Impaling Dracula: How EU Accession Empowered Civil Society in Romania

Parau, Cristina E.

doi:10.1080/01402380802509917

Cited by 52 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Local activists slowly achieved public exposure of problematical environmental issues of the project in a country with no traditional interest in environmental protection (Pop, 2014;Oldson, 1996). Only when the efforts of local activists received the financial support and technical expertise from international activists in mid-2002 did the controversy become significant (Parau, 2009). International organisations, such as Greenpeace, brought the case beyond national borders.…”

Section: -2004: Debates Around the Project Heated Upmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In late 2013, the commission recommended the law project to be rejected and the Chamber of Deputies did that in June 2014. Following a tendency towards a strengthening civil society in Eastern Europe (Parau, 2009), the civil society has increasingly questioned the state's role as a representative of public interests. Revealing the state's tendency to favour an economic one-sided perspective to solve the problems of the Roşia Montană region has emerged as an important role for activists.…”

Section: Aaaj 282mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They initiated numerous calls to state officials to stop the project but did not succeed in diminishing the state's supportive actions for RMGC. This may be indicative for a yet weak civil society, in a country undergoing profound transformations towards democratic institutions (Parau, 2009). Activists' insufficient pressure on state officials resulted in a 224 AAAJ 28,2 failure to substantially disturb the project's advancement.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In young democracies like Romania, civil societies are weak but social movements around highly controversial cases have the potential to empower citizens and strengthen civil society (Parau, 2009). Indeed, in recent years, Roşia Montană became one of the most significant social movements in Romania, eventually managing to take concrete action against the project.…”

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confidence: 99%

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A project for Romania? The role of the civil society’s counter-accounts in facilitating democratic change in society

Apostol

2015

Accounting, Auditing &Amp; Accountability Journal

107

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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to look more closely, in the context of a given case study, at the role of civil society’s counter-accounts in facilitating democratic change in society, as an essential goal of an emancipatory and radical social accounting project. Design/methodology/approach – A case study of a Canadian company’s plans to open a gold mine in western Romania is here analysed. Civil society’s opposition to the mining project gave rise to an unprecedented social movement contesting the project’s utility for Romanian society. The role played by counter-accounts produced by civil society groups is investigated. Findings – Counter-accounts produced by civil society played multiple roles in the case study analysed. First, counter-accounts indicated the failure of corporate reports to present the gold mining project in a balanced manner. Second, counter-accounts were successful in problematizing the corporate approach to addressing the social, cultural and environmental impacts of the project, while also nurturing societal debate on these issues. Third, counter-accounts exposed the ideological inclinations of state institutions to favour economic interests over the social, cultural and environmental ones. As a result of these contributions, even if the counter-accounts were subjective, this study claims that they form a good basis for the development of emancipatory accounting. Research limitations/implications – Limitations associated with an interpretative approach and case study research apply. Originality/value – The paper illustrates the potential of civil society’s counter accounts to enable societal debates, as means towards democratic, transformative change.

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Section: -2004: Debates Around the Project Heated Upmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Aaaj 282mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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A project for Romania? The role of the civil society’s counter-accounts in facilitating democratic change in society

Apostol

2015

Accounting, Auditing &Amp; Accountability Journal

107

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“…Analyses of the Europeanisation of interest groups or of the EU's impact on civil society organisations are still rare, but have started to grow strongly. There is some evidence that domestic civil societies were empowered through transnational networks in the context of EU conditionality (Fagan 2005;Forest 2006;Iankova 2009;Parau 2009Parau , 2010Perez-Solorzano Borragan 2004). Yet the overall picture is still one of weak civil societies in CEECs (Sissenich 2010) that are unable to benefit from the opportunity structure provided by EU membership, and where Europeanisation primarily empowered those groups that already had sufficient capacities (Börzel 2010;Börzel and Buzogány 2010a,b;Carmin and Fagan 2010;Fagan 2010;Kutter and Trappmann 2010).…”

Section: National Core Executives and Judiciariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Europeanisation in new member and candidate states

Sedelmeier¹

2011

Living Rev. Euro. Gov.

150

121

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The Europeanisation of candidate countries and new members is a rather recent research area that has grown strongly since the early 2000s. Research in this area has developed primarily in the context of the EU's eastern enlargement. A small number of theoretically informed book-length studies of the EU's influence on the Central and Eastern European candidate countries have provided a generalisable conceptual framework for this research area, drawing on the debate between rationalist institutionalist and constructivist institutionalist approaches in International Relations and Comparative Politics. This framework makes these studies highly compatible with analyses of the Europeanisation of member states, with which they also share one key empirical finding, namely that the impact of the EU on candidate countries is differential across countries and issue areas. At the same time, the theoretical implications of these findings appear more clear-cut than in the case of the Europeanisation of member states: rationalist institutionalism, with its focus on the external incentives underpinning EU conditionality and the material costs incurred by domestic veto players, appears well-suited to explaining variation in the patterns of Europeanisation in candidate countries. A very recent development within this research agenda is the focus on the Europeanisation of new member states. While the study of the EU's impact during the early years of membership was hitherto primarily a subfield of analyses of the Europeanisation of member states, it has now become an extension of studies of candidate countries by analysing the impact of accession on the dynamics of pre-accession Europeanisation and how durable and distinctive the patterns of candidate Europeanisation are in the post-accession stage.

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Local State-Society Relations in Romania

Stănuș

Pop²

2020

Close Ties in European Local Governance

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Impaling Dracula: How EU Accession Empowered Civil Society in Romania

Cited by 52 publications

References 43 publications

A project for Romania? The role of the civil society’s counter-accounts in facilitating democratic change in society

A project for Romania? The role of the civil society’s counter-accounts in facilitating democratic change in society

Europeanisation in new member and candidate states

Local State-Society Relations in Romania

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