"Partidele au murit, trăiască partidele!": apariţia "partidului-cartel" în România

Abstract

This article try to observe if some concepts which was used in order to explain the changes in the western party systems can be use for the Romanian case too. We concentrate our analyze on the concept of "cartel party" and his emergence in the Romanian political space. The Democratic Party was chose as a study case because we think that this political organization illustrate very well our hypothesis that in the last years, in Romania we pass from a model of mass parties to catch-all parties and cartel parties. We must clarified that this concept of "cartel party" can be understood only if we have in mind that the hole party system is subjected to the same cartelization logic. The author focuses his analysis on the evolution of the Democratic Party between the two electoral moments of 2000 and 2004, whit a special attention on the modalities for establishing the lists of candidates, the discussion about the internal reforms and organization. An important part of the article is dedicated to the political migration of the members of Democratic Party, a very often practice for the Romanian political system.