Browsing by Author "Pirvulescu, Cristian"

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Institutional Resilience and Democratic Sustainability in Post-Transition Europe: Lessons from Romania and Central-Eastern Europe
(2026) Pirvulescu, Cristian
This paper conceptualizes institutional resilience as a core condition of democratic sustainability in post-transition Europe. Building on neo-institutionalist approaches and recent scholarship on democratic resilience, we argue that democracies endure when three capacities align: policy coherence, procedural legitimacy, and civic/monitory participation. Using a comparative, theory-guided design, we analyze Romania, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia (2007–2025), triangulating V-Dem/Eurostat indicators with documentary evidence (EU Rule of Law reports, CEPEJ) and interpretive analysis. Romania illustrates “reactive resilience” anchored in judicial independence and civic vigilance; Slovakia shows “restorative resilience” after corruption scandals; Poland exhibits “societal compensatory resilience,” where civic mobilization offsets institutional regression; Hungary demonstrates “instrumental resilience without democracy,” combining administrative capacity with normative decay. We integrate these findings into a three-dimensional model—institutional, normative, and communicative—showing how feedback loops convert crisis into learning. The paper concludes that sustainable democracy depends less on constitutional design alone and more on the institutionalization of learning: redundant veto points, impartial procedures that generate trust, and a monitory public sphere that sustains continuous accountability. For EU policy, the shift from conditionality to capacity (e.g., RRF) can foster endogenous resilience when supranational norms are domestically internalized rather than externally imposed.
Normative power and Europeanization: The EU’s global agenda for gender equality
(MDPI, 2026-07-27) Pirvulescu, Cristian; Ion, Oana-Andreea; Irod, Gabriela-Roxana
This article explores how the European Union (EU) promotes gender equality beyond its borders, situating the analysis within broader debates on external Europeanization and normative power. While most studies have examined the domestic impact of EU policies, this paper focuses on how gender equality norms are projected internationally and conceptually investigates the mechanisms involved in their diffusion. Drawing on existing theoretical literature, the article analyzes how EU-level normative strategies may interact with domestic political, institutional, and societal dynamics in third countries, often in complex and contested ways. Rather than providing empirical testing, the study identifies core mechanisms—such as strategic communication, partnerships, and funding tools—and reflects on their limitations and the role of local agency in interpreting or resisting EU-promoted norms. The findings highlight the difficulty of isolating EU influence from other international and transnational drivers of norm diffusion, and the need for caution in attributing policy shifts solely to EU action. The article concludes that a better understanding of these processes requires more attention to domestic contexts, as well as future empirical research to complement conceptual analyses of Europeanization in sensitive policy domains such as gender equality.
Urban–Rural Asymmetries in Social Resilience: The Role of Territorialized Institutional Trust in Central and Eastern Europe
(MDPI, 2026) Pirvulescu, Cristian
Social resilience has become a central concept in urban and sustainability research, yet its institutional and spatial determinants remain insufficiently specified in contexts marked by persistent urban–rural asymmetries. The objective of this article is to explain how spatial differences in institutional trust shape divergent resilience trajectories across territories in Central and Eastern Europe. This study develops a conceptual, mechanism-based framework and employs a qualitative comparative illustration based on institutional indicators of trust, service accessibility, and governance effectiveness. The analysis shows that territorialized institutional trust—structured by institutional presence, procedural consistency, and institutional legibility—systematically conditions access to resources, stabilizes expectations, and shapes adaptive behavior, with dense and predictable institutional environments supporting longer-term resilience while thin and uneven ones entrench short-term coping. The findings suggest that social resilience should be understood as an institutional outcome shaped by the spatial organization of governance rather than as a territorially neutral attribute of communities. The broader significance of the study lies in providing a territorially sensitive and institutionally grounded framework for urban sustainability and resilience planning, highlighting how built environment and governance arrangements jointly structure the adaptive capacities of urban and rural territories.
What about populism? : is the populism a “thin” ideology or a neutral political instrument?
(Filodirito, 2018) Pirvulescu, Cristian
In the last years, the populism has become a very popular concept. So, popular that it becomes difficult to explain. Sometimes populism is used to describe radically different speeches. In Europe, the politicians from all the parties had adopted populist tactics by branding their opponents as tools of the “establishment”. In the Central and Eastern Europe, the populism was adapted at the historical traditions of each society and made a natural junction with iliberalismul that now gives an ideological universal sense. This is the reason because it was quite natural that populism from Eastern Europe takes an illiberal turn and no an openly fascist orientation.
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.