%0 Journal Article
%T DAN DIACONESCU: THE POLITICS OF BREAD AND CIRCUSES
%A VALENTIN QUINTUS NICOLESCU
%A SABINA BASIUL
%J Challenges of the Knowledge Society
%D 2013
%I Nicolae Titulescu University of Bucharest
%X Founder and owner of two television stations, Dan Diaconescu found the opportunity to rise the electoral support for his anti-system party through media channels in the circumstances of a tumultuous political year and a bitterly personal power struggle between President Traian B sescu and Prime Minister Victor Ponta. He described the victory in the upcoming parliamentary elections as a start of the battle against the post-communist Romanian political class that impoverished the country. Through this battle lead by him and other members of his party, his  army of angels¡±1, Dan Diaconescu says he can liberate the Romanian people and install  people¡¯s dictatorship¡± that will punish all the political class for the injustices suffered by them. In a context of highly visible and influential populist discourse, this paper considers the self-representation of Dan Diaconescu and his People¡¯s Party ¨C Dan Diaconescu during parliamentary election campaign in 2012. First of all, a multi-methodological approach was adopted to examine the key elements of national populist discourse: antagonistic struggle between politicians and citizens, popular sovereignty, corruption of the political class and popular mobilization for political change. After that, I will examine how this Romanian form of populism represents the rival version of western representative democracy, the populist democracy specific to Latin America based on direct representation embodied by a leader or a party capable to symbolize the power of the people. Within this frame, I will try to analyse to what degree Dan Diaconescu¡¯s populism enrolls in the logic of Latin American populism instead of a cultural or ethnic populism dominant in Europe.
%K national populism
%K anti-system parties
%K populist discourse
%K People¡¯s Party ¨C Dan Diaconescu
%U cks.univnt.ro/uploads/cks_2013_articles/index.php?dir=3_Administrative_and_Political_Sciences%2F&download=cks_2013_administration_005.pdf