Thanks to Colectiv and corona-induced boredom, I've decided to turn my interest in Romanian politics into something creative.
Here it goes — the diagram of all Romanian legislative elections since 1990!
Some notes before we get to it, though:
1) Romania is a bicameral country
2) That in itself wouldn't be a problem, if it wasn't constantly trying to beat Italy in the competition to create world's most demented electoral system
3) As a consequence of 2), both chambers have a similar composition, but a wildly varying number of members from election to election
4) Hence I decided to add the parties' seats in both houses together and display them as a share of the whole legislature, whatever its size is. The numbers show the parties' total number of seats in Chamber+Senate.
Right click for a bigger versionUgh.
As you can see, Romania suffers from the typical Eastern European problem of having way too many parties and not much in the way of "block politics". To help you make sense of the above piece of abstract art, I decided to put most of the parties in one of two "families", each named after their founding party: National Salvation Front and National Liberal Party. Note that these blocks don't really exist, I just came up with them to make this less of a mess.
THE FRONT FAMILY — parties descended, in one way or another, from the elite that got into power after Ceaușescu's overthrow, including past iterations of PSD and their official or unofficial allies.
FSN | Frontul Salvării Naționale | National Salvation Front — a big-tent alliance of anti-Ceaușescu ("reformist" would be too strong a word) Communist forces, led by Ion Iliescu and Petre Roman.
FDSN | Frontul Democrat al Salvării Nationale | Democratic National Salvation Front — an authoritarian split-off from FSN led by Iliescu.
MER | Mișcarea Ecologistă din România | Romanian Ecologist Movement — a pseudo-green front for FSN (think Mexican PVEM).
PSM | Partidul Socialist al Muncii | Socialist Party of Labor — self-explanatory
PDSR /
UN | Partidul Democrației Sociale in România / Polul Democrat-Social din România / Uniunea Națională PSD+PUR | Party of Social Democracy in Romania / Social Democratic Pole of Romania / National Union PSD+PUR — For all intents and purposes, the predecessors of today's PSD, either as a standalone party or a coalition with small satellite parties.
USL | Uniunea Social Liberală | Social Liberal Union — a short-lived alliance of PSD and PNL against PD-L and Traian Băsescu.
PSD | Partidul Social Democrat | Social Democratic Party — the winner of 2016 elections, until recently Romania's governing
criminal organization old Securitate boys' club "party"
ALDE | Alianța Liberalilor și Democraților | Alliance of Liberals and Democrats —
No, no, no, we definitely aren't the people who helped get Dragnea into power and supported PSD until it became inconvenient...THE LIBERAL FAMILY — Of course, "liberal" here is the opposite of "authoritarian" more than anything else Westerners will imagine associated with liberalism — indeed, these parties are mostly conservative.
PNL | Partidul National Liberal | National Liberal Party — a continuation of the interwar party of the same name, excluding the Băsescu era the main opposition to the Front family, pretty much standard conservatives. Party of current PM Ludovic Orban and President Klaus Iohannis.
PNȚCD | Partidul Național Țărănesc Creștin Democrat | Christian Democratic National Peasants' Party — essentially PNL for rural folks, at least in theory, in reality probably indistinguishable from them.
CDR | Convenţia Democrată Română | Romanian Democratic Convention — an alliance between PNL and PNȚCD to consolidate their forces against Iliescu.
USD /
PD | Uniunea Social Democrata / Partidul Democrat | Social Democratic Union / Democratic Party — created from the democratic and pro-European rump of FSN, at first left-leaning under Roman, later swung hard to the populist right under Traian Băsescu, merged with PNL dissidents and became PD-L.
PD-L | Partidul Democrat-Liberal | Democratic Liberal Party — Băsescu's personal machine, after his departure merged into PNL.
DA | Alianţa Dreptate şi Adevăr | Justice and Truth Alliance — a coalition of PNL and PD-L against PSD that elected Băsescu to presidency in 2004.
ARD | Alianţa România Dreaptă | Right Romania Alliance — a front for PD-L + some satellite parties in the 2012 elections, created in an unsuccessful attempt to shield PD-L from Băsescu's unpopularity.
PMP | Partidul Mișcarea Populară | People's Movement Party — Băsescu's personal machine no. 2, created after his policies and deranged behavior infuriated not just the whole country but also PD-L.
USR | Uniunea Salvați România | Save Romania Union — an anti-corruption classical liberal party created out of Save Bucharest Union, a localist party. Together with
Plus objectively the
best most normal party in Romania, if only by the virtue of not swimming in bribes.
OTHER PARTIES RMDSZ (UDMR) | Romániai Magyar Demokrata Szövetség | Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania — the beneficiaries of the votes of Hungarian minority since the revolution. Virtually always get somewhere between 5-7%. Christian democrats in theory, but really support whoever is more convenient and hands out more pork.
PRM | Partidul România Mare | Greater Romania Party
PUNR | Partidul Unităţii Naţionale a Românilor | Romanian National Unity Party
AUR | Alianța pentru Unitatea Românilor | Alliance for Romanian Unity
A trio of very similar far-right nationalist parties, of which PRM is best known for Gheroghe Funar, a Zhirinovsky-like lunatic at their helm who managed to get into second round in the 2000 presidential election. The parties are definitely politically closer to the Front family, but I decided to classify them separately because of their different histories (not descended from FSN).
PPDD | Partidul Poporului Dan Diaconescu | People's Party Dan Diaconescu — a nationalist and vaguely lefty populist party that did well in 2012 and promptly disappeared once Dear Leader got bored with politics.
Minorities — Romanian Constitution guarantees a variable number of seats (currently 17) in the Chamber of Deputies to ethnic minority parties. The only one of those parties relevant outside these seats is Klaus Iohannis' former party
FDGR (Democratic Forum of Germans in Romania).
Others — some small parties that won seats in 1990 and 1992, when there wasn't a 5% threshold.
Poll
