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Parliamentary & presidential elections took place in Romania on 26 Nov 2000, with the second round of the presidential elections held two weeks later. The elections saw defeat for the parties that governed Romania in the 1996-2000 period. Following the elections, the Romanian Party of Social Democracy (PDSR), the left-wing party that governed Romania before 1996, returned to government & Ion Illiescu regained the presidency he lost in 1996. For most observers, the most surprising aspect of the election was not the victory of the PDSR & Iliescu, but the unexpectedly high support gathered by the extremist nationalist Party of Greater Romania (PRM). 3 Tables, 8 References. Adapted from the source document.

Candidate-centric campaigns are most likely to occur when electoral system incentives to personalize do not conflict with party-based incentives. Then it makes sense for candidates to use any campaign mean to improve their chances to win a seat while also helping the party win more seats and increasing their standing within the organization. The Romanian electoral system uniquely combined mechanisms that enabled all three motivations for almost all candidates. Our analysis of the degree and determinants of personalization in the 2012 parliamentary elections illustrates that electoral system incentives were key factors driving campaign personalization as a party-congruent rather than adversarial campaign strategy.

This paper examines cross-national variance in the impact of public and commercial television on citizens' political knowledge level and whether and how that variance may be related to differences in the content of public television broadcast. Multilevel models are used to link micro-level information on citizen knowledge from the European Election Studies of 1999 and 2004 to macro-level information about media systems and how public television operates in different contexts that we compiled from a variety of information sources. We find that exposure to news programs on public and private television channels are both positively associated with political knowledge after stringent controls for possible shared determinants of news exposure and knowledge, but only among less interested citizens. While exposure to news on public television appears to have, on average, a more positive effect than exposure to news on private channels, the difference is not significant and varies greatly across contexts. Public television seems more effective in informing citizens in countries where public television is largely independent of commercial revenue and uses its public funding to provide a particularly large amount of news and information programs for a politically very heterogeneous audience. However, private television appears to have the advantage in countries characterized by the opposite characteristics and relatively lower levels of press freedom. The discussion relates our findings to debates about the virtues of public broadcasting.

This report was co-funded by the European Commission ; Two versions available: English and Romanian

Drawing on an original sample of 351 elections held in new and consolidated democracies from 1960 to 2013, this article examines the likelihood that new parties gain parliamentary representation as a function of electoral system permissiveness and contextual factors that shape political entrepreneurs' perception of political opportunity. We distinguish between the success of genuinely new parties and that achieved by splinters or parties formed through mergers. We find that the district magnitude matters for the success of all three types of newcomers, while the electoral formula and proportionality matter only for the parliamentary entry of splinter parties. Another novel finding is that government instability facilitates the success of genuinely new and splinter parties. The analysis also shows that, irrespective of the type of transition, the more elections have taken place since then, the less likely it becomes that genuinely new parties and merger new parties enter parliament.

This article highlights aspects concerning the background, electoral system, election contenders and campaigns, as well as results from the 2009 Romanian presidential elections. As the authors suggest within, the election ran against a highly conflicted political landscape, comprising President Basescu and his grand collation created during 2008, of which such policies were short-lived. From this juncture the article delves into the 3 contenders' campaigns and challenges, as well as focuses on the civil mobilization and media monitoring, and political and constitutional issues promoted at this time. Next, the article examines the actual election results, highlighting the closeness of the election, and provides a complete background of the results and outcome, including the statistical information on both election rounds. In conclusion the authors provide highlights re the political after-effects of this presidential election on Romania, and the country's political direction. M. Diem