Roman Politics Research Articles

半大統領制におけるルーマニア国家機関の対立

In the study of semi-presidential systems, it has been claimed that there are often conflicts between the president and the prime minister. This hypothesis can also be applied to cases in Romania. However, in Romania, the outcomes of these conflicts have been varied. In the first two conflicts between the president and prime minister in 1991 and 1998, the prime ministers were forced to resign, while the two most recent cases in 2007 and 2012 led to the suspension of the president by parliament. Can all of these cases be explained by the same hypothesis about semi-presidential systems? If so, we may suppose that conflicts are merely changed in a formal sense from being between the president and prime minister to being between the president and parliament, and that the basic characteristics and structure of the conflicts between them remain essentially unchanged. However, if these cases cannot be explained by the institutional hypothesis alone, we may suppose that some structural change must have happened in recent Romanian politics. We argue that the latter is the case. What then is the structural change that has recently occurred in Romania’s politics? In order to answer this question, firstly, we review the variety of hypotheses on the relations between president and prime minister in semi-presidential systems, and examine their validity in relation to the cases in Romania. We confirm that these hypotheses could adequately explain the relations between president and prime minister in Romania until around the period of the country’s accession to the EU. However, we also observe that, after that period, the essential characteristics of relations between these state organs changed so profoundly that these hypotheses could no longer explain them. Secondly, as a first step to understanding how these relations had changed, we analyse the political process of the suspension of the president by the parliament and government in the summer of 2012, and we notice that the struggle over judicial independence developed in parallel with the conflicts between the president, prime minister, and parliament. Thirdly, we examine the political struggle over judicial independence, and discover that there were two forces struggling over it. One was the status-quo forces attempting to maintain the current structure of a politically-dependent judiciary which easily facilitated corruption, and the other was the forces attempting to restore the independence of the judiciary and reduce corruption. The balance of power between these two forces was overwhelmingly favourable for the former until around the time of Romania’s accession to the EU. Since then, however, the latter has started to gain strength, as Romania has sought to fulfil the conditions for the EU accession, such as judicial independence and the elimination of corruption. As policies for judicial independence and anti-corruption have been producing concrete results, the struggle between the competing forces also has been intensifying, including the struggle between the state organs of president, prime minister, and parliament. Therefore, the conflicts between these three state organs cannot be explained by an institutional analysis of the semi-presidential system alone. They should be also analysed from the point of view of structural conflicts over essential issues in Romanian politics as a whole.

RECONSTRUCTING WHAT ROMAN REPUBLIC?

Abstract The article, in discussing Karl Hoelkeskamp's Reconstructing the Roman Republic, argues that the relationship(s) between the role of theory and an analysis of the last generation of the Roman Republic is much more complex that H. allows, and that concentration on the elite, deriving ultimately from the approach of Christian Meier, is misguided; it also deals with other recent approaches to the functioning of Roman politics in the period in question, notably those of Millar and Mouritsen; and offers reflections on the role(s) of language and identity in modern historical writing.

The Greek slogan of freedom and early Roman politics in Greece

The Greek slogan of freedom and early Roman politics in Greece

Nietzsche and the Romans

ABSTRACT This article examines Nietzsche's interest in and appeal to the Romans in both his published and unpublished work. In most cases he shows little interest in specific figures from ancient Roman politics or military history, literature, or philosophy. Julius Caesar is the conspicuous exception among politicians and generals; he figures among Nietzsche's very short list of truly great human beings. In the literary and philosophical sphere, the major exceptions are Horace and Petronius, but the latter only at the end of his working life. He admires both writers, Petronius especially, and this attitude is connected in some ways with his general estimation of the Romans. His attitude to the Romans in general becomes increasingly positive, and they serve in his writing increasingly as a foil for Christianity, over the course of his career, culminating in The Antichrist.

Staatsschuld, Verfassung und Revolutionsprävention: Friedrich Buchholz und der Beginn der Sozialwissenschaft

From within the environment of the Prussian reforms at the beginning of the 19th century, Friedrich Buchholz developed the social-scientific concept of Zukunftspolitik, which deals with the constitutional safeguard of public credit and the prevention of destructive revolution through targeted political reforms. In contrast to political romanticism (Adam Muller and others), Buchholz orients himself not toward the English system of representation, but toward the French model, to combine revolutionary popular sovereignty with representative government. Using the example of English public debt in the 18th century, he develops the political dialectic of materialist necessity and arbitrary contingency. Whereas sovereignty without representation in the maintenance of public credit inevitably leads to Jacobin Terror, parliamentarian representation without sovereignty leads to, in the English model, a general state of war. Europe’s future, according to Buchholz, thus depends on the reform of English Parliamentarianism.

The Critique of Hamletism in The Wild Irish Girl and Corinne

This essay explores the intertextual use of Hamlet in Sydney Owenson's Wild Irish Girl and Germaine de Staël's Corinne to shed new light on these writers' interventions in European Romantic politics. Both Owenson and Staël associated their male protagonists with the figure of Hamlet at a time when Shakespeare's Danish prince was being reinvented as an embodiment of Romantic weltschmerz and as a symbol for the powerless, isolated intellectual. Instead of contributing to the Romantic cult of a melancholy Hamlet, Owenson and Staël confront their protagonists with the influence of empowered Ophelias who illustrate a less solipsistic version of melancholy. Thus both authors criticize the inertia that gripped their male counterparts directly after the French Revolution. Staël's novel ultimately follows a tragic pattern, while Owenson's gestures toward the possibility of a comic ending. But beyond the different levels of optimism implied by those endings, Owenson and Staël deliver a similar message to the Romantic intellectual, a message that most Romantics ignored in their persistent cultivation of Hamletic attitudes.

From Greece to Babylon: The political thought of Andrew Michael Ramsay (1686–1743)

This paper explores the political thought of Andrew Michael Ramsay with particular reference to his highly acclaimed book called A New Cyropaedia, or the Travels of Cyrus (1727). Dedicated to Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender, to whom he was tutor, this work has been hitherto viewed as a Jacobite imitation of the Telemachus, Son of Ulysses (1699) of his eminent teacher archbishop Fénelon of Cambrai. By tracing the dual legacy of the first Persian Emperor Cyrus in Western thought, I demonstrate that Ramsay was as much indebted to Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet's Discourse on Universal History (1681) as he was to Fénelon's political romance. Ramsay took advantage of Xenophon's silence about the eponymous hero's adolescent education in his Cyropaedia, or the Education of Cyrus (c. 380 B.C.), but he was equally inspired by the Book of Daniel, where the same Persian prince was eulogised as the liberator of the Jewish people from their captivity in Babylon. The main thrust of Ramsay's adaptation was not only to revamp the Humanist-cum-Christian theory and practice of virtuous kingship for a restored Jacobite regime, but on a more fundamental level, to tie in secular history with biblical history. In this respect, Ramsay's New Cyropaedia, or the Travels of Cyrus, was not just another Fénelonian political novel but more essentially a work of universal history. In addition to his Jacobite model of aristocratic constitutional monarchy, it was this Bossuetian motive for universal history, which was first propounded by the German reformer Philipp Melanchthon in his Chronicon Carionis (1532), that most decisively separated Ramsay from Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, author of another famous advice book for princes of the period, The Idea of a Patriot King (written in late 1738 for the education of Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales, but officially published in 1749).

El prefecto del pretorio: una figura dominante de la política romana en el siglo III

El artículo analiza el desarrollo de la fi gura del Prefecto del Pretorio, que desde sus comienzos fue una de las más importantes dentro de las instituciones de estado romanas, pero que con la llegada de los cambios políticos después de la muerte de Marco Aurelio, aumentó su protagonismo hasta el punto de gozar de más poder en ocasiones que el mismo emperador. La coyuntura inestable y las fuertes prerrogativas de las que gozaba convirtieron a ese alto funcionario, mitad militar y mitad burócrata, en un personaje clave dentro de las intrigas políticas romanas, que desde su posición inigualable fue capaz a menudo de eliminar al emperador mediante una conspiración para ocupar su lugar. La situación se hizo tan grave llegado el siglo iv que Constantino decidió retirarle el mando de tropas y las funciones militares, convirtiendo al Prefecto del Pretorio en un juez supremo y organizador del suministro.

<i>The Cambridge Companion to Laurence Sterne</i> (review)

Reviewed by: The Cambridge Companion to Laurence Sterne Elizabeth Kraft The Cambridge Companion to Laurence Sterne, ed. Thomas Keymer, Cambridge: Cambridge, 2009. Pp. xvi + 203. $28.99. This collection of essays on Sterne, part of the distinguished Cambridge Companion series, is notable for three things. First, as Mr. Keymer points out, it is (to date) the only volume of essays to treat the entire scope of Sterne's career as a writer. Second, in addition to the current state of scholarship on Sterne, the essays suggest directions for future work. Finally, the wit and verve of the essays make the collection enjoyable as well as instructive. The volume begins, appropriately, with a review of Sterne's life and works. Ian Campbell Ross emphasizes the "ludic self-fashioning" that characterized Sterne's literary career. Much of the author's success, Mr. Ross argues, lay in his ability to appeal to the tastes of a volatile market. By "playing one role off against the other" (Yorick, Tristram, and Lorry Slim), Sterne was able to appeal to both "moralists" and "novel readers" alike. Mr. Ross occasionally presents speculative observations as fact. How do we know, for example, that "Sterne showed scant enthusiasm for the parish round"? There may be no record of his enthusiasm, but does that necessarily imply that he did not engage in his duties with some avidity? On other speculative matters, Mr. Ross is more judicious; for [End Page 47] example, he notes the "contemporary scandal" that blamed Elizabeth Sterne's mental breakdown on her husband's lack of fidelity "may not be without foundation." Mr. Ross makes it clear that the relationship between fact and fiction poses particular challenges for biographers of Sterne: "By the end of his life, Sterne had become an expert at fictionalizing his own biography, and at using autobiographical experiences as the basis of his fiction." The next five essays treat Sterne's works in chronological order—Marcus Walsh covering the pre-Tristram satires of A Political Romance and A Rabelaisian Fragment, Judith Hawley and Robert Folkenflik discussing Tristram Shandy as the work relates to the satiric and the novelistic traditions respectively, Tim Parnell writing on The Sermons of Mr. Yorick, and Thomas Keymer addressing A Sentimental Journey. In A Political Romance's dismissal of what Mr. Walsh amusingly refers to as "a storm in an ecclesiastical teapot," Sterne first evidences the philosophical stance he seems to have been born to elaborate: a resistance to "the systematizing of knowledge" that coexists with—indeed is founded on—a firm belief in incontrovertible Truth, that is, the truth of Anglican Christianity. For Sterne, as for other skeptical religious thinkers of his time (and other times, for that matter), there is nothing at all paradoxical in holding, as Mr. Walsh puts it, "the value of true interpretation while leaving it still beyond reach." Indeed, Ms. Hawley notes in Shandy a similar stance toward Enlightenment knowledge. Intellectual systems are objects of satire for Sterne, but they are also unavoidable habits of mind, and sometimes they touch on certain truths, if not the Truth. Sterne ridicules intellectual gravity, for example, without denying that gravity as a physical force exists. By demonstrating Sterne's engagement with the thinkers of his own time as well as those of the past, Ms. Hawley's reading offers a refinement on D. W. Jefferson's highly regarded essay on Sterne and the tradition of Medieval and Renaissance scholasticism ("Tristram Shandy and the Tradition of Learned Wit," EIC, 1, 1951). Ms. Hawley's insistence that Shandy engages with the new as well as the old is reinforced by Robert Folkenflik's essay on the work's relationship to other narratives of its time. We have long debated the topic of whether or not Shandy is a novel. Mr. Folkenflik demonstrates clearly that Sterne's work participates in the genre of "comic romance" and, therefore, presumably, is as much a "novel" as Tom Jones or The Adventures of Roderick Random. Shandy existed in an environment of "anxious and defensive experimentalism," Mr. Folkenflik asserts, not only with regard to the comic romance, but in relation to other genres (like autobiography) as well. Mr. Folkenflik would encourage more depth...

The Cambridge Companion to German Romanticism (review)

Reviewed by: The Cambridge Companion to German Romanticism Dennis F. Mahoney Nicholas Saul, ed., The Cambridge Companion to German Romanticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. xx + 335 pp., 2 illustrations. German romanticism, with its penchant for crossing boundaries and its ever-shifting groupings of artists and intellectuals, is a phenomenon that calls for interdisciplinary, collaborative scholarship. Nicholas Saul, who has done pathbreaking work as scholar and editor on what he has called the “Aesthetic Humanism” of the period from 1790 to 1830, has here assembled a distinguished team of scholars from British, Irish, German, and American universities to take a fresh look at German romanticism. After Azade Seyhan’s introduction to the historical, philosophical, and literary origins and essential features of early romanticism, Ricarda Schmidt traces differing notions of human fulfillment in love and art from early to late romanticism, while also taking note of the triadic concept of historical development that distinguishes the romantic writers from their predecessors and successors. Then follow concise, informative chapters on the narrative, lyric, and dramatic productions of German romanticism, written respectively by Anthony Phelan, Charlie Louth, and Roger Paulin, which are complemented by John McCarthy’s ensuing reflections on the forms and objectives of romantic criticism as a “a fourth generic category” (114). Both in these chapters and throughout the volume as a whole, it is encouraging to encounter more than just the “usual suspects” of literary histories of German romanticism. McCarthy discusses, for example not only the Schlegels and Hardenberg/Novalis, but also Görres and Adam Müller, while Louth includes treatments of Hölderlin and Günderode in his interpretations of the romantic lyric. Kleist’s works are treated in the chapters on romantic prose and drama; likewise, Zacharias Werner’s works appear not only in this latter chapter, but also in Saul’s essay “Love, Death and Liebestod in German Romanticism.” Here Saul makes a convincing case for re-examining in its capacity “as a central focus of Romantic thought” (166) a theme that opponents of romanticism long regarded as evidence of its life-denying nature, but which in recent decades has been less in the forefront of critical attention. First, though, in his capacity as editor he provides three further wide-ranging and insightful contributions from Jane Brown (“Romanticism and Classicism”), Gesa Dane (“Women Writers and Romanticism”), and Carl Niekerk (“The Romantics and Other Cultures”). The next five chapters form a subunit in their discussions of romantic philosophy and religion (Andrew Bowie), romantic politics and society (Ethel Matala de Mazza), romantic science and psychology (Jürgen Barkhoff), German romantic painters (Richard Littlejohns), and romanticism and music (Bowie’s second contribution to the volume). Littlejohns deserves particular praise for providing an overview of romantic artists and their achievements in the areas of landscape, political, and religious art that also gives a vivid sense of individual paintings and drawings—so much so that it seems as though there were more illustrations provided than the two black-and-white reproductions of Caspar David Friedrich’s Das Kreuz im Gebirge (1808) and Runge’s Morgen (1803). The volume concludes with Margarete Kohlenbach’s survey “Transformations of German Romanticism 1830–2000,” which ranges from Heine and Nietzsche through French symbolism and neo-romanticism (with a special focus on Hugo von Hofmannsthal) to the Frankfurt School and contemporary writers like Botho Strauß and Peter Handke. [End Page 327] With the exception of Saul (less) and Kohlenbach (slightly more), each author has written essays between fifteen and twenty printed pages in length. All the contributions are scholarly and accessibly written, with observations of value both to specialists and to individuals seeking a good preliminary guide to the topic at hand. Some chapters have more extensive notes than others, but all conclude with select bibliographies of relevant scholarship for those readers interested in further investigations. In addition, Saul provides a concise but well chosen guide to further reading (291–304) for the volume as a whole, subdivided into sections on editions, works in English translation, and secondary literature relating to general topics, authors, genres, and themes. Similarly user-friendly is the extensive index (305–35), which includes entries not only for authors and their works, but...

Staatsschuld, Verfassung und Revolutionsprävention: Friedrich Buchholz und der Beginn der Sozialwissenschaft/National Debt, Constitution and the Prevention of Revolution: Friedrich Buchholz and the Beginning of Social Science

From within the environment of the Prussian reforms at the beginning of the 19th century, Friedrich Buchholz developed the social-scientific concept of Zukunftspolitik, which deals with the constitutional safeguard of public credit and the prevention of destructive revolution through targeted political reforms. In contrast to political romanticism (Adam Müller and others), Buchholz orients himself not toward the English system of representation, but toward the French model, to combine revolutionary popular sovereignty with representative government. Using the example of English public debt in the 18th century, he develops the political dialectic of materialist necessity and arbitrary contingency. Whereas sovereignty without representation in the maintenance of public credit inevitably leads to Jacobin Terror, parliamentarian representation without sovereignty leads to, in the English model, a general state of war. Europe’s future, according to Buchholz, thus depends on the reform of English Parliamentarianism.

U.S. Political Romanticism and the Psychological Impacts of Obama's Presidency

U.S. Political Romanticism and the Psychological Impacts of Obama's Presidency

Words of Praise in Roman Politics

Words of Praise in Roman Politics

The Battle of Vercellae and the Alteration of the Heavy Javelin (Pilum) by Gaius Marius – 101 BC

Gaius Marius (157-86 BC) is widely known as one of the most innovative commanders of the Roman military. In 101 BC Marius implemented an alteration to the design of the heavy legionary javelin (pilum). However, unlike Marius' previous reforms, this modification of an elemental aspect of the Roman legions was not adopted as a standard military practice. An examination of the evidence relating to the reform and of the events surrounding the time of its implementation demonstrates that the benefit of the modification was different from that currently accepted by scholars. Furthermore, the evidence indicates that the reason why this reform failed to be adopted by the legions was not that it provided no clear tactical advantage on the battlefield, but was due to the course of Roman political and military history immediately after it had first been implemented.

The Cambridge Companion to German Romanticism (review)

Reviewed by: The Cambridge Companion to German Romanticism Arnd Bohm (bio) Nicholas Saul, ed. The Cambridge Companion to German Romanticism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. xx+336pp. US$80 (hb). ISBN 978-0-521-84891-6. Different eras feature different publishing fashions. Right now, the simultaneous collapse of monograph publishing and the shift of scholarly journals to theme issues has been matched by the rise of series such as the one represented by the Cambridge University Press Companion to volumes. Focused on famous writers or on selected topics, the books have a respected editor and a collection of individual contributions, which together provide an overview, primarily for those seeking quick yet reliable information. Somewhere between reference works and special journal numbers, the volumes have the advantage of being timely and authoritative. Individual experts can find time for an article when they are often too busy to undertake a book-length study of a subject they know quite well. These advantages are displayed by this Companion. Nicholas Saul is an established scholar and an experienced editor, so one immediately has confidence in the project. All sixteen contributors have published on various aspects of German literature and bring an impressive background of learning to bear, more than one person could easily claim and certainly not express so succinctly. Libraries and readers will from the outset be virtually guaranteed good value for their money and time. The range of the contributions complicates matters for a reviewer. Thus, of the sixteen articles, less than half will be of much direct interest to Eighteenth-Century Fiction readers, which does not mean that they are therefore slight. However, only Anthony Phelan’s “Prose Fiction of the German Romantics” (41–65) is clearly worth recommending here. Phelan has faced a difficult challenge with masterful aplomb. As everyone who has attempted to bring order into the view of German Romantic prose knows, it can be quite a tangle. Phelan’s headings — Goethe, the early Romantics, later Romantics, and shorter forms (Novelle, Erzählung, Märchen) — may seem idiosyncratic, but they accurately reflect the state of things. Phelan concentrates on canonical texts such as Friedrich Schlegel’s Lucinde, Ludwig Tieck’s Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen, Dorothea Schlegel’s Florentin, and Friedrich von Hardenberg’s Die Lehrlinge zu Sais and his Heinrich von Ofterdingen, Clemens Brentano’s Godwi, oder das steinerne Bild der Mutter, and Joseph von Eichendorff ’s Ahnung und Gegenwart. Perhaps with the exception of E.T.A. Hoffmann, these writers are little more than names to the Anglo-American literary world. This is regrettable, especially when the qualities associated with what Phelan calls “radical experimentation” remain cut off from the discourse on English prose texts. The article concludes with notes and with a brief list of further readings, one that does justice to American and British scholarly contributions. [End Page 231] Several other contributions emphasize the prose of the German Romantics. John McCarthy offers a keen look at “Forms and Objectives of Romantic Criticism” (101–18), reminding how important criticism was in the work of German theorists at the time. Useful overviews are Jane K. Brown, “Romanticism and Classicism” (119–31); Gesa Dane, “Women Writers and Romanticism” (133–46); Nicholas Saul, “Love, Death, and Liebestod in German Romanticism” (163–74); Andrew Bowie, “Romantic Philosophy and Religion” (175–90); Ethel Matala de Mazza, “Romantic Politics and Society” (191–207); and Jürgen Barkhoff, “Romantic Science and Psychology” (209–25). Richard Littlejohns on painters and Andrew Bowie on music can barely scratch the surfaces of their respective large areas. Ricarda Schmidt deals with “early to late Romanticism,” Charlie Louth with lyric, and Roger Paulin with drama, each with good success. Two contributions were disappointing despite the claims of their announced titles. Azade Seyhan’s “What Is Romanticism and Where Did It Come from?” opens the volume with a review of familiar arguments that do not find bridges to current work on histories of epistemology. Similarly, Carl Niekerk’s “The Romantics and Other Cultures” operates with a rather mundane concept of culture. In contrast, the closing review of Romantic scholarship and the Romantic presence by Margarete Kohlenbach, “Transformations of German Romanticism 1830–2000” (257–80), is stimulating as well as...

The Rabbinic View of Idolatry and the Roman Political Conception of Divinity

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Rabbinic View of Idolatry and the Roman Political Conception of DivinityYair FurstenbergYair FurstenbergHebrew University Jerusalem Search for more articles by this author Hebrew University JerusalemPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Religion Volume 90, Number 3July 2010 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/652262 Views: 62Total views on this site Citations: 2Citations are reported from Crossref © 2010 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Daniel Barbu The Invention of Idolatry, History of Religions 61, no.44 (Jun 2022): 389–418.https://doi.org/10.1086/718968Alexander M. Weisberg Assemblages and Realism in Tannaitic Law: Legal Intensities, Affects, and Circuits, Journal of Ancient Judaism 13, no.11 (Nov 2021): 85–111.https://doi.org/10.30965/21967954-bja10014

Roman Political Thought and the Modern Theoretical Imagination. By Dean Hammer. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008. 358p. $39.95.

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Diosa Fortuna e identidades barrocas

The title of this article refers to the two books I have worked in the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Peter Burke. The first book, The Goddess Fortune, was published in 2006 and won the Spanish National Prize for Non-fictional Literature in 2007. Now I am writing the second book, whose title will be Baroque Identities. This new concept is an “ideal-type” and refers critically to the two ways of constructing collective identities in contemporary political philosophy: kantian cosmopolitanism and political romanticism. The article’s core is dedicated to the analysis of two key metaphors of baroque identities: the self as a labyrinth and the identity as a dream.

Introduction: Contemporary Romanian politics

Romania is an archetypical case of protracted post-communism. Its regime transition was problematic and its founding election flawed, allowing successor communists to secure their hold on power. A period of quasi-authoritarianism and failed reform followed until critical elections in 1996 brought the liberal opposition to power for the first time. Since that time its political system has stabilized into a pattern in which electoral competition occurs but political accountability is limited and corruption is widespread. The current regime should therefore be considered as consolidated, bearing the marks of the transition period, but unlikely to undergo any further near term dramatic change.

Plus ça change: Electoral law reform and the 2008 Romanian parliamentary elections

Romania reformed the law governing its parliamentary elections between 2004 and 2008, shifting from a complex proportional representation system based on county-level party lists to a complex uninominal system in which each district for the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate elects one representative. The change in law emerged after more than a year of heated political controversies, including partisan and personal animosity between President Basescu and Prime Minister Tariceanu, a failed attempt at impeachment, a deadlocked special electoral commission, a failed popular referendum, an unfavorable constitutional court ruling, and a confusing final accord brokered under deadline. Qualitative comparison of the 2004 and 2008 laws reveals that the heralded reform merely added an additional layer of calculation to the previous electoral system. Quantitative analysis using counterfactual estimation reveals that the new law had absolutely zero effect on the partisan outcome. In the conclusion, we explore the implications of these findings for Romanian politics and the politics of electoral reform more generally.