The role of founding elections in shaping the Romanian party system. Electoral clarity versus the failure of party in government (1990-2014)

25 years after the first competitive elections, the Romanian party system still exhibits high levels of discontinuity between electoral competitions and governmental functioning. Despite the ongoing party consolidation process, the Romanian party system reveals the persistence of two main tensions, which explain the failure in transforming party system stabilization in institutional routinization. The first paradox concerns the disconnection between the increasing clarity of electoral choices (e.g. decrease in the electoral fragmentation) and the political instability (high electoral volatility and more importantly, higher levels of government instability). Second, despite the concentration of votes on a limited number of actors and the elite quasi-professionalization, the Romanian parties continuously fail in selecting reliable party servants. The high levels of parliamentary, governmental and local party switches suggest the party inability in organizing the party in public office.