Previous research on Romania revealed an empirical paradox with respect to party system stability. On the one hand, the number of political parties stabilized in the most recent decade. Since 1992 there were no new entries on the parliamentary arena (Birch et. al. 2002; Preda 2005; Gherghina and Chiru 2011; 2012). On the other hand, the level of party system electoral volatility continued to be relatively high (Sikk 2005; Tavits 2005; 2008; Rose and Munro 2009; Casal Bertoa and Enyedi 2011).
To understand and better measure the dynamics of the Romanian party system, we must take a step back and disentangle the often intricate changes in party splits, mergers and alliances in order to clarify which parties contesting the various electoral cycle represent changes or continuities with the previous elections. We aim to produce concise and comprehensive narratives focusing on party changes and longitudinal inter-party relationships and will include all political parties that received more than 1% of the votes in post-communist elections.
In accordance with the objectives of the workshop, our single case study will produce comparable data in terms of party system indicators based on quantitative and qualitative information on the six electoral cycles between 1990 and 2012. It will contribute to the methodological discussions on validity and reliability of party system measurement and classification.
