Candidate Selection and Roma Political Representation - a Nexus?

More than 25 years after the fall of communism and the adoption of representative democracy, with numerous minority rights and a “permissive system of representation”, the Roma are the most under-represented recognized minority group in Romania in terms of the share of population and the number of legislators, but also on how the legislators respond to their interests and preferences. At the national level, the Roma have always been present through the reserved seat that each minority group is entitled to, in case they fail to reach the electoral threshold. At the local level, the number of mandates won by Roma minority organizations has been decreasing since 1996, so that in 2016, for example, they won just 0,39 % of the total of mandates available. Important is to mention that the situation is puzzling as the population of the Roma in Romania, which according to independent sources ( such as the CoE) reaches 1,5-2 millions, meaning around 10 % of the total population. In an attempt to account for this phenomenon, this study proposes a different angle of analysis namely to focus on the candidate selection of the mainstream political parties at the local level. Although Roma groups are entitled to have their own Roma political parties, it is necessary to see how mainstream political parties perform their function of aggregating interests in a diverse society, where Roma have been living for centuries. Candidate selection has been widely acknowledged as one of the most important function of political parties because it gives them the power to propose future legislators, which only later on are elected by the voters, influencing in this way which groups are represented in the national or local assemblies. Previous research on minority groups such as women has identified political parties as gatekeepers who disadvantage women in their selection process, but less is known about ethnic groups. This study helps this gap by investing the candidate selection procedure of the mainstream political parties in Romania. Based on interviews with the selectorate of political parties, successful and unsuccessful Roma candidates, this study finds that the process of candidate selection at the local level, similar to the previous research on women, puts certain barriers to Roma aspirants. It is not only that the rules of selection (both formal and informal) are not neutral, but the selectorate does not put much effort to place many more Roma candidates on winnable places due to discriminatory attitudes and views.