The Romanian madhouse – political crisis and its political economy

"On the barricades" — s02e56

Explaining Romanian politics to an international audience is not an easy task. Caught in an ever-lasting “transition”, Romania experiences original forms of democracy. Or, perhaps the periphery just makes our political experiences, in contrast to the ones in the West, harder to cover in PR.

September 2021 will be remembered in Romanian politics as the month when, just as the fourth wave of the pandemic was beginning, Florin Câțu, the Prime Minister, decided that one crisis was not enough and basically threw the country into political chaos. He did so by firing the Minister of Justice who was the nominee of Union Save Romania, the party that partnered with Câțu’s party, The National Liberal Party, to form a governing alliance.

In this episode of our show, Maria Cernat explains to Boyan Stanislavski the hidden reasons why Florin Câțu decided to start this political crisis and why the pandemic offers him an unexpected advantage since this exceptional situation makes it easier for the executive to circumvent parliament and other forms of democratic control.