Vote et réforme territoriale en Europe Centrale et Orientale: administration et politique électorale en Roumanie postcommuniste

Abstract

This article retraces the evolution of the Romanian electoral management system during the postcommunist decades, by considering it from an institutionalist and strategic perspective. Electoral management is the setting where various institutional actors are in constant interaction with the view of producing the postcommunist democratic legitimacy. Their very interaction is a test of the validity of the postcommunist polity. If the general design of electoral management remained relatively stable, the institutional actors called to participate in the endeavour changed their political status, and their institutional attributes and their policy capacities. The sequence of postcommunist elections unravel the process of institutional disjunction and political re-conjunction between the central government, local administration, and the judicial, which set the patterns for the institutionalisation of Romanian democratic politics.