Shifting to an Ethno-National Citizenship Model: the Regime of Constitutional Nationalism

Chapter 6 Shifting to an Ethno-National Citizenship Model: the Regime of Constitutional Nationalism

Celebrated by apologists for the new order as yet another “revolution,” the forced abdication of Prince Cuza inaugurated a new political regime in Romania. Cuza’s dictatorship, based on the 1852 French Constitution, was replaced by a constitutional monarchy modeled on Belgium’s liberal 1831 Constitution, endorsing major civil rights and liberties, and providing for participatory citizenship. A shift in the legal model of state-citizenship also occurred, with the country moving from the inclusive French state-national to a prevailing ethno-cultural model. Lastly, the secularized system of civil mar- riage instituted by the Civil Code was replaced by a mixed system which was both civil and religious. These apparently minor revisions in the country’s legal framework reflect major transformations in the understanding of Romanian nationhood, which moved from an inclusive civic nationalism based on a “thin” and “learned” definition of nationhood to a regime of constitutional nationalism based on the sociopolitical domination of ethnic Romanians, to the detriment of other ethno-religious groups living in the country. In addi- tion, since political life in the new regime’s formative years was dominated by Conservative politicians, the participatory citizenship set by Cuza’s statute was diluted in favor of an oligarchic regime which made political participation contingent on more rigid education and property qualifications. These chang- es marked the gradual abandonment of the Liberals’ revolutionary fervor in favor of pragmatic state practices, and the departure from the Old Regime’s inclusive membership model, based on “the right of the natives,” to a citizenship body redefined as an ethnic community. This transition occurred mostly by way of a new constitutional order. Historian Hellmuth Hecker observed that in countries where the political order emphasized the political entitlements of citizenship, such as Revolutionary France or certain member-states of the Confederation of the Rhine, condi- tions of access to state-citizenship were stipulated in constitutions. By con- trast, countries that attached greater importance to civil, rather than political rights, included legal definitions of citizenship in civil codes; these include Napoleonic France (1804), Austria (1811), Baden, and the Italian States (1865). The modern practice of defining citizenship in separate “laws of nationality” developed only gradually, initially in Prussia in 1842 and later in Britain in

1870.1 Romania rapidly transited from one tradition to another, a proof of the major shift in its national ideology. During Cuza’s reign, it adopted the model of the Code Napoléon. However, while the French legal system attached great importance to civil rights, granting them to foreigners only on the condition of reciprocity, Romanian legislation was more liberal. It granted civil rights to all inhabitants, irrespective of citizenship status. In exchange, Romanian legisla- tors attached particular importance to the exercise of political rights, which explains the adoption of constitutional provisions on citizenship. This resulted in a hybrid legal system, marked by contradictory stipulations on citizenship advanced both by the Civil Code and the Constitution.

1 “The Belgium of the Orient”: the 1866 Constitution and Its Model

Following the forceful abdication of Prince Cuza on February 11, 1866, political power was assumed by a new government led by the Wallachian moderate- liberal Ion Ghica, and a transitory regency called Locotenența Domnească, com- prising the Liberal politician Nicolae Golescu as representative of Wallachia, the Conservative politician Lascăr Catargiu as representative of Moldavia, and the Wallachian colonel Nicolae Haralambie as representative of the army. The priority of the new government was the establishment of a constitutional monarchy under a foreign prince and a new democratic constitution. In line with the national program set by the Ad-Hoc Divans, the majority of politicians argued for the enthronement of a foreign prince as a guarantee of political stability, and a new stage in the consolidation of the nation-state toward obtaining independence. The dethronement of Cuza via a coup d’état nevertheless posed grave dip- lomatic problems, potentially putting the very existence of the new nation- state into question. On the one hand, since the Great Powers had recognized the union of the Principalities only for the duration of Cuza’s reign, the anti- unionist powers—Russia, Austria and the Ottoman Empire—could use the crisis to split up the two Principalities. On the other hand, the end of Cuza’s personal regime brought political tensions, accumulated between Moldavians and Wallachians in the process of state unification, to the surface. The most significant challenge was the revitalization of a separatist trend in Moldavia, fueled by resentments against the alleged Wallachian domination of the new

1 Hellmuth Hecker, Staatsangehörigkeit im Code Napoléon als europäisches Recht: Die Rezeption des französischen Code Civil von 1804 in Deutschland und Italien in Beziehung zum Staatsangehörigkeitsrecht (Hamburg, 1980), cited in Fahrmeir, “Definitions of citizenship,” 19.