Issues in Local Communist Politics: the Romanian Case

Abstract

IT IS, perhaps, truism of politics that capital cities do not reflect accurately nature of political life in any country. Whether or not we can make that assumption for communist political systems is difficult to say, since local politics in such countries has received relatively little attention. Until recently, our knowledge about central committees, politburos, and councils of ministers far exceeded what we knew about citizen's contact and interaction with communist government.1 Yet, it is at local level where meaning of communism for citizenry is most directly and constantly apparent. This paper has, first, descriptive purpose as it reports findings about in local communist politics based upon extensive interviews with political participants in Romania. There has been extensive academic debate, particularly in context of American politics, as to what constitutes an issue, how relate to decisions about public policy, and many related points. Bachrach and Baratz, for instance, have criticized Robert Dahl for being not cognizant of individuals and organizations in whose hands rests power to limit the scope of actual decision-making to 'safe' issues2 that is, who controls agenda for decisions by public officials. This control or influence, by which topics for policy making are limited to unimportant and even trivial issues, leads to phenomenon of nondecisions whereby political actor decides to take no action, to avoid involvement, etc.3 When Frederick Frey sought to clarify lines of argument, he defined an issue as a matter calling for or involving decision4 and non-issues as the effective use of power by some actors in political system to deter other actors in that system from even attempting to exert influence.5 In such definitions, Frey pinpoints something central to study of political in communist states. Regardless of how one tries to measure issues around which policy-making processes focus in communist systems, data are strongly affected by phenomenon of non-issues. Asking political actors in such states about local issues is not likely, then, to generate complete portrayal of local controversies. Instead, one will receive picture of within parameters allowed by party. Most (if not all) political actors recognize unacceptability of certain proposals or topics from party's perspectives. Identifying matters which political actors think call for, or involve, decisions is complicated because content of media is of limited utility due to obvious indoctrination functions in communist states. An alternative, namely per-