Engineering party competition in a new democracy: post-communist party regulation in Romania

Abstract

The article examines the evolution of party regulation in Romania and identifies a progressive shift from the early 1990s promotion scope of party legislation towards a multi-layered prescriptive and rather restrictive legislation. The dynamics identified fit the party cartelisation idea, although with significant amendments. The mid 90s and the 2000s changes were not primarily geared towards controlling access to public funding for party politics; beyond the rhetoric pleading in favour of a simpler democracy, the various amendments testify parties' interest to limit access to privileged state contracts and patronage positions.

Keywords:

• party competition
• post-communism
• party regulation
• electoral legislation

Notes on contributors

Marina Popescu (PhD Department of Goverment, University of Essex) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Central European University. Before joining CEU, she was a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Essex with a project on mass media and democracy (mediasystemsineurope.org). She is also director of Median Research Centre in Bucharest, member of the Romanian National Election Study team and Principal Investigator of the project “Re-thinking Representation: Campaign Personalization and Legislative Behaviour,” financed by the Romanian National Scientific Research Council at the University of Sibiu, and of “Less Hate, More Speech”, a comparative project on anti-democratic intolerant discourse and citizen engagement funded by Norway Grants. Her most recent publications came out in the International Journal of Communication and Electoral Studies.

Sorina Soare is Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Florence, Italy. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Université libre de Bruxelles and previously studied Political Science at the University of Bucharest. She works in the area of comparative politics and her research interests include political parties, the democratization process and the populist phenomena.

Notes

1. President Băsescu's involvement in the competition for the PDL direction has been largely covered by the media and provided support for criticisms against the lack of neutrality stated by his institutional position. Similarly, criticisms raised in occasion of the attendance of the 2012 PPE meeting in Bucharest. See for example “Victor Ponta: Participarea lui Băsescu la Congresul PPE e în afara Constituţiei, dar să-l suspendăm pentru asta?”, B1, 16 October 2012 (available at: http://www.b1.ro/stiri/politica/victor-ponta-participarea-lui-basescu-la-congresul-ppe-e-in-afara-constitutiei-dar-sa-l-suspendam-pentru-asta-40157.html).

2. The CFSN has a rather unclear status and history, but in short it was the entity acting as a provisory parliament that replaced the state and Party legislative institutions after the fall of the Ceausescu regime.

3. The number of splits at the time was quite high especially within the PNL – National Liberal Party and the other historical parties in spite of their small size (Soare et al. 2013).

4. The initial version of the 1996 bill supported a softer variant with 2500 signatures, in at least 10 counties but not less than 100 per county. See the Constitutional Court Decision n. 35, 2nd of April 1996, on the constitutionality of certain provisions of the Law on Political Parties, Monitorul Oficial, no 75, 11 April 1996.

5. PNL MP Mircea Iustian during the debates in the Chamber (April 25, 2002).

6. It again refers to magistrates and those with functions assimilated to this category, the military and civilian personnel active in the structures of the armed forces, public safety and order and national security, members of the Court of Audit and the Legislative Council as well as those involved in the management of public service mass media.

7. For the average salary in 1990 the Romanian National Institute of Statistics lists 4010 ROL (www.insse.ro/cms/rw/pages/castiguri1938.ro.do) which amounts to about 185 USD according to the Romanian National Bank archives (www.bnr.ro/Baza-de-date-interactiva-604.aspx).

8. Note that similar although, less incisive provisions, can be found in the Czech and Slovak laws Republics with payout threshold of 3% and 1.5% (Casal Bértoa and Spirova 2013, 10) while in Hungary the all parties obtaining at least 1% of the voting can obtain public funding (Enyedi 2007 as quoted in Casal Bértoa and Spirova 2013, 10).

9. Since personal funds were allowed, the regulation was not personally directed against Ion Ratiu, the wealthy presidential candidate of the PNTCD, but had a more general thrust against the historical parties and a nationalist undertone. Since the electoral success of the UDMR (the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania) was not foreseen in 1990, they were not the main target of these restrictions at the time but fear of foreign support for the Hungarian political organisations would be mentioned on subsequent occasions.

10. As noted in an interview in Jurnalul National on April 25, 2000.

11. As noted in “Daniel Constantin: Obiectivul primordial al PC e ca în 2016 să fie un partid fără de care să nu se poată face guvernarea”, March 23, 2013 http://www.agerpres.ro/media/index.php/politic/item/184056-Daniel-Constantin-Obiectivul-primordial-al-PC-in-2016-sa-fie-un-partid-mult-mai-puternic-decat-acum.html

12. The 2000 PNTCD electoral failure testifies to their strategic miscalculation. Being the main party in the 1996–2000 governmental coalition, the PNTCD supported the changes in the electoral threshold raised from 3% to 5% for individual parties, plus 3% for the second party, and plus 1% for each additional party up to a maximum of 10%. Competing as an individual player would have secured a PNTCD parliamentary representation in 2000.

13. As noted by Georgiana Stavarache, “Cum se face un partid nou în România si cât costã”, Money Express, March 4, 2012, http://www.money.ro/cum-se-face-un-partid_1216493.html

14. The UNPR is a rather extreme case and it is not the party legislation that led to its success but the nature of Romanian semi-presidentialism and the search for presidential majorities. Yet once parliamentary rules allow the formation of such splinter parties and bestow upon them all benefits of parliamentary party status, including in terms of funding, high hurdles of registration are unlikely to matter since parties with parliamentary representation and even more parties in government like the UNPR do not face the same bureaucratic adversities in collecting signatures or the same difficulties in capturing media attention than a grass-roots party.

15. Looking at patterns of volatility could not bring much clarification in this case since the decisions that need to be made regarding party continuities in the calculations entail exactly to define the stable and predictable political options when the changes in electoral alliances reflect exactly the opposite.

16. Our electoral data based on the Official Electoral Bureau Data. The computations are related to the Chamber of Deputies. The 2012 results cannot be explained in relation to the decrease in the number of registered voters.

17. Although support for party policy units is rare and their emergence depends on party need, the OSCE/ODIHR report recommends legislation in support of party policy units to strengthen the policy competence of parties and emphasise its importance. Romania Draft Law on Political Parties Osce/Odihr review, Warsaw, 13 December 2002.

18. E.g. the case of the New Republic in the current Parliament. Subvenţii acordate partidelor politice în luna ianuarie 2013, în conformitate cu prevederile Legii nr. 334/2006 şi ale Hotărârii de Guvern nr. 749/2007, cu modificările şi completările ulterioare, Autoritatea Electorală Permanentă, http://www.roaep.ro/finantare/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Subventii-ianuarie-2013.pdf

19. Out of the 446 candidates presented by the PPDD at the 2012 elections, 27 had been MPs before 2012 (15 of them in other legislatures during 2008–2012) and 23 held different elected offices (from local councillor to MEP). These 50 candidates (11.21% of the total) had previously been elected under the labels of the 4 previous parliamentary parties (PSD, PNL, PDL and PRM) (Chiru forthcoming).

20. Adrian Nastase was accused of camouflaging his electoral fundraising (for the 2004 presidential elections) by organising a symposium gathering around 1.6 million €. The sum was eventually paid forward to a firm contracted by the former prime minister in his presidential campaign. “‘Toţi suntem Adrian Năstase’. Chiar toţi?”, Gândul, 19 March 2013, available at http://www.gandul.info/puterea-gandului/toti-suntem-adrian-nastase-chiar-toti-10677892