Institutional Conflict and Party Politics in Romania Since 2007

Südosteuropa 63 (2015), no. 1, pp. 47-74 THE ROMANIAN POLITICAL SYSTEM AFTER 1989 DANIEL BRETT Fiddling while Rome Burns: Institutional Conflict and Party Politics in Romania since 2007 Abstract. Drawing on the work of Maurice Duverger, this paper explores the dynamics of dual systems in the post-communist world by focusing on Romania . Unlike in states such as Poland and Russia, where conflicts between the president and the parliament were resolved relatively early in the transition period, conflict appears to have only recently emerged in Romania. This paper argues that the capacity for such conflict has existed since 1989 due to the nature of Romania’s exit from communism and its subsequent transition, which shaped and institutionalised Romanian political culture and its party system. However, actual conflict has emerged only because of recent, externally generated changes in the party system, and the relative decline in the electoral power of the Social Democratic Party. Two attempts by President Băsescu’s opponents to remove him from office, along with increasing constitutional manipulation by all actors, calls into question the consolidation of democracy in Romania . The desire of actors to gain power or remove their opponents by any means necessary, including the use of undemocratic methods, rather than by establishing a broad popular base to achieve these ends reflects the structural problems of the Romanian party system. Daniel Brett is an Associate Lecturer at the Open University in the UK . Introduction Since its accession to the European Union in January 2007, Romania has ex- perienced a period of sustained institutional conflict and instability between the president and the parliament, including two attempts to remove the president via the impeachment process, rows over their respective roles, and attempts to change the institutional architecture to ensure that one side has an advantage over the other 1. The conflict has largely been seen in terms of the politics of personality, the combative approach of President Traian Băsescu, having alien- 1 The author would like to thank Irina Marin, Anna Fruhstorfer, Amy Samuelson, Radu Cinpoeș, Sherrill Stroschein, Dennis Deletant, and Sergiu Gherghina for their help and encouragement with this article . 48 Daniel Brett ated his former allies and sent them into the arms of his opponents in the Social Democratic Party (Partidul Social Democrat, PSD) .2 This instability is considered to represent a new phase in Romanian politics and potentially points to a weaken- ing commitment to democracy and the acceptance of elections by some actors . This article argues that the potential for such conflicts – arising from an ambigu- ous constitution, a poorly defined separation of powers, and the likelihood of periods of cohabitation – has been present within Romanian politics since the revolution of December 1989. However, the driving force behind the attempts to remove Băsescu have been the declining electoral fortunes of the PSD and the need to shore up their support . While cohabitation has always been a pos- sibility in the post-communist period, changes to the party system as well as the electoral system and cycle have caused periods of cohabitation to become more likely . Because no party can gain an overall majority, any actor wishing to gain office has to form a coalition; however, the nature of the Romanian party system makes these coalitions highly volatile and unstable . We thus see a process of mutual reinforcement: the institutional framework exacerbates party instability, and in response political actors exploit the institutional architecture to further their short-term political goals as a response to this instability . This article explores the interplay between the party system and the institutional architecture to explain the high level of institutional conflict since 2007. Here I seek to answer the following questions: Why has the recent political conflict in Romania taken place? To what extent was it driven by vested interests or concern over declining electoral fortunes? Why did it break out when it did? How much was the timing of the conflict influenced by the process of accession to the EU and by key anti-corruption cases? What was the role of institutionalised but non-constitutional distribution of power, and the nature of the party system? Ultimately, the article aims to answer the broader question about the degree to which democracy is consolidated in Romania . Focusing on the period of Traian Băsescu’s presidency (2004-2014), this essay argues that the attempts to remove him from office were motivated by certain actors’ strategic objectives rather than by any single issue or event. Băsescu’s opponents opportunistically seized upon events to create exploitable political crises, and took advantage of the constitutional architecture to achieve the short- and medium-term objectives of the PSD and the National Liberal Party (Partidul Naţional Liberal, PNL) . Neither the events of 2007 nor of 2012 can be looked at in isolation, as in each case they were the result of long-term conflicts and changes in the structure of Romanian politics . Furthermore, it would be incorrect to look 2 For more on the PSD and its roots in the National Salvation Front (Frontul Salvării Naționale, FSN), see Sergiu Gherghina, Party Organization and Electoral Volatility in Central and Eastern Europe . Enhancing Voter Loyalty . London 2014 . Institutional Conflict and Party Politics since 2007 49 at the Băsescu-era conflicts without examining how his predecessors had shaped the presidency and how previous conflicts had been resolved. Thus the paper takes a long-term perspective in its view of how power has been institutionalised in Romania . Inevitably, profuse coverage will be given to the PSD as the largest political party in the post-1989 Romanian party system, the main inheritor of the pre-1989 Romanian Communist Party in terms of membership, ideology, and political infrastructure, and the party that dominated the Romanian political scene after the fall of communism . This paper explores the theoretical literature both on institutional conflict between president and parliament and on semi-presidentialism, but argues that these theories’ usefulness is limited, as they analyse primarily the formal divi- sions of power rather than the everyday workings of power within the system . Although the recent conflict has centred on the institutionalisation of power during the transition in contradiction to the formal distribution of power laid out in the constitution, its underlying causes reflect the shifting dynamics of Romanian society and its impact on party politics and elections. Attention must therefore be given to ideas about institutionalisation, the nature of the Romanian party system, and the question of democratic consolidation . This essay thus examines presidentialism in Romania in relation to the theoretical literature and explores the nature of the country’s party system . Taking a chronological survey of the conflicts between the president and Parliament during Băsescu’s presidency, it uses a process-tracing analysis that accounts for the emergence of the recent period of crisis . The events in Romania can be seen as part of a wider tide of democracy being rolled back by actors willing to resort to authoritarianism to gain and consolidate power in post-communist Europe in recent years . From the earlier unsuccessful attempts by Poland’s Law and Justice Party ( Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS) to the successful rolling back of democracy in Hungary by Viktor Orbán, to those who have flirted with authoritarian rhetoric at times, such as Robert Fico in Slovakia and Václav Klaus in the Czech Republic, to the post-Yugoslav states which are variously considered to have defective democracy or to be mere electoral democracies,3 political actors in post-Communist countries seem to be increasingly willing to embrace illiberal democracy . Once elected either to parliament or the presidency, actors then consolidate their power through constitutional revision and the erosion of judicial and media independence, thereby helping them to remain in power . The question is whether Romania is part of the emerging trend of “semi-soft authoritarianism” as Florian Bieber 3 See Florian Bieber / Irena Ristić, Constrained Democracy . The Consolidation of Democracy in Yugoslav Successor States, Southeastern Europe 36 (2012), no. 2, 373-397, 374. 50 Daniel Brett has described it,4 or whether the current situation represents a deeper erosion of democracy 5. While it is easy to view the current events as a rolling back of democracy and a rise of a new authoritarianism, an alternative explanation is that a section of the Romanian political, economic and social elite has never fully embraced democracy . This rejection of democracy can in part be traced back to the 1989 revolution and the failure to remove the deposed regime’s old guard, which subsequently reinforced itself through the party system, particularly within the PSD but also in sections of other parties . That the response to declining electoral performance is to attempt to gain power through the back door reflects the failure of democratic values to become entrenched within the Romanian party system . Democratic Consolidation It might be assumed that, some twenty-five years after the revolution that overthrew communism, and despite the often difficult journey to democracy, the rules of the democratic game would have been absorbed into Romanian

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