European
countries have experienced massive changes since the end of the war – and yet,
I keep on wondering, .”to what extent do national characteristics actually
change”. The
interview with Dorel Sandor does not seem to have attracted much notice in
the country but, for me, has crystallised the various impressions about Romania
I’ve conveyed in the blog in recent years
Let me
summarise his key points -
- the so-called “revolution”
of 1989 was nothing of the sort – just a takeover by the old-guard masquerading
in the costumes of the market economy and democracy
- which, after 30 years, has
incubated a new anomie – with the “mass” and “social” media dominating people’s
minds
- So-called “European integration”
has destroyed Romanian agriculture and industry - and drained the country of 4
million talented young Romanians
- After 30 years, there is
not a single part of the system – economic, political, religious, cultural,
voluntary – which offers any real prospect of positive change
- Even Brussels seems to have
written the country off
- The country is locked into
a paralysis of suspicion, distrust, consumerism, apathy, anomie
- No one is calling for a new
start – let alone demonstrating the potential for realistic alliances
My last 2
posts have argued that -
- in the early 90s everyone (particularly outside Romania) expected
too much
– although remember that Ralf Dahrendorf - unique in his experience as
both a German and British politician and one of the first academics in the 50s to
explore the nature of the social changes which took place in Germany in the
first half of the 20th century (Society and Democracy in
Germany) - had warned in 1990 that real cultural change
would take “two generations”. For middle class academics, this meant 50 years!
- Absolutely no preparations existed in 1989 for the possibility
that communism might collapse and for the choices this would present for
political, economic and legal systems …..Everyone had assumed that the change
would be in the opposite direction. The only writings which could be drawn were
those about the south American, Portugese
and Spanish transition ….
- The EC stopped treating Romania as in need of “developmental
assistance” in 1998/99. The PHARE programme was
phased out - the focus shifted to
training for EU membership and the implementation of the Acquis (using the TAIEX
programme). Talk of differences
in political culture was seen as politically incorrect – eastern countries
simply had to learn the language and habits of the European social market and,
hey-presto, things would magically change……
- 30 years on, the names of Bulgarian and Romanian institutions
and processes may have changed but not the fundamental reality – with a
corruption which is nothing less than systemic.
- The billions of Euros
allocated to Romania since 2007 under the EC’s Structural Funds programmes have compounded the systemic and moral
corruption which affects all sectors.
- The Cooperation and
Verification Mechanism is, after 11 years, deeply resented – despite the
increasingly clear evidence of the
collusion between the Prosecution and the Secret services…..
The
Italian and German examples
In 1958 Ed
Banfield coined the phrase “amoral familism” to characterize southern
Italy and its resistance to change. In 1993 Robert Putnam extended this
critique with his Making Democracy Work –
civic traditions in modern Italy – pointing out that, centuries later, cultural
patterns in the south still profoundly affected modern institutions …. The Italian system since then has
demonstrated little capacity for change. What appeared to be a new opening in
the 1990s disappointed….the old systems simply resurfaced
Germany’s traditional power structure, on the other hand,
was able to change after 1945… The Weimar Republic failed to break it – but
simply gave a Nazi regime the opportunity to let loose a blood-letting from
which the world has not yet recovered. Three
forces were required to transform German society in 1945-50 - the trauma of
defeat on all fronts; the imposition by the victors of completely new
institutional, legal, social and economic systems; and the Realpolitik
calculations of the Cold War
Romania, however, has been able to brush off the
institutional challenge which had been posed by membership of both the EC and
NATO (see).
The occasional scandal can and does cause the downfall of a government - but nothing
now seems able to disturb its systemic inertia.
Conclusion
It has given
me no pleasure to draft this post. But I feel that too many people for too long
have not spoken out….In 2 months Romania will take over the Presidency
of the EU which will see the full panoply(a)y of mutual
sycophancy at full throttle……making it even more difficult for dissenting
voices to be heard…
Dorel Sandor was least convincing when he tried to offer a way
forward
I have a list of what to do – starting with the need for an exploration of what sort of Romania we should be aiming for in the next few decades. Such a process would be moderated by professionals using proper diagnostics, scenario thinking and milestones.
It would be managed by a group with a vision emancipated from the toxic present.
I have a lot
of sympathy for such approaches – embodied, for example, in the Future
Search method. It’s how I started my own political journey in 1971 – with an
annual conference in a shipbuilding town facing the decline of the trade on
which it had depended for so long….But any venture would have to demonstrate
that it can deal with the astonishing level of distrust of others shown by the
fact that, in 2014, only 7% of the
Romanian population could say that “most people can be trusted” (compared
with about 20% in Italy and 40% in Germany)
For my money
Social Trust is one of the
fundamental elements of the soil in which democracy grows. From the start of
the transition Romania was caught up in a global neo-liberalism tsunami which has
been corroding that soil….
A Short Reading List on Romanian political culture
Articles
RGY posts
Are
Nations really masters of their fates? (April 2017)
Is it people who change systems - or systems which change people? (July 2017)
Is it people who change systems - or systems which change people? (July 2017)
Academic articles on political culture - and Romania
A Guide to Change and change management for Rule of Law practitioners (2015)
A Guide to Change and change management for Rule of Law practitioners (2015)
Hijacked modernisation - Romanian political
culture in the 20th century; Alina Mungiu-Pippidi (2007)
Poor Policy-making
and how to improve it in states with weak institutions; Sorin Ionitsa (CEU
2006)
“Fatalistic political cultures” Alina Mungiu-Pippidi 2006
(chapter in Democracy and Political Culture in East
Europe
in which she argued (a) that it was too easy for people (not least the
political elite themselves!) to use the writings of Samuel Huntington to write
off countries such as Romania; and (b) that we really did need to look more
closely at what various surveys (such as The
World Values Survey) showed before jumping to conclusions
books
In
Europe’s Shadow – two cold wars and a thirty-year journey through Romania and
beyond; Robert Kaplan (2016) - a fascinating book which has an element of
the “Common Book” tradition about it with its breadth of reading
A
Concise History of Romania; Keith Hitchins (2014) Very readable..
Mapping Romania - notes on an
unfinished journey;
Ronald Young (2014) See
section 7.2 at page 31 and all the annexes for the political culture references
Romania and the European Union
– how the weak vanquished the strong; Tom Gallagher (2009) great narrative
Romania –
borderland of Europe; Lucian Boia (2001) Very readable and well translated
