40
44
See the BOP-OSF, October 2003.
45
See the CURS poll from 9-16 August, published on August 23 at www.curs.ro.
46
See the BOP-OSF, October 2002.
47
See the section by Dumitru Sandu, “Democra ie ‘tr it ’ prin institu ii i resurse,” BOP-OSF, October 2003,
www.osf.ro.
48
See the data from IMAS published in Adev rul, 3 August 2004.
49
Ibid.
50
See the interview with PD president Traian B sescu in 22, nr. 752 (3-9 August 2004), and the interview with
former PNL president Valeriu Stoica in 22, nr. 751 (27 July – 2 August 2004).
51
See, e.g., the editorial by Cornel Nistorescu, “Adunareaaa!”, in Evenimentul zilei, 31 July 2004, and other analysis
in the same issue.
52
See the column signed by the pseudonym “Alcibiade,” in România Mare, nr. 734, 6 August 2004. PSD’s denial
of any “protocol” of understanding between the two parties regarding support in county councils can be found in
Ziua, 14 June 2004.
53
Vadim Tudor announced the meeting to the press almost immediately. See Ziua, 12 June 2004. Cozmânc did
not admit the meeting had taken place until over a month later. Ziua, 16 July 2004.
54
See Vadim Tudor’s declaration to the press in România Mare, nr. 732, 23 July 2004.
55
The România Mare editorial containing the death threat was reproduced in part in Adevãrul, 4 October
1995 and apparently in entirety in Evenimentul zilei, 4 October 1995. After a string of the usual insults and
insinuations, it read, in a direct address to Iliescu, “Vadim will be for you what you were for Ceau escu!”
56
See the BOP-OSF, May 2003.
57
See the data published from the October 2003 survey by the Institutul Politicii Publice (Institute for Public Policy)
and the Gallup organization at http://www.ipp.ro/altemateriale/IPP-Gallup_Caiet%20Sondaj_Extremism-2003.pdf.
58
Rose and Munro, 118.
59
See my doctoral dissertation, Democratization in Spite of Itself: Patrimonialism, Parties and Regime Change in
Southeastern Europe, May 2003.
60
Data gathered by scrutinizing the information on members of parliamentary groups for the 1996-2000 legislature
at http://www.cdep.ro/pls/parlam/structura.gp?leg=1996&cam=2&idg=&poz=0&idl=1 for the Chamber of Deputies
and http://www.cdep.ro/pls/parlam/structura.gp?leg=1996&cam=1&idg=&poz=0&idl=1 for the Senate.
61
The CDR in particular, fell from polling support of well over 50 percent in early 1997 to the point of failing to
cross the electoral threshold in 2000 (10 percent for CDR 2000, on account of the new law adding 1 percent for each
of the parties in the five-member coalition, with the normal single-party threshold being 5 percent). But that
massive loss of support did not flow entirely to PSD, which improved its score relative to 1996 by only 15 points
(and following a merger with the small Social Democratic Party around Alexandru Athanasiu). PRM, it will be
remembered, received roughly 19.5 percent of the vote in the Chamber of Deputies and around 21 percent for the
Senate.
One other juicy, hard-to-refute indicator supporting the “vot de blam” argument is that 29 percent of Emil
Constantinescu’s voters and 23 percent of Iliescu’s voters, both from the second round of presidential elections in
1996, voted for Vadim Tudor in the first round of the 2000 presidential elections. On top of that, 36 percent of those
who did not vote in 1996, voted for Vadim Tudor in that first round of elections in 2000, well beyond any other
candidate (including Iliescu, who got the vote of 26 percent of those 2000 voters who did not vote in 1996). See the
data from IMAS Exit Poll: Alegeri Generale – turul 1: Raport Final, a copy of which is in my possession.
62
I ran some calculations of volatility measures in chapter 5 of my doctoral dissertation (op. cit.), following the
standard literature best represented by Mogens N. Pedersen, “Changing Patterns of Electoral Volatility in European
Party Systems, 1948-1977: Explorations in Explanation,” in Hans Daalder and Peter Mair, eds., Western European
PartySystems: Continuity & Change (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1983) 29-66; and Stefano Bartolini and
Peter Mair, Identity, Competition and Electoral Availability: The Stabilisation of European Electorates, 1885-1985
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Rather than go into it in cumbersome detail, suffice it to say that
volatility in Romania is considerable through the 2000 elections, ranging from 20 to 32 on the Pedersen scale.
Convention