‘Women in Church,Men at the Public House’: religious experience in Romanian society, 1700–1830

This study analyzes religious practices in the Romanian lands in the long eighteenth century. Research for it was based on a series of largely unpublished archival documents which illustrate ordinary people's attitudes to faith, magic, superstition and the church. In periods of instability and insecurity, quite understandably, as daily worries become more acute, faith and religion step in to offer spiritual comfort. This study looks at spiritual practices in the Romanian old regime and explores the ways in which women and men used them as focal points for building sociability and solidarity networks.     

“Nationalism as a national danger?” Early Romanian socialists and the paradoxes of the national question (1880–1914)

This article traces the gradual accommodation of early socialists in Romania with the predicament of nationalism in the period between 1880 and 1914. The attitudes of Romanian socialists evolved from initial ambivalence toward nationalism to staunch commitment to internationalism in the 1890s, and an inadvertent but unmistakable growing engagement with nationalism after the turn of the century. Locating socialism in the broader political and cultural debates of the time, this article argues that belonging to the Romanian public arena forced socialists to become increasingly more sensitive to the challenges of nationalism. Especially after 1900, the rise of very influential competing nationalist ideologies, as well as the necessity to address the Jewish question and the problem of ethnic Romanians living abroad, turned Romanian socialists into opponents but also implicit partners of dialogue in debates on nationalism. In the long run, however, socialists failed to find a persuasive alternative to nationalism and eventually resorted to the same language, concepts, and imagery they were so vocally dismissing. Engaging the popular nationalist trends of the time required socialists to reevaluate their own theoretical tenets and to put forward different, but essentially no less nationalistic, projects for the future.     

Low-cost policy specialisation,district characteristics and gender. Patterns of committee assignment in Romania

ABSTRACT

Committee assignment can influence the efficiency of legislative work, the success of parties in reaching their policy goals and even the electoral fates of individual legislators. Nevertheless, little is known about this process in the legislatures established in the Central and Eastern European democracies. These legislatures faced severe informational, electoral and partisan challenges which raised the stakes of efficient committee-seat allocation. Simultaneously, most parliaments in the region were endowed with strong committees. The Romanian Parliament is representative for this combination of conditions. Drawing on a dataset that covers the careers, sector knowledge, partisan and electoral attributes of all the members serving in five terms of the Chamber of Deputies the article shows that committee assignment is used to facilitate low-cost policy specialisation, district characteristics matter for gaining seats in committees with distributive potentials, while female legislators are confined to committees dealing with feminised policy areas.     

Managing furia latina: the making of a Romanian football system and style of play

This article investigates the creation of a Romanian football style and system of play, best espoused by the Romanian national teams of the 1990s. It does so by engaging the works of Virgil Economu (1896–1978), undoubtedly the leading Romanian practitioner in the field. The analysis develops around the notions of furia latina – Latin fury – and “élan” and traces their elaboration and implication at two different historical periods, the interwar and the postwar. Premised on these notions, Economu sought to develop a distinctly Romanian style of football play, one emphasizing speed and individual technique. The successes of Romanian football in the 1980s and early 1990s, the rise of the midfielder Gheorghe Hagi, and the popular meanings attached to them are all intimately connected with Economu’s contributions. Overall, my arguments document football’s crucial role for modern Romanian nationalism.     

Success in slow motion: The Europeanization of Romanian child protection policy

This paper analyzes the influence of the European Union (EU) through a qualitative case study of child protection policy in Romania. This is a particularly tough case for the growing “Europeanization” literature. Prior research has called attention to several factors that promote Europeanization, including the presence of a pro-reform domestic coalition, the clarity and consistency of the EU’s own legislative targets, a state’s own prior involvement in the setting of European standards, a strong consensus among EU member states backing the European position, and strong non-European support for EU initiatives. According to these propositions, Romanian child protection seemed to provide a worst case scenario for Europeanization, as initially none of these conditions held. And yet the paper shows that substantial Europeanization occurred anyway. We argue that the EU experienced a very slow start with Romania but that it cultivated an opposition that responded to EU initiatives when that opposition took power. Moreover, the EU found three “workarounds” to the obstacles just noted: it asserted legislative targets it did not possess itself, invented new policy tools, and drew protection for its most controversial policy from another international organization, the ECHR. Our central theoretical claim is that external pressure requires internal accommodation in order to have lasting effects. The claim has important implications for the diffusion and conditionality debates.

Perceptions of Discretion in Street-Level Public Service: Examining Administrative Governance in Romania

ABSTRACT

Street-level bureaucrats have long been seen as key figures in program and policy implementation, often occupying unique positions that encompass executive, legislative, and judicial functions. Osborne’s concept of the New Public Governance addresses concepts of policy implementation and interpretive activities that characterize street-level bureaucracy. Current understanding of street-level bureaucracy is, however, dominated by research focused on the United States and the United Kingdom, both of which demonstrate differences from countries in Eastern Europe. This study uses survey data to examine street-level bureaucracy in Romania, with attention to the determinants of bureaucratic perceptions of discretion. Results indicate that proactive personality, prosocial motivation, autonomy, job satisfaction, and years of experience are related to individual perceptions of discretionary latitude among front-line workers.     

The education skills trap in a dependent market economy. Romania's case in the 2000s

We discuss the political economic development of Romania since 1989, with a focus on the evolution of higher education (HE). First, we place this evolution in the context of demand for HE by prospective students and employers, focusing on the low demand for skills in the MNC-dominated Romanian economy. Second, we provide empirical insight on indicators of quality, enrolment, and funding as key features of the HE system. We argue that Romania has evolved into a dependent market economy entrenched in a low-skills equilibrium, and that the weakness of the HE system is a key element in this process.     

Orthodoxy and nation-building: Nichifor Crainic and religious nationalism in 1920s Romania

This article uses the early career of Nichifor Crainic (1889–1972) to show why Orthodox Christianity became a central element of Romanian ultra-nationalism during the 1920s. Most Romanian nationalists were atheists prior to the First World War, but state-sponsored nation-building efforts catalyzed by territorial expansion and the incorporation of ethnic and religious minorities allowed individuals such as Crainic to introduce religious nationalism into the public sphere. Examining Crainic's work during the 1920s shows how his nationalism was shaped by mainstream political and ideological currents, including state institutions such as the Royal Foundations of Prince Carol and the Ministry of Cults and of Art. Despite championing “tradition,” Crainic was committed to changing Romanian society so long as that change followed autochthonous Romanian models. State sponsorship allowed Crainic to promote religious nationalism through his periodical Gândirea. Crainic's literary achievements earned him a chair in theology, from which he pioneered new ways of thinking about mysticism as an expression of Romanian culture and as crucial to understanding the Romanian nation.     

Unacademic academics: Holocaust deniers and trivializers in post-Communist Romania

The Romanian Academy (and much of the country's historical establishment) is packed with Holocaust deniers and trivializers, many of whom indulge in Holocaust obfuscation against the background of the post-Communist “competitive martyrdom” between the victims of the Holocaust and the Gulag. Quite a few of these deniers and trivializers are also former secret police informers. On closer examination, however, it turns out that explaining the reluctance to face the country's “dark past” as being the independent variable resultant of the post “Romanianization” of the Communist Party and its Securitate is a partial explanation at best. A substantially more convincing one might be provided by scrutinizing the phenomenon as the product of post-mnemonic cultural traumas.