2
Why should we care about political parties and accountability in Romania? The reason is
not just Vadim Tudor and PRM’s 2000 success, or functionalist justifications for the puzzle of
how elections or parliament would be organized, let alone aggregate voter interests without
parties. Political parties enjoy the least trust of any institution in Romania, securely entrenched
at the bottom of the heap in all opinion polls. In May 2004, even the usual suspects among
institutions normally targeted for criticism could outdo political parties by a significant margin.
Voters trusted, in order, the government, foreign investors, private firms, the justice system,
NGOs, Parliament, and trade unions more than they trusted political parties, ranging from 34
percent of voters trusting the government to 23 percent trusting parliament and the trade unions.
By comparison, Romanian political parties earned a measly 15 percent trust level among voters
in May 2004, which was an improvement over the 8 percent they held in October 2003, or more
pointedly, in November 2000 (around the time of the national elections) as well.
1
Two years
ago, in October 2002, forty-eight percent of Romanians polled did not feel represented by any
political party,
2
and one year ago, in October 2003, a third of Romanians opined that it would be
good that there exist a single party.
3
Twenty-two percent of Romanians surveyed that same year
would like to have a military regime, while no less than 84 percent agree that “Romania needs a
powerful leader who would make order in the country.”
4
Even beyond that: 25 percent of those
polled in May 2004 are dissatisfied by democracy in Romania, and another 34 percent are neither
dissatisfied nor satisfied by democracy.
5
That is hardly an overwhelming vote of approval by
nearly sixty percent of the population for what I have labeled elsewhere as “really existing
democracy.”
6
I do not mean to overstate the case: Romania is not in danger of democratic
collapse just yet, and some of those “democracy fence-sitters” would probably miss what
democracy there is if a truly authoritarian government were to come to power. However, the
Convention