Activisme civique et protestation en Roumanie: soutien ou contestation du régime démocratique?

Abstract

Political participation is generally taken for an important asset for democracy. In Western settings, participation moved from classical forms as voting and supporting political parties to new, unconventional forms, as protest. During this important change from conventional types of political action, new social categories previously excluded, as women, have been brought in. What about Romanian political participation? Is it as unequal as the former Western conventional participation was many decades ago? And protest, is it the same as in Western settings? If the Western participation is no less than the same kind of participation but by new means of expression, as acknowledged by some scholars, is it the same in Romania? Could one take protest in Romania as undermining the legitimacy of democracy? The conclusion is that Romanian protesters resemble by and large to their Western counterparts and that they are not a serious threat for the still incipient Romanian democracy.