The Importance of Mindsets in Receiving and Maintaining Democracy: The Case of Post-Communist Romania

As a constitutional law professor, coming exclusively from a legal background, I have often been confronted with the limits of the “legal” approach to democracy. This was amplified by the fact that the Romanian “legal” approach is very positivistic, in the post-communist sense of the word. Trying to delve deeper into why democracy does not work in Romania, I realized that beyond concepts and theoretical ideas about democracy, there are people animated by personal mindsets that actually affect the way democracy works or does not work much more than the theoretical aspects. In this context, in my paper, I want to analyze, first of all, what democracy really is from a more practical standpoint – as a sum of ideas, conceptions, and principles about how a political system should work in order to preserve freedom. Second of all, I want to then get beyond definitions, given that democracy comes to actually be the way people think and act according to those principles. In order to highlight these ideas, I will use Romania as a case study to reflect that mindsets are crucial in receiving and maintaining democracy. After 45 years of communism, Romanians could not receive an authentic form of democracy, as they were brainwashed in fear and collectivism. They chose a new “democratic” leader, promoting an “original” democracy, which was actually another form of authoritarianism masked as democracy. The people are like the soil, while democratic values are the seed. If the soil is not ready, democracy does not take root or transforms itself into distorted forms of democracy. In this context, I want to study the mindsets specific to ordinary people, politicians, and the legally educated, which block or distort the process of democratization in Romania. Lastly, I want to also tackle the problem of education with the aim of uprooting the toxic mindsets identified, with an accent on transmitting values, not only theoretical ideas about democracy.