Legitimisation Through Representation: The 2008 Electoral Reform in Romania

To whom legitimacy is given in a democratic regime and for what purpose? How the presence or absence of legitimacy can be measured? After almost ten years of public and institutional debates on electoral system change, in 2008, Romania adopted a genuine form of mixed electoral system replacing the old closed list PR system. The new MMS combines both seat and vote linkages within the same system (Shugart and Wattenberg, 2001: 15). The main goal of Romanian electoral reform was to re-design political representation involving the representatives in a personal link with theirs constituents. Nevertheless, a unique system in a transitional democracy determined unexpected outcomes. The reform was expected to be a genuine remedy mostly against the decreasing trust in political institutions and the lack of accountability of political parties. Reviewing the debates and the history of events which foregone and followed the reform, the paper will attempt to prove that legitimacy through merely elections is not sufficient. The democratic regime requires a legitimisation through representation. Thus, to a certain extend, legitimisation is representation. The equalisation of the two concepts may answer to two problems of political science. The study of legitimacy and legitimisation can extend its methodological measurements to the study of representation. Second, the crisis of representation can find an answer once matching representation with legitimisation. Legitimisation as representation is a substantive, ongoing, and extensive process of democracy and thus of the political regime. The electoral reforms and especially the elite-mass interaction reforms (Renwick 2010) are appropriate cases for studying legitimisation and representation.