Authors

Daniel Șandru¹;  ¹ ”Petre Andrei” University, Romania

Discussion

My paper analyses the Romanian society in the years of transition "responsible" not only by the revival of populist themes but also by the appearance of communist nostalgia. I try to explain how the presence of populism in the Romanian society, on different dimensions, has affected, over time, the development and consolidation of the democratic political system. I argue that the populism is one of the causes of the configuration of a dysfunctional democracy, a true mark of the type of society we now have. That is a populist society dependent on the temptation of easily identifiable authoritarianism in its evolution from the last century. The establishment of a strong social attachment to the democratic values ​​was and continues to be a difficult one in the Romanian society, the essential cause being the temptation exercised by a specific form of populism, having authoritarian veils. We tried to offer a few explanations concerning the persistence of systemic gaps which Romanian society wasn’t able to surpass. As we can see the ethnic nationalist themes not only survived to the communism but were used both from different reasons by political parties and public intellectuals more or less connected to the political power.