ABSTRACT
In post-communist Romania, the legal provisions in respect of political parties have changed substantially between 1990 and 2016, yet their spirit and motivation have remained largely the same. Romanian parties have promoted numerous alterations of party regulation knowing that, in the end, limited changes were an opportunity for a renewed continuity. The chapter aims to map the evolution of the constitutional provisions regarding political parties, and examines the various legal regulations concerning party formation, activity and dissolution. It looks at direct and indirect state funding and other party finance regulations, including problematic enforcement provisions. The chapter reviews the logic behind the process of legislating party regulation and its desired and plausible consequences while acknowledging the difficulties involved in disentangling specific effects from those of other institutional arrangements. It provides the implications for democracy of the artificial creation and stabilization of political parties, which are too strong to fall, yet too weak to be internally democratic or truly responsive.
