SNSPA Digital Repository
Welcome to SNSPA Digital Repository, the institutional repository of the National University of Political Sciences and Public Administration.
The repository contains research produced by SNSPA academic staff, including journal articles, book chapters, books, working papers, conference papers, and more.
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“For me, Germany is here.” German “Superiority,” Migration, and the Promise of a Better Society in Transylvania, Romania
(Cambridge University Press, 2026) Anghel, Remus Gabriel; Oltean, Ovidiu
The article engages the recent literature on whiteness and East-West ethnic hierarchies in Europe with an Eastern European perspective. We analyze how German ethnicity expresses symbolic superiority in a multicultural region of Romania by tracing how non-ethnic Germans affiliate with the local German minority and sustain German associational life. Such dynamics unfold within institutions of the German minority but are amplified by mobility to Germany, transnational ties, and significant German investments. We focus on how a notion of a “better society” derives not only from regional economic development due to German investments and local German political leadership, but especially from civic initiatives associated with ethnic German minority actors. We thus show how such hierarchies of superiority become articulated from below, as non-Germans attach worth, opportunity, and social improvement to a presumed more progressive “German societal model.”
"When they return home they do nothing for half a year”: opposing remittances and articulations of Romanian migrant labour in agriculture
(Springer, 2026) Anghel, Remus Gabriel; Vesalon, Lucian
Food security is becoming increasingly problematised, as demonstrated by the Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdown, or by the crisis in the global grain markets induced by the war in Ukraine. How out-migration and return change agriculture in different countries of origin, including Eastern Europe, is less understood in connection to such crises. In this paper we look at the ways in which agriculture and its labour regime change under the impact of international migration in two geographical areas in Romania, the Transylvanian Highlands and Banat. We analyse how two types of actors return to Romanian agriculture and how they occupy different labour positions: small-scale entrepreneurs and seasonal workers. Unlike much research on migration and development depicting migrants as agents of positive change, we consider social remittances as contested. We advance the notion of “opposing remittances” to account for how migrants differently reflect on their migration experiences and how class-based relations, marginalisation and racial inequalities affect social remittances related to labour. Ultimately, this paper reveals how inequalities are entangled in return migration in agriculture, and how contingent migration experiences contribute to the variegation of social remittances.
Selling Jewish Victims’ Experiences During the Holocaust for Hard Currency: The Case of the Romanian Communists Compensation Claims Collection from 1970
(De Gruyter Brill, 2025) Mihalcea, Eugenia
In the 1970s, the Romanian authorities put together a large collection of compensation claim files of Romanian citizens victims of Nazi persecution between 1939 and 1945. The Romanian Communists’ scope was for a hard-currency settlement with the Federal Republic of Germany. In doing so, the Romanians claimed that the Federal Republic of Germany would pay for persecutions for which the Romanian state had been responsible. The selective denial of the Holocaust was the Communist authorities’ approach to the topic after the end of the Second World War. Especially after 1948, they carefully avoided tackling the issue of country’s own involvement in the persecution of its citizens, externalizing the blame on Nazi Germany. Additionally, in the official narrative the focus was on anti-Fascist resistance and Communists’ martyrdom during the Holocaust and not on Jewish sufferings. By analyzing different claim files part of the larger Romanian collection to be found in the Arolsen Archives I argue that Romanians’ plan of getting Germany’s money–and indirectly recognition of Germany’s responsibility for the Romanian authorities’ wrongdoings during the Holocaust – would have solidified the externalization of blame at international level on the long run.
Parallel politicization: rethinking the demand–supply divide in populism. Evidence from parliamentary and protest discourse in Romania (2020–2024)
(2026-08-25) Rammelt, Henry P.; Bujdei-Tebeica, Vlad
This article examines how populist politicization unfolds across civic and institutional arenas and what its temporal dynamics reveal about demand- and supply-side explanations of populism. Focusing on Romania between 2020 and 2024, it compares protest-related media coverage and parliamentary plenary debates to trace the circulation of five core populist themes. Rather than treating populism as either a societal attitude or an elite strategy, the study conceptualizes it as a discursive repertoire whose salience can be traced over time. Using a longitudinal, frequency-based design, the analysis tests whether politicization follows a demand-induced (bottom-up), supply-induced (top-down), or interactive logic. The findings show no consistent evidence of bottom-up diffusion from protest to parliament, nor of systematic top-down activation from parliament to protest. Parliamentary discourse exhibits a stable and routinized engagement with populist themes, whereas protest communication remains episodic and event-driven. Politicization is therefore institutionally insulated and only weakly coupled to civic mobilization. The article proposes the concept of parallel politicization to describe this configuration: a pattern in which similar populist repertoires circulate across arenas without stable temporal transmission or semantic alignment. The results suggest that populist politicization can persist without continuous feedback between citizens and elites, challenging linear demand- or supply-driven models and indicating that populism may endure as an institutionalized repertoire of political communication even when civic mobilization remains fragmented.
Women in STEM in the Eastern Partnership: EU-Driven Initiatives and Challenges of External Europeanisation
(MDPI, 2025) Irod, Roxana; Pirvulescu, Cristian; Miculescu, Marian
This article explores the role of the European Union (EU) as a normative gender actor promoting women’s participation in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) within the Eastern Partnership (EaP) region. In a context marked by global inequality and overlapping international efforts, this paper assesses the extent to which EU-driven Europeanisation influences national gender policies in non-EU states. Using a postfunctionalist lens, this research draws on a qualitative analysis of EU-funded programmes, strategic documents, and a detailed case study encompassing Armenia, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, and Azerbaijan. This study highlights both the opportunities created by EU initiatives such as Horizon Europe, Erasmus+, and regional programmes like EU4Digital and the challenges presented by political resistance, institutional inertia, and socio-cultural norms. The findings reveal that although EU interventions have fostered significant progress, structural barriers and limited national commitment hinder the long-term sustainability of gender equality in STEM. Moreover, the withdrawal of other global actors increases pressure on the EU to maintain leadership in this area. This paper concludes that without stronger national alignment and global cooperation, EU gender policies risk becoming symbolic rather than transformative.