Suchergebnisse

The study catches a glimpse of the different faces of "communist death", imagined as "assumed death", "egalitarian death", or exemplary (i.e., heroic) death. In fact, this was really the death of individuality. The goal of this study was achieved through transdisciplinary methodologies, which involve the specific tools of social investigation, interconnected disciplines (see political history, political, cultural and funerary anthropology, social psychology, art and architecture history), through convergent usage of historical sources specific to recent history (official documents, newspapers of the Stalinist period, memory literature, ethnographic sources, funerary inscriptions, interviews). The aim is to present the operations involved in the ideologization of death, a process demanded by "the hunger for legitimacy" of the communist system.

Unlike in most Western contexts, women's emancipation in communist Romania was a
top down processes, part of the social change platform imposed by the Communist Party. And
unlike the Romanian political regimes that preceded communism, it was justified by the latter as "natural", with women presented as integrated in all everyday life activities. Permeating throughout all layers of society, this emancipation was performed through propaganda in the written press and cinematography, as the Party used varied means to promote a positive imaginary
of women in communism. However, the difference between the Party's propaganda on women and the reality of women during communism was not only striking but had a significant impact on women's status and role in Romania even after the fall of the communist regime.

At the end of the Second World War, on the Romanian Communist Party's agenda two major points were highlighted: massive industrialization and the recruitment of party members. The article explores the role and functions of the socialist enterprise in communist Romania, a place where the interaction between party and society was strongly emphasized. Focusing on the first two decades of communist rule, I have chosen as a case study an enterprise with an old tradition, created at the end of the XIXth century: The Hunedoara Integrated Iron and Steel Works. In the confined space of the socialist enterprise the political, economical and social objectives of the communist regime were put in practice. In this context, the socialist enterprise became one of the most important places of propaganda, domination and control.

The article examines the evolution of inter-party mobility in the post-communist Romanian Parliament, confirming that the practice has been a constant phenomenon, growing continuously after 1992. Political mobility is analysed from a double perspective, that of political representation and that of political parties. The case study on the 2008-2012 legislature reveals that beyond the quantitative aspect, the mobility of MPs became a real factor of instability, changing the majority in the Parliament and, as such, triggering the government's dismissal. Deputies and senators changing party affiliation produced, for the first time after the fall of the communist regime, an alternation of power between elections.

The erosion of media trust raises concerns about the ways in which the conduit of political information could undermine citizens' trust in democracy. While a large body of research in western democracies shows that media trust is contingent on specific media-system, political and cultural factors pertaining to national contexts, little is known about the sources of media trust in the new democracies from Central and Eastern Europe. Based on statistical analyses of public opinion surveys, this research tests if levels of trust in various traditional (television, radio, written press) and alternative mediums (Internet and online social networks) are differentiated along political party lines and depending on media consumption patterns in post-communist Romania. The results reveal a stronger association between trust in political parties and trust in traditional mediums, while trust in online media is more strongly linked to consumption patterns. These findings have practical, theoretical and normative implications for the functioning of democracy in post-communist societies.

This article try to observe if some concepts which was used in order to explain the changes in the western party systems can be use for the Romanian case too. We concentrate our analyze on the concept of "cartel party" and his emergence in the Romanian political space. The Democratic Party was chose as a study case because we think that this political organization illustrate very well our hypothesis that in the last years, in Romania we pass from a model of mass parties to catch-all parties and cartel parties. We must clarified that this concept of "cartel party" can be understood only if we have in mind that the hole party system is subjected to the same cartelization logic. The author focuses his analysis on the evolution of the Democratic Party between the two electoral moments of 2000 and 2004, whit a special attention on the modalities for establishing the lists of candidates, the discussion about the internal reforms and organization. An important part of the article is dedicated to the political migration of the members of Democratic Party, a very often practice for the Romanian political system.

The article is an account of Romanian Marxist discourse between 1970 and 1980, one that was completely engaged in the justification and legitimation of the contemporary totalitarian political regime. Radu Florian's works, one of the most representative authors of this decade, are analysed via the conceptual lenses of Austrian economic theory. This methodological approach is quite fertile, since it generates clear explanations why Marxist theory and the communist state incarnating its teachings could not and cannot implement their claims. The samples of Romanian Marxist discourse under scrutiny are a showcase of philosophy invaded by rhetorics and converted into ideology. The author concludes that Romanian Marxism in the designated period represents a long line of contradictions resulting from the attempt to adapt a cruel reality to a generous and humane self-construction of a political programme.

The 2000 Romanian General Elections marked the disappearance of the Romanian Democratic Convention (CDR), until then a remarkable fixture within the party system. The Convention's dissolution enabled other parties to emerge and fill in the void. This article explores these replacements at their geographical level. The historical region of Transylvania, once a stronghold for the Convention, became a favorable place for the Justice and Truth Alliance (DA) in 2004 and for the National Liberal Party (PNL) and the Democratic Liberal Party (PDL) in 2008. Using Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA), we examine the geography of party replacement in six Transylvanian counties. ESDA indicates that the party replacement process within the Romanian context has a definite and clear geographical dimension. Our study shows the need to place electoral changes in a geographic framework for a better understanding of Romanian party politics.

The study focuses on the analysis of a minor literature selection. My application, being determined by the nature of the selected theme (the major historical literature, which offers important interpretative reference points, usually does not appeal to the repertory characteristic of the historiographic and mythologizing imagery), is also conditioned by a personal concern pertaining to the resurgence, in recent years, of this type of imagery that usually affects the perception of historicity as well as the structuring of civil society. The themes of postcommunist Dacianism represent a thin catalog of theories and motives, which primarily aim to the reinvention of the traditional historiographic discourse through the reinterpretation of the older or more recent archaeological discoveries from a Dacianist perspective. The anti-Semitic themes from the post-communist discourse disseminated especially in connection to the instauration of the communist regime in Romania, are connected to the new radicalisms as well. Publishers that promote nationalist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic, and fictional along with historical Dacianist literature are also responsible for the dissemination of extremist ideas using Dacianist rhetoric. This minor literature, ignored by the academic establishment, but benefiting from a large segment of culture consumers, has had appeal especially among adolescents attracted by the soteriological profile of Dacian heroes. The influence of texts can be explained by the manner in which major themes of the national historical discourse are vulgarized and reinterpreted from the perspective of some rhetoric of crises. The search for heroes in an ancient and hypothetical "golden age" (we refer to the Pelasgic Empire) is part of the already obsolete repertoire of mythological reconstructions. The refuge in the past (in fact, a sign of maladjustment and the inability for social and identitary reformulation) and sacrifice become the reference points for the socio-cultural behavior proposed in a world, which is considered hostile and conspiring. Anti-Semitic attitudes go hand in hand with the instances of identitary exacerbation produced on the traditional basis of victimology, on the Orthodoxist-Dacianist exaltations. We cannot but to be astonished by the nationalist mixture, which paradoxically combine Dacianism and Orthodoxism, or Dacianism and alternative religions, the latter occurrence being also violently anti-Semitic through its rejection of Judaism as a subversive and unilateral religion. In conclusion, post-communist Dacianism (promoted especially by the Dacia Revival International Society ), as an answer to the identitary crisis, fits into the autochtonist historiographic trend, while more radical approaches (see the extremist publications and the books recently published especially by the "Obiectiv" Publishing House from Craiova) are somehow closely related to both the "interwar prophetism", which they vulgarize, and to the legionary mystique too.

Public access to accurate and reliable information is vital for democracies and the media play a key role in informing citizens about the political process. While a large body of research shows that media exposure influences electoral behavior, less is known about the factors that shape people's propensity to actively search information about politics in the media. Based on explanatory models of political participation and using public opinion survey data, the results show that material endowments and education along with motivational variables largely explain why some people are more prone to seek political information in the media. The results illustrate the importance of defining media exposure to political messages as a form of cognitive involvement in politics as this analytical strategy provides valuable insights into the socio-economic inequalities that bias public access to information.

The present study investigates the major problems and challenges faced by the Romanian educational system during the last years of Nicolae Ceauşescu's regime. My main focus is on the so-called "polytechnic" education as a mean to reform and improve the system, and the debates it generated starting with the late 1970s. Consequently, the paper also examines the evolution of the debate and the top-down and bottom-up projects and initiatives to reform the educational system during the first decade following the collapse of the communist regime in Romania in December 1989. The aim is to present the clashing visions of different actors over the idea of reform and the urge to implement it, nonetheless to reveal the long term deadlock generated by this situation within the Romanian educational system.

The aim of the article is to reframe the political ideas Dimitrie Gusti has been expressed alongside two decades of the interwar period, through the conservative political doctrine. Dimitrie Gusti did not relate his political perspective to the conservative label. Still, his political commitments and ideas, as these have been summed up in 1932-1933, when he was Ministry of Public Education in a Government led by National Peasant Party, allow seeing him amongst the leading personalities who has resumed the prewar conservatism in Romania. My arguments revolve around this latter thesis.