Voting Intentions Before and After

Corruption Scandals in Romania

Student:

Roxana Alina Madalina Ghidanac

Student no.:

10968016

Preparatory Programme for Communication Science Master

University of Amsterdam

2015

Voting Intentions before and after a Corruption Scandal in Romania

Corruption is a serious problem in Romania. According to Transparency International

(“Corruption Perception Index”, 2014), Romania is one of the most corrupt countries in Europe,

with a score of 43, which makes it the 69th country in the corruption ranking.

Corruption has always been an important subject for romanian politicians during electoral

campaigns. They say that they are committed to the fight against corruption, that they have zero

tolerance to those who do not respect the Constitution. Last years’ practice had proven to us that

romanian politicians are not that committed to the fight against corruption as they say. When

they face a corruption scandal, or when another man/woman within the same party is involved in

such a scandal, they tend to forget all the promisses they made durring electoral campaigns.

Last year, as shown in The Annualy Report of the National Anticorruption Departament (citeaza

siteul dna), more than 100 of Romania’s politically connected people have been indicted,

including 20 mayors, eight members of parliament, five county presidents, along with more than

120 others who have been accused by prosecutors, arrested, or announced as suspects.

It is obviously that Romania is passing through a critical time in its modern history, long

considered to be one of the most corrupt nations of European Union and Europe. It is also clear

that along with this major problem of corruption, come a lot of other problems that Romania is

forced to deal with. This is the case of economic growth and welfare, not to mention the

difficulties to join Schengen Area.

The last two months has been a real marathon of arrests among elite politicians, accused of

bribery, money laudering, embezzlement or trading in influence. The most important names here

are: Elena Udrea, Tourism ex-Minister and former presidency candidate; Marian Vanghelie, the

mayor of the fith district of Bucharest since 2000; Radu Mazare, the mayor of Constanta since

2000; Relu Fenechiu, former Transport Minister and many others.

How does these facts influence people’s voting intentions? Are romanian voters sensitive to

corruption scandals? How this sensitiveness affects their preferences?

It seems like in the last couple of years, the increasingly documentated image about corruption

has led to continuous depreciation in the credibility of the romanian political class. Although

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elections should be seen as a weapon and an instrument of voters to punish politicians, the reality

of recent elections shows that romanian citizens are not aware of this power that they have.

The research question that is going to be analyzed is : Does a corruption scandal in the

romanian political scene influences voting intentions?

There are a lot of previous studies related to the corruption phenomena, but there is no existing

research trying to connect corruption scandals among politicians with voting intentions in

Romania.

The main aim of the paper is to examine whether romanian citizens change their voting

intentions or modify their participation in elections after a corruption scandal involving a

politician.

There are two hypoteses proposed for the current paper. Hypothesis 1 proposes that corruption

scandals change voting preferences, meaning that people will not vote again for a politician who

has been accused or convicted in a corruption scandal. Hypotesis 2 proposes that in general,

corruption scandals demotivate romanian citizens to vote.

Operationalization of concepts.

There are three concepts that need to be operationalized here. The first one is corruption.

Defining corruption, though, it seems to be not an easy task, because of the fact that this concept

includes a lot of complications and faces several ambiguity. But, to be able to operationalize this

concept, it is important to know in advance what is corruption and what kind of aspects we have

to look at when measuring it.

The existing literature is very generous in giving us various definitions of the term corruption.

According to The Oxford Dictionary, corruption is “a dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in

power, tipically including bribery.” But this is, though, a very broad definition, and we are

particularly interested in political corruption. Most of the political scientists have agreed that

corruption is “any transaction between public and private sector actors through which collective

goods are illegitimately converted into private-regarding payoffs” (heidenheimer, 1993cauta

exact).

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“Political corruption is the manipulation of the political institutions and the rules of procedure,

and therefore it influences the institutions of government and the political system, and it

frequently leads to institutional decay” (Amundsen, 1999, p. 3).

Arround the concept of corruption, there are some other terms that are related and inter-

connected with it, such as: bribery – “the payment (in money or kind) given to or taken by

thestate official in a corrupt relationship” (amundsen, 1999, p. 11); embezzlement – “theft of

public resources by public officials” (amundsen, 1999, p. 11); fraud – “ a crime that involves

some kind of trickery, swindle or deceit, and it is a broader legal and popular term that covers

both bribery and embezzlement” (amundsen, 1999, p. 11); extorsion – “money (or other

resources) extracted by the use of coercion, violence or the threats to use force” (amundsen,

1999, p. 11); trading in influence – “a corrupt trilateral relationship in which a person with real

or supported influence on other persons, often public officials, trades this influence against

money with someone seeking influence” (trading in influence and the illegal financing of

political parties – council of europe publishing, 2000, p. 10); money laundering – “ a process

whereby the proceeds of crime are transformed into apparently legitimate money or other assets”

(duhaime christine what is money laundering, 2015).

The measurement of corruption is not a easy task, because of the many ways in which the

concept is defined, and therefore it implies a lot of chalenges for those who want to examine it in

a more dipper way. The most useful method is by using the CPI (Corruption Perception Index) of

Transparency International. Transparency International measures the level of corruption using as

a basis the public sector, so this includes civil servants, public officials, politicians.

The second concept that needs operationalization is romanian political scene. Romania is a

semi-presidencial republic, governed on the basis of multi-party democratic system and on the

division of the judicial, executive and legislative powers. In December 1989, Romania won the

battle with the communist regime, after 42 years of dicatorship. As Willian Crowther said,

“There have been two significant turning points in Romania’s transition. Each played a decisive

role in shaping political dynamics in the period that followed, and each shifted the country

further toward the mainstream of Central European politics. The first of these was the December

1989 revolution that displaced the Ceausescu dictatorship. Second was the 1996 transfer of

power to the liberal opposition parties which initiated a second phase of reform. Many hoped that

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the 2004 election of Traian Basescu would constitute a third such defining moment and, for

symbolic purposes at least, mark the finale of the country’s transition to democracy” (2010, p.1).

After one decade of fighting corruption and trying to put Romania in a good place in Europe and

European Union, after believing that the corrupt system has been repressed, it seems that we are

not even at the half of the road. Indeed, the battle that Traian Basescu declared to anyone who

was not working for the wellfare of Romania leaded the country to a new level, meaning that we

can see an obvious improvement in the operation of judicial system, and there have been

important stepts in the modernization and purification of the political system.

As mentioned above, the political system of Romania is based on a multi-party system. The main

political parties that are represented in the Parliament are: PSD (Social – Democrat Party), PNL

(National Liberal Party), PMP (Popular Movement Party), UDMR (Democratic Union of

Hungarians in Romania), UNPR (National Union for the Progress of Romania). There is a small

chance that only one of these parties will gain the parliamentary majority alone, so most of the

governs are based on government coalitions between parties. An important thing to mention is

that these coalitions do not respect always respect the political spectrum.

The Parliament of Romania is the legislative power of the state. It is a bicameral parliament,

consisting of The Chamber of Deputies and The Senate.

The third concept that needs operationalization is voting intention. Voting intention is “not a

single-unit decision based upon a voter's evaluation of a particular candidate. Rather, it is a

multi-evaluative process relying upon simultaneous decisions to vote for one candidate while

necessarily implying that the individual will not vote for thac candidate's opponent” (VOTING

INTENTION AND THE COMPLEXITY OF POLITICAL IMAGES: A PILOT STUDY

LARRY POWELL, Psychological Reports, 1977, 40, 243-246)

Among romanians, it seems that the intention is “formed as a consequence of trend of the

moment, which is mostly determined by the influence of the social structure in which the voters

live / perform their activity” (Lucian Săcălean – Mircea Munteanu -THE FORMATION OF

VOTING INTENTION IN MULTIETHNIC COMMUNITIES, The 7th International Days of

Statistics and Economics, Prague, September 19-21, 2013).

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Also, it is quite obvious that romanian’s voting turnout are not the same for every elections in

part. Romanians seem to be more attached to the local elections, in which they see a personal

benefit. The percentage here is 50-70% (INSCOP, 2012). The second most important scrutiny for

romanians is the presidential one. The presidential elections that took place in December 2014

has reached a surprisingly high level, with around 64% (http://www.idea.int/vt/countryview.cfm?

CountryCode=RO) . The turnout for the Parliament is almost 42%, and the one for EU

Parliament, even lower, with no more than 33%.

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