Keywords
anti-corruption Central and Eastern Europe clientelism corruption democracy democratization economic growth elections EU conditionality EU neighbourhood European integration Europeanization European Union Euroscepticism financial crisis foreign policy Good governance governance governance reforms Hungary ideology implementation institutionalization institutions and development local government Montenegro Nationalism participation party system Poland political parties political protest post-communism Republic of Moldova Romania Russia Russian Federation security Serbia Slovenia small states social media transparency Ukraine voting behaviourPosts Tagged ‹Romania›
Monday, February 23rd, 2026
The 2025 Romanian presidential elections in the Republic of Moldova: Voting behavior, public perception, and contextualization
This study provides a critical analysis of the 2025 Romanian presidential elections, focusing on their unfolding and public reflection within the Republic of Moldova. Interest in these elections grew significantly among Romanian citizens residing in Moldova. The May 2025 vote followed a prolonged and intricate electoral process that began in...
Wednesday, September 18th, 2024
The Romanian Electoral Management Body: Between the Governmental Model and the Independent Model
This study examines the Romanian Electoral Management Body (EMB), focusing on its dualistic structure. It distinguishes between the formal independence and functional independence of electoral management institutions and proposes a qualitative evaluation of the Permanent Electoral Authority (AEP) and the Central Electoral Bureau (BEC). The...
Tuesday, July 18th, 2023
Leaders, institutions, or context? Explaining local government compliance with transparency regulations in Romania
The paper proposes a contextualized approach to local government transparency and its determinants. It starts by briefly discussing the distinction between local government compliance with transparency regulations and broader/more substantial local government transparency. A context-dependent measure of local government compliance with transparency regulation is built for the Romanian case and...
Sunday, May 7th, 2023
Electoral proportionality vs. party system concentration. The 2020 Romanian local election
Voter representation based on votes cast and the degree of concentration of the party system are two variables correlated with the design of the electoral system. In general, there is an inverse relationship between proportionality and concentration: when the proportionality of the electoral system increases, the concentration of the party...
Monday, August 22nd, 2022
The invisible (under)hand – Access to information and competition in the Romanian public procurement sector
Competition in public procurement in Romania has declined sharply since 2017. Romania’s efforts toward transparency and anticorruption since becoming an EU member-state have been remarkable yet the results from over a decade of struggle do not seem to point in the direction of systemic improvement. On the contrary, over the...
Friday, July 31st, 2020
Shaping Civic Attitudes: Protests and Politics in Romania
This article looks at the contemporary upsurge of activist citizenship in Romania. Our assessment is aimed at disentangling the contextual determinants, from the agency of the movements themselves. Our research is based on primary empirical evidence collected from semi-structured interviews, surveys, news coverage, and official documents. Our findings suggest that...
Tuesday, April 3rd, 2018
Strengthening civil society beyond the ‘assistance-for-democratization’ era. Lessons from Romania
This article investigates the puzzling observation that, despite the vigorous mass protests that have taken place since 2012 and mobilized Romanian civil society against attempts to implement unpopular policies in fields such as health, environment or justice, and which have led to the fall of two cabinets, the non-governmental organization...
Friday, October 9th, 2015
Government engagement in co-operative service delivery in Romania: knowledge and acknowledgement
This paper approaches the engagement of successive Romanian governments with service delivery by third sector organisations and uses policy discourse to assess governance practices associated with collaborative service delivery. The topic is approached by a theoretically-informed qualitative analysis of policy documents spanning a decade. Results point out that the most...
