about democracy in romania

Building Democracy in Romania: Internal Shortcomings and External Neglect

Tom Gallagher

Communist rule ended violently and abruptly in Romania in 1989, but in the 1990s a protracted and incomplete transition from that social system has occurred. Romania thus stands apart from Central European states with whom it prefers to be grouped and even with several in South-East Europe (SEE) or the Balkans, the geographical category into which international observers and many ordinary Romanian citizens feel Romania best fits.

1 Until the 1996 election victory of centre-right reformers, Romania experienced a transition from communist rule controlled by second-ranking members of the old regime; until the mid-1990s, when at last it appeared possible that they could be peacefully substituted in office, they were widely seen as reluctant democrats wedded to illiberal practices, with a near-monopolistic approach to political power.

The situation appeared recognizable to scholars familiar with Romania's long-term political evolution. In the past imported ideologies have been modified and drained of their reformist content to suit local elite requirements.2 This has led to huge discrepancies between constitutional forms and actual practices. Since Romanian independence in 1881, rhetoric about reform has often been a screen enabling a narrow oligarchy, whether aristocratic, mercantile, communist, or post-communist to pursue self-serving policies

end p.383

that produce a dangerous gulf between state and society. A legacy of foreign occupation stretching over centuries, and sharp internal cleavages—economic, cultural, and above all ethnic—retarded the progress of democratization.

From 1881 to 1938 Romania enjoyed over fifty years of stable constitutional rule which distinguished it from all other states in SEE, but institutions and civic culture were not democratic (nor are they today according to one of Romania's foremost political scientists).3 The inability of a poorly institutionalized state to integrate new territories with large minority populations acquired after 1918 led to the collapse of democracy twenty years later. For the next sixty years indigenous forms of development were pursued in turn by right-wing populists and national communists, following an interlude of communist rule shaped by internationalist (i.e. pro-Soviet) norms.

The self-image of Romania as 'a Latin country which has always believed itself to be an extension of the west towards the East', helps to explain why it has often differentiated itself from its neighbours.4 It may share the Orthodox religion with its Slav neighbours, but it stays aloof from most of them, especially Russia, which is seen as a long-term foe of Romanian independence. Along with Hungary, Romania is the only non-Slavic nation-state in the Danubian basin, but cooperation has been thwarted by the debilitating quarrel over Transylvania, part of Romania since 1918, but mainly Hungarian-ruled for hundreds of years before that. Even with its long-standing Romanian majority, this province has undeniable Central European characteristics. Thus Romania finds itself crossed by important cultural fault-lines. The pre-1918 state shaped by Byzantine culture and proximity to Ottoman power coexists with relatively new territories where the Romanian majority has been exposed to German influence and where minorities enjoyed influence greater than their numbers. The great powers exploited such internal cleavages and Romania suffered devastating invasions in both world wars (never recovering Bessarabia and North Bukovina seized by the Soviet Union in 1940). It is hardly surprising that recently acquired independence and dire threats to territorial integrity have allowed nationalism to occupy a salient role in political culture. Nor is it any more surprising that, often

end p.384

against a background of misrule, rulers have consistently sought legitimacy from citizens by invoking nationalism and portraying themselves as executors of 'the national mission'.

In this chapter I argue that the process of building democracy in Romania is dependent on a favourable external environment and active backing from abroad. The communist regime's determination to retain absolute control over politics and society and oppose any liberal initiatives in economics blocked off the possibility of a democratic transition largely resourced and driven from within. However, at least until 1999 Western interest in Romania and concern for the success of its democratic experiment has been weak, with most involvement coming from NGOs and international economic bodies whose influence over Western policy towards Romania is relatively limited. The difficulties in the way of Romania consolidating a fragile democracy by pursuing a strategy dependent on successful integration with Western economic and security organizations are spelt out. Instead, the case is made for a new approach to democracy-building from domestic reformers and international organizations that recognizes Romania's special problems, one that is not based around unrealistic targets which the country is unable to meet for the foreseeable future.

Fluctuating International Influence

Romania today is the second largest of the former Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe (EE) and there has been intermittent interaction with the West (even though the importation of Western political values is of debatable significance). Independence was acquired through the skill of Romanian politicians in dealing with the Western powers, ensuring that Ottoman overlordship was not substituted by Russian control. After 1960, the West enjoyed a wider range of diplomatic and commercial contacts with Romania than with any other Warsaw Pact state, despite the unyielding character of a Marxist-Leninist regime soon to be infused with 1930s-style ultranationalism. The bid by Nicolae Ceauşescu, general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) from 1965 to 1989, to acquire autonomy from the Soviet Union made him seem a weak link in Soviet power and thus a leader apparently worth cultivating.5 Prestigious state visits from General De Gaulle and US President Nixon occurred in 1968 and 1969. In 1972 Romania was invited to join both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It obtained preferential trading status from the European Union (EU) in 1973 and was awarded Most Favoured Nation trading status in 1974, the only EE state enjoying such a distinction.6 Moreover, in 1967 Romania was the first communist state to recognize the Federal Republic of Germany.7

The West indirectly contributed to the chain of events that led to the violent collapse of the Ceauşescu regime in 1989. While it preferred to overlook systematic human rights abuses until the last years of the dictatorship, it made available massive loans to Ceauşescu that were used to finance ill-conceived industrialization schemes that resulted in massive policy failures. At considerable cost to his people, Ceauşescu set out to repay these loans by 1990, but in December 1989 popular protests and a rebellion by second-ranking communists brought about his downfall.

Numerous conspiracy theories seek to explain the sequence of events leading to the overthrow and execution by his underlings of a previously unchallenged communist dictator. One that has enjoyed unusual staying-power despite the absence of corroborating evidence is that Presidents Bush and Gorbachev at their Malta summit in November 1989 worked out the details of Ceauşescu's removal and his substitution by communist reformers who would not disturb the balance of power in the area.8 In 1990 one of the most common chants of protestors angry at Western inaction as the political vacuum was filled by men with roots in the communist regime was 'Malta Yalta', indicating their belief that the democracies were ready to abandon Romania to Russian captivity for a second time.9

But, however unpalatable, Western passivity as coup leaders led by Ion Iliescu moved quickly to confirm their authority by holding

end p.386

elections in May 1990 before their competitors had the chance to organize themselves, probably has a more mundane explanation. No Western country saw Romania as being in its zone of influence. Neither Germany nor France had obvious economic or strategic interests there. Unlike Poland or Hungary, Romania lacked a large and vocal émigré community in the USA able to persuade politicians to adopt a vigilant approach to events in their former homeland.

Initially, there was relief in western capitals that Iliescu was able to co-opt the party and state bureaucracy which recognized that this paternalistic ex-communist was in a good position to safeguard their interests in troubled times. Anxiety built up, however, following Romanian-Hungarian clashes in the city of Tirgu Mures in March 1990 in which official complicity, at least at lower levels, seemed apparent.10 Analysts were already advising Western policy makers that the politics of ethnicity had the potential to sabotage the transition to open politics being attempted in EE.11 Anxiety gave way to displeasure when the state used violence against its political opponents. In May 1990 the US ambassador was recalled to Washington for consultations regarding violence and intimidation in the election campaign.12 In June when the government used vigilante workers to beat up opposition protestors in the capital, there was widespread outrage. The EU froze agreements with Romania and the US government condemned 'in the strongest possible terms, the Romanian government's brutal suppression . . . of legitimate forms of dissent and public protest'.13

But the West was disinclined to take punitive action against ex-communists seemingly turning Romania into a façade democracy. As events in Yugoslavia would demonstrate only too clearly, policy makers are reluctant to act as organizers, leaders, or peacemakers in a region where there are serious doubts about the potentialities of local elites and their populations to aspire to good government and modern forms of political conduct. Besides, the undeniable winner in May 1990 was Iliescu and his National Salvation Front (FSN).

end p.387

The Front's denial of state assets to a fragmented opposition made its victory a runaway one. But Iliescu was genuinely popular on account of relaxing the savage austerity of the Ceauşescu era and collectivized villagers, elderly citizens, and heavy industrial workers, all with reason to feel insecure about the future, found noisy electoral competition unsettling and were more comfortable with socialist paternalism.14

Little noticed as Western governments averted their gaze from Romania was the voluntary help provided by thousands of ordinary citizens and trained professional people from across Western Europe who were moved by the television footage from Romania at the end of 1989 to seek to help rebuild that shattered society. Such efforts reveal the existence of an international civil society capable of surmounting political and geographical barriers often more effectively than powerful and well-financed governmental and multilateral organizations.15 Private assistance meant to offer relief from the multiple hardships millions of Romanians were facing was soon followed by attempts to promote democracy and free institutions from private foundations, not least the Open Society Foundation, which was the brainchild of millionaire George Soros. These non-governmental initiatives are often ignored when drawing up a balance-sheet of external intervention in post-communist states, but there is no shortage of evidence to suggest that in Romania they may have been crucial in sustaining democratic values in the first half of the 1990s.16

NGOs played an active role in promoting free media, in monitoring local elections and then presidential and parliamentary elections in 1992, and in encouraging the government to show greater respect for human rights. The Iliescu regime was susceptible to international pressure in these areas. It felt it could give ground without undermining the basis of its rule. Indeed external monitoring of elections did not prevent widespread allegations of vote-rigging from domestic sources in the national polls of 1992.17 As will be seen, it was far less happy about accepting advice from Western

end p.388

creditors concerning how to introduce market mechanisms into a state-led economy. Nor did the electoral arithmetic after 1992 when it was dependent on ultranationalist parties for its parliamentary majority allow it to respond positively to requests from the Council of Europe, the European Parliament, and the OSCE that it provide better safeguards for its ethnic minorities. Nor until Romania formally applied to join the EU in 1995 and NATO in 1996 was there external scrutiny of key state institutions and laws and the degree to which they were compatible with the standards required by these organizations. In the early 1990s the ruling FSN had been able to draw up a new Constitution and restructure on its own terms, or leave relatively unaltered, institutions such as the judiciary, the intelligence services, and the armed forces.18

Following the outbreak of warfare in ex-Yugoslavia, Romania began to be seen, rather unexpectedly, as an island of stability in the Balkan maelstrom. The restoration of Most Favoured Nation trading status by the US Congress in October 1992 was followed by the signing on 17 November of an association agreement with the EU, the first major diplomatic successes obtained by Romania since 1990. Statements by US officials in 1993-4 that the presence of extreme nationalists in the government was a Romanian affair seemed to confirm that Iliescu could pursue an idiosyncratic approach to democracy building without incurring severe penalties.19 Of particular satisfaction was Romania's admission to the Council of Europe in October 1993. Membership was then seen as a gateway to wider European integration and Romania could claim that its human rights record was beyond serious reproach now that it could gain entry to such a prestigious body. But, soon afterwards, by admitting Croatia and Russia despite appalling human rights records, membership of the Council of Europe began to lose its lustre and ratings Romania received from human rights monitors such as Freedom House and the US government's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor would place it near the bottom of the European league until well into the 1990s.

end p.389

When, in 1995, the minimalist Western approach to the Bosnian conflict was replaced by NATO-led military intervention, the repercussions were not long being felt in Romania. Following the Dayton peace accord of November 1995, there was growing interest in the stability of the former communist states bordering ex-Yugoslavia, especially among US officials. The need to isolate nationalist hard-liners in Bosnia and promote moderate forces capable of arranging compromises across the various ethnic divides, was at the centre of the strategy identified with Richard Holbrooke, a former US assistant secretary of state. The architect of the Dayton accord realized that the success or failure of the initiative depended, in part, on efforts to delegitimize conflictual nationalism in SEE.20 It is probably no coincidence that the criticism made by US Ambassador Alfred Moses on 22 February 1996 about the presence of ultranationalists in the Romanian government came not long after a visit to Bucharest by Holbrooke to discuss with Romanian officials the aims behind his Bosnia peace plan.21

With NATO prepared to include the former communist states of SEE inside a common European security umbrella provided they met a daunting range of civil and military conditions, far more attention began to be paid to the Romanian situation. US pressure contributed to a breakthrough in Romanian-Hungarian state relations in 1996 and the signing of a bilateral treaty between the two states on 14 September.22 Iliescu was unable to exploit the treaty for electoral advantage. The tone of the messages of congratulation from Western leaders was noticeably cooler than the ones sent to Bucharest in 1997 as Romanian-Hungarian relations dramatically improved under a very different administration and it was not without significance that in October 1995 France had awarded the Legion d'Honneur to Corneliu Copusu, a veteran survivor of communist prisons who had stitched together an opposition electoral alliance which would shortly challenge Iliescu's hold on power.

In the November 1996 presidential and parliamentary elections, voters opted for a new president and for parties that were felt to have more credibility in Western capitals. The industrial workers who had kept Iliescu in power since 1990 rejected him because his poorly institutionalized regime with a daunting record of incompetence was seen as jeopardizing their interests.23 With 95 per cent of Romanians endorsing NATO entry, foreign policy issues played a not insignificant role in securing what amounted to a peaceful change of regime.24 The choices Iliescu had been forced to make about the degree to which he was serious about integrating with the West undermined the cohesion of his regime and may have signalled to Romanians who took an interest in foreign affairs that the new times required new and untarnished people at the helm.

Thus despite Romanian events being a low priority for the West, external forces at different moments have played an influential role in strengthening weak democratic institutions and preventing a slide into post-communist autocracy. The strongly authoritarian instincts of the 1990-6 Iliescu regime were checked by the willingness of multilateral bodies like the EU and NATO to link financial and diplomatic backing with active respect for human and minority rights. Arguably, the victory of opposition reformers in the 1996 elections was enhanced by signs that the West was at last prepared to offer security guarantees to South-East Europe and envisage integrating countries making progress with democratization and economic reforms into pan-European institutions (though at a slower pace than Central European states).

Romanian Responses to the Outside World 1990-1996

Romania's perception of international events also influenced the progress of democratization after 1989. For a while, in 1990 the ruling FSN's attention was directed inwards as it sought to consolidate its authority in a society badly traumatized by an iron-fisted dictatorship and the violent nature of its demise. Little thought seems to have been given to how the West was likely to view the human rights abuses that occurred as the new regime took shape. The appointment as ambassadors to major Western capitals of Moscow-trained holdover from the communist era or else low-grade backers of the FSN, suggests that foreign relations were accorded

end p.391

a low priority.25 Emil Constantinescu, the liberal academic who became head of state in 1996, vividly described the form of post-communism emerging in Romania and how inimical it was to core Western values:

We are not talking about classic communism . . . but rather of a form that is both old since it awakens latent nationalism and new because of its goal, which is to preserve all that can be preserved, both in men and structures, of the old regime: as many as possible of the large enterprises, as many monopolies as possible, especially in the areas of energy and agriculture, as many of the political and economic leaders as possible, and as much as possible of an isolationist and anti-Western mythology, ready to halt all openings towards Europe and the rest of the world.26

Perhaps Iliescu hoped that, as in the communist era, cosmetic changes would be sufficient to allow Western financial and diplomatic support to buttress his rule. In April 1991, when France's President Mitterand became the first Western leader to pay Iliescu an official visit, it suggested that such a devious strategy might indeed be worth pursuing. Evidence that Iliescu was still far from certain about whether to align with the West even in an opportunistic way was provided in the same month when Romania became the only former Moscow satellite to sign a comprehensive treaty with the Soviet Union. The April 1991 treaty of friendship gave Moscow an effective right of veto over any Romanian alliance with a Western country. If it had not been abrogated by the collapse of the Soviet Union six months later, it might have placed Romania more firmly in the Soviet sphere of influence than it had been before 1989; and thereafter, senior officials remained anxious to appease Russian sensibilities. In July 1993, General Dumitru Cioflina, the chief of the army, stated that Romania was not going to enjoy closer relations with NATO than the ones it already had with Russia.27 While on a visit to Moscow in July 1995, Prime Minister Nicolae Vacaroiu declared that he was ready to realign the Romanian economy with Russia's because Western economic support had been so disappointing.28

Iliescu may have had reasons to keep relations with Moscow in good repair (such as access to cheap energy supplies) but isolation,

end p.392

or alignment with an internally exhausted Russia, were not realistic objectives for post-communist Romania.29 Besides, it is clear Iliescu hoped that Romania could benefit from Western economic and diplomatic support while being able to shape its own internal approach to democracy. Admission to European institutions, generous aid, official visits, and cordial interstate relations gradually became key goals. If accomplished, they could increase political stability and undermine opposition charges that Romania remained a pariah state under Ceauşescu's successors.

The first indication that Iliescu was not going to challenge Western interests as Slobodan Milosevic, the post-communist leader of Serbia was doing in 1991-3, came in the second half of 1990 during the Gulf Crisis. Romania held the presidency of the UN Security Council when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and the necessity of her backing for the US-led action against Iraq was more important than it would normally have been.30 It was extended willingly by Iliescu even though Romania lost up to $3 billion because of the embargo imposed on what had been one her most important trading partners.31

The UN embargo imposed on rump Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) in 1992 was even more damaging to the Romanian economy, leading to estimated losses of $7 billion as a result of the disruption of trade.32 An admission in 1998 by Virgil Magureanu, the former head of the Romanian intelligence service that Romania had not wholly abided by the sanctions confirmed what a number of Western analysts had long suspected.33 The decision to allow large supplies of oil to be shipped to Serbia came from President Iliescu himself, according to his top aide.34 It was also to Serbia that Iliescu made his first official visit abroad in 1990 and Miloševih was

end p.393

received in Bucharest in 1994 with all due ceremony when he was still widely seen as an international pariah.35

Attitudes to Moscow and Belgrade at specific moments showed how real was the temptation for some neo-communist backsliding. The Vacaroiu government's willingness to take Western credits but spend them for political purposes that were inimical to reform (resulting in the suspension of the IMF's agreement with Romania in late 1995) was probably the most daring example of bogus change. But Iliescu and his entourage lacked the vision and the energy to follow the maverick path and look for yet another indigenous solution to Romania's daunting handicaps in the economic sphere. They were essentially mediocre politicians looking for some sort of modus vivendi with the West in the hope they could still enjoy the autonomy to pursue a semi-authoritarian course in Romania.36 This option became unrealistic as soon as Romania began to look seriously at integration into Euro-Atlantic security structures.

In January 1994, when NATO announced a cooperation programme with prospective new members called the Partnership for Peace, Romania was actually the first former Soviet bloc state to join. A process of reforming the Romanian military and bringing it closer to the model of armies in long-established democracies was established. Greater civilian control was asserted, several hundred hard-line nationalist officers were retired in 1995, and professional competence was given a higher priority than in other branches of the state. By early 1996 invitations had been extended to former Warsaw Pact states to join NATO and Romania applied in April of that year. The leading states in NATO seem to have concluded that SEE could not be left in a security vacuum after the war in the former Yugoslavia.

NATO made it clear that a candidate nation's chances of joining the Western military alliance depended on its performance in democratizing its society, reforming its economy, settling differences with adjacent states, and restructuring its military, in accordance with Western democratic standards. Romania's credentials for NATO membership were weaker than those of most other applicants. The country's political system, though pluralist, was displaying growing oligarchic tendencies. The transition from communism was proving painful and slow in the economic realm. Above all,

end p.394

the failure of bilateral treaty negotiations with Hungary and the Ukraine, and the delay in normalizing relations with Moldova, suggested to many NATO planners that Romania might be a consumer of security rather than a provider of it. Reviewing Iliescu's record, one local analyst concluded that 'the outcome of the disjunction between declaration and behaviour was the marginalization of Romania [and] the grave weakening of its international political position'.37

But Romania's gradual entry into a liberal international system limited his room to manœuvre. The external monitoring of human rights and governmental practices which he allowed meant the façade democracy that perhaps he would have been most comfortable with slowly gave way to a competitive system with enough genuine elements to secure his peaceful removal from office.

Dimensions of the Post-1996 Reform Push

In the euphoria of the moment, the unexpected transfer of power to the opposition alliance known as the Romanian Democratic Convention (CDR) following elections in November 1996 was hailed as a relaunch of the revolution stalled since 1990. But it was a repudiation of the incompetent Iliescu regime rather than a positive endorsement for the opposition. No blueprint for economic reform had been worked out in advance by the Christian Democrat and National Peasant Party (PNTCD), the dominant force in the victorious alliance and the only major party of pre-war vintage in the region to be restored to government in the 1990s. To form a viable government, the PNTCD swallowed its reservations and formed a coalition with the Democratic Party (PD) which had broken away from the Iliescu camp in 1992. It was a marriage of convenience between an ill-matched couple, inveterate anti-communists and reform-minded junior ex-communists. For such a coalition to honour its promise to relaunch a moribund economy and halt tumbling living standards, a culture of compromise would need to replace the partisanship which had disfigured Romanian politics since 1989.

In 1995 a rare degree of consensus had been exhibited by all the major parties when unanimous backing was given in parliament for Romania's application for EU entry. So popular was the desire to 'return to Europe' among the Romanian public that similar

endorsement was given to Romania's NATO bid even from extreme nationalist parties. Under President Constantinescu, a post-nationalist agenda of fence-mending with neighbours and reconciliation with minorities was emphasized. The new head of state argued that the chief threats to Romanian security were internal in origin rather than external, which was a fresh departure in Romanian politics.38 He emphasized the moral danger and subversion of democratic values posed by corruption, the danger of the penetration of criminal organizations into the very heart of government; and the need to switch from a parasitic and exploitative capitalism to a growth-generating one which did not forget its responsibility for contributing to the public good.39 In 1997 corrupt officials were removed from different branches of the state. But lack of enthusiasm for the anti-corruption drive from the courts and the prosecution service soon blunted its effectiveness. A cigarette smuggling scandal involving senior members of the president's military entourage in 1998 showed how hard it was for the president to rely on trusted personnel who shared his aim of creating a law-based state where there was equality for all before the courts.40

The president has important mediating powers rather than executive ones, so the brunt of the reform challenge was faced by the government headed by Victor Ciorbea. This upright and economically literate premier soon discovered how great was the shortage of loyal and competent officials willing to launch a shock therapy programme under which Romania implemented reforms that Central European states had dragged out over 7-8 years. An unholy alliance of anti-reform bureaucrats and managers of loss-making state firms was hard to dislodge even in the absence of its former political patrons. But popular enthusiasm about the ability of the state to protect the common good gave the Ciorbea government the breathing-space to challenge the sacred cow that the state must rule in the name of the ethnic majority alone. Ministers from the UDMR, the Hungarian minority party, were appointed to the new government, even though they were not essential for its survival. Proposed changes to the law gave Hungarians the right to be schooled in their own mother tongue at all levels of education, as well as the right to use their language in courts of law and the local administration. A cautious entente

end p.396

with Hungary blossomed and what leaders from both states described as a strategic regional partnership began to emerge. Measures to strengthen bilateral economic and military cooperation were agreed in top-level visits.41 Ciorbea openly stated in 1997 that he wished Romania to benefit from Hungarian investment and its greater experience of market economics so as to help relaunch the Romanian economy.42 The previous government had portrayed such investment as tantamount to the recolonization of the country.

The new post-nationalist agenda of interethnic and interstate cooperation rightly earned Romania numerous plaudits from world leaders as its relations with Hungary moved from being a subject of occasional international concern to a positive example for resolving a thorny ethnic problem. Notice was also taken of the breakthrough in relations with the Ukraine that includes territory lost by Romania to the Soviet Union in 1940. A bilateral treaty on 2 June 1997 recognized that the borders between the two states were 'inviolable' and paved the way for practical measures of regional cooperation that will determine whether treaties with formerly suspicious neighbours are empty formulae or else augur a new era of partnership.43 Progress in regularizing ties with Russia was much slower. No longer did Russia share a land frontier with Romania, but Russia was helping to shore up the self-styled breakaway Republic of Transnistria on the right bank of the river Dniester which, with the support of the Russian 14th Army, had refused to become part of the new state of Moldova that had declared independence from Moscow in 1991. With Moldova negotiations were long in train for a bilateral treaty. Bucharest wished for a document that 'contains nuances demonstrating the special nature of relations between the two states', their historic affinities based on common language and the fact that historically the territory comprising the state of Moldova is viewed by most Romanians as part of their traditional homeland, while the Chisinau authorities preferred the classic form of treaty between two sovereign states.44 The signing of a bilateral treaty with Russia, scheduled for 27 April 1996, was postponed at the last minute by the Iliescu government owing to a storm of protest raised by the then

end p.397

opposition at the fact that condemnation of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact (paving the way for the Soviet annexation of the Romanian province of Bessarabia in 1940) was not in the main treaty, but placed in a separate annexe.45

Romania's image as a stabilizing force in a disorderly Balkan neighbourhood won it high-level support in NATO, especially from Latin members with France in the vanguard. But it was not enough to overcome scepticism about Romania's abilities to cure its economic ills and not be a financial drain on the organization. Lingering doubts also remained that Romania would be a consumer rather than a provider of security. The rebuff delivered after the NATO summit in Madrid on 12 July 1997 had no adverse effects on public opinion and did not generate the nationalist backlash feared in some quarters. An opinion poll in late May showed that 29 per cent of voters blamed Iliescu's PDSR for any failure of Romania's NATO bid compared with 16 per cent holding the Ciorbea government responsible.46 There was little noticeable public anger that Hungary had been selected and Romania spurned. Nor had there been a public outcry over the government's liberal minority policy, because it was widely seen as helping to end Romania's international isolation. The Romanian electorate showed patience and even maturity though it was hard not to disguise the fact that the government was using a foreign policy goal symbolizing 'the return to Europe' to extract more moral sacrifices from a hard-pressed population.47

But the government parties were unable to promote a culture of cooperation that would enable the coalition to survive in difficult times. Disputes over patronage between the PNTCD and the PD meant that reform plans hastily worked out in the winter of 1996-7 were never really implemented. Government came to a standstill in the first quarter of 1998 as the PD refused to support the budget

end p.398

or other important bills until the PNTCD replaced Ciorbea with a more acceptable premier. Infighting among the ruling centre parties at a time of mass social hardship benefited the ugly nationalist fringe of Romanian politics whose poll ratings rose in 1997-8.

The widespread verdict of the sixteen-month Ciorbea government was that it had been in office but not in power. The power of the managers of state firms remained as strong as ever as did the capacity of these loss-making operations to swallow up huge amounts of public funds. While price controls had been lifted in 1997 and the currency freed, there had been minimal progress in restructuring the unproductive state-led economy. The failure of the Ciorbea government to match rhetoric with action had a demoralizing effect at home and eroded foreign confidence in the ability of Romania to throw aside a totalitarian legacy and catch up with its neighbours.

International Perspectives on Romanian Reform 1996-2000

South-East Europe was already a growing security concern for the West thanks to the Bosnia crisis when the dramatic results of the 1996 Romanian election occurred. The outcome suggested that there were parts of the Balkans where democracy could sink native roots in unpromising conditions. In a few months Romania went from being 'a no hope' outsider for NATO entry to being a serious contender. However irresolute he might sometimes have been in domestic politics, President Constantinescu soon acquired the reputation of being one of the most eloquent champions of reform to have emerged in EE since 1989. By contrast with his predecessor who had received few invitations to prestigious Western states, Constantinescu was soon enjoying a high profile in the West. There was no shortage of commentators ready to pronounce that Romanian political life was beginning to outgrow the Balkan stereotypes dominated by images of partisanship, collectivist values, and nationalism. On several occasions in 1997, US president Clinton expressed his admiration for the Romanian-Hungarian entente, claiming that it was a model for resolving intractable interethnic disputes.48

end p.399

Public statements emanating from NATO in 1996-7 indicated that it was efforts to bring the Romanian military into line with the armed forces capability of member states that most impressed NATO planners. In promoting its case for first-wave entry, Bucharest described the Romanian military as a stabilizing force both internally and in the regional context. There was no praetorian tradition in Romania, the armed forces had not been integrated into the Warsaw Pact (although Romania was a member), and 80 per cent of military equipment was produced at home.49 The Foreign Ministry's White Book on Romania and NATO emphasized that:

Defence policy is made by civilian authorities. The military do not decide what are the national security risks, nor do they make the decisions on the ways and means to counteract them. Under the current legislation, the Armed Forces cannot impose their point of view with regard to any particular problem of interest to the society as a whole.50

In 1998 the military's image was tarnished owing to the involvement of senior elements in corruption and to the determination of top commanders to secure an amnesty for officers who had given the orders to fire on unarmed civilians in December 1989.51 These events suggested that there was still a long way to go before the malign influence of the Ceauşescu era could be eradicated from the armed forces. But of greater concern to the West was the existence of no less than nine intelligence services that at different times have enjoyed considerable freedom of action from their nominal political masters.52 Iliescu had created parallel structures in this sphere as in the domain of law enforcement in order to prevent his authority being challenged.53 The existence of state bodies with near identical functions that often sought to neutralize each other's effectiveness impeded the efforts of reformers to dismantle the communist legacy in many areas of state activity.54 At least the Romanian Information Service (SRI), the chief domestic intelligence service and successor to the Securitate (in some eyes the chief power in the land before Ceauşescu's overthrow) had undergone a process of reform.55 But the SRI's capacity to distort or even derail the democratization process was still regarded as considerable. In January 1999, following the narrow failure of an uprising by miners from the Jiu Valley protesting against IMF-backed plans to trim their industry, a rueful president admitted that he had learnt far more about what was happening from the media than from the intelligence services.56

Virgil Magureanu, who remained in charge of the SRI until April 1997, was one of the chief architects of the 1990-6 Iliescu regime and had been heavily implicated in the coup that toppled Ceauşescu.57 His resignation as head of SRI in that month was widely seen as an attempt to assuage fears in the Western intelligence community about including as a NATO member a state where the security services had, until recently, played an omnipotent role in national affairs.58

Overlapping authority, poor management, and inability to define priorities were aspects of the Romanian administrative culture that left negative impressions on external officials vetting Romanian credentials for Euro-Atlantic integration.59 The gap between the government announcing a decision and its actual implementation is greater in Romania than in many other countries. Western creditors, represented by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, grew increasingly exasperated during the death agonies of the Ciorbea government about the incapacity of the ruling parties to renounce politicking in order to pass a budget, never mind tackle structural reform. In May 1998 the World Bank suspended an accord designed to achieve the latter aim. Shortly beforehand, its Bucharest representative, Francois Ettori had warned that the marathon crisis had 'opened up a widening gap

end p.401

between Romania and other countries of Eastern Europe . . . Also threatened were Romania's chances of entering the European Union along with other countries.'60

In July 1997 the European Commission had recommended that Romania, along with five other states, be left out of the accession process getting underway at the end of the year because they appeared to be far from meeting the criteria from EU entry, something Premier Ciorbea admitted himself.61 The economic gap not only between Romania and EU states but between Romania and successful EU aspirants from Eastern Europe such as Poland and Hungary was immense. The volume of foreign investment per head of population in Romania between 1989 and 1996 and the volume of exports per head from Romania in 1996 were both lower than for all other former communist states in Eastern Europe.62 But in December 1997 the gloom was lifted somewhat at the Luxembourg summit of EU heads of government, when it was decided to extend simultaneous invitations to all eleven aspirant members, but to proceed at a slow pace with countries like Romania which clearly fell far short of entry requirements. Further encouragement for Romania was offered in March 1998 when the EU decided that the pre-accession states least prepared for entry would receive a disproportionately large share of funds from the EU so as to catch up with the fast-track candidates.63 In the year 2000 Romania was due to receive 650 million Euro to help it meet EU standards on a wide range of indicators.

In October 1999 Gunter Verheugen, the EU Commissioner for Enlargement, obtained the agreement of the Romanian government (headed by Radu Vasile since April 1998) that the EU would play an active role in supervising the formulation and implementation of the country's medium-term economic strategy between 2000 and 2004. Inevitably, Romanian sovereignty is infringed under such an arrangement. But the government had come to recognize that its failure to reach key policy targets vital in order to keep alive its EU integration hopes (not least the restructuring of loss-making state industries) stemmed from the post-communist state's limited administrative capacity.

In December 1999 EU pressure resulted in the passage of a law meant to depoliticize the top bands of the civil service, improve

end p.402

coordination between ministries, and regularize appointment procedures. Instilling a public service ethos in a bureaucracy with Romania's legacy of misrule will not happen overnight, but such a law may encourage competent and motivated officials to stay in the public service rather than move to the better-paid private sector.

At the Helsinki summit in the same month, the EU formally invited Romania to take part in talks for full membership. Romano Prodi, the EU Commission president was hopeful that Romania's application was bound to succeed when he was in Bucharest in January 2000 for talks with the new Romanian premier Mugur Isarescu, the former state bank governor at the head of the same four-party coalition in office since 1996.

Romania's bid to join NATO has failed to generate the momentum of its EU application despite President Clinton declaring on a visit to Bucharest on 11 July 1997, after the Madrid summit, that 'the door to NATO is open, will stay open, and we will help you pass through it'.64 If nothing else, this visit showed that Washington felt it important to provide top-level support to Romania's reformers, perhaps out of a belief that their success could have a stabilizing influence in South-Eastern Europe as a whole.65 But Romanians took most comfort from the official NATO statement issued at the end of the Madrid summit, negotiated between Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and her French counterpart Hubert Vedrine which in diplomatic language mentioned that Romania was at the forefront of countries due to join NATO in a second wave of expansion.66 However, the attention span of the West towards the problems of South-East Europe has always been limited unless unrest threatens the security of the wider European theatre.

Kosovo: A Catalyst?

The 1998-9 Kosovo crisis, culminating in NATO's military campaign against Serbia that began on 24 March 1999 transformed Romania from a Balkan backwater to a 'front-line state'. NATO required

end p.403

military facilities from Romania as well as Bulgaria in its drive to force Slobodan Milosevic to give meaningful autonomy to the Albanian majority in Kosovo and to halt ethnic cleansing. The strategic importance of Romania increased as an aerial war got underway and plans for a ground invasion of Kosovo were hastily drawn up. The importance of the South-East European flank to NATO's security, something that most NATO planners had underestimated, seemed vindicated by the Kosovo war.

On 22 April the Romanian parliament approved NATO's demand for an unlimited use of Romanian airspace. On 18 April Romania had denied Russia use of its airspace to fly humanitarian aid to Belgrade. When it came to choosing between religious and historical ties with Serbia and persisting, in dangerous circumstances, with a pro-Western foreign policy that hitherto had enjoyed massive popular backing, the Romanian government quickly concluded that it had no alternative but to align with NATO.

The pro-NATO stance of a previously fractured government was impressive, especially in light of the fact that public opinion, under the influence of a nationalist media, was turning against NATO. The government was encouraged by a string of declarations, such as that of President Clinton on 12 April that the West 'should try to do for Southeastern Europe what we helped to do for western Europe after World War II and for Central Europe after the Cold War'.67

On 10 June 1999 the German foreign minister Joschka Fischer formally launched a stabilization plan for the Balkans that involved the EU being the main source of funds for a project designed to prevent future conflict and integrate the region with the rest of Europe. But Romania was disappointed when Fischer, on a visit to Bucharest on 8 July, said that the Stability Pact should not be understood as a means of granting material and financial rewards for economic losses, its aim being to promote 'economic development opportunities in the region on a long-term basis'.68 German caution contrasted with the declaration of US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on 10 June that 'Europe has to pay for the reconstruction of the Balkans', the US having assumed much of the military burden.69

end p.404

When the fiftieth anniversary NATO summit passed in April 1999 with no progress in Romania's application, President Constantinescu complained that 'an admission date [to NATO] some time before 2002 is an unjust and faraway prospect for our countries which have assumed the same risks as other NATO countries'.70 The liberal president's patience seemed to snap when he declared on 13 July that 'Every day personalities from NATO and the EU come to Bucharest and tell us that during the conflict we behaved like member states of NATO. But nobody offers us security guarantees or speaks about recovering our losses in respect of the embargo [on trade with Yugoslavia] . . . While we are patted on the back and congratulated, our losses mount day by day.'71

Romania was left with two concrete assurances from NATO delivered presumably because of its highly supportive stance in the Kosovo crisis. During the conflict, high-level support for its EU membership bid emanated from Britain and Germany, hitherto unenthusiastic about the prospect of Romanian entry.72 Romania (along with other multiethnic states in the region) was also promised that no change of boundaries was planned in Yugoslavia as part of an eventual peace settlement, a reassurance designed to dampen the claims of nationalists who were arguing that Kosovo offered a precedent which might lead to the detachment of Transylvania from Romania.73

During the Kosovo crisis while Romania found itself courted by Western powers, it also watched as NATO went to elaborate lengths to mollify the Russian authorities in order to obtain at least their reluctant acquiescence for its actions in Kosovo. Despite statements from Blair, Prodi, and Albright identifying Romania with the Western family of nations, fears remained that Western countries might do a deal with Russia which would place a country like Romania in the Russian sphere of influence in return for NATO expansion elsewhere. In 1994, Ion Mircea Pascu, shortly to become deputy defence minister, actually expressed the view that Germany and Russia had reached a secret understanding to that effect in the early 1990s.74 In 1997 Russia was increasingly adamant, through the pronouncements of its then foreign minister, Evgheni Primakov, that 'the extension of NATO has already reached its maximum point and that the interests of European stability require a stop to be imposed in the process'.75 At the same time, Moscow reportedly offered Romania security guarantees and economic incentives in return for abandoning its bid to join NATO.76

More than in most former communist states, the success of the democratic transition in Romania depends on the supportive external environment. Poorly institutionalized parties lacking clear-cut ideologies or governing programmes, authoritarian power-structures, the weakness of civil society, and declining living and health standards, do not offer a propitious domestic environment. Without clearly focused and long-term Western help, the prospects of success for what is an audacious experiment in fostering pluralism in a society ravaged by totalitarianism (after fifty years of relatively democratic rule) are slim. Indeed as the range and scale of Romania's problems became evident after 1996 along with the incapacity of domestic reformers to deal adequately with them, constructive outside engagement began to appear a sine qua non in order to sustain a feeble reform process, particularly in the economic sphere.

It is unclear what will be the long-term fate of a developmental strategy for Romania partly crafted and supervised by the EU, especially if the PDSR (well ahead in the polls since 1999) returns to power in elections due at the end of 2000. Previously, the issue of decriminalizing homosexuality was the one that produced the most frequent interventions from elected officials in the European Parliament and the Council of Europe.77 But the government was unable to persuade its own parliament that liberal European values were superior to conservative ones, as championed by the Orthodox Church, the main opponent of law reform in this area.

Indignation has long been expressed in the Bucharest press that the West has imposed strict conditions on the treatment of a range of minorities while itself continuing to discriminate against Romania as a whole.78 Romania's inclusion in a EU blockade of

end p.406

countries for which strict visa requirements need to be met has become a cause célèbre. It makes obtaining a visa to travel to EU states extremely difficult for most Romanians and it was only in early 2000 that the EU signalled its willingness to take Romania off the list of European countries from whom visas are required. Many Romanians contrast the fact that tariff barriers have been lowered (in line with Romania's EU agreement), allowing West European goods to flood the country, thus jeopardizing local agriculture and industry) while Romanian citizens are effectively blockaded from travelling westwards.79

In the EU, fear of unwelcome immigrants from countries like Romania and Bulgaria (with the mobile Roma minority at the top of the list) outweighs concern that nations involuntarily severed from the rest of Europe during the Cold War, still lack easy access to the West. When President Constantinescu raised the issue of visas on a visit to Germany in March 1998, he got an unavailing response from his hosts. Indeed, it appears that to justify their approach, the Bonn authorities leaked to the press the results of an investigation that accused staff in the Romanian embassy of accepting bribes from suspected Romanian criminals in return for granting forged visas.80

There was general goodwill for Romania after it ditched rulers widely seen as neo-communist in 1996. But the degree of attention has been uneven and optimism in the West about its potential for switching to the fast-track of economic and institutional reform was soon dashed by the political turbulence of 1998. Only countries with cultural links to Romania have shown a real interest in its fate. France, and to a lesser degree the other South European states are the main examples.81 Despite being the EU state with the biggest interest in stabilizing the former communist states to its east, Germany, under Chancellor Helmut Kohl, made it clear to Romania that progress with its NATO and EU bids largely depended on its own efforts to speed up reform at home.82 Accordingly, hopes that Germany's ruling Christian Democrats might warm to the

end p.407

Romanian cause because Christian Democrats were the majority force in Romania's ruling coalition proved illusory.

The United States lacks the organic links with Romania that large émigré communities provide. Romania may have become a greater priority for Britain as a result of the Kosovo crisis, but it is unclear how long this will last. Russia still regards Romania as its backyard despite no longer sharing a land-frontier with the Danubian state, a cause of real, and perhaps not unjustified, apprehension in Bucharest.

Policy Drift Encourages Nationalism

Lack of progress with foreign policy goals seen as crucial for strengthening democracy has seen the return of a quasi-nationalist discourse even from the pro-Western government. In May 1998, the new prime minister, Radu Vasile proclaimed that the new budget was '100% Romanian', having observed that his predecessor might well have been called 'IMF', given the leverage the latter had enjoyed over economic policy in 1997.83 In June 1998, Vasile seemed to reject the president's thesis that the major threat to Romania came from its internal debility not from external threats when he predicted that foreign intelligence agencies interested in destabilizing Romania were likely to intensify their activities in the period before NATO's April 1999 summit.84 It came as no surprise for some that when ejected from the premiership and expelled from the PNTCD at the end of 1999 Vasile and his supporters looked for a new political home in a small ultranationalist party.

In an increasingly introspective atmosphere, much of the enthusiasm for Romanian-Hungarian détente also evaporated. Elements in both the PNTCD and the PD started to adopt intransigent attitudes towards the Hungarian minority as the need to appeal to a home audience took precedence over adhering to European norms on minority rights. Christian Tudor Popescu, the influential chief editor of Adevarul, was arguing in mid-June 1998 for the need to redefine Romanian politics by abandoning the obsession with Euro-Atlantic integration and concentrating on avoiding economic collapse, so as 'to avoid at any price the disintegration of the unitary Romanian state'.85 An increasingly populist media (private television being to the fore) has influenced both

end p.408

public opinion and a political elite where clear-cut ideological differences are not always easy to discern. If a realignment of politics occurs in the wake of the defeat of the PNTCD-led attempt to mount fundamental reforms, the new nationalist discourse could prove appealing, especially if a new governing majority emerges from the left-centre of Romanian politics.

By 1998, disquiet was expressed at senior EU levels that laws designed to offer minority protection and which Romania had been told would be necessary if her applications to join the EU and NATO were to go forward, were unable to command a majority even among the parties which had signed up to a pro-Western prospectus on the defeat of Iliescu in 1996.86 Thus it was no small achievement that the Hungarian UDMR remained inside the coalition as its term approached its end in 2,000, moderates being able to argue that enough progress had been made in securing minority rights to justify staying in.

The emphasis on trans-border cooperation with states from which Romania had previously held aloof receded in importance after a brief flurry of interest in Euro-regionalist concepts during 1997. Romania obstinately preferred to see itself as being 'in the immediate proximity of the Balkan peninsula', rather than a Balkan state per se.87 At the first meeting ever convened of the heads of all South-East European states, held in Crete on 3-4 November 1997, Romania's unwillingness to be involved in a problematic geopolitical region was obvious. Greece's initiative for 'the institutionalisation of a permanent structure of Balkan co-operation' (one backed by Richard Holbrooke, the architect of the United State's proactive policy in the region since 1995) was rejected by Romania.88

A fragmented political elite in Romania sees European integration as necessary for national recovery (and perhaps even survival), but there are deep reservations about renouncing the nationalist complexes that the founders of the European integration project challenged in the 1940s and 1950s. Since 1995 whenever prospects for integration with European institutions has faltered, so has Romanian enthusiasm for a post-nationalist agenda. It is no

end p.409

coincidence that Romania seemed to discard its anti-Hungarian complex in the first half of 1997 when it looked like having a real chance of being invited to join NATO at the July Madrid summit. There were cordial top-level bilateral meetings, declaration of a strategic partnership between Romania and Hungary, and laws were drawn up in Bucharest to give the Hungarians some of the cultural and linguistic rights they had long been demanding. But when Romanian expectations were dashed, laws strengthening minority rights failed in parliament despite the government's technical majority and the Hungarian party found itself isolated inside the coalition.89

There is no sign of the culture shift which will allow new forms of governance based on subsidiarity to replace the centralized nation-state on the jacobin model which has not served Romania very effectively in over a century of independence. Decentralization is a key part of the European integration process but legislation allowing sub-state poles of government to enjoy autonomy from the centre has been slow to emerge. Nationalist mentalities based on rigid defence of sovereignty and suspicion of neighbouring states have considerable staying-power in Romania. Even though there is abundant evidence that decentralization has been a key to the political stability and economic success of former dictatorships like Germany and Spain, these role models are unlikely to prove persuasive for much of the politico-administrative elite in Romania.

Conclusion

Romania has benefited far less from external efforts to promote democracy than most other ex-Warsaw Pact states. Measures such as US President George Bush's decision to annul Poland's large debt to the USA have not been taken in Romania's case. Instead the country's economy was further weakened by Western insistence that Bucharest comply with tough sanctions against former close trading partners Iraq and Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.

A more favourable attitude started to be shown towards Romania by the West following the 1996 presidential victory of Emil Constantinescu. He is unambiguously committed to Euro-Atlantic integration and broad adherence to the same goal has been shown by the unwieldy four-party coalition that provided three governments in the 1996-2000 period.

But it was only in the aftermath of the 1999 Kosovo conflict that the EU Commission and key state players in the EU and NATO showed a willingness to provide concentrated assistance to Romania which is required if it is to begin to bridge the gap between it and more favoured EE aspirants for EU entry. The EU commission's offer of a partnership with the government to jointly shape and implement an economic and administrative reform strategy, Commissioner Prodi's keenness to advance Romania's EU application, the large amount of PHARE aid donated to Romania in 2000, and the EU's stated intention to devote more time and energy to second-stream candidates like Romania than frontrunners offers a striking contrast with previous Western attitudes.

But it remains to be seen how concentrated Western attention will prove to be, especially if the PDSR returns to office in forthcoming elections. EU Enlargement commissioner Verheugen warned in February 2000 that Romania would face the isolation being visited upon Austria's new right-wing coalition, if populists and nationalists entered government at the end of the year.

It is clear that Brussels now recognizes that the obstacles in the way of Romania shedding its politically authoritarian and economically collectivist past are of such a magnitude that a special approach is required towards it from the gatekeepers of Euro-Atlantic integration. An approach involving active external engagement on the ground in rebuilding public institutions and a competitive economy is being pursued in a country where a large part of the power structure is still attached to authoritarian and collectivist values in politics and economics.

Anti-reformers who might, for convenience, be described as 'nomenklatura nationalists' are stronger in Romania than in most other post-communist states. They demonstrated their ascendancy by blocking economic reform between 1989 and 1996. But their advance has been contained by the fact that the main proponent of authoritarian politics in the region remains Russia. Russia appears keen to involve Romania in a series of economic agreements that would make the Romanian economy depend on its cheap energy supplies in return for political compliance. This would suit the powerful lobby of managers in the state-led Romanian energy sector who are hostile to genuine reform. But for most Romanians Russia remains 'a pole of repulsion' owing to long-term Russian bids to stifle Romanian independence. So it is difficult for Romanian interests hostile to the Western democratic project to take measures which are seen as analogous to ones being promoted by 'red-brown' forces in Russia itself. (Similarly, the surprising weakness of

end p.411

Russian-influenced organized crime in Romania can probably be ascribed to the fact that even for local criminal forces Russia remains an anti-model).

Pro-Western Romanians were relieved when the Russian elections at the end of 1999 resulted in a comprehensive defeat for the communists. But it remains to be seen if Vladimir Putin's nationalist bloc will prove to be less hostile to Romania's path of Euro-Atlantic integration than an unambiguously left-wing administration in Moscow.

Divided and demoralised reformers accepted the active assistance of multilateral organizations in order to draw up a strategy for economic recovery meant to prepare Romania for EU entry after 2007. But drawing closer to the West was unable to save them from electoral rejection at home. By 2000, most of the population, around 40% of which was facing absolute poverty, was no longer prepared to accept further economic misery in return for progress on foreign policy goals which previously had enjoyed overwhelming support. Stemming unemployment and poverty and dealing harshly with the corruption that was widely perceived to have got out of control took precedence over staying on good terms with NATO, the IMF or the EU. A nervous President Constantinescu abandoned a second-term bid rather than face the wrath of voters on the campaign trail. The PDSR obtained a near majority of seats in the 26 November election but it was the beneficiary of a negative vote rather than the repository of hopes that it would do better than the outgoing coalition. Far more unsettling was the remarkable success of the anti-western Greater Romania Party which reconciled the extremes of left and right. It mopped up many of the votes of the collapsed centre as well as the young, acquiring 25% of seats in parliament compared to a handful in 1996. Its fiercely anti-minority leader C.V. Tudor, formerly Ceauşescu's court poet, became the prime beneficiary of the rift between the main parties and society at large where the chief political players are often viewed as a separate caste ready to promote their group interests at the expense of most ordinary Romanians. The PRM is a haven for former and serving members of the security forces and has influential supporters in a string of government ministries. Unless the other parties behave in a more public-spirited way than they have done since 1989, nationalist mentalities will acquire an even stronger grip on the electorate than before, opening up the possibility of political isolation and renewed authoritarianism in Romania.