Assimilation, Segregation, Integration: State Control on Minority Policies in Modern Romania (1918-2007)

Internal factors created the major impetuses in the drafting and implementation of these policies. This analysis dismisses the belief that twentieth century external pressure has been fundamental in this case. In fact, it seems that the policy drafting of Romanian governments could largely be described as simply reactionary to the historical context. In essence, external factors influenced minority policies in Romania, but did not pressure and thus, did not have a decisive role. By ultimately defining external pressure as exertion of direct constraints or forceful impositions of various treaties and criteria, I finally argue that when it comes to its minorities, Romania was, in fact, able to determine its own fate

Nationalizing international relief : Romanian responses to American aid for children in the Great War era

First published online: 03 February 2020This article examines the interactions between American humanitarian agendas and initiatives and domestic efforts for child relief in Romania in the aftermath of the Great War. While focusing on the presence of the European Children's Fund (ECF) in post-war Romania, the article traces the domestic organization of relief, the Romanian elites' turn to American humanitarian assistance, and their active responses to this external aid on behalf of war-suffering children. The article argues that Romanian leadership of child welfare initiatives nationalized American humanitarian aid by integrating ECF's institutional efforts into domestically established philanthropic associations. This nationalization was sustained in three key ways : (1) American humanitarians' own engagement of local channels in aid diffusion; (2) the growing network of national associations of child welfare in post-war Romania; (3) the competing political agendas of both donors and recipients. The case of Romanian responses to American aid for children, and its eventual domestic institutionalization, challenges the seemingly unequal relationship between Western donors and East-Central European recipients during a period of post-war reconstruction and sociopolitical transformation. It sheds light on the transnational dimension of the humanitarian process, driven by the dual agency of foreign humanitarians and domestic interlocutors in the country of aid reception