Les partis politiques roumains: l'histoire d'un développement inattendu

Abstract

The Post-communist party systems are often presented as extremely fragmentised and the political parties which emerged after the break down of communism are characterised by their blurred link with the civil society, by weak membership structures and a strong tendency to wards the colonization of the state. The mainstream literature considers, in the case of the new democracies, the existence of a strong tendency towards the emergence of a centralisation of power at the level of party leadership which describes both the party creation and party development phases. Nevertheless, at the level of the empirical studies little attention has been paid to the analysis of party organizations and their internal articulation of power. In this context, the study aims at providing a general image of the party organisational features during the party institutionalisation process in a particular case: the post-communist Romania. The paper explores the main characteristics of the party on the ground, party in central office and party in public office components of the main Romanian political parties and the relationship established between them. The conclusions of the study emphasize the sui generis features of the Romanian political party development process which favours an unexpected reinforcement of the local party organisations and the emergence of linkage mechanisms between different party layers.