The Interplay between Domestic Politics and Europe: How Romanian Civil Society and Government Contested Europe before EU Accession by Cristina Elena Parau A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD in Government The London School of Economics and Political Science University of London 2006 UMI Number: U615645 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U615645 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Declaration of authorship I declare that the work presented in this dissertation is solely my own Signed M Cristina Elena Parau London, 6 November 2006 ii Abstract The key research questions of this dissertation are: ‘How do domestic actors construct Europe?’ and ‘How do they utilise it in seeking to empower themselves against other actors?’ The questions of construction and utilisation of Europe are some of the most topical questions in Europeanization. The first question addresses constructivist/sociological concerns. The second addresses the issue of winners and losers (differential empowerment). Both are key issues in the literature of Europeanization and yet have been little addressed in the context of post-communist EU accession countries. This dissertation aims to bridge this gap by focusing on the post-communist country of Romania, a soon to be EU member-State. The actors under investigation are civil society, which emerged in Romania for the first time ever after 1989 and the central government Executive. The study covers the period during which the EU acquis negotiations were negotiated under the Social Democratic government led by Prime Minister Adrian Nastase (2000-2004). The data was gathered through in-depth case study and process-tracing, the methods found best able to disentangle a complex causal nexus. The Europeanization literature is contradictory with regard to which domestic actors are constrained and which empowered: some scholars theorise that it empowers civil society (Diffusion); others that it empowers the Executive (Executive Empowerment); still others that it promotes co-operation between them (Network Governance). The empirical evidence so far has been inconclusive. This dissertation shows that only a small elite made of civil society entrepreneurs and government Executives constructed and utilised Europe in the pre-membership phase, to empower themselves relative to other actors, particularly opponents. The empirical data support two of the classical Europeanization theses in the literature: the Diffusion and the Executive Empowerment Theses. The Diffusion Thesis better explains civil society empowerment near the beginning and at the peak of acquis negotiations, although some evidence also favours Executive Empowerment. This latter thesis better explains the powerlessness of civil society at the close of negotiations, although some evidence for Diffusion was also found. No evidence was found supporting Network Governance. Instead evidence was found in favour of its critics, namely support for the claim that the EU (or Europe) empowers an elite in both civil society and the State. Acknowledgments Thank you to all of my interviewees, who carved out precious time to answer my detailed and sometimes intrusive questions. I wish to thank especially certain European Commission officials in the Delegation in Bucharest, in DG Enlargement and DG Environment, but who took the trouble to talk to me in more than one occasion; Members of the European Parliament; the former senior civil servants and Ministers in the Environment Ministry and the National Agency for Mineral Resources; a senior official in the negotiations team; the Vice Presidents and former Director of the Rosia Montana Gold Mining Corporation; Members of the Romanian Parliament. All of these people requested anonymity and therefore I cannot fully acknowledge them here, as I would like. I am particularly indebted to Radu Mititean from Cyclo-Tourism for his time and energy to provide me with detailed accounts of civil society involvement in the Rosia Montana and the Bechtel case, and for his feedback on my drafts; and to Alex Gota and Hans Bruno Frohlich in Sighisoara for providing me with much empirical material which they meticulously collected during the Dracula Park campaign, half-expecting that someone might write a dissertation one day about it! I am also grateful to Sherban Cantacuzino and Nicolae Ratiu from the Pro Patrimonio Trust, and to Jessica Douglas-Home from the Mihai Eminescu Trust. Thanks to all of you! Any factual mistakes or misinterpretations of the data are mine and have been caused inadvertently. Thanks to my supervisor, Dr. Gwen Sasse, for her useful and timely comments on my drafts, their structure and argument, and for her patience and understanding of my needs. Thanks to Vesselin Dimitrov for the meticulousness of his comments on my Motorway chapter and my dissertation’s overall structure, and for his other support. Thanks also to Eiko Thielemann for helping me at times when nobody else was able to do; and to Cecile Fabre for looking after my needs in moments of crisis. Thanks also to Klaus Goetz for his positive influence on the design of the thesis and for sharing some of his strategic vision on Europeanization with me early on, and to Martin Lodge for his comprehensive comments on my first efforts. Thanks also to all my funders, especially the LSE, the Ratiu Family Foundation and the Central Research Fund for contributing toward the funding of this research. On this note, thanks also to Steve, Peter and Jane in the WebCT office of the LSE. Thanks to my parents, still living in the village of Orlat, Transylvania. Thanks to my dear Rich, for his optimism, humour and light-hearted approach to life, which slowly, slowly contributed to softening up my Romanian defeatism. Thanks especially for the essential financial support he gave me, which allowed me to complete within the expected 4-year timeframe (well, 4 years and 1 month!). Thanks, too for the fun, interesting and adventurous holidays which I would have never been able to afford. Most of all, thanks to my dear friend and mentor, Jerry, for his super-human love, moral support and the painstaking patience with which he showed me the way out of my past conditioning. I would have never got here without you. I will always be indebted to you. This dissertation has traced not only the breakout of constraints by Romanian norm entrepreneurs trying to better the status quo. It also traced my own breakout of the constraints imposed on me by my upbringing under Ceausescu and the damaging Socialist conditioning imposed on every Romanian by that regime. Such conditioning proved the most difficult part of my past to shed, and it is likely that the process has not ended. iv Abbreviations CEE Central and Eastern Europe EIA Environmental Impact Assessment regulations EP European Parliament GRP Greater Romania Party MP Member of the Romanian Parliament MEP Member of the European Parliament NGO Non-governmental and non-for-profit organisation PSD Social Democratic Party RMGC Rosia Montana Gold Mining Company SAR Romanian Academic Society TEN T rans-European T ransportation Network UDMR The Democratic Union of Magyars in Romania UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization v Table of Contents Declaration of authorship .............................................................................................. ii A bstract............................................................................................................................iii Acknowledgments ..........................................................................................................iv Abbreviations .................................................................................................... v Chapter 1: Europeanization of domestic politics ..............................................3 1.1 The top-down approach ..........................................................................................4 1.2 The bottom-up approach ........................................................................................11 1.3 Europeanization as differential domestic empowerment ....................................17 1.4 The approach of this study .................................................................................... 33 Chapter 2: The status quo before the advent of Europe ............................... 50 2.1 The context ............................................................................................................ 50 2.2 Domestic inertia before Europe ..........................................................................75 Conclusions ...................................................................................................................92 Chapter 3: Empowerment of domestic civil society through Executive self-constraint in anticipation of EU accession ................................................94 3.1 The Executive