FROM TV TO PARLIAMENT:
Populism and Communication in the Romanian 2012 Elections
Sergiu Gherghina
Sorina Soare
Department of Political Science
Department of Political Science
Goethe University Frankfurt
[email protected]
University of Florence
[email protected]
Paper prepared for delivery at the
XXVII Congress of the Italian Society of Political Science
University of Florence
12 – 14 September 2013
Introduction
There is a general consensus in the field of comparative politics that the Central and Eastern
European party systems are structurally unstable. They are characterized by a large number of
entries and exits thereby generating episodic appearances in the political space. New parties have
emerged in even once stable systems such as the Czech Republic or Hungary that have gained
access to the Parliament in their most recent elections. In this context, Romania has particular
features that make it a relevant case for analysis. First of all, note that populism had a history of
stability for two decades, with the political space divided among the same actors. In addition, after
1992, for twenty years no new parties gained seats in the legislature, although numerous exits
occurred. However, the November 2012 Romanian elections allowed a newly formed party to
enter parliament. Founded in 2011, the People's Party - Dan Diaconescu (PPDD) has rapidly
progressed from obscurity to the third position in the legislature with approximately 15% of the
votes. In this respect, the PPDD is a relevant case due to its ability to overcome institutional
obstacles such as the legal registration procedures, electoral system, or public funding (Gherghina
and Jiglau, 2012; Gherghina and Chiru 2013) and to mobilize a large share of the electorate when
competing against major mainstream parties and other populist competitors.
As already mentioned, Romania has an established tradition of successful populist parties
characterized by the personalization of their leadership (Gherghina and Mişcoiu, 2010; Soare
2012). The PPDD followed this same path and was formed as a personal party, strongly dependent
on the image and wealth of the founding leader, who is even identifiable in the party name. At the
same time, the party is characterized by particular features: it pursued neither the formation of a
membership organization (i.e. difficulties to field candidates in all constituencies) nor the
development of a compelling manifesto. Instead, it emerged on the bases of the leader’s private
business – a TV station (OTV) that had a double task. On the one hand, it produced infotainment
and cheap sensationalism broadcasting fortune tellers’ stories, mystery deaths, religious
revelations, or private scandals. On the other hand, OTV was used as the exclusive tribune to
promote the party and its candidates through an anti-establishment rhetoric combined with a
messianic image of the Saviour-leader. This mixture between media and politics has been a
successful experiment for the Conservative Party (PC), which became a pivotal actor in almost all
coalition governments since 2000. In that case, the media tycoon Dan Voiculescu created the party
in the 1990s and its political development has been largely conditioned by his media network.
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Major parties have asked the PC to join the government coalition in order to secure public visibility
and positive framing in the news.
In light of these features, it is unclear whether the PPDD succeeded in the legislative
elections due to its personalised character, business party features or both. This is the thin and
porous border on which this paper is developed in compliance with the SISP panel call of proposals
on the relationship between populism and, in our case, traditional media. While the Romanian
political arena is a prime example of the consolidated role of new media (Dumitru, 2010;
Holotescu et al., 2010), new communication technologies were peripheral to the PPDD success.
Our study aims to identify the determinants of the PPDD’s electoral success in 2012. In doing so, it
uses a qualitative approach that relies on public discourses, party documents, and media or NGO
reports made during the last two years.
The first section provides a brief overview of the literature dealing with the success of
populist parties. Next, we describe the formation and development of the PPDD with an emphasis
on its formation, ideology, elites, and membership. The third section analyzes the determinants of
the PPDD’s electoral success and argues that the exclusive-exposure of the candidates through the
party leader’s TV-station had a major effect on the electoral outcome. In this context, the two
factors contributing to the party’s electoral success were the emotional campaign style and the
dependency upon the leader. The final section summarizes the major findings and discusses the
implications of our study.
1. Mediatisation and personalisation: A breeding ground for populism?
Scholars generally agree on the influent role played by the media in framing political reality
(Campus 2000; Farrell and Webb 2000). This happens with relevant differences from case to case
due to the country-specific features of each media system; including the level of the public’s
dependence on the television news, the volume of campaign coverage, the diffusion of the
internet, or the characteristics of the election campaigns (Barisione, 2009: 478-479). The media
impact on the democratic settings is quite a new phenomenon. Pombeni (2009) recalls that while
in 1920 the French President Paul Deschanel accidentally fell during the night of the presidential
train without being recognized by its citizens, now this same scenario seems unimaginable. The
images spread through new and traditional media have transformed both local and national
politicians into easily recognizable individuals. Although this process can resemble other resources
of legitimacy (e.g. the personification of domination through easily recognizable images in the
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form of coins), it has an innovative side. The diffusion/dependence on these media-shaped images
is much more connected to the ensurement of visibility (within and outside institutional roles) and
less to the shared interest of (would-be) politicians to build a personal and, quite often, emotional
connections with the voters.
Nowadays, there is no (relevant) politician whose physiognomy is not known to a broader
audience (Pombeni, 2009). This recognition has been supported by the development of modern
communication tools and, in particular, the television by bringing politics’ faces and voices closer
to citizens (Campus, 2010: 220). Considering the mass media’s double role as both the crafter and
dispatcher of information (Altheide 1976), a virtual democratic agora has arisen (Pombeni, 2009)
that allows politicians to efficiently reach citizens during and between the elections. In the digital
age, the trend initially verified in the new century’s US presidential primaries was rapidly
reproduced in Europe where parties and their leaders often develop distinct websites.
Furthermore, party leaders’ popularity/visibility is promoted by widespread blogs and numerous
social networks profiles (Römmele, 2003; Gibson and Ward, 2009).
The personalisation of politics: from leader-centred to business parties
Within this context, the mediatisation of democracy provided part of the background in which a
parallel process occurred, namely the personalisation of politics and its bi-directional
developments: (1) increasingly leadership-centred elections and (2) party leadership increased
power resources and autonomy within the party (Poguntke and Webb, 2005a: 5). Beyond the
impact of the media, other explanatory frameworks emphasized general issues such as the
(de)nationalisation of the decision-making process and the growing complexity of the state.
Institutional explanations were also advanced in relation to the government’s systems, electoral
formulas, party laws, level of the elections, etc. In a correlated framework, emphasis was laid on
the evolution of the party loyalties and the erosion of structural cleavages (Swanson and Mancini,
1996; Farrell and Webb 2000; Poguntke and Webb, 2005b, Barisione, 2009). At the same time,
contingent factors were also considered due to the fact that exceptional situations of economic,
social or political crisis (or even collapses) are particularly favourable contexts for the visibility of
the persons (Barisione, 2009: 480-481).
When it comes to assessing the implications of these phenomena on the model of
representative democracy, the literature indicates a shift towards presidentialised political
processes in most contemporary democracies (Graetz and McAllister, 1987; Mughan, 2000;
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Poguntke and Webb, 2005b) with significant differences between parliamentary and presidential
regimes (Webb et al. 2012). This strong diagnosis is still partially contested by scholars such as
Karvonen (2010) whose conclusions support a more nuanced thesis in favour of a process of
personalization in media coverage while casting doubts about a consistent trend towards a
generalised personalisation (e.g. Belgium’s different path).
The complex blend between the power of image and the image of power (Pombeni, 2009)
with the correlated personalisation of politics has further challenged the mechanisms
characterising the functioning of the parties and party system. The increased leader-centred
electoral strategies have had a wide array of consequences ranging from the sense of an
“independent mandate” that provided leaders with a relevant (in)formal operating space in the
party organisation (e.g. the leadership-selection procedures), allowing the institutional rules to be
bypassed when organizing the management not only of the party but also of the executive branch
(Webb et al., 2012). A new category of “catch all leaders” is thus formed whose main features are
the aim of satisfying the expectations of the most varied and broadest audience (Pombeni, 2009).
Therefore, they are eager to subordinate their message and style to fit media requirements
(Campus, 2010: 221).
Under extreme conditions, the leader’s control over the party generates “personal parties”
that rely on the transplantation of an entrepreneurial organisation model to a new party in order
to guarantee clear objectives and rapid interventions (Calise, 2000: 77). Built on the Italian
experience of Forza Italia, this model relies on the media’s professional support of the private
business of the party founder with the opinion polls used not only as conduits of the political
message but as the content itself (e.g. the proof of the validity of the leader opinions). As such, the
personal party is simultaneously a media and business party (Calise, 2000: 77-81). Regarding the
latter, Hopkin and Paolucci (1999) developed the model of the business party, strongly influenced
by rational choice assumptions according to which political entrepreneurs offer their guidance in
exchange for an element of private “profit”. Accordingly, “the party, instead of being a voluntary
organisation with essentially social objectives, becomes a kind of ‘business firm’, in which the
public goods produced are incidental to the real objectives of those leading it” (Hopkin and
Paolucci, 1999: 311). The dependence on the leader and the private profit logic influences the
party’s organisation, which tends towards under-development with limited technical tasks often
externalized and limited grassroots membership. These organisational patterns together with the
prevalence of voters acting as ‘consumers’ becomes a source of instability. In fact, “its continued
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electoral survival is less predictable than that of a traditional party” (Hopkin and Paolucci, 1999:
333).
The progressive personalisation of politics has generated a complex hierarchy according to
which party leaders can be compared to the classic Greek gods. Contemporary politics places
political leaders above common citizens in virtue of their extraordinary qualities provided by their
(delegated) power while laying emphasis on the “normality” of their private life or of their
weaknesses, tensions or impulses (Pombeni 2009). Within this area, the impact of individual
leader evaluations on voting behaviour is, however, less consensual. There is the widespread
assumption within the core of the literature that within more-institutionalized party systems, both
politicians and voters are mainly loyal to their parties, while a higher degree of autonomy of
politicians and a personalisation of the vote is associated with more unstable party systems and
deficient democratic processes. Recent studies have made a nuanced interpretation of this
association, but the leaders’ impact on voters remains ambiguous. Within this area, political
psychology studies have identified different personality traits that tend to be positively assessed
by leftist and rightist voters respectively (Caprara et al. 2006 quoted by Campus 2010: 222).
Similarly, Bittner’s analysis (2011) pinpoints the relevance of stereotypes related to party-specific
personality strength perceptions among voters: rightist leaders are rated more positively in the
competence dimension, while left party leaders are more positively assessed in the character
dimension. In a parallel dimension, Curtice and Hunjan (2006) show that a leader’s evaluation has
a stronger impact on voting behaviour in presidential elections than in legislative elections. At the
same time, leadership evaluations are positively influenced by elections under majoritarian
electoral system in a two-party system. Karvonen’s (2010) research indicates a lower relevance of
leaders’ personalities and citizens’ assessments of political leadership in terms of votes and
electoral results. Bittner’s (2011) analysis on 35 election studies from seven countries with
different institutional settings between 1968 and 2006 reaches different conclusions: leaders
matter in vote choice, especially for those sophisticated voters who are more able to evaluate
leaders’ prospective performances. From this optimistic interpretation, the leader-centred vote is
associated with a positive contribution to the overall quality of the democracy process.
Populism matching personalisation
There is a similarity between populism and the intertwined process of personalisation and
mediatisation of politics. Despite a rich literature on the topic, populism remains “elusive and
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protean. It bobs up everywhere, but in many contradictory shapes (Ionescu and Gellner, 1969: 1).
Without dealing with the thorny issue of the populism’s Cinderella syndrome (Tarchi 2004) we use
a minimal definition according to which populism is “a political strategy through which a
personalised leader seeks or exercises government power based on direct, unmediated, uninstitutionalized support from large numbers of mostly unorganized followers” (Weyland, 2001:
14). The focus on personalised leadership (within the party and in the elections) is only one
dimension, other major elements are also present such as a voluntarily underdeveloped
organisation, the followers’ devotion, the discretionary rule of the party leader. Accordingly,
populist personalised parties represent an extreme form where the party organisation is
transformed into a political weapon strictly controlled by the leader who stays above the party.
Characteristically, on a model inspired by the ancient tribuni plebis, populist leaders build
their legitimacy on the claim that genuine democracy (according to a strictly etymological
definition) is at stake and their intervention will bring salvation in cases of unfair acts against the
contemporary plebs (Canovan, 1999: 3). Hence, almost by definition, it is not the party that
dominates the public discourse but the personality of the leader with a high degree of autonomy
to craft party programmes and to influence over the selection and appointment for elective offices
was reinforced by its up-grading effect on the party electoral support. Beyond the structural and
contingent determinant of the general trend towards the presidentialisation of the leadership in
contemporary parties (Poguntke and Webb, 2005a), the populist genus has been assimilated with
specific characteristics that further accentuate the leaders’ grip on the party either in terms of
popularity or organisation. Either through popular meetings or media, their leader plays the role
of the (exclusive) protagonist, simultaneously glorifying “the ordinariness of [their] constituents
and the extraordinariness of their leaders(hip)” (Taggart, 2000: 102).
Along these lines, the populist party leaders present themselves as “‘incarnations” of the
people’s culture; they are supposed to articulate the will of the people by “saying what people are
thinking”, by seeing through the machinations of the elites. They have the vision, the ability and
the interest “to provide simple, understandable solutions to the problems portrayed by the élites
as complex and intractable” (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2008: 7). As Tarchi (2003: 30) argues:
there is no doubt that a (populist) leader must show uncommon qualities in the eyes of his followers
in order to secure their trust but, at the same time, he must never make the mistake of showing
himself made of different ingredients compared to the common man; instead, his foremost ability
should be precisely that of suggesting to his followers that, in the end, he is like them, and still to
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know how to make a more appropriate use of the gifts that each member of the people potentially
has.
Thus, “the loyalty to the leader equals loyalty to the people. As a result, those within the party
who disagree with the leader tend to be swiftly branded as traitors and added to the list of the
‘enemies of the people’” (Tarchi, 2003: 30). He is the main connection to the people and is
tantamount to “the preference for direct personal representation over elaborated mediating
institutions” (Canovan, 1999: 14). On a similar note, Mény (2004: 370) claims that populist parties
tend to criticise the pre-eminence of the constitutionalist interpretation in modern democracy by
laying emphasis on the need to a return to a genuine “state of democracy”, in which “the people
have the first and last word on each issue”. Hence, less than a form of subordination of the party
and in general of the led (either as party organisation, party members or followers), there is a
single, homogenous political tribune coherent with the lack of interest in institutional constraints.
As such, the leader embodies the genuine mechanisms of representation, becoming a sort of
spiritual leader, provider of the correct interpretations of events or ideas. At this level, the
emphasis on their need to underline difference from the establishment reappears: populist
leaders exhibit a certificate of non-belonging to elite politics either in terms of (routine) roles or
with a physical appearance that does not indicate too much (intellectual) refinement (Hermet,
2001: 110). It is thus highly representative that populist leaders emphasize their similarity with the
voters by using a simple language (interspersed with direct, provocative, rough and even vulgar
vocabulary, sometimes sprinkled with voluntary grammar mistakes in order to better resemble to
the common people), appearance and way of life.
Considering the peripheral position of the populist parties in relation to the executive (see
the more or less porous cordons sanitaires) and their tight-knit relationship with the leader, the
classical concept of presidentialisation of the party leadership as developed by Poguntke and
Webb (2005a) seems to be less appropriate. Instead, the concept of Caesaro-partism better
captures the relationship between populist charismatic leaders and their parties. While, at a
glance, populist parties seem to comply with the general trend of leaders being more independent
than their parties. In this case, the leader exercises a complete and openly exhibited authority
over the party by virtue of his autonomous legitimacy along with a messianic twist.1
1
The image of populist leaders is regularly based on a mixture of true and forged qualities, compliant with what the
followers require. His/her legitimacy is regularly linked to their ability to reach large audiences of followers; he/she is
the beacon of hope; he/she emotionally reassures by proving both diagnoses and prescriptions.
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Based on an implicit hierarchy between party and leader, the Casesaro-partism we refer to
testifies that the leader/founder's increasing control over the party is activated through both
formal and informal mechanisms: the leader’s interpretations have priority in the party's internal
activities and give a fundamental input in its public behaviour. The party becomes a public
extension of the leader. As such, the Caesaro-partism refers not only to the personification of
power as a central element in contemporary political life (Farrell 1971 quoted by Poguntke and
Webb, 2005a: 1), but it also encompasses the party’s full adherence to a set of common values,
norms and projects interpreted exclusively by and for the leader. In this extreme form of
personalisation, although the party has legal autonomous legitimacy, it displays servility to the
leader. In doing so, its relevance in terms of electoral visibility, resources or public offices is only
acquired and granted through the intervention of the leader; potential discontent might
determine the loss of these advantages. Accordingly, the party becomes the leader’s private utility
geared to justify his/her values and interests in the public arena. In brief, although formally the
leader is “anointed” by the party on the basis that only he/she incarnates the public mission; the
leader’s power within the party is “natural” requiring neither justification nor control. The
authority of the political leader lies in the ability to represent and manage the party (i.e. provides
resources, controls its faces).
In brief, the leader is the “defender” of the party to such an extent that the party could not
exist without the leader’s approval (symbolic and material). As a direct consequence, the formal
and informal powers of the leader are reinforced at the expenses of the party’s. The following two
sections will investigate to what extent this is the case with the PPDD in Romania.
2. The PPDD’s formation and general features
The European experience ring the last half a century indicates that the emergence of populist
parties usually takes place around a strong charismatic leader and is associated with political,
economic or social difficulties. The formation of the PPDD follows this pattern. Founded in 2011 as
a reflection of Dan Diaconescu’s growing political ambitions, the party gained visibility from the
highly mediatised judicial problem of its leader. Diaconescu was imprisoned and released in the
absence of substantial evidence. Based on this episode, his entire discourse was framed around
the conspiracy of the state against an ordinary Romanian citizen who was not guilty of any crime.
In general, the PPDD appears to be the by-product of its founder’s private wealth and of an
intimate connection with the world of media. As a consequence, the party was staffed with
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persons under professional contracts with the party leader. For example, Diaconescu’s private
lawyer became the leader of the parliamentary group in the Chamber of Deputies, while the host
of an OTV show became the leader of the parliamentary group in the Senate.
In addition to the existence of a strong leader, the PPDD was formed as a voice against the
economic and political instability in the country. The financial crisis had a deep and lasting effect in
Romania. The coalition government between December 2009 and February 2012 launched
austerity measures that greatly affected the population. The measures revealed structural
weaknesses that have already placed Romania as the second poorest country among the EU
Member States. The existence of new economic hardships was combined with the older problems
of widespread perception of corruption, general disenchantment with democracy, or low levels of
trust in the domestic political institutions (Gherghina, 2010). Formed in a shaky environment, the
PPDD continued to benefit from the political instability that emerged when the presidential party
left the government coalition after two votes of no confidence in three months. This co-habitation
led to severe institutional clashes (Gherghina and Miscoiu, 2013) that allowed the PPDD to use a
populist discourse oriented against the entire political elite in the typical form of “us vs. them”.
Such a discourse involves a constant mix of policies that lacks consistency and is quite
vague. To illustrate these claims, we use several examples from the manifesto prepared for the
2012 legislative elections. In economic terms, the PPDD advocates less taxes for the population
but aims for a heavier state involvement (state owned enterprises, market regulation) and
expenditures (including those related to the private sector). It promotes less revenue for the state
budget as well as increased spending. The absence of coherent policies leads to major
contradictions. Corruption and clientelism are among the favourite themes of the party, in part
due to the conditions in which it emerged. While no measures are proposed to address these two
problems, they were identified in areas ranging from the political arena to border control to
football. However, when extensively discussing the first point of the manifesto – each Romanian
citizen older than 18 was to receive 20,000 € - the mechanism is purely partisan. The party
elaborated an algorithm to calculate which priority is given to party members and citizens
belonging to areas where the local or central representative belongs to the PPDD.
In a similar way, the nationalist card is not always played in a consistent manner. Overall,
the PPDD displays a clear tendency to present itself as a representative of all Romanians, who is
returning the country to its citizens. Along these lines, emotional appeals are mentioned in the
manifesto, e.g. it mentions key figures from Romanian history or culture. Another strategy is to
9
cultivate a nationalist feeling by introducing a law that allows punishment for all those who speak
against the country. Another point of the manifesto refers to the (re)unification with the Republic
of Moldova, an older dream of Romanian nationalists. Next to these clear messages, the PPDD
does not support the idea of Romanians in key positions when it comes to reforms. Points 49-51 in
the manifesto emphasize the necessity of bringing foreigners to the border control points (Fins), as
Ombudsman (American), and as the head of the Internal Revenue Service (Germans).
The heterogeneity that characterizes the PPDD in terms of the above mentioned policies is
also visible with respect to the organizational structure and candidates. The organizational
structure before elections included the party’s central office as well as the party in the field (i.e.
territorial branches and number of members). 2 Following the suggestions of its leader and
founder, in January 2012 the party congress decided on the structure and composition of the
central office. Diaconescu did not want to be president of his party and supported another
candidate, Simona Man, who he introduced as the niece of Alexandru Averescu. The latter was a
general who founded the People’s Party in 1920 (formerly known as the People’s League) and thus
Diaconescu tried to legitimize the historical roots of his party. The first-vice-president was
considered to be the second position in the party. This was occupied only for one year and three
months because in May 2013 the person in charge was dismissed from the party after negotiations
with the social democrats; currently, the PPDD has no first-vice-president. The general secretary, a
large number of vice-presidents, and the president of the youth organization are the rest of
positions in the central office.
In the field, the party developed swiftly and in less than half a year after its formation the
PPDD had territorial organizations in almost all of the Romanian counties (i.e. territorial
administrative division of the country) and in a large number of cities and towns. A few months
later, in the June 2012 elections, the party fielded candidates in many constituencies and managed
to become third at the national level with almost 9% of the votes. While the territorial
organizations broadly covered the country, the actual number of members remains problematic.
According to PPDD’s official statement, the membership organization reached 1,000,000 members
a few days after the January 2012 congress.3 This sharply contrasts with the figures presented in
the official registry of political parties where the membership organization of the PPDD is 31,929
(RTV, 2012a). The statements of the territorial branches support the official figures more than the
2
The typology with the three faces of the party belongs to Katz and Mair (1994).
More details and a video are available at www.politicalocala.ro/adeziunea-cu-numarul-1-000-000-la-partidulpoporului-s-a-inregistrat-la-ploiesti.html, last accessed 27 July 2013.
3
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numbers declared by the party. For example, two months before the January 2012 congress the
PPDD organization in the Gorj county – the constituency where Diaconescu ran against the primeminister in the legislative elections – declared that it had 3,000 members (PPDD website, 2013).
This is illustrative since Gorj was one of the most supportive constituencies for the PPDD.
The PPDD elite is a mixture of Diaconescu’s personal network and individual or small group
migrants from other political parties. The promotion of people belonging to the first category
(personal contacts) to key positions in the party was already discussed. A consistent group of
experienced politicians from other parties joined the PPDD in the months before the elections.
Many of these were incumbent members of Parliament (MPs) who were sure about their parties’
refusal to nominate them once again as candidates. Journalists noted that one third of the
candidates fielded by the PPDD in the legislative elections – 115 out of 446 – had experience in
other political parties (Chiruta and Bogdan, 2012). Many of these candidates got elected so that
out of the 68 PPDD MPs, half were active in at least another political party; the switching record
was held by one MP being a member of five different political parties between 2008 and 2012
(Biro, 2012).
All of these features indicate that the party was born overnight due to contextual features,
had weak organizational structures, has and continues to have low membership rates, and
practically “borrowed” the political elite of the other competitors. In spite of these traits, the party
gained a large amount of support that allowed it to enter the legislature. How was this possible?
One explanation that can be offered is that the PPDD had no competitors for its populist discourse.
The two political actors with a similar profile were not real threats. The Greater Romania Party
(PRM) did not recover from its 2008 failure to gain parliamentary representation, whereas the
leader of the New Generation Party (PNG) ran under the label of the liberals (PNL). However, the
explanatory power of this variable is limited since the two parties together gained 5.5% of the
votes in the 2008 elections. Consequently, the following section explains the PPDD’s electoral
success as a combination of personalization and media access.
3. Visual media and electoral success
Our previous arguments indicated that the PPDD emerged to fuel its leader’s political ambitions.
For one decade, between the OTV launching in 2001 until the PPDD formation in 2011, Diaconescu
proved to be a successful media entrepreneur. As an experienced journalist, his choice to use a TV
station as his main vehicle for visibility and popularity was not accidental but matched the
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consumer profile and public demands. The staging of provocative collective events or individual
performances to get the attention of media and voters has been a trademark of the Romanian
transition to democracy. It began with the 1989 events that “fit” the television formats and
became an efficient tool to mobilize voters. Over time, Romanian society has remained highly
attached to the TV-based information. In spite of relevant credibility issues and increased
politicization, more than 80% of the population declares television to be their main information
source (FreeEx Report, 2011). In addition to this high level of visual media consumption, the
demands of the Romanian public are quite straightforward: people have always shown interest in
spectacular topics. The OTV matched their expectations and set a one-man show led by the owner
– Dan Diaconescu Live – to address a broad range of topics ranging from mystery crimes to wide
international conspiracy theories. Broadcasted on a daily basis, this show had a variable length,
starting late in the evening without having a pre-established end.
Paving the way to politics
With this strategy, the OTV has attracted a significant number of viewers and by 2008 it has
become the third most popular channel in Romania (ziare.com, 2008). In this period Diaconescu
imposed himself in the eyes of the public as a creative agent of representation of post-communist
challenges. At the same time, he was the promoter of a unique communication style based on
improvisation and controversy. In addition, the language he used was simple, colloquial and
sometimes very close to slang. In light of these traits, the term OTV-sation was coined to refer to
the transformation of any type of information into a live show where people “visibly gesticulate,
scream, use a colourful language and make grammar mistakes”, people with whom the viewer can
easily identify (Gandul, 2009). The success story is summarized by Diaconescu himself:
That’s the Romanian people. I try to downgrade the level of the discussion as much as possible
during TV transmission; otherwise people do not understand. This is what politicians failed to
understand and they lost. I remember that one night I said something about "last week-end" (n.a. –
week-end used in English in the original). People sent me a bunch of messages: "Dan, we love you,
you are the best, but what did you mean with week-end?" Since then, I have used only the end of the
week (Gandul, 2009).
This targeting of a low-profile audience (i.e. poorly educated, mostly those negatively impacted by
the transition) took place simultaneously with the promotion of Diaconescu’s personality. The
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strategic use of self-presentation focused on an image of normality from his private life; this
counterbalanced the aggressive style of his TV show. Diaconescu portrayed himself as a mix
between the image of a simple person (e.g. Mr. Dan for his collaborators and audience), a genuine
Romanian, and a successful business-man. His shows not only conveyed his view on how to
interpret the problems of the Romanians, but also identified the available solutions. In addition,
he has always advertised his openness to the public demands. In this respect, the most prominent
actions always involved the viewers in the OTV broadcast. They decided the topics, the rhythm,
and duration of the shows. Diaconescu clearly outlined his philosophy: “I do the show seven days a
week, ten hours a day. How could I stop at midnight, go to bed and lose 4% of the Romanians who
watch me? I stay up until 4 AM, when they go to bed. We close with the last customer!” (Gandul,
2009). This approach brought Diaconescu relevant personal benefits, i.e. visibility and private
wealth estimated to be 26 million € in 2011 (Simina, 2011) and transformed the OTV into an
attractive arena that hosted important political leaders such as the country president, prime
minister or capital’s mayor.
Following these developments, the official entry into politics was only a matter of time.
Diaconescu took advantage of his temporary arrest in 2010 to provide the public with a new
conspiracy theory oriented against him as a critic of the system. Hoping to transform the OTV
audience into electoral supporters, he placed emphasis on his abilities to identify problems,
provide solutions, and implement them. Everything was personal in Diaconescu’s decision to get
into politics: starting with the reasons behind the formation of a party to the sacred dimension of
an expected salvation (Mutler, 2012) in which he proclaimed himself, 2 years before the 2014
Presidential elections, the next Romanian President).
A Caesaro-party: between pragmatism and opportunism
So far, we have showed how the involvement in politics has been an addendum to the
professional career of Diaconescu. This sub-section illustrates how the media-entrepreneur
became a political leader who played the central role in a) establishing the party structures and
mobilizing electoral support and b) conveying the programmatic discourse. Starting with the
former, the party organization was built by transforming parts of the audience into followers and
party members (Chiruta and Rachitam, 2012). This was necessary since the legal provisions require
25,000 members originating in almost half of the counties, i.e. the territorial-administrative
divisions of the country (Law 14/2003). However, this bottom-up structure created as an answer
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to the appeal of the leader was only sufficient for the initial phase of party formation. An
important task for the party was to field candidates for the 2012 local elections and this was the
moment where the initial audience-centred approach was no longer useful. The quest for suitable
candidates – with popularity and financial resources – led to different recruiting strategies. One of
the most popular strategies was the import of local politicians from other parties who brought
financial and symbolic benefits to the party. The same pattern was followed in recruiting
candidates for the legislative elections when the PPDD attracted political elites belonging to other
parties with limited opportunities for re-nomination.
This approach was officially explained as a consequence of the institutional obstacles.
Newly emerged parties like the PPDD did not have access to public funding for the electoral
expenditures. Hence, it was an externally conditioned necessity to recruit parliamentary
candidates with different ideological backgrounds outside the original organization (Ilie, 2013).
The development of the PPDD organization was long perceived by the party leader as the main
liability. Diaconescu has often complained about how expensive a territorial organisation is and
emphasized that the other parties can afford to pay for professional consultancy. The official
discourse praised dilettantism, spontaneity and improvisation as cheap solutions adopted by the
party of the common people. Although the symmetry between the leader and the common people
is the official element of rhetoric, hierarchy had its relevance too. In a 2011 interview, Diaconescu
praised the local involvement of “colleagues” that used their private wealth to “do something at a
local level, to be a smaller Dan Diaconescu” (Tabacu and Teodorescu, 2011). The unofficial version
is that the financial benefits brought by candidates were not necessary only for the party, but
ended up in the leader’s pockets. Candidates had to pay an important amount of money to run
under the PPDD label. The journalists who conducted a fake negotiation with Diaconescu revealed
that the price for a candidate was 50,000 € (Biro, 2012). Similarly, some PPDD local leaders
acknowledged that Diaconescu asked them to recruit candidates who have more than 20,000 € in
their accounts (RTV, 2012b).
With respect to his speeches, the leader provided the necessary programmatic references
in tone with the crude and simplistic style of the OTV infotainment. This was a mixture of anticorruption slogans and nationalistic values that coexist with contradictory economic stances (see
the previous section on ideological fuzziness). The ideas that nurtured the programmatic identity
were derived from the leader’s own experiences with what he called in general the abuses of the
system and in particular the judicial system. Diaconescu’s experiences were transformed into
14
powerful symbols of the fight against the system, the elites, and the establishment. In an interview,
he agreed with the definition of his party as an anti-system one, slightly amending its significance:
“Many analysts say I am an anti-system party. And this is correct. But do not forget that I am the
victim of the system” (Tabacu and Teodorescu, 2011).
In conveying Diaconescu’s messages, the role of his visual media outlet played an essential
role. The party was advertised even before its official formation. The fines imposed for illegally
conducting its electoral campaign were interpreted as proof of the obstacles invented by a
corrupted and inefficient system against honest people and their future representatives.
According to this view, the leader, the party and the audience were victims that should gather
their discontent in a common voice. The latter could best develop in the environment provided by
the OTV studios where the candidates for the 2012 elections echoed a platform familiar to the
traditional OTV audience. Contrary the other TV stations where parties and their candidates could
not (fully) control the interaction with the journalists, the OTV provided a consensual and
flattering support arena for the PPDD candidates. In addition, on the party's internet website, one
of the few available links was to the OTV live or recorded broadcasts. Consequently, since the
leader was the owner of the TV station he could easily control the way himself and his candidates
were presented to the voters. This exclusive publicity hid the heterogeneity of the party
organizations and lists of candidates. Instead, it enhanced a strong personalization of the PPDD
formation and electoral campaign. The latter was mainly about voting for Diaconescu, his personal
qualities and interpretations of politics. The eponymous party label, adopted after the avatars of
the registration procedures between 2010 and 2011, promote the leader as a value per se, as the
very incarnation of the people’s will. It was exactly this aspect that was emphasised in the 2012
electoral campaign. Significantly the party website opened with a leader-centred slogan:
Romanian, free yourself! Vote Dan Diaconescu’s angels! (Website PPDD, 2012). The messianic
position of the party leader was extended to its candidates. Another relevant slogan was: Dan
Diaconescu makes the people speak! Once again, the leader was presented as the trustworthy
voice of the genuine people; his honesty became the solution for all societal problems.
In line with the previously discussed concept of Caesaro-papism, Diaconescu has become
not only the main face of the party and the source of its identity, but also a tutor of the party. The
latter could not exist without the leader’s material and symbolic involvement. The deriving
emphasis on the Saviour character of the leader reinforces his legitimacy as being “beyond the
party”, granted directly by the people (equated with the OTV viewers). While the spontaneous and
15
dilettante characteristics of the party were publically defended as proof of the “noncontamination” from the system/establishment, on the eve of the 2012 elections the extent of the
leader’s full control over the internal decision-making process was illustrated by the pragmatic
compromises over candidate selection and campaign funding that completely ignored the
grassroots’ reticence.
In brief, Diaconescu’s autonomy within the party activities and in the electoral arena has
generated a complex over-personalization intensely promoted by the OTV studios and the PPDD’s
website. The entire electoral campaign was meant to fit the visual formats of the OTV-centred
campaign and the content of Diaconescu’s speeches for more than a decade. The central elements
have been the fight against a corrupt system and the defence of the national values and common
people. Under these conditions, the PPDD was deprived ex ante of its capacity to provide a
counterpoint to the personal interpretation provided by the leader; it could not challenge his
complete control over the three faces of the party. Consequently, the party was created at the
service of the leader: the personal and business dimensions overlap, becoming a full dependence
of the party on the leader's inputs.
Conclusions
This paper has analyzed the case of the PPDD, a newly emerged political party in Romania with a
relevant electoral support in the 2012 legislative elections. We have tried to understand its
political development and electoral success departing from an identification of the theoretical
types of personal and business parties. The qualitative study of the PPDD’s recent history
illustrates that the party is a mixture of these types. It was not formed as the political expression
of clearly identified social groups. It reflected the interest of a media entrepreneur who aimed to
achieve goals that are hard to reach outside politics (e.g. influence). The PPDD emerged as a catchall electoral machine and not as a social project. Thus, it is not surprising that its origins and source
of authority can always be traced back to the leader. As the same time, the PPDD was heavily
dependent on the financial and media professional support of the leader’s private business. In this
respect, the OTV has fostered the elite's recruitment and ensured mediatisation during the
electoral campaign.
The strong control held by Diaconescu over the party organization and communication
strategies allowed him to establish a particular equilibrium between personal dominance and a
business approach. This is what we called Caesaro-partism and corresponds to a situation in which
16
the leader is autonomous from the party, where he not only has a pragmatic and openly exhibited
authority by virtue of his private business but also a moral authority. The financial dependence on
the leader’s private wealth further accentuates his authority, status and prestige. Contestations
are rare and depicted as hostile and often in central or public office the party acts to maximize the
leader’s utility. In such a context, the party organization is less relevant than the leader.
Although we are dealing with a single-case study, the main theoretical contribution of this
paper consists in identifying a relevant overlap between personal and business investments in
politics. The concept of Caesaro-partism might have broader applications to post-communist
settings and, more in general, transitional contexts in which party system are still porous to new
political entrepreneurship. It may become a useful framework for the analysis of organisational
and electoral effects on the personalisation of politics in extreme cases. At the same time, it can
be applicable to study the influence of populist attitudes on parties formed as appendixes of
successful businessmen. Like in the Romanian case, the open question concerns the relationship
between these parties and the overall quality of democracies where images and personal
interpretations tend to prevail over social structural projects.
Considering the young age of this party, its political stability and relevance are difficult to
assess. As far as this analysis is concerned, the television still explains short-term electoral gains. In
this respect, it opened the grounds for a comparative analysis of the newly emerged parties in
post-communist Europe. Accordingly, further research could investigate the existence of common
patterns of development that look closer at the relevance of the media. At the same time, future
studies could remain focused on the single-case of the PPDD and assess the impact of structural
(i.e. the 2013 amendments of the Constitution, MPs floor-crossing) and contextual (i.e. oscillation
in leader’s popularity) opportunities in shaping the political future of the party and of its leader.
17
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