The Communal Elections from 1930: Case studies – Slimnic and Presaca Communes, Sibiu County

Abstract

"The parliamentary elections play a special role in Romanian historiography, but we still need many studies on the local ones. The study aims to focus on how political life occurred in rural areas after the achievement of the administrative unification. Following that newly created context, we intend to capture how the electoral campaign is carried out at the local level. We analyse the changes in the Romanian electoral system, primarily focusing on the local elections in the rural area of Sibiu. From a methodological point of view, we studied the press of the period and archival documentary sources. We have focused on the communal electoral lists, which we analysed with the support of a database. Our approach, based on a quantitative statistic-sociological classification of the candidates, and of the voters from the communal elections in Sibiu County, reveals how involved the peasants were in political affairs. At the same time, this paper elucidates, through archival evidence, how authorities interfered in the mechanisms of the electoral process. Keywords: communal election, electoral system, candidates, political parties, propaganda, electoral results"