,” (Petrovici 2011, 69) (OTH_FOREIGN = 3). Note that this does not seem to be an indication of OTH_ECONOMIC rhetoric (= 1).

The picture on OTH_POLCLASS is less clear, however several sources point to Funar’s general position that Bucharest did not appreciate the needs of Romanians in the North (Gallagher 2005, 103), and that it had become a “city of filth and corruption” that did not deserve to be the Romanian capital (Gallagher 1995, 203; see also Petrovici 2011, 70–71). While evidence for this rhetoric is not as clear as for Tudor, it does warrant at least a 2 on OTH_POLCLASS. Funar was “a believer in one-man leadership” (Gallagher 1995, 209), and his controversial image defined the PUNR (CHARISMA = 3).

People’s Party Dan Diaconescu

People’s Party – Dan Diaconescu (Partidul Poporului – Dan Diaconescu, PP-DD) was a left wing nationalist party that emerged in 2010. Its founder and leader, Dan Diaconescu, is a former investigative journalist with a large audience, known for revealing sensational stories about corruption and political scandals (Gherghina and Miscoiu 2014, 187). After stunning success in the 2012 parliamentary elections, the party soon faced a downfall after Diaconescu was imprisoned on extortion charges (Busuioc 2016, 43).

The PP-DD has a somewhat confusing ideological profile, but has generally been called left-wing (Busuioc 2016, 43). Its programme was a crowd-pleasing set of contradictions, promising cash handouts of 20,000 Euros per citizen, free tractors, and jobs for everyone, with little detail on how it would be paid for (it also advocated cutting taxes) (Lavinia 2013, 22; Gherghina and Miscoiu 2014, 189). The party was generally critical of state privatisations and promised the confiscation of unjustified wealth (Lavinia 2013, 22) (OTH_ECONOMIC = 2). Diaconescu’s was a highly performative populism, as displayed by his spectacle of trying to buy the state-owned chemical firm Oltchim “in the name of the people and for the people” (Busuioc 2016, 43) in 2012.

The party did have some nationalist elements in its politics, such as its dismissal of ethnic-Hungarian’s demands for autonomy, and its hostility towards the IMF as a “foreign intruder”, and the policy of reuniting with Moldova (Gherghina and Miscoiu 2014, 187–90) (OTH_ETHNIC = 2, OTH_FOREIGN = 2). However, it is not particularly nativist in the sense of the PRM or PUNR (Cinpoeş 2013, 176). Instead, its principle “other” for the PP-DD was the political class, which it accused of a permanent conspiracy against the Romanian people (Gherghina and Miscoiu 2014, 187). This was given momentum by the 2012 constitutional crisis and anti-government demonstrations. The party drew a simple distinction between the people affected by the economic crisis and the established elite who caused it (Smrčková 2012, 207). It also alleged that all established rivals criticised each other in order to hide the extensive cross-party networks of corruption (Lavinia 2013, 17) (OTH_POLCLASS = 3).

PP-DD It was – as its name suggests – totally dependent on its leader, who maintained total control of it (Gherghina and Miscoiu 2014, 189; Gherghina and Soare 2013, 1) (CHARISMA = 3). Interestingly, most of the PP-DD candidates were former members of ruling party members (Lavinia 2013, 17). However, as the party leader or the party itself has never been in power, we have coded it 1 on INSIDER. We have seen no evidence that it threatened LIBDEMNORMS (1).

References

Andreescu, Gabriel. 2003. Right-Wing Extremism in Romania. Cluj-Napoca: Ethnocultural Diversity Resource Center.

Busuioc, Elena Negrea-. 2016. ‘“Of the People or for the People”? An Analysis of Populist Discourse in the 2014 European Parliament Elections in Romania’. Romanian Journal of Communication and Public Relations 18 (2): 39–53.

Cinpoeş, Radu. 2013. ‘Right-Wing Extremism in Romania’. In Right-Wing Extremism in Europe. Country Analyses, Counter-Strategies and Labor-Market Oriented Exit Strategies, edited by Ralf Melzer and Sebastian Serafin, 169–97. Berlin: Universität Tübingen.

Gallagher, Tom. 1995. Romania after Ceauşescu: The Politics of Intolerance. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

———. 2001. ‘Nationalism and Romanian Political Culture in the 1990s’. In Post-Communist Romania: Coming to Terms with Transition, edited by Duncan Light and David Phinnemore, 104–24. Springer.

———. 2005. Modern Romania: The End of Communism, the Failure of Democratic Reform, and the Theft Of. New York: New York University Press.

Gherghina, Sergiu, and Sergiu Miscoiu. 2014. ‘A Rising Populist Star: The Emergence and Development of the PPDD in Romania’. Debatte: Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe 22 (2): 181–97. https://doi.org/10.1080/0965156X.2014.959325.

Gherghina, Sergiu, and Sorina Christina Soare. 2013. ‘From TV to Parliament: Populism and Communication in the Romanian 2012 Elections’. In . University of Florence.

Lavinia, Stan. 2013. ‘Romanian Politics in 2012: Intra-Cabinet Coexistence and Political Instability’. South-East European Journal of Political Science 1 (3): 12–26.

Mungiu‐Pippidi, Alina. 2001. ‘The Return of Populism ‐ The 2000 Romanian Elections’. Government and Opposition 36 (2): 230–52. https://doi.org/10.1111/1477-7053.00063.

Norocel, Ov Cristian. 2011. ‘Heteronormative Constructions of Romanianness: A Genealogy of Gendered Metaphors in Romanian Radical-Right Populism 2000–2009’. Debatte: Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe 19 (1–2): 453–70. https://doi.org/10.1080/0965156X.2011.626121.

Petrovici, Norbert. 2011. ‘Articulating the Right to the City: Working-Class Neo-Nationalism in Postsocialist Cluj, Romania’. In Headlines of Nation, Subtexts of Class: Working Class Populism and the Return of the Repressed in Neoliberal Europe, edited by Don Kalb and Gábor Halmai, 57–77. New York: New York University Press.

Shafir, Michael. 2008. ‘From Historical to “Dialectical” Populism: The Case of Post-Communist Romania’. Canadian Slavonic Papers 50 (3–4): 425–70. https://doi.org/10.1080/00085006.2008.11092591.

Smrčková, Markéta. 2012. ‘Romania’. In Populist Political Parties in East Central Europe, edited by Vlastimil Havlík and Aneta Pinková, 199–226. Brno: Munipress.

Sum, Paul E. 2010. ‘The Radical Right in Romania: Political Party Evolution and the Distancing of Romania from Europe’. Communist and Post-Communist Studies 43 (1): 19–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.postcomstud.2010.01.005.

Ţurcanu, Florin. 2010. ‘National and Right-Wing Radicalism in the New Democracies: Romania’. Paper for the workshop of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation on “Right-wing extremism and its impact on young democracies in the CEE countries”.