In December 1989, Romania became the last Eastern European communist country to break with its communist dictatorship, the most powerful in the region at the time. It has struggled ever since to overcome the transition to democracy and to become a 'full-time' member of the Western democratic community of states. This book provides a contextual analysis of the Romanian constitutional system, with references to the country's troubled constitutional history and to the way in which legal transplantation has been used. The Constitution's grey areas, as well as the gap between the written constitution and the living one, will also be explained through the prism of recent events that cast a negative shadow upon the democratic nature of the Romanian constitutional system. The first chapters present a brief historical overview and an introduction to Romanian constitutional culture, as well as to the principles and general features of the 1991 Constitution. The chapters which follow explain the functioning of the institutions and their interrelations-Parliament, the President, the Government and the courts. The Constitutional Court has a special place in the book, as do local government and the protection of fundamental rights. The last chapter refers to the mechanisms and challenges of constitutional change and development.

In this book, legal scholars from the EU Member States (with the addition of the UK) analyse the development of the EU Member States' attitudes to economic, fiscal, and monetary integration since the Treaty of Maastricht. The Eurozone crisis corroborated the warnings of economists that weak economic policy coordination and loose fiscal oversight would be insufficient to stabilise the monetary union. The country studies in this book investigate the legal, and in particular the constitutional, pre-conditions for deeper fiscal and monetary integration that influenced the past and might impact on the future positions in the (now) 27 EU Member States. The individual country studies address the following issues: - Main characteristics of the national constitutional system, and constitutional culture; - Constitutional foundations of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) membership and related instruments; - Constitutional obstacles to EMU integration; - Constitutional rules and/or practice on implementing EMU-related law; and - The resulting relationship between EMU-related law and national law Offering a comprehensive and detailed assessment of the legal and constitutional developments concerning the Economic and Monetary Union since the Treaty of Maastricht, this book provides not only a study of legal EMU-related measures and reforms at the EU level, but most importantly sheds light on their perception in the EU Member States.

Romania has had a tumultuous history of changing leadership and contested land. Marked by revolution with a strong cultural history preserved in artifacts and traditions, today Romanians are among some of the most enduring peoples of the European Union. All books of the critically-acclaimed Cultures of the World® series ensure an immersive experience by offering vibrant photographs with descriptive nonfiction narratives, and interactive activities such as creating an authentic traditional dish from an easy-to-follow recipe. Copious maps and detailed timelines present the past and present of the country, while exploration of the art and architecture help your readers to understand why diversity is the spice of Life.

This book represents an effort to assess the unprecedented political, economic, and social reforms that have swept through Central and Eastern Europe in the five years since the collapse of Communism. The dismantling of the Warsaw Pact, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, the Communist Party apparatus, and the various manifestations of the `nomenklatura' political control system have meant different things in different countries, but throughout the region we have witnessed a struggle to replace an authoritarian, one-party political system and a command economy with something resembling Western-style constitutional democracy and market economics. Accompanying this struggle have been attempts to transform the legal structure of these countries. It is no exaggeration to claim that lawyers, and particularly legal scholars, have played a central role in the struggle for reform in post-communist Europe. As conceived by its principal organizer and editor (Stanislaw Frankowski), this study gives these scholars an opportunity to express their perceptions of the success achieved to date and the work still remaining. A secondary goal is to expose a Western audience to the views and insights of legal scholars who have worked within the Central and Eastern European traditions. The four parts of this book reflect the principal areas in which legal reform seemed essential. First comes the reconstitutionalization of the societies in question, which means above all else the elimination of single-party politics and the notion of unity of powers. Then comes the creation of the legal institutions that would make possible a civil society under law. Then the institutions that moderate and control the uses of state power to discipline and punish persons that have transgressed the society's norms. Finally there is the question of how law reform had dealt with industrial democracy and the anticipated transformation of the workplace.

This insightful book brings the study of coalitions and coalition governance in Central and Eastern European democracies up to date, with an analytical focus framed by difficult economic and social periods, such as the end of the economic crisis and the Coronavirus pandemic. The volume posits insights from a plethora of experts on party politics and coalition studies from their respective countries, with chapters on Bulgaria, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Embellished with illustrative tables and extensive datasets throughout, each chapter maps the developments of party system change, covering the coalition life cycle from the early 1990s until the end of 2021, and explores whether there has been transformation of the coalition, governance and dissolutions patterns due to heightened pressures. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of coalition politics, representative democracy, governance, political parties, European Union politics, East and Central European politics, and comparative politics.

Although it has been more than 20 years since Communism crumbled in Central and Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, many scholars and politicians still wonder what the lifting of the Iron Curtain has really meant for these former Communist countries. And, because these countries were largely closed off to the world for so long, there has yet to be an all-inclusive study on their administrative systems—until now. In Public Administration in Post-Communist Countries: Former Soviet Union, Central and Eastern Europe, and Mongolia, expert contributors supply a comprehensive overview and analysis of public administration in their respective post-Communist countries. They illustrate each country’s transformation from an authoritarian system of governance into a modern, market-based, and in some cases, democratic government. The book covers the countries that were officially part of the Soviet Union (Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Estonia, Lithuania, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan); those that were theoretically independent but were subject to Soviet-dominated Communist rule (Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Poland); as well as a satellite republic that was under significant Soviet influence (Mongolia). Each chapter includes a brief introduction to the specific country, an overview of politics and administration, and discussions on key aspects of public management and administration—including human resource management, public budgeting, financial management, corruption, accountability, political and economic reform, civil society, and prospects for future development in the region. The book concludes by identifying common themes and trends and pinpointing similarities and differences to supply you with a broad comparative perspective.

The Digital Government Review of Romania evaluates the efforts made by the government to transition towards digital government. It provides in-depth analysis and actionable policy recommendations to improve institutional governance, digital investments, digital talent and skills, government service delivery and the strategic use of data, including open government data.

Constitutional democracy is more fragile and less 'natural' than autocracy. While this may sound surprising to complacent democrats, more and more people find autocracy attractive, because they were never forced to understand or imagine what despotism is. Generations who have lived in stable democracies with the promise that their enviable world will become the global 'normal' find government rule without constitutionalism difficult to conceive. It is difficult, but never too late, to see one's own constitutional system as something that is fragile, or up for grabs and in need of constant attention and care. In this book, Andras Sajo and Renata Uitz explore how constitutionalism protects us and how it might be undone by its own means. Sajo and Uitz's intellectual history of the constitutional ideal is rich in contextual detail and informed by case studies that give an overview of both the theory and practice of constitutionalism worldwide. Classic constitutions are contrasted with twentieth-century and contemporary endeavours, and experimentations in checks and balances. Their endeavour is neither apologetic (and certainly not celebratory), nor purely defensive: this book demonstrates why constitutionalism should continue to matter. Between the rise of populist, anti-constitutional sentiment and the normalization of the apparatus of counter-terrorism, it is imperative that the political communities who seek to sustain democracy as freedom understand the importance of constitutionalism. This book is essential reading for students of law and general readers without prior knowledge of the field, as well as those in politics who believe they know how government works. It shows what is at stake in the debate on constitutionalism.

From Algeria to Zimbabwe, Constitutions of the World is a guide to the constitutions and constitutional histories of eighty nations. It will prove an invaluable resource for any teacher or student interested in politics, law, human rights or the political history of nations across the world. Strucured alphabetically each chapter profiles one country in an easy-to-use format. For every country a wealth of information is to be found.

This book explores how power-sharing between the president and the prime minister works in semi-presidential regimes. In contrast to much of the existing comparative work on semi-presidentialism, the book emphasizes the role of institutional coordination at the most concrete level of executive policy-making, and asks how institutional coordination between the president and prime minister influences presidential activism and the balance of power within the executive. The authors develop a tentative framework embedded in institutionalism and based on four strands of research – semi-presidentialism, public administration, political leadership, and foreign policy analysis – which is subsequently applied to the cases of Lithuania, Romania and Finland. Given the political challenges facing many semi-presidential countries, the study ultimately seeks to identify institutional solutions that facilitate power-sharing and successful policy-making.