AUR – The Electoral Geography of Romanian Conservative Nationalism

Abstract

In December 2020, Romania held elections for its new Parliament amid the pandemic crisis. The voter turnout was historically low, at 31.84%. The Alliance for the Union of Romanians, a new party, won 9% of the vote, making it the fourth largest party in the Parliament. Having received only 0.29% of the votes in the local elections held 2 months prior, Alliance for the Union of Romanians’ success was unexpected. To explain this outcome, we analyse its programmatic choices, political strategy and symbolic and electoral geographies. The pandemic crisis allowed the consolidation of a nationalist and conservative constituency originating in the 2018 constitutional referendum to ban same-sex marriages. Romania’s example shows that a nationalist-conservative radical party can become viable if extra-political groups, networks and organisations are willing to lend significant local support to it.

Prostorna analiza populističke radikalne desnice na parlamentarnim izborima 2020. u Hrvatskoj

“…S obzirom na to da se u ovom radu proučava dosad neistraženi fenomen u hrvatskoj politici, u teorijskom i metodološkom aspektu istraživanje se oslanja na komparativne studije izbornog uspjeha populističke desnice u državama Srednje i Istočne Europe. Proučavanjem krajnje desnice s geografskog stanovišta bavili su se autori iz Češke (Suchánek i Hasman, 2022;Maškarinec, 2019), Rumunjske (Crăciun i Țăranu, 2023) i Slovačke (Kevický, 2022;Plešivčák, 2023). Slika 1.…”

Towards a New Common sense? A Gramscian Analysis of the Discursive Strategies of Romania’s Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR)

“…An important event that stimulated the appearance of AUR happened in 2013, when the Coalition for Family attracted attention, an association of NGOs that initiated a referendum (held in 2016) which aimed at changing the Constitution to ban same-sex marriages. The referendum has not reached the minimum threshold, but the conservative-Christian discourse became very present in the civil society (Crãciun and Þãranu, 2023). The COVID-19 pandemic served also as a stepping stone for the party, as AUR has adopted a virulent discourse against the governmental measures, claiming that those measures were restricting the liberties of the population.…”