Evoluzione dei partiti e sistema di partiti nella Romania post-comunista

This contribution aims to map the characteristics of political parties and the party system in Romania more than thirty years after the collapse of the communist regime. The analysis begins by identifying the main stages in the development of Romanian party politics: from the extreme fluidity of the early 1990s to the gradual closure of the party system since the 2000s and the more recent crisis of traditional parties. On the one hand, this stabilization has been equated with predictable competition for government positions and regular inter-party relations; on the other hand, the low number of parliamentary political parties in Romania has been increasingly criticized because it hinders the possibility of party renewal, reinforces corruption and collusive practices, and implicitly generates limited power turnover. On this basis, various organizations and political entrepreneurs have invoked the need to defend traditional values in politics; the 2020 Romanian general elections brought an important radical right-wing populist party into Parliament. In addition to this electoral success, the arrival of the AUR on the national political scene has given greater visibility to illiberal traits in politics and highlighted the vulnerability of Romania’s post-communist democracy