Alexandru RADU,

Politica între proporționalism și majoritarism.

Alegeri și sistem electoral în România postcomunistă

[Politics between proportional and majoritarian systems.

Elections and electoral system in post-communist Romania],

Institutul European, Iași, 2012, 365 pp.

Professor Alexandru Radu’s political sciences paper, published in the summer of 2012, analyses in an objective, critical manner, based on bibliographical references, the types of elections which took place in post-communist Romania and the ways in which the leaders were nominated, as well as the degree to which the citizens were represented based on the votes. Instead of conclusions, the author suggests a new election system. The paper’s aimed audience are political sciences specialists, students, researchers and everyone else who has an interest.

The book is not divided into chapters but rather into sections based on the domains the author researches. This way, the author highlights several items, first, the election system through the election theory, differentiating types by election formula and by ballot counting methods, then, the election thresholds by describing constituency sizes, the vote type- plurality voting or party-list voting, on open or closed lists. He also highlights the electoral disproportionality, the absentee percentage and the degree of representation against the type of voting- majority rule, simple plurality or two-ballot plurality, party list voting, and proportional representation in Romania by describing the type of votes: cumulative, limited, single non-transferable voting or transferable voting. Towards the end the author analyses mixed election systems and their effects.

As far as elections in Romanian history are concerned, the author starts his analysis from the stage before the introduction of an election system, through the “Statute expanding the Paris Convention” in 1858 based on which the Ad-hoc assemblies elections were organised and led to the election of Alexandru Ioan Cuza as ruler in both Romanian Principalities. He then passes on to the census suffrage, plural suffrage and plurality suffrage, a hallmark of the monarchy in the 1866-1918 era under king Carol 1^st, and then equal suffrage and electoral primate which granted parliament majority to the party that managed to receive 40% of the votes, an electoral law which governed the whole period between the two world wars. In 1938, the plurality vote is introduced for the first time for the 1^st and 2^nd of May elections for all men over 30 years old and for all literate women – who could only vote at the Organisation for Adults. Candidates were nominated by the only political formation in the country, The National Rebirth Front and the vote lacked any surprise results[1]. The Parliament was structured on professional categories and the Senate had an obviously corporate look- there were three types of senators: elected, nominated and entitled, the last category being mostly part of the social elites. Next, starting from the corporate-like elections, the electorate and the structure of the Parliament under Carol’s authoritarian monarchy, the author analyses elections and plurality voting under popular democracy defined by unanimous voting.

Another research theme analysed here is the first decade of democracy after the fall of the communist regime. The first elections are considered as foundational and atypical by the author, and the 1992 ones are thought to be the first constitutional elections whereas the 1996 tour gave party stability and political upheaval by creating the first moderate right government after the Revolution. In the second decade of democracy he analyses the 2000 elections, the turn-over test and he continues with the 2004 elections which are considered to be “presidential”. There is therefore a contradiction between the ballots for each party resulted from the votes and the government composition made after the elections – this fact marked Romania’s post-elections political evolution which made volatility into a rule. The 2008 and 2009 elections are two years of electoral show. It was given by parties competing in the election race marked by the diminishment of the role the presidential elections. This diminishment was caused by the separation between the presidential and general elections. Next, the author also analyses the first elections for the European Parliament in the summer of 2009.

The Romanian electoral system has been based on the elections law mechanism established by the 1991 and the 2003 constitutions. It is also based on an original law practice given that politicians’ appetite for reform is substantial with respect to elections. From 1990 to 2012 the elections methods remained unchanged and the contradictions were in the very nature of the laws.

The analysis of the proportional election mechanism discusses parliament, local counsel and European Parliament elections, through which people’s votes are turned into parliamentary seats, from the 1990 to the 2012 elections. The analysis of the majority voting mechanism discusses the election of the country’s President, laid down in the Constitution and how the election of mayors and county counsel presidents is different from that of a President in the degree of majority required by the first round.

The author questions the correctness of Romanian elections because of a lack of official records as far as the composition of circumscriptions is concerned thus leading to a favourable terrain for fraud since the way circumscriptions are made has been continued throughout this period. Although there are 18 million voters listed out there, the author correctly concludes that the real number is lower and the number of decision makers is even lower.

When discussing the democratic concept of representation- proportionality, the author believes that there is a problem of ‘proportional non-representation” – an expression taken from political sciences professor Daniel Barbu[2], and he also considers the mechanism of indirect seats distribution/redistribution to be a myth. The analysis of the proportional transformation of votes into seats in the Parliament is made by highlighting the differences between the proportional representation system and the party system. Although majority voting and seat distribution were introduced in 2008 by the election law 35/2008, based on the proportionality and representation principles, they are still applied following the majority voting system, which means that seats won by a majority of votes by one candidate are still gained through the proportionality rule. Professor Alexandru Radu’s thesis is that “although the voting is described by the law as being proportional, the law’s effect is of a majority vote nature, thus creating two categories of elected people: those elected by majority votes and those elected proportionally”.

The majority vote law was the declared target when changing the party list voting system through a closer connection between the elected and the elector, but the change of the election system did not aim at changing the double method of seats distribution. Therefore, the process of turning votes into seats resulted in MP’s elected directly and by popularity. Through the distribution of seats, which was made in two stages, it created two sorts of seats: the ones elected and distributed directly in constituencies and the non-elected ones, distributed indirectly at country level. On the other hand, 1 out of 3 MP’s whose connection with the voters is done through the mechanism of distributing seats left empty in the first round in constituencies. Not all votes from under the electoral threshold are used in the second round. Unused votes at constituency level- that is what is left after the electoral coefficient is calculated, come only from parties which went over the electoral threshold. The d’Hondt method for distributing empty seats is used for these votes gathered at a national level by each electoral competitor. By this method, “the votes are given to parties who lost the elections by not making it to the legislature body”[3].

Instead of conclusions, the author imagines two types of election systems, which are the novelty and the touch of originality in the book. Alexandru Radu suggests a visionary system: a unicameral parliament elected through a plurality vote, in a relative majority with a first-past-the-post election like the one used in 2008 for the election of county counsel Presidents. By replacing proportional representation with a first-past-the-post one, that is through a majority voting, a more stable government would result. But majority voting is less European and adopting such an election system is not favourable to our kind of democracy

The reformation of the Romanian election system is needed through the improvement of electoral management, that is through managing the election process and trust in the elections. The solution suggested by the author is independent management based on the broadening of the Permanent Election Authority during the election period so that it becomes the only independent authority of Executive power through budget and structure, with roles in managing the election process alongside the Ministry of Justice/ Internal Affairs.