After thirty Years, how fares the system in Romania?

I'm having format problems with the blog and had to take down a previous post - here it is again

They say a picture is worth a thousand words – and documentaries can have an even more profound effect. I’ve just come across this documentary marking 30 years of democracy in Romania – made apparently 3 years ago. It’s a great introduction – with Romanians explaining the key events from 1988 with subtitles. My best friend (who is Romanian) tells me that it did, however, fail to deal with the continuing power of the security services over the political system.

I lived in Bulgaria and Romania between 2007 and 2017 – since then exclusively in Romania. 

For a decade I enjoyed crossing the Danube, with the last 100 km stretch of the drive on 

the highway through the Balkans and the sight of the Vitosha mountain which dominates Sofia 

always bringing a particular thrill. I wintered in Sofia and summered in my summer house in 

the Carpathian mountains – a picture of which heads this post

In the 1990s there was an interesting body of literature known as “transitology” which was 

effectively a retraining scheme for those in redundant Soviet and Eastern European studies 

University Departments as they tried to adjust to the new reality of “liberal democracy” and 

“free-market capitalism”.
The integration of many of these countries into the European Union seemed to leave the others 

in a state of suspended animation – still “transiting”. Except that the “integration” had not 

gone as planned – some countries (such as Hungary and Poland) had clearly reneged on their 

commitments and were challenging the “rule of law” canons; and others (such as Bulgaria and 

Romania) had been unable to satisfy the monitors that they had even got to the required 

judicial standards. Indeed Philippe Schmitter, one of the doyens of the field, went so far in 

2012 as to talk of “ambidextrous democratisation”
Bulgaria's world-renowned political scientist Ivan Krastev has (with US Stephen Holmes) 

written one of the surprisingly few books which attempt to assess the fortunes since 1989 

of the eastern countries – although its primary concern seems more that of “the crisis of 

modern liberalism”. It’s entitled "The Light that Failed – a Reckoning”. The book starts with 

a chapter on the psychological effects on central European countries of the “imitation game” 

they were forced to play and the demographic shock as millions left the country for a better 

future elsewhere; followed by one on how Putin’s Russia moved on in 2007 from imitation to 

“mirroring” Western hypocrisy; a chapter on Trump’s America; and a final one which takes in China.

The authors argue that part of the nationalist reaction in Hungary and Poland was the shock 

of realising that the European "normality" they had hoped for had been transformed into an 

agenda which included homosexuality, gay weddings and rights for Romas. But their emphasis 

on the “psychology of imitation” totally ignores the brazen way west European countries and 

companies exploited the opening which the collapse of communism gave them to extend their 

markets in both goods and people - with the consequences brilliantly dissected by Alexander 

Clapp in a 2017 New Left Review article “Romania Redivivus”.

Talk of “transitology” disappeared more than a decade ago and was absorbed into the 

Anti-Corruption (or governance integrity) field which grew into a "name and shame" industry 

- complete with league tables and Manuals. But the world seems to have perhaps grown weary 

even of its talk…
Alina Mungiu-Pippid is a Romanian social psychologist - appointed, in 2007, as Professor of 

Democracy studies of the prestigious Hertie School of Governance in Berlin - with a unique 

understanding and knowledge of the issue. This was her blunt assessment in 2009 of the situation

 in Romania

Unfortunately, corruption in Romania is not only related to parties and businesses, but cuts 
 across the most important institutions of society. Romanian media has gradually been captured, 
 after having been largely free and fair at the end of the 1990s. After 2006, 
 concentration in media ownership continued to increase in Romania. Three owners 
 enjoy more than two-thirds of the TV political news market. As long as Romania was a 
supplicant for entry to the EU, it had to jump through the hoops of “conditionality” to 
satisfy Brussels it was behaving itself. When Poland, Hungary et al were let in in 2004, 
the pressures started to relax – but The European Union’s Cooperation and Verification Mechanism 
(CVM) replaced that conditionality in 2007 and Bulgaria and Romania are still subject of an 
annual check of their legal and judicial health. Mungi-Pippidi therefore concluded her 2009 
assessment with a simple observation -

At the end of day, “democracy promotion” succeeds by helping the domestic drivers of change, 
 not by doing their job for them. Only Romanians themselves can do this.


Her latest book "Europe's Burden - promoting good governance across. Borders" (2020) is a must-read for anyone who wants to know why a quarter of a century of trying to build systems of government that people can trust has had so little effect in ex-communist countries. It starts with a sketch of Switzerland’s political development which reminds us that Napoleon was the catalyst for a 50-year period during which the Swiss embedded the basic structures we associate with that country. It is, however, Denmark to which most countries (according to Fukuyama) aspire to – although a study of its history suggests that, contrary to Dahrendorf’s optimism, that was more like a 100 year journey.
Her description of her own country, Romania, is quite damning –

• From 2010-17 there were 600 convictions for corruption EACH YEAR – including 18 

Ministers and one Prime Minister, Generals, half of the Presidents of County Councils

 and the Presidents of all the parliamentary parties

• The Prosecution system became thoroughly politicised through its connection with 

the powerful intelligence system – the infamous Securitate which was never disbanded

• The level of wiretapping used is 16 times the level of that used by the FBI

• Romania heads the league table of cases brought to the European Court of Human Rights 

dismissed for breaching the right to a fair trial – with a half of its cases so failing

• The annual CVM reports on the country are always positive and make no mention of 

any of this – on the basis that “questions about the intelligence services are outside our remit”!!

• TV stations run by those convicted of corruption have provided damning evidence 

of the prosecution service threatening judges and fixing evidence

One of Romania's most famous political analysts gave an extensive interview in 2018 which was important enough for me to summarise as follows –

• 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 “social” media dominating people’s minds

• “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

Dorel Sandor has clearly given up on the politicians and confessed to a hopelessness for the prospect of any sort of change in his country

“The stark reality is now that we do not have political parties any more. The Romanian political 

environment is in fact an ensemble of ordinary gangs that try to survive the process and jail and 

eventually save their wealth in the country or abroad. That's all! Romania has no rulers. 

It has mobsters in buildings with signs that say "The Ministry of Fish that Blooms".
One of the reasons why the EU is not too concerned about us is that it is that they reckon that you can only reform a driver with a car that works. We are a two-wheeled wagon and two horses, a chaotic space, broken into pieces. What's to reform? So it's a big difference.”

But he 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. But effective social change rarely comes from such an elitist approach; any such 

effort would have to demonstrate exactly how it would propose to deal with the astonishing 

level of distrust of others in the country.
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).
The revelation of the collusion between the infamous Securitate and the Anti-Corruption 

Agency (DNA) has understandably fanned the flames of paranoia for which the Romanians 

can be forgiven - given the scale of the surveillance of the population the Securitate enjoyed

 under Ceausescu. Little wonder half of the population are Covid sceptics

Conclusion
In the 1980s it was Solidarity in Poland; Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia; and reformers in Hungary who were challenging the power structure – I remember taking the opportunity of being in the country to visit the Party’s “White House” in Budapest in 1987 to talk with a spokesman for the latter.
Bulgaria and Romania, on the other hand, were monolithic and frozen societies – with 

the only sign of discord being the odd Romanian poet – and on the Danube where protestors 

against a chemical plant included a few establishment figures such as Svetlin Rusev.
But the street has become much more active in the past decade – even if it is the more 

educated and “entitled” who are prominent there. And it is “the Crowd” that the power 

elite has always feared – particularly in the last century eg the infamous “Revolt of the Masses”

 (1930). And who can ever forget the moment when the massed crowd turned against Ceausescu 

in December 1989 – within minutes, he had been hoisted from his balcony by helicopter and, 

within days, summarily tried and shot.
It’s noticeable that the figures whose words I’ve quoted – Dahrendorf, Canetti, Krastev, 

Mungiu-Pippidi and Sandor – all represent the intelligentsia. I was brought up to take their 

words seriously - but they are not activists!
The sadly-missed David Graeber was one of the very few such people prepared to get his 

hands dirty… to work across the barriers that normally divide people and to try to forge 

new coalitions…The Crowd needs people like Graeber who understand how to bridge such 

barriers…………..particularly between the “downtrodden masses” and the “entitled”
Where is Bulgaria’s Graeber? There are, actually, several eg Vanya Grigorova – the 

economic adviser of the labour union “Podkrepa” (Support) and leading left-wing public 

figure – who has been travelling the country to present her latest book on labour rights 

and how to claim them. A year ago she gave this interview to Jacobin, which positioned 

her on the side of social change in Bulgaria and the region.

Both Covid19 and the greater concern about global warming – as embodied, for example in 

the recent Extinction Rebellion – suggest that the “normality” being sought by the 

entitled is a will o’ the wisp.
The Sofia protestors would therefore be well advised to widen the scope of their agenda. 

After all, smaller countries generally seem better able to “do” change viz Switzerland, 

Iceland, Denmark, Singapore, Estonia, Slovenia – particularly when they have women at 

their helm who have a combination of trustworthiness and strategic vision!!
Especially for them I updated my list of essential reading for activists – adding my own 

“opportunistic” theory of change which emphasises the element of individual responsibility 

as well as the dynamic of the crowd viz

“Most of the time our systems seem impervious to change – but always (and suddenly) an opportunity 

arises. Those who care about the future of their society, prepare for these “windows of opportunity 

– through proper analysis, mobilisation and integrity. It involves–

• speaking out about the need for change

• learning the lessons of previous change efforts

• creating and running networks of change

• which mobilise social forces

• understanding crowd dynamics

• reaching out to forge coalitions

• building credibility

I grant you that the time for preparation is over in Sofia; and appreciate that 

some of this may come across as rather elitist but the process it describes is still 

a crucial one – prepare, analyse, network, speak out, build coalitions, mobilise, 

no hidden games…..It’s a tough combination……

How Fares Democracy in Europe?

Today’s post remains on eastern europe but widens to embrace such countries as Bulgaria, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine and to cover such subjects as media freedom, rule of law, anticorruption work and judicial integrity. It's been sparked by two downloads

• the EU's annual rule of law report for 2023 which, I was intrigued to see, uses the language 

of ”regime of conditionality” which is a new one for me

• "The struggle for Good Governance in Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova" ed M Emerson et al (2018) 

which I haven’t had a chance to read yet

2004 had seen 10 countries admitted to the EU - just 2 countries were judged not sufficiently 

ready – Bulgaria and Romania – on grounds of their levels of corruption and judicial incapacity. 

Both were admitted on 1st January 2007 but subjected to an annual inspection through a 

new procedure called the Cooperation and Verification mechanism (CVM). 
Coincidentally, these are the 2 countries in which I have lived since 2007 – indeed I had no 

sooner returned to Romania from an 8 year stint in Central Asia than I took up a position as 

Team Leader in Sofia in a project for training regional and local officials to ensure the country’s 

compliance with EU legislation. Exclusion from Schengen and the Euro gave Bulgaria and Romania 

reason for feeling the smack of second-class citizenship – particularly because after more 

than a decade they have not managed to satisfy the taskmasters in Brussels on judicial reform. 

The requirement for annual reports on judicial aspects and corruption continued until 2019 

when it was replaced by the Rule of Law Mechanism (RLM) which necessitates an annual report 

to be submitted to the Commission by each and every member country.
Bulgaria and Romania had by then become the least of the EU’s concerns - Hungary and Poland 

had quickly instituted significant departures from the rule of law – packing courts with political 

appointees, severely limiting media freedom and making political use of European Funds. 

And some older member countries such as France and Spain were considered to have questionable 

aspects to their judicial and constitutional systems

Much of this had passed me by – but a critical report commissioned by an Irish MEP Clare Daley 

on the 2021 assessment by the European Commission which started a dialogue with member 

countries about their submissions. Her report – called Binding the Guardians – was written 

by a well-known political economist Albena Azmanova who basically analyses how well the European 

Commission is fulfilling the task of holding member countries to account for their observation 

of the Rule of Law. It starts by suggesting four tests for the Commission’s work -

We suggest that, in order to effectively comply with the rule of law while conducting its annual rule

 of law surveys, the Commission needs to be guided by (at least) four norms:

• clarity of communication,

• thoroughness in addressing rule of law violations (that is, in the full range and depth of detail),

• equal treatment of the subjects of power, and

• impartiality in the use of power (in the sense of not having a narrow partisan-political agenda).

Obscurity is a fertile ground for arbitrariness, omissions tacitly condone what is omitted, 

favoritism disempowers some, and partisan-political considerations harm the common good.

Azmanova then applies these tests to the Commission commentary and finds the 

following problems

• A dangerous conflation of “rule of Law” with aspects of procedural democracy

• Vague, overly-diplomatic language

• Restricted focus - The Commission report delimits its range to four areas: the 

justice system, the anti-corruption framework, media freedom, and ‘other institutional 

checks and balances’.

• Failing to include the operations of the private sector

A skim of the 2023 Report has unearthed a lot of other reports from worthy bodies 

such as the Council of Europe, Transparency International, Judicial bodies and European 

Parliamentary Committees.. Just think of the tens of thousands of people involved  in this work!!

Other Relevant Material
https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2021/11/bulgaria-flies-under-radar.html 
https://edoc.coe.int/en/annual-activity-report/11589-state-of-democracy-human-right-and-the-rule-of-law-2023-annual-report-of-the-secretary-general-of-the-council-of-europe.html 
https://rm.coe.int/report-of-the-high-level-reflection-group-of-the-council-of-europe-/1680a85cf1 2022
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/en/libe-democracy-rule-of-law-and-fundament/product-details/20190103CDT02662 
https://commission.europa.eu/system/files/2023-06/scoreboard-factsheet--v2.pdf 
https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2022 
https://verfassungsblog.de/impunity/

UPDATE

A report from October 2024 questions the veracity of reporting

https://dq4n3btxmr8c9.cloudfront.net/files/_adyxi/Gap_Analysis_EC_Rule_of_Law_
Report_By_Liberties.pdf

Being Clear about Human Nature

The penultimate post got too caught up in my past and didn’t really convey the connection I was trying to make between the book I wrote in 1977 and the one I’ve been trying to draft for the past decade. I knew there was an important message in the quote from JR Saul’s “Voltaire’s Bastards – the dictatorship of reason in the West” which was included when I first set up the blog in 2009 and contained the wonderful sentence

"We've spent half a century arguing over management methods. If there are solutions to 
our confusions over government, they lie in democratic not management processes"
 
 It’s just that I didn’t understand in 2009 what that message was. It’s become clear 

to me that it was a reminder that I had, between 1968-90, been very clear whose side I was 

on in the perennial ideological battle which divides society. Although I’ve called myself a 

mugwump, I was generally clear that I stood with the activist against the elite. But, in 

becoming a technocratic consultant to state bodies, I implicitly changed sides
I’ve been struggling with that dilemma for the past decade – and my blogposts show the process 

of one scale after another dropped from my eyes. Perhaps none so much as What is to be Done? 

Dispatches to the Next Generation which is a mea culpa to my children about the damage my 

generation has brought to theirs.

So I’m now working on a new version of “The Search for Democracy” which tries to do justice 

to the need to -
- extend democracy to the workplace
- comment more succinctly on the reality of democracy – particularly (but not only) in the new member states of the EU, including those in which I have been living for the past 15 years

In 1975 Samuel Huntington and others published for the Tripartite Commission - a report entitled 

“The Crisis of Democracy” which was a diatribe against the hoi poloi and our aspirations. 

It created the conditions for the neoliberal onslaught which has been inflicted on us for 

the past four decades and to which there has been no real answer. What passes for the 

left seems to have accepted that individualism is here to stay – with Richard Wolff’s  

“Democracy at Work – a cure for Capitalism”, Thomas Pikety’s “Time for Socialism” and 

Jeremy Gilbert’s “Common Ground – democracy and collectivity in an age of individualism ” (2014) 

and “21st century Socialism” being rare exceptions . What seems very clear is that progressives 

need to give much more thought to human nature if we have any chance of convincing the 

electorate of our programmes. Rutger Bregman’s Humankind – a hopeful history would be a 

good start.  
Democracy has very much been in retreat since I wrote that first book in 1977 with the 

Thatcherite attack not only on trade unions but all possible challenges to corporate power. 

And the populism we’ve seen in the last couple of decades has given new energy to that attack. 

The saving grace has been the new discourse about direct democracy and citizen juries 

– at least in western Europe. But central Europe and the Balkans remain disfigured – with oligarchic elites consolidating their power.

How the hell does this substack work?

It seems that everyone these days is making use of substack – but I’m so untechnical that I can’t find my way around the damn thing. And the advice offered on the site is not at all useful. I suspect that it doesn't recognise the blogspot address?

Twitter is used by a lot of people to alert to new material on substack and this would be helpful for raising the blog's profile. It does, after all, offer such amazing riches - more than a dozen Ebooks; a huge blogroll; and almost 2000 posts from 14 years work  

I managed some time ago to put some posts up on substack – but that was three years ago and I’ve not managed to repeat the trick!

My address is https://ronaldyoung.substack.com/ .

Can any of my readers help??