Romania’s Road to “Normalcy”

The populist backlash against corruption, the CEE transition-era elites, and the liberal consensus has led to a democratic crisis, but does not portend systemic change.

In Romania today, as in Italy twenty years ago, the gradual politicization of anticorruption has come to shape the political scene.

Today, there are three parts of the old Soviet bloc—one is democratic, another is wholly authoritarian, and a third “intermediate” group is caught between two worlds. This last should be…