Public Administration in Post Communist Romania

Public Administration in Post Communist Romania

Republic of Romania

The Republic of Romania is located in Central Europe with a land area of 90,000 sq miles (230,340 sq km). Romania is bordered by the Black Sea to the east, Ukraine to the east and north, the Republic of Moldova to the east, Hungary and Serbia to the west and Bulgaria to the south. The country is crossed by the Carpathian Mountains and the River Danube. The population is approximately 85 percent Romanian, the rest being divided in numbers between Hungarians, Roma (Gypsies), Germans, Jews, Bulgarians, Serbs, Russians, Tartars and others.

Modern Romania was formed by the union of three main and distinct provinces: Moldova/Moldavia, which had innumerable conflicts with Tartars, Imperial Poland, Imperial Russia and the Ottoman Empire; Muntenia (aka Wallachia) which was under South Slavic and Ottoman influence for several centuries; and Transylvania, which was under long-lasting Hungarian dominance (Davis, 2008). In 1947, Romania became communist and was characterized by a more and more ethnocentric nationalism (Light, 2001). In December 1989, the entire world watched on television the bloody overthrow and execution of Romania's last communist dictator, events which marked the country's return to democracy and open multiculturalism (Giurescu, 1998).

Post Communist Romania Public Administration

These changes, whether political, legal, economic or socio-cultural, clearly reflected in the everyday life of people affected by this process produce and, undoubtedly, significant changes in the attitude and people's behavior. Thus, initially, they were forced to adapt to new values such as respect for human rights and minority rights, civic spirit, freedom of expression. Second, social structures are also changing with the new regimes. The underground economy and almost mafia groups to bring leading a class of new rich who influences, as we shall see immediately, on the reactions of the population

The Romanian political system of the period between the wars, based on the suffrage, is designated as a "democracy mimed". The social, economic and cultural were not in themselves promoting civic and political culture of the electorate. In political terms, Romania stood, like all other countries of south-eastern "Europe, in the phase constitution of the nation after the collapse of great empires where they had been incorporated. The need to consolidate their national identity was the common denominator of these countries. Thus, between the wars-Bolshevism and fascism-option of elites Romanian and part of the population is right-wing extremism, represented by "the legionnaire movement". The prohibition of "multiparty" by the electoral law of May 1939 was taken over by the "regime of Democracies' (1944-1948), step in which the communist regime imposed by specific manipulation techniques (Mihailescu, 2007).

Added to that in communist Romania, the "Ceausescu regime" (1965-1989) excelled by the "nationalism" promoted by the impediment and the annihilation of all forms of resistance exercise through control by the police policy on citizens and censor information with which they could come into contact. Thus, in the process of collapse of communist regimes in Europe, to change the team in power in Romania "was put ...