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A University of Sussex DPhil thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details 1 University of Sussex Centre Right failure in new democracies: the case of the Romanian Democratic Convention Edward Robert Maxfield Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Contemporary European Studies Submitted: January 2010 2 Table of contents Page List of tables 4 Thesis summary 6 Preface 7 Acknowledgements 8 Chapter 1: Introduction 9 1.1 The existing debate 10 1.2 Why post-Communist Europe 14 1.3 Understanding the centre-right 17 1.4 Romanian Exceptionalism 21 1.5 The Democratic Convention as a case study 25 1.6 Defining success and failure 28 1.7 Establishing a system of party classification 34 1.8 Thesis structure 39 1.9 Data sources used 46 Chapter 2: The Convention and Beyond 51 2.1 Balancing Act: the formation of the Democratic Convention 53 2.2 Learning from defeat: the 1992 and 1996 elections 55 2.3 From opposition to power and out again 70 2.4 From Orange Revolution to Basescu Epoch 74 2.5 In search of a Convention electorate 78 2.6 Conclusion 81 Chapter 3: Turning points and legacies 82 3.1 Nation 83 3.2 Democracy, monarchy and dictatorship 87 3.3 The fall of Ceausescu 89 3.4 The events of January 93 3.5 Deepening conflict, hardening responses 97 3.6 Opening old wounds 99 3.7 Democratic Romania’s founding elections 101 3.8 University Square 105 3.9 Romanian exceptionalism: the role of legacies 111 3.10 The radicalisation of politics: why it mattered 112 3 Chapter 4: Elites, legacies and organisational cohesion 117 4.1 The Seniors 118 4.2 The civic activists 125 4.3 The inter-generational shift 131 4.4 Conclusion 138 Chapter 5: The organisational development of the Democratic Convention 145 5.1 Governance structures 146 5.2 The party continues 149 5.3 The Convention at the grass roots 154 5.4 Crisis points: case studies in organisational failure 158 5.1 The other nation 159 5.2 The coalition of the disgruntled 164 5.3 End game 173 5.4 Conclusion 179 Chapter 6: In search of an ideology 185 6.1 The evolution of Romania’s right ideology 186 6.2 Anti-Communism 192 6.3 Economic reform 197 6.4 A united nation? 203 6.5 Democracy – new or old? 208 6.6 A Christian Democracy? 210 6.7 Towards a Convention ideology? 213 6.8 Return to the West 217 6.9 The moral crusade 220 6.10 Conclusion 224 Chapter 7: Conclusion 230 7.1 Summary of key findings 230 7.2 Testing the propositions 232 7.3 Broader implications 236 7.4 Taking the research forward 238 Bibliography 244 Appendix 1: Romania’s principal political formations, 1990-2000 253 Appendix 2: Post-Communist Romania’s constitutional framework 263 Appendix 3: Summary of interviewees 266 4 List of tables Table Page 1 The Democratic Convention vote in parliamentary elections 29 2 The main political parties in post-Communist Romania 38 3 Selected Romanian election results, 1990 – 2009 52 4 Party members of the Democratic Convention, 1992, 1996 and 2000 53 5 Local election results 1992 - seats won on County Councils 56 6 Presidential election result, 1992 58 7 Parliamentary election result, 1992 58 8 Votes cast in elections to County Councils, 2 June 1996 67 9 Opinion poll ratings, August 1996, choice for presidential elections 68 10 Opinion poll ratings, August 1996, choice, parliamentary elections 68 11 Votes cast in presidential election, 1996 70 12 Result of parliamentary elections, 1996 70 13 Chamber of Deputies election result, 2004 77 14 Parliamentary election results, 1990 102 15 Organisational structure of the Democratic Convention 149 16 Relative strength of various liberal parties, 1998 152 17 % of municipalities reporting a party organisation, 2001 157 18 Votes cast in presidential election, 2000 177 19 Result of parliamentary election, 2000 177 20 Distribution of Parliamentary seats by county 265 Map (page 85): Modern Romania showing current administrative counties and historic provinces 5 DECLARATION I hereby declare that this thesis has not been, and will not be, submitted in whole or in part to another university for the award of any other degree. ………………………………………………………………………….. Edward Robert Maxfield, January 2010 6 University of Sussex Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy SUMMARY Centre-right failure in new democracies: the case of the Romanian Democratic Convention This thesis asks why some centre-right formations have been more successful than others in the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe. It does so by examining a single centre-right formation – the Romanian Democratic Convention. It adds to an existing body of literature that covers the development of political parties in post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe and to the small number of studies focusing on centre-right parties in the region. Specifically it adds to the literature on party success and failure and to that on Romanian party and electoral politics. The Romanian Democratic Convention is chosen to add new insights: it is unusual because it is a study of organisational failure and because there is a geographical imbalance in the published studies of the politics of the region towards the Visegrad states. The thesis acknowledges existing academic debate about the competing influences of historical legacies, agency and structural factors in relation to post-Communist democratisation. It aims to identify what led the Convention to first establish itself but then fail to consolidate and eventually to collapse. It draws on a range of sources: semi- structured interviews; contemporaneous newspaper reports; published diaries and autobiographies and a number of secondary sources. The thesis is structured thematically, examining the role of legacies and critical events in shaping long term behaviour by politicians (chapters three and four); organisational factors and the influence of operational objectives (chapter five); the search for a broad and integrative ideology (chapter six). The conclusions in chapter seven suggest that successfully crafting a new, broad political formation requires a degree of pragmatism, directive leadership and political entrepreneurship that was missing from the Democratic Convention because it was shaped by Romania’s transition from Communism, by its organisational structure and by differences within its leadership elite so that competing operational objectives could not be reconciled when the formation entered government. 7 Preface The material for this thesis has been derived from a range of published sources and from face-to-face interviews conducted by the author. The published sources are set out in the bibliography and a list of interviews is included as Appendix 3. Section 1.8 describes the sources used and the approach taken with them. None of the work was derived from joint working with another person. 8 Acknowledgements I am extremely grateful to my principal supervisors, Dr Tim Bale and Professor Aleks Szczerbiak for their patience, advice and support throughout the process of creating this thesis. I am grateful, too, to Professor Paul Webb and Dr Dan Hough (who acted as supervisors for part of my studies when Dr Bale and Professor Szczerbiak were on leave) and the other members of staff and fellow post-graduate students in the Sussex European Institute who provided help and support over the course of four years of study. Gaining access to the world of Romanian politics is a challenge at the best of times but is almost impossible without a friendly introduction and I wish to place on record my particular thanks to Ionut Ciobanu, Alice Ratyis, Lavinia Stan (who also provided valuable advice on the thesis), Laurentiu Stefan and to Bill Newton Dunn MEP. I am grateful to all the interviewees who gave me their time and a good deal of fascinating and useful information. And special thanks are due to my family for their support and understanding, particularly to my wife Daniela. 9 Chapter 1: Introduction The key research question addressed in this thesis is why, in new democracies, some formations on the centre-right succeed and others fail. It does so using the example of a single organisation – the Romanian Democratic Convention.1 The thesis adds to an existing body of literature which examines the development of political parties in post- Communist Central and Eastern Europe and to the small number of studies that focus on centre-right parties in the region. Specifically it adds to the literature on party success and failure and to that on Romanian party and electoral politics. The Romanian Democratic Convention is chosen deliberately to add new insights to the existing literature as it is unusual in being a study of organisational failure and because there is a geographical imbalance in the published studies of the politics of Central and Eastern Europe towards the Visegrad states (Poland, Hungary and the Czech and Slovak Republics). This thesis identifies the ‘centre-right’ as a distinct party family and within that family it examines the factors influencing why, in the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe, some centre-right parties fail while others succeed. However, it aims to draw conclusions which have relevance to the study of political parties in a wider context than just one region and one party family.2 The thesis acknowledges existing academic debate about the competing influences of historical legacies, agency and structural factors in relation to post-Communist democratisation.