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The paper explores the merits of Protagoras' view of politics as a possible intellectual source of the post-communist theory of democracy. Unbeknownst to themselves, Romanian politicians and political scientist tend to understand the function of politics in the footsteps of Plato and Lenin, as an art, or science of leadership. Interested mainly in the effectiveness of government, they give no significant heed to the issue of rights and liberties. The great discourse of Protagoras of Abdera could supply, in a normative way, the conceptual tools for a different approach to politics, as a pedagogical rhetoric of legal and political equality.

I present an analysis of the electorate of the left in Romania in the last 25 years (1990-2014), both longitudinal and comparative. The analysis reveals an electorate that has hardly changed since the early 1990's - it continues to be predominantly poor, old, and rural, with little education, much like the electorate of parties such as the Russian Communist Party or the Hungarian Fidesz. I argue that this profile, and its lack of evolution, is largely a product of the left's (FSN, FSDN, PDSR and PSD) lack of genuine commitment to the institutions and principles of liberal democracy.

This study aims to answer the question whether Christian Orthodoxy can inspire political movements. In so doing we start from the political theories of modernity where the link between Christianity and democracy is central. Our result sounds unexpected: interaction between Orthodoxy and democracy seems to not have a perspective. It is too late for it since most political movements in post-communism do not have the religious identity of their members as criterion. The situation was not different before. As an example the effort of the orthodox theologians and laymen in Romania before the outbreak of the Second World War is quoted here. Almost without an exception all focused and restricted their interest on the question of the nation. Therein we see the principal reason for the above postulated perspective of an orthodox political doctrine until now. On the European level the situation looks also no better. Even the parties, which attribute themselves the Christian values, have at present large difficulties to convey their message. It remains only to hope that the political actors rediscover the social and actively support the Christian ethics in the public area. Only so can democracy be regarded as one of the most important binding forces also under the Christians.

Political behavior research starts from the assumption that democracy cannot function properly without citizens' political involvement. In general, studies of political activism aim to understand democratic processes, focusing on the nature of the relationship between citizens and public authorities. Despite a relatively large number of studies devoted to this research topic, many controversies remain regarding political participation in contemporary democracies. What is the optimal level of political engagement in a democracy and the consequences, how do citizens get involved in political processes, and what factors best explain the differences between participants and non-participants, respectively? These questions guide the study of the relationship between political participation and democracy in the present book.

The article explores the rationale of the Romanian political community as defined by its successive constitutional layouts, since the first fundamental law of 1866, including the Communist constitutional settings, and concluding with the post-communist constitutional design. This consistency of the political community is tested by means of an analytical distinction between the Nation-State and the National State. The former is understood as the institutional underpinning of a community bearing a political project. The latter is seen as the institutional outcome of an ethnic group and the warrant of its political integrity. Such an examination of the Romanian constitutional production sheds light on the historical and unambiguous predominance of the National State, while the Nation State emerged briefly and warily in the Romanian setting in the form of the socialist nation state. By the same token, this approach questions the adequacy between democracy and this rationale of the Romanian political community. While the socialist Nation State, as it was constitutionally designed, failed to guarantee the effectiveness of popular democracy, the Romanian National State, as it was shaped by the successive constitutional texts, pre-communist and post-communist, was always unable to accommodate completely with democracy.

In the conservative imaginary, at least in the cases of Constantin N. Brăiloiu and Alexandru N. Lahovary, France was not deemed a functioning political model (i.e., a political or constitutional regime) that Romania should have followed. Compared with the English political model (or rather with the Anglo-Saxon one, since the reference sometimes included the United States of America) and with the Belgian regime, France was certainly a less favoured option. However, without exception and despite all discursive artifice, in the perspective of these two politicians, who were evidently Francophile, both by education and by cultural affinities, France undeniably remained a landmark of civilization or administrative and economic efficiency, and sometimes a beacon of legal inspiration. It must be said that the latter perception was in no way related to Constantin N. Brăiloiu and Alexandru N. Lahovary's conservative convictions. It was commonplace in the local cultural imaginary, which, regardless of one's political, social or cultural affiliation, repeated the encomiastic mantra dedicated to imperial France, to whom the Romanians were convinced that they owed the existence of their nation. In fact, one should not overlook another typical belief of this political imaginary, which is illustrated in our case by Alexandru N. Lahovary: the Romanian politicians were persuaded that the ideals included in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen were exclusively due to the France of 1789.