Shadows of the past: Common effects of communism or different pre-communist legacies? An analysis of discrepancies in social mobilization throughout Romanian regions

Abstract

An increasing number of studies dealing with democratic transitions in Eastern Europe, especially those dedicated to aspects of social capital and political culture, stress their comparative component. The newly democratic countries in this region, used as unit of analysis, are often treated as being monolithic blocks. Even though they are not as homogeneous as they appear, their regional diversity does not pass through the lenses of the majority of those comparative studies. Furthermore, the studies usually do not include considerations on social mobilization or social movements and their relationship to the regime change. The purpose of this article is, therefore, to analyze the impact of historical legacies on differences of social mobilization in post-communist Romania. Following reports on regional discrepancies – mainly concerning ethnic composition, distribution of indicators of social capital and political participation – this paper focuses on patterns of social mobilization in two regions, with a common communist, but a divergent pre-communist history – Transylvania, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the rest of the country, part of the Ottoman Empire. Using two different time-series, monitoring protest activities throughout the two regions, we found relevant proof of dissimilar protest behavior within Romania.