Romania in the Process of Democratic Consolidation. The Impact of the Electoral System.

After the fall of communism and the transition to a democratic regime and after more than 6 years from accession to European Union, Romania recorded a decline of democratic consolidation process according to the latest reports of Freedom House called “Nations in Transition„. The present paper aims to analyze the relation between the change of the electoral system in Romania and the decreased quality of democratic governance. The data used for this paper were collected from Freedom House reports ( “Nations in Transition„- 2007 -2010) and the methods of investigation are case study and comparative analysis of the data. The paper reveals that, despite the fact that Romania changed the electoral system, the legislators were elected in single-unit constituencies on the basis of a mixed electoral system, no progress has been made in process of democratic consolidation. Moreover, the score of the electoral process caused the degradation of Romania's rating. As a conclusion, the Romania's EU accession and the change of the electoral system are not sufficient premises for completing the process of democratic consolidation in Romania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]