ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief historical background and a description of major events in Romania. It also provides basic political, economic, and social data arranged in the following categories: polity, economy, population, purchasing power parities, life expectancy, ethnic groups, capital, political rights, civil liberties, and status. The chapter discusses the progress and decline of political rights and civil liberties in Romania. Romanians can change their government democratically under a multiparty system enshrined in a 1991 post-Communist constitution. In the November 2000 parliamentary elections, the Party of Social Democracy won 65 of the 140 seats in the senate and 155 of the 327 seats in the chamber of deputies. In July the Romanian government adopted nullified a law that allowed jail terms of up to five years for homosexual relations in public or that provoked a public scandal. Romania became independent following the 1878 Berlin Congress.
