The Challenges of Political Protest and Democratic Representation

The collapse of communism gave way to optimism regarding the potential for the development of a strong democratic political landscape, in terms of both the consolidation and stability of the party system and an active and diverse civil society. This chapter investigates these developments, with a focus on protest as a mechanism for political engagement. It argues that three and a half decades after the fall of Ceaușescu’s regime, the picture remains mixed in terms of political representation and democracy. A worrying tendency is represented by insurrectional protest—a protest that has its primary aim to topple elected governments—which undermines representative democracy. Given that civil society participation (and participation in protest) remains low and characteristic to a narrow demographic group of largely young, urban, educated people, representation gaps produced by insurrectional protest become more acute. This happens against the background of low electoral turnout, and low trust in key political institutions (political parties, parliament and government), which opens up a different representation gap. The result is a pattern of highly polarised and adversarial interactions between elected representatives and protesters (each with a narrow support base), which creates a significant crisis of representation and democracy. This crisis is further deepened by parliamentary parties that both represent their voters in the parliament and protest against the parliamentary structures they are part of.