The following article examines the emergence of parties in post-communist Romania concluding that the theoretical basis of cleavages (the Lipset-Rokkanian model) is almost impossible to apply in this country. Accordingly, the historical evolution of the post-communist society and the strategic moves of political actors during democratization were often perceived as an „expected moments lacking any theoretical model”. Contrary to this assumption, I argue that even an incipient cleavage suggests at least two questions about the significance of an ideological framework and a stable party system.post-communist cleavages, post-communist party systems, transition, the Lipset-Rokkanian model, electoral behavior.

OLIMID, ANCA PARMENA

English

Research Papers in Economics

1 
 
POLITICAL CLEAVAGES IN ROMANIA. A 
THEORETICAL OVERVIEW OF THE POST-
COMMUNIST PARTIES AND PARTY SYSTEMS 
 
Anca Parmena Olimid 
 
 
Abstract 
 
   
The  following  article  examines  the  emergence  of  parties  in  post-
communist Romania concluding that the theoretical basis of cleavages (the 
Lipset-Rokkanian  model)  is  almost  impossible  to  apply  in  this  country. 
Accordingly, the historical evolution of the post-communist society and the 
strategic  moves  of  political  actors  during  democratization  were  often 
perceived as an „expected moments lacking any theoretical model”. Contrary 
to this assumption, I argue that even an incipient cleavage suggests at least 
two  questions  about  the  significance  of  an  ideological  framework  and  a 
stable party system. I also propose a linkage between Lipset-Rokkan’s model 
and Kitschelt’s, Deegan-Krause’s and Crowther’s theories. The article begins 
with an overview of general trends of development of political parties  in 
Romania.a general development of Romanian party system tendencies. Its 
aim is to present the three main political cleavages using as a starting point 
for discussion Lewis’s reflection regarding post-communist parties. 
 
Key  words:  post-communist  cleavages,  post-communist  party 
systems, transition, the Lipset-Rokkanian model, electoral behavior. 
 
Main  trends  of  formation  of  party  system.  The  democratic 
transition from „a hundred-party system” to „a partial consolidation of a 
partial system” 
 
The central argument in the present article is to find the key issues of 
the  post  communist  transition  by  focusing  on  cleavages.  The  scope  and 
extension  of  the  present  paper  makes  it  sensible  to  limit  the  selection  of 
literature and political theories. To summarize my approach, there have been 
six important tendencies in the formation of the party in Romania since 1989: 
1. The post-communist party fragmentation; 
2. High electoral instability and an ideological vacuum; 2 
 
3. The return of the „pre-communist” parties in new forms and new 
ways; 
4. The  growing  abstention  at  the  elections  beginning  with  2000’s 
elections and the moral confusion; 
5. The declining confidence in Parliament and institutions; 
6. The rise of the nationalist rhetoric. 
As indicated earlier, my intention is not to analyze all these issues, 
although  in  many  recent  studies  the  approaches  concerning  the  post-
communist  party  system  fragmentation,  the  high  electoral  volatility,  the 
ideological  vacuum,  the  growing  absence  at  the  elections  or  the  decline 
confidence in central institutions played the most important role. My decision 
is  not to  approach  an  empirical  analyze  of  the  results  of  post-communist 
party  fragmentation  from  the  difficulty  of  determining  the  theoretical 
framework of the new democracy and the number of parties.  
The following paragraph about the party system in Eastern Europe 
offers the basic reasons why it is important to study the connection between 
the emergence of party systems and the post communist cleavages: „Early 
overviews  of  post-communist  Eastern  Europe  suggested that, of  the  three 
main cleavages that contributed to the emergence of party system in Western 
Europe,  only  that  which  produces  autonomous  or  secessionist  parties 
supported  by  national  minorities  was  likely  to  appear  with  equivalent 
strength in the East. The socio-economic cleavage retained its importance but 
was likely to impinge in quite different ways on post-communist politics, 
whereas  the  resonance  of  religious  cleavages  appeared  to  be  surprisingly 
muted. The kind of party then developing also seemed to militate against the 
likelihood of such a freezing taking place”
1. 
 
Old Theories vs. New Parties:  
 
 The main question of the research is to establish whether and what 
forms of cleavages emerged in the post-communist political arena. Regarding 
different  categories  and  definitions,  for  Kitschelt  et  al.,  Lipset’s  and 
Rokkan’s  theory  (1967)  develops  a  two-level  model  of  political  cleavage 
formation:    firstly,  „the  historical  account  of  the  societal  identities  and 
alignments” and secondly, „the strategic moves of political actors at the time 
of democratization and the endogenous choice of institutions”
2. 
                                                             
1 Paul G. Lewis, Political Parties in Post-communist Eastern Europe, London, Routledge, 
2000, pp. 143-144. 
2    Herbert  Kitschelt,  Zdenka  Mansfeldova,  Radoslaw  Markowski  et  al.,  Post-communist 
Party  Systems:  Competition,  Representation,  and  Inter-party  Cooperation,  Cambridge, 
Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 13. 3 
 
Over the last decade there has been an increase in studies concerning 
political literature, among academics, surrounding the notion of „cleavages” 
in East Central Europe, and more specifically, the impact of cleavages on the 
post-communist development of party system. Deegan-Krause shows that the 
post-communist European society offered the image of a unique laboratory 
for  political  development
3.  Ovidiu  Vaida  notes  that  there  are  two  major 
difficulties concerning the analysis of the post-communist cleavages: firstly, 
the  time  dimension,  and,  secondly,  the  various  definitions  and 
understandings of the concepts
4.  
Other studies found a connection between pre-communist historical 
legacies  and  institutional  post-communist  design.  Márkus  argues  that  in  
Eastern Europe countries (most notably in Poland) following the collapse of 
the communist regime, in a geographical space where the structure of state 
and nation has been unstable, „the struggle between center and periphery has 
inevitably  become  the  dominant  cleavage  linked  to  conflicting  cultural, 
linguistic,  religious,  ethnic,  and  economic  claims,  and  exacerbated  by 
economic collapse”
5. If we follow Kitschelt et al., cleavages are divides that 
exhibit longevity and entrenchment
6.  
Surprisingly,  post-communist  cleavages  in  Romania  have  been  the 
spotlight of relatively little attention. Indeed, as Crowther writes „if skeptics 
are correct, Romania should stand out as a strong case for the inapplicability 
of social cleavage analyses. Because of the peculiarities of its pre-communist 
and communist past, Romania is often taken as an archetypical example of 
the post-communist countries’ dearth of civil society”
7. Or, in other words, it 
is  almost  impossible  to test the  theory  of  Stein  Rokkan  or  S.  M.  Lipset.  
Without necessary sharing Crowther’s point of view on the inapplicability of 
social cleavage analyses, the present article will attempt to point some of the 
recent understandings: 
                                                             
3 Kevin Deegan-Krause, New Dimensions of Political Cleavage in Russell J. Dalton, Hans-
Dieter Klingemann, The Oxford Handbook of Political Behavior, Oxford, Oxford University 
Press, 2007, pp. 538-544. 
4 Ovidiu Vaida, Clivaje politice în România postcomunistă in „Sfera Politicii”, no. 123-
124/2006, pp. 26-27. 
5  György  G.  Márkus,  Hungarian  Cleavages  and  Parties  prior  to  1989  in  Kay  Lawson, 
Andrea  Römmele,  Georgi  Karasimeonov,  Cleavages,  Parties,  and  Voters:  Studies  from 
Bulgaria,  the  Czech  Republic,  Hungary,  Poland,  and  Romania,  Westport,  Connecticut-
London, Praeger Publishers, 1999, p. 61. 
6 Herbert Kitschelt, Zdenka Mansfeldova, Radoslaw Markowski et al., op.cit, p. 262. 
7 William Crowther, Romania in Sten Berglund, Joakim Ekman, Frank A. Aarebrot, The 
Handbook  of  Political  Change  in  Eastern  Europe.  Second  Edition,  Cheltenham,  UK–
Northampton, MA, USA, Edward Elgar, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2004, p. 363. 4 
 
a.  To outline the three cleavages patterns identified in post-communist 
Romania; 
b. To argue that common “cleavages” concepts suffer from conflation 
with  substantive  application  of  the  Rokkanian  model  to  other 
Eastern countries; 
 
From  a  general  hypothesis  to  a  special  case  (Romanian  post-
communist party systems) 
 
Most  recent  works  on  the  concept  „post-communist  cleavages” 
commence with a few comments on Lipset’s and Rokkan’s cleavage theory 
applied to the case of Central Europe. Georgi Karasimeonov indicates that 
Lipset’s  and  Rokkan’s  cleavage  theory  was  formulated  on  the  special 
conditions and terms of a particular European western model. Karasimeonov 
contributions to the debate can be interpreted in the tradition of the analysis 
of  the  electoral  behavior  and  party  formation  in  transnational  societies 
revealing at least four types of cleavages: residual (historical), transitional, 
actual  and  potential
8.  De  Waele,  seeks  to  clarify  and  categorize  the 
relationship  between  the  original  theory  of  cleavages  as  it  is  applied  to 
Western model and the post-communist experience undertaking his project 
with the view of three cleavages
9:   
1. First there are questions of the socioeconomic level. The first set of 
objective considerations  influencing the emergence of the post-communist 
party  system  concerns  the  economic  cleavage.  De  Waelle  argues  that the 
socio-economic  cleavage  („maximalist”  vs.  „minimalist”)  comes  from  the 
communist  regime’s  successful  orientation  towards  destruction  of  the 
capitalist economy
10. 
Other scholars are quicker to deal with notions of „maximalist” and 
„minimalist” tradition. Sonia Alonso requires broadening the policy program 
to emphasize socio-economic  issues  not directly related to the  maximalist 
tradition
11. The problem in all this, as Alonso has put it, is that emphasizing 
                                                             
8 Georgi Karasimeonov, Bulgaria, loc. cit., p. 418. 
9 Jean-Michel de Waele (ed.), Partide politice şi democraţie în Europa centrală şi de est, 
Bucureşti, Humanitas, 2003, pp. 157-167. 
10 Ottorino Cappelli, The Short Parliament 1989-91: Political Elites, Societal Cleavages and 
the Weakness of Party Politics in Stephen White, Rita Di leo, Ottorino Cappelli, The Soviet 
Transition: From Gorbatchev to Yeltsin, London, Routledge, 1993, p. 113. 
11 Sonia Alonso, Enduring Ethnicity: The Political Survival of Incubent Ethnic Parties in 
Western Democracies, p. 99. 5 
 
socioeconomic  issues  encourages  voters  to  be  more  attentive  to  the 
performance of the party in office
12.  
De Waele himself flags up this problem with his own definition: the 
term „maximalist” is used to describe the adherents of a fast transition. In 
theory, the claim that the „minimalist” perspective is likely to have a socio-
economic  basis  has  been  highly  dependent  upon  overall  record  of  mixed 
progress with uneven and slow reform implementation
13. The fact that the 
first  stage  of  post-communist  level  occurred  within  the  economic  arena 
would  have  extremely  important  consequences  for  party  systems. 
Consequently, the first type of party (the „minimalist”), emerged after 1989, 
was composed of the Party of Social Democracy of Romania (PSDR) and 
Greater Romania Party (PRM).  After their first election victory in 1990, this 
„new” political elite envisaged a „weak transition program as the populist 
approach favored by Iliescu”
14.  
On the contrary, the „maximalists” represented the turning point for 
the post-communism. In 1996, the new government of Victor Ciorbea was 
dominated by the Democratic Convention of Romania (CDR) and composed, 
primarily, by the National Peasant Christian Democratic Party (PNŢCD, the 
core of the Democratic Convention of Romania), the National Liberal Party, 
the Democratic Party (PD, a splinter of the National Salvation Front) and the 
Democratic  Alliance  of  Hungarians  from  Romania  (UDMR).  „The 
maximalists”  launched  new  reform  programs,  a  macroeconomic  plan 
stabilization  and  structural  reforms,  an  ambitious  “shock  therapy”  for  the 
Romanian economy,  including the  liberalization of prices and the  foreign 
exchange market as well as the acceleration of the privatization
15. 
2. The second cleavage to be analyzed, the so-called „authoritarian-
democratic divide”, refers to the inability of a significant part of the society 
to renounce in discursive terms the communist legacy (although, in Romania 
this did not necessarily translate into a rejection of all kind of authoritarian 
                                                             
12 Ibidem. 
13  De  Waele,  op.  cit.,  pp.  163-164.  See  also,  Cristian  Popa,  Transition  Experience  and 
Challenges in Romania in Gertrude Tumpel-Gugerell, Lindsay Wolfe, Peter Mooslechner, 
Completing Transition: The Main Challenges, Springer, Berlin/Heidelberg, 2002, p. 276. 
14  David  Turnock,  Aspects  of  Independent  Romania's  Economic  History  with  Particular 
Reference to Transition for EU Accession, Aldershot, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2007, pp. 
94-95. 
15 See also ***, Central and South Eastern Europe 2004, London, Routledge, 2003, p. 493, 
Steven D. Roper, Romania: The Unfinished Revolution, London, Routledge, 2000, pp. 79-
83, Milada Anna Vachudová, Europe Undivided: Democracy, Leverage, and Integration 
After  Communism,  Oxford,  Oxford  University  Press,  2005,  pp.  205-206,  Dimitris 
Papadimitriou,  David  Phinnemore,  Romania  and  the  European  Union:  From 
Marginalisation to Membership?, London, Routledge, 2008, pp. 99-101. 6 
 
attitudes)
16.  In  many  recent  studies  on  authoritarian  attitudes  in  post-
communist  Romania,  researchers  have  pointed  the  electoral  success  of 
Vadim Tudor in 2000, „as a distinctly unpleasant surprise for many in the 
West”
17.  The  case  in  point  was  the  increase  of  supporters  of  a  latent 
antipluralist attitude towards the European values arena.  
The  other  concept  „the  democratic”  signifies  more  than  a  purely 
academic  debate,  because  it  has  important  implications  for  the  future 
development  of  ethnic  national  consciousness
18.  From  an  empirical 
standpoint, there have been two distinct processes all over Eastern Europe: 
one concerns the formation of a different group consciousness defined by 
several authors as the group. Of course, each type of group: authoritarian and 
democratic exists, hardly in a pure form. The terms are often misused as a 
description of a social  movement, group or association that may claim to 
embrace the democratic values.  
Some scholars attempt to provide a clear and explicit definition of the 
two groups. Most seem to distinguish between the two groups mainly on the 
basis of the attitude toward the European integration
19. Verdery argues that 
anti-European rhetoric has been associated with the old elite in the equation 
„nationalism equals Securitate plus Communist”
20. As a result, contradictory 
processes emerged in terms of “moral dichotomies between black and white, 
good and evil”.  
On the macro-level the death of Party rule produced a crisis of self-
determination. Parrott connects the exceptionally complex theoretical issues 
and  the  nature  of  political  changes  inside  the  post  communist  countries 
through the assumption that the study of the extension of democratic values 
in  each  post-communist  country  and  the  strength  of  countervailing 
                                                             
16 John S. Dryzek, Leslie Holmes, Post-communist Democratization: Political Discourses 
Across Thirteen Countries, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 250-251. 
17  George  Schöpflin,  Nations,  Identity,  Power:  The  New  Politics of Europe,  London, C. 
Husrt & Co. Publishers, 2000, p. 189. 
18 Maria N. Todorova, Etnicity, nationalism, and the communist legacy in Eastern Europe in 
James  R.  Millar,  Sharon  L.  Wolchik,  The  Social  Legacy  of  Communism,  Cambridge, 
Cambridge University Press, 1994, p. 96. 
19 See also Reinhardt Rummel, The European Union’s Politico-Diplomatic Contribution to 
the  Prevention  of  Ethno-National  Conflict  in  Abram  Chayes,  Antonia  Handler  Chayes, 
Preventing Conflict in the Post-communist World: Mobilizing International and Regional 
Organizations, Washington, D.C., Brookings Institution Press, 1996, p. 216. 
20 Katherine Verdery, What was Socialism, and what Comes Next?, Princeton, Princeton 
University Press, 1996, p. 90. 7 
 
authoritarian tendencies are essential in order to initiate the discussion about 
the variations of the post-communist dissimilarities
21.  
Finally, a few authors distinguish the starting point of the rights of the 
national minorities. There are also academics that use a multiple criteria. For 
example, Pilon analyzes the issue of authoritarian and democratic attitudes in 
four  chapters:  cultural  aspects,  political  aspects  of  national  integrity, 
metaphysical definitions of ethnicity and aggression or struggle for power 
disguised as nationalism
22. 
3. The  third  cleavage  line  is  between  the  communists  and  the  anti-
communists. The „old” attitude, a so-called „pre-communist” behavior was 
usually  reactivated  after  the  emergence  of  the  new  parties.  Given  the 
discontinuity of the transition, Ágh concludes that the confrontation between 
the two groups led to the formation of a multi-party and the „first generation 
parties”
23. He also witnessed the fact that the new parties were formed „as 
second generation parties”, and the third category, the so-called small „third 
generation  appeared  much  later
24.  In  a  similar  way,  Gill  argues  that  it  is 
difficult to establish the real significance of the cleavage between the two 
types. He also indicates there have been at least three referential ways to see 
post-communism:  „post-communism as a system”, „post-communism as  a 
condition”, „post-communism as a situation”
25. 
  After this analysis of the main three cleavages that the Romanian 
post-communist system has experienced, it is almost impossible at this point 
to raise the discussion of a consolidated democracy. This article began by 
outlining a number of key issues of the post-communist transition, generated 
from literature, concerning post-communist political cleavages. Instead, we 
focused  on  the  differentiated  process  of  Romanian  political  dealignment 
reflecting the theoretical cleavages.  With politics in Romania still changing, 
the  outlines  of  the  three  families  of  cleavages  advanced  in  this  article 
constitute a significant obstacle towards consolidation
26. 
                                                             
21 Karen Dawisha, Bruce Parrott, Democratic changes and authoritarian reactions in Russia, 
Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 1-5. 
22 Juliana Geran Pilon, The Bloody Flag: Post-communist Nationalism in Eastern Europe: 
Spotlight on Romania, New Brunswick, Transaction Publishers, 1992, p. 6.  
23  Attila  Ágh,  The  End  of  The  Beginning:  The  Partial  Consolidation  of  East  Central 
European Parties and Party Systems in Paul Pennings, Jan-Erik Lane, Comparing Party 
System Change, London, Routledge, 1998,  p. 211. 
24 Ibidem, p. 212. 
25  Graeme  J.  Gill,  Democracy  and  Post-communism:  Political  Change  in  the  Post-
communist World, London, Routledge, 2002, pp. 201-202. 
26 See also Jon Elster, Claus Offe, Ulrich K. Preuss et al., Institutional Design in Post-
communist Societies: Rebuilding the Ship at Sea, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 
1998, pp. 267-268. 

Political cleavages in Romania. A theoretical overview of the post-communist parties and party systems

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