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The article questions, in a sceptical and prospective way, the institutional outcomes of this major trans-national trend of administrative reformism known as "New Public Management". In our view, the main cross-border legacy of the process of acclimatizing NPM precepts and recipes to various national configurations consists essentially in institutional rearrangements and in a repertoire of managerial tools and recipes, embedded into different institutional orders and hybridized with many other key features of various administrative cultures. Backing up major administrative reforms started several decades ago, the NPM rhetoric claimed to furnish the universal cure for the "bureaucratic" disease which was supposedly affecting the developed states at the end of the 1970s. From then on and although it never acquired the inner coherence of a real doctrine, it spread all over the world at the point of becoming both a "policy paradigm" and a "praxeologic". However, once implemented and in order to endure, the NPM-inspired logics, instruments and methods have fatally begun to suffer a process of routinisation which transformed them significantly. Hence, far from achieving their initial goal of "de-bureaucratizing" the state, NPM reformism became part of the endless processes of bureaucratic reproduction inescapably affecting modern states and ensuring their resilience.

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.

International audience ; The article questions, in a skeptical and prospective way, the institutional outcomes of this major trans-national trend of administrative reformism known as "New Public Management". In our view, the main cross-border legacy of the process of acclimatizing NPM precepts and recipes to various national configurations consists essentially in institutional rearrangements and in a repertoire of managerial tools and recipes, embedded into different institutional orders and hybridized with many other key features of various administrative cultures. Backing up major administrative reforms started several decades ago, the NPM rhetoric claimed to furnish the universal cure for the "bureaucratic" disease which was supposedly affecting the developed states at the end of the 1970s. From then on and although it never acquired the inner coherence of a real doctrine, it spread all over the world at the point of becoming both a "policy paradigm" and a "praxeologic". However, once implemented and in order to endure, the NPM-inspired logics, instruments, and methods have fatally begun to suffer a process of routinization which transformed them significantly. Hence, far from achieving their initial goal of "de-bureaucratizing" the state, NPM reformism became part of the endless processes of bureaucratic reproduction inescapably affecting modern states and ensuring their resilience.

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.

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.

The article investigates the political mechanisms specific to contemporary Romanian politics and political parties, as well as those social representations related to gender roles and the
definition of family that have contributed to maintaining a low level of women participation in
Romanian politics after 1989. In a first part, it sets the conceptual context through a review of the
main theoretical approaches for the political representation of women, with an emphasis on
gender studies' cognitive dimension. Second, it connects a quantitative evaluation of women's
presence in the Romanian post communist parliament with a qualitative analysis of public (i.e.
mass media) discourse of the rejected legislative proposal to introduce gender quotas in various
political and social processes. The author finds that, beyond the dynamics of political elites'
recruitment and the functioning of the political "game", the ideological options and social
representations that emphasize the differences between men and women, as well the central role
of family in building gender roles play an essential part in maintaining a low number of women
within the Parliament.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the Romanian studies, in postcommunism and inter-war period, upon Montesquieu, more specifically upon his writting, De l'esprit des lois. In order to understand and to create a Romanian tradition of liberalism, one needs to begin from its origins. Montesquieu created a new language, different from that of his predecessors, a moderate one. He used the philosophic reason as an instrument of inquiry. It is said that one cannot understand a philosopher unless one thinks in his terms. Do the Romanian studies upon Montesquieu use this instrument, the philosophic reason? If they used it, they would be able to clarify Montesquieu's writtings and to understand the moderate language of liberalism. It is from this perspective that this paper will analyze the Romanian studies, out of which only two are academic.

This article discusses the case of Ion Grigorescu, and of his ambiguous relationship with the communist regime, which he registered through a form of "documentary realism". Through his "realgrams" Grigorescu documented real life experiences in an innovatory approach to the majority of Romanian artists of the time using photographs of his everyday environment, and being inspired by his social and political context. Grigorescu is thus an artist committed to the public space and assuming a critical stance without it being discursive, pedant or moralizing. The approach of this study is descriptive, based on the artists' artworks and self-descriptions, and seeking to situate Grigorescu's approach in the context of the communist regime and its transformation after 1990 into a democratic regime. The conclusions show that Grigorescu's artworks are anti-system, criticizing any establishment, no matter in which regime he finds himself. His contestation is specific to a committed artist that chooses to express his freedom of expression beyond his own studio.

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.