ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by summarizing the political configuration of Romania in the immediate aftermath of the war. Election returns from the country's ten national parliamentary elections between 1918 and 1938 will then be used to determine major developmental trends of the interwar system. The achievement of national territorial unity in the absence of national parties destabilized rather than stabilized Romania's political system. The principal dilemma of Romania's precommunist political heritage was conflict between dominant social interests and state interests, that is, between Romanian society and those who controlled the Romanian polity. Structural changes in Romanian political life during and immediately after World War I were so fundamental and far-reaching that to call Ion I. C. Bratianu's return to power in January 1922, after twenty-seven months in opposition, a "return to normal" of Romanian politics is very problematic.
