The first elections of the Romanian post‑communism

Abstract

The vote of 20 May 1990 was the one that inaugurated the proportional election of the parliamentarians in the Romanian post-communism, as well as the popular election of the president of the republic. From a technical point of view, the parliamentary elections were distinguished not only by the absence of the legal electoral threshold, but also by the juxtaposition of two ways of distributing the mandates: with two geographical levels, in the case of deputies, and with only one level, that of the senators. This resulted in significant differences between the two Chambers in terms of electoral disproportionality, as the degree of overestimation of the first party was much stronger in the case of the Senate. From a political point of view, the elections, based on the largest popular participation in the history of Romanian post-communism, generated an unbalanced parliament with a hegemonic party format. Finally, as all these distinctive elements of the 20 May 1990 vote would remain unpaired, we can talk about the atypical character of the founding choices.

Keywords

• Romanian elections
• proportional representation
• parties system
• electoral disproprotionality