Populism on the Semi-Periphery: Some Considerations for Understanding the Anti-Corruption Discourse in Romania

ABSTRACT

The article analyzes why and how anti-corruption has become a quasi-hegemonic metanarrative and identity marker of urban middle classes in Romania, and argues that it is part of a complex identity discourse that is in essence populist.  It pits “the People” against the elites, it displays an exclusionary character, and the hostility toward elected institutions is also present. While scholarly accounts rarely associate Romanian anti-corruption discourse with populism (because of its putative “progressivism”), we argue that it should be regarded as a prominent example of a new form of populism emerging on the semi-peripheries of the Western core.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Zsuzsa Csergő (Queen’s University) for her valuable feedback on earlier drafts of this article, as well as the two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions and comments.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Governmental Emergency Ordinance 13/2017.

2. See Weyland (1999) for further Latin American and Eastern European examples.

3. In Romanian: Parchetul Național Anticorupție.

4. In Romanian: Direcția Națională Anticorupție.

5. The Coalition defined six criteria according to which a politician was unfit to run in the elections: switching from one party to another, having been accused of corruption in the past, having been a member of the Securitate (the secret police during communism), owning a private company with tax arrears, disparities between one’s income and asset declaration, or the existence of conflicts of interest.

6. In Romanian: Dreptate și Adevăr (Justice and Truth).

7. In Romanian: Partidul Decomcrației Sociale în România, meaning the Party of Social Democracy in Romania. It was the predecessor of PSD, the change of name occurring in 2003 after a merger with several small left-wing parties.

8. The most notable case was that of former minister of tourism and regional development, Elena Udrea, a close collaborator of Băsescu.

9. A core slogan of USR, “Vrem o țară ca afară!” (We want a country like the outside—that is, the West), is well known from the protest movements.

10. Art. 1(1) Romania is a sovereign, independent, unitary and indivisible National State. […] Art. 2(1) The national sovereignty shall reside within the Romanian people […].

11. About the reinforcement of class boundaries, see Lamont and Virág (2002).

12. W.W. Rostow’s (1960) theory of the phases of economic growth is one of the best-known examples.

13. One should emphasize that this important ideological element—even if propagated by right-wing parties —was originally connected to Marxist world-system theory.