The Constitutional Court’s decision to invalidate the presidential round of elections, organized in December 2024, deeply divided Romanian society and led to the country being downgraded to the status of a hybrid regime characterized by high volatility, high polarization, and the rise of far-right parties. Nicușor-Daniel Dan, the pro-European Mayor of Bucharest, won the presidential elections of May 2025, while the cabinet of Ilie-Gavril Bolojan adopted policies to avoid economic collapse in the summer. However, the structural problems that led to the rise of far-right parties remain unaddressed, whereas the economic austerity measures and the continued hold on power of corrupt politicians could lead to more public dissatisfaction.

Through the example of Romania’s divergence from Soviet refugee policy in the case of the 1971 East Pakistani refugees, this article suggests that great powers face barriers to persuading even weaker states within their orbits of influence to acquiesce on issues of refugee politics. Responses to refugees touch sensitive state concerns about sovereignty. Aiding refugees can be an implicit condemnation of the state from which refugees flee. States that want to avoid the microscope of international opinion looking inside their own domestic human rights contexts will be hesitant to scrutinize another state, even in the context of a great power proxy conflict. As Romania sought to leverage favorable economic agreements, including with Pakistan and India, its position on the East Pakistani refugees reflected a hinge approach that attempted to balance political and economic relationships on both sides of the conflict. Small states use diplomatic entrepreneurship to work between larger powers as they pursue their own strategic goals. This article uses archival, diplomatic documents from Bucharest, some of which had never been accessed prior to this research. The article contributes a small state’s perspective based on diplomatic correspondence by its own officials and in its own language.

This paper investigates how the historical institutional legacies of the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires affect present-day attitudes toward women and minorities in Romania. We conduct a thorough historical analysis which shows that the institutional setup in the Ottoman part of Romania was more favourable toward women and minorities compared to that in the Habsburg part. Using the 2016 round of the EBRD-World Bank Life in Transition Survey, we find that these differences in historical institutions have long-run impacts on attitudes today. While we find mixed support for our hypotheses when it comes to gender attitudes, consistent with our expectations, men and women in ex-Habsburg locations report that women have less decision-making power in the household and are less tolerant towards people of different races, gay people, and Jews. The paper has important implications for advancing the debate on long-run imperial legacies by highlighting their persistent impact on women and minorities.

This article focuses on the use of the terms “deaf” and “deaf-mute” in the interwar Romanian press to explore the multiplicity of meanings attached to this condition in different types of public discourse. My aim is to place in the larger context of that period what meanings become most prominent in newspapers and other forms of popular press, why, and with what consequences. I offer an exploration of these discourses to better appreciate how the reading public, both able-bodied and disabled, saw disability represented. Rendering the very multiplicity of meanings attached to “deafness” visible in the relevant context is an important goal for this essay; it allows us to better understand the continued imprecision and stigmatizing framework in how Romanian society engaged with the deaf. I also explore what space existed for the deaf community to shape their own self-representations. Placing ableist discourses in dialogue with the voices of the deaf community is an important aim, as a method to de-essentialize the predominant ableist discourses and normalize accounting for disability as a significant element of modern history.

Does austerity influence incumbent support? Existing studies struggle with conceptualizing the evolution of austerity's impact over time, estimating a causal effect, and analysing the reactions of different voters. This study theorizes that the effect of austerity on electoral preferences is not immediate, but gradual, as voters find out about the measures' consequences via the media. It leverages a survey in the field at the time of the austerity announcement in Romania in 2010, additional survey data collected immediately after this event and comprehensive daily media coverage to show that austerity measures do not have an immediate impact on incumbent support, anticipated turnout and expressing a vote preference. Instead, there is a gradual effect that is associated with increased media attention to budgetary cuts. This natural experiment allows the estimation of the immediate causal effect of austerity on electoral intentions. Difference‐in‐differences (DID) models show that the announcement triggered a massive loss of support for the incumbent among those who had voted for the party in power only a few months before. Austerity also led to the demobilization of the governing party's supporters. There is no evidence that those most directly affected by the spending cuts are more likely to punish the incumbent party.

What is the effect of external stimuli in curbing corruption at the national level? This article analyses the intervening impact of EU post-conditionality and GRECO monitoring on countries’ anti-corruption record. It finds that “soft governance” has a positive impact and stimulates national responses against corruption. This positive influence increases when is additionally conditioned by strong internal stimuli targeting corruption.

Romanian Political Science was institutionalized mostly after the fall of the communist regime. While the number of Political Science departments has declined after the 2000s, the number of journals continued to increase. We investigate this unusual pattern, focusing on the journals’ relationship with their home universities and editorial teams, and on their reaction to the opening of Romanian Political Science to the outside world. In a context characterized by low competition, lack of resources, and the absence of functioning professional associations and national conferences, the journals failed to cut across departmental boundaries and evolve into a national platform for scientific publishing. Changes in national academic standards also brought them into direct competition with international journals. Although, through internationalization, standards of scientific publishing have improved, the landscape of Romanian Political Science journals remains semiperipheral, and the national community continues to be fragmented and tribal.

Russia’s unprovoked war on Ukraine has deteriorated the security environment in all neighbouring countries. Some of these countries are terrified of the risk of further Russian invasions while others express less fear of Russian hostile and unlawful actions. The aim of the paper is to outline the Kremlin’s narratives presented in Romanian and Bulgarian media and their impact on the security concerns of both countries. The paper argues that Russia uses media to spread narratives trying to reshape public opinion and to aggravate insecurity and distrust. The arguments are divided into the following parts: First, Romania’s and Bulgaria’s perceptions of Russia are analysed; second and third sections describe the Russian official rhetoric presented in the local media. The conclusion sums up the outcomes of both cases and the impact of the Kremlin’s narratives on Romania and Bulgaria.

Romania is characterized in general by poor institutional capacity and low popular trust in public institutions. In this context, it is an unlikely case for an effective stakeholder cooperation in times of crisis. However, this article shows that during the pandemic, the structural vulnerabilities in the public system led to many solutions being delivered through public and private stakeholder cooperation. The health care system engaged with community stakeholders to complement public efforts in managing the pandemic. A consistent institutional approach towards public engagement can compensate for systemic vulnerabilities and adds to societal resilience in times of crisis.

The article explores the development and institutionalisation of political science in Romania after 1989. It argues that, despite a rapid process of expansion and institutionalisation, the emergence of political science as an internationally competitive discipline has been fundamentally affected by two types of factors: communist legacies and systemic under-investment in teaching and research.

This article summarises a part of the findings of a larger explorative research that investigates the way in which various representations of national political science(s)/studies tradition and community are negotiated and transformed through interaction, with a focus on the impact of international mobility on political science canon-building. Through a case study on Romania and mostly discourse analysis tools, it examines in particular the competing discourses on (1) what is considered prestigious and scientifically desirable for a national political science community, and (2) what a national political science tradition should be about in relation with the rest of the scholarly world.

This paper examines issues of democratic accountability as they apply to faith-based organizations cooperating in international developmental efforts, with a specific focus on the freedom of expression rights of nonprofit organizations and the freedom of association rights of their clientele. Child welfare nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Romania are used as a case study for examining the issue. The paper begins with a discussion of NGO-government partnerships in service provision in international development, and examines the ethical concerns surrounding church-state separation as applied to nonprofits in the United States and in the context of foreign aid. The literature analysis is complimented by empirical evidence from the Romanian case, using data gathered in a qualitative study exploring the role of NGOs as social service providers and policy advocates. The paper concludes by discussing the particular role that bureaucratic discretion and power plays in protecting the freedom of association rights of clientele in Romania.