Resistance to change: Romania’s debate over territorial reforms

This paper examines the evolution of debates about territorial reforms in Romania in the first two decades after the fall of Communism. It suggests that the debate was shaped mainly by the choices made by political elites in positioning their parties in relation to ‘post-Communism’ and the ‘Hungarian issue’. Critically, territorial reform rapidly ceased to be a tradable political asset in coalition building for the Democratic Union of Hungarians (UDMR). In recent years debate about territorial reforms has been influenced more heavily by exogenous factors (notably the desire to gain accession to the EU).