States of contention: State-led political violence in post-socialist Romania

East European Politics and Societies

Volumn 19, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 40-75

  Gledhill, John ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

Contentious politics; Democratization; Miners; Political violence; Romania

Indexed keywords

EID: 20744449519     PISSN: 08883254     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0888325404271065     Document Type: Review

References (107)

1. Mineriadǎ is the (indefinite) singular form of the word. Mineriade is the (indefinite) pluralized form. The two terms shall be used in their appropriate mode where applicable throughout this article. There is no direct English translation; an approximate translation is "miners' attack(s)."
2. Jack Snyder, From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict (New York: Norton, 2000).
3. Use of the tag "post-communist" is, admittedly, contentious. A strong argument against continued use of the term is presented by Charles King in "Post-Postcommunism: Transition, Comparison, and the End of 'Eastern Europe,' " World Politics 53:3(2000): 143-72. While the redundancy of the term today is acknowledged, if we are to examine the broad relationship between political violence and democratization in the region during the early 1990s, then use of the tag in specific reference to the period of "transition" remains valid.
4. See Ion Bogdan Vasi, "The Fist of the Working Class: The Social Movements of Jiu Valley Miners in Post-Socialist Romania," East European Politics and Societies 18:1(2004): 132-57.
5. For the most recent incarnation of their argument, see Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, Dynamics of Contention (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
6. Contemporary works on contentious politics set the extrainstitutional political acts of social movements against the institutionalized politics of the state. See, for example, Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 2-3.
7. McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly, Dynamics of Contention, 5.
8. Gabriela Gheorghe and Adelina Huminic, "Istoria mineriadelor din anii 1990-1991," Sferǎ Politicii 67 (1999), http://www.dntb.ro/sfera/67/mineriade-5.html.
9. Simona Imireanu, "Romania in the 1990s: The Miners' Movements" (Master's thesis, University of Manchester, UK, 2000), 44.
10. Gheorghe and Huminic, "Istoria mineriadelor."
11. Gheorghe and Huminic, "Istoria mineriadelor." Ibid.
12. For a thorough treatment of the early stages of the Piata Universitǎtii protest, see Alina Mungiu, "Intellectuals as Political Actors in Eastern Europe: The Romanian Case," East European Politics and Societies 10:2(1996): 333-64.
13. Vladimir Tismaneanu, "Homage to Golania," New Republic, 30 July 1990, 16.
14. See also Mihnea Berindei, Ariadna Combes, and Anne Planche, Roumanie, le livre blanc: la réalit́ d'un pouvoir ńo-communiste (Paris: Editions la Découverte, 1990), 212-13.
15. The exact nature of those who forced entry into the television headquarters remains unclear. Although the FSN government claimed immediately after the events that the invaders had been the more belligerent of the "golani," eyewitness interviews conducted by Mihai Sturdza later suggested that former members of the Securitate had led this charge, with the knowledge and consent of the government. See Mihai Sturdza, "The Miners' Crackdown on the Opposition: A Review of the Evidence," RFE/RL Report on Eastern Europe 2:2(11 January 1991): 25-33.
16. Quoted in Imireanu, Romania in the 1990s, 21.
17. Katherine Verdery and Gail Kligman, "Romania after Ceausescu: Post-Communist Communism?" in Ivo Banac, ed., Eastern Europe in Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), 134.
18. Quoted in Vlad Flonta, "Valea Jiului: un caz atipic in economia româneascǎ," Sferǎ Politicii 67 (1999), http://www.dntb.ro/sfera/67/mineriade-4.html.
19. For an anthropological treatment of some of the social origins that fed into the later mineriade see Jack Friedman, "Ambiguous Transitions and Abjected Selves: Betrayal, Entitlement and Globalization in Romania's Jiu Valley" (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, Durham, NC, 2003).
20. Also see David Kideckel, "Storm and Stasis: the Paradox of Labor in Post-Socialist Romania," Journal of Transforming Economies and Societies 6:2(1999): 38;
21. and David Kideckel with Bianca Elena Botea, Raluca Nahorniac, and Vasile Soflâu, "A New 'Cult of Labor': Stress and Crisis among Romanian Workers," Sociologie Româneascǎ 1:1(2000): 142-61.
22. Vasi, "The Fist of the Working Class," 145-57.
23. Ruxandra Cesereanu, "O perspectivǎ jurnalisticǎ asupra mineriadelor," 22 672 (21 January 2003), http://www.revista22.ro/week/arhiva.php.
24. Andrei Cornea, "Imaginatie versus precedent," cited in
25. Cesereanu, "O perspectivǎ jurnalisticǎ asupra mineriadelor."
26. Andrei Cornea, "Vechi scenarii, actori noi,"
27. cited in Cesereanu, "O perspectivǎ jurnalisticǎ asupra mineriadelor."
28. Quoted in Flonta, "Valea Jiului: un caz atipic."
29. This kind of a psychological approach to understanding crowd behavior is most commonly associated with the works of Gustave LeBon. See, in particular, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (Dunwoody, GA: Norman S. Berg, 1968).
30. Dorel Abraham, "Post-Revolutionary Social Phenomena in Romania: The 'University Square' and Violent Collective Behavior on June 13-15th," Romanian Journal of Sociology 1:1(1990): 122-24.
31. Alina Mungiu, Românii dupa '89: istoria unei neînt elegeri (Bucharest, Romania: Humanitas, 1995), 189.
32. See, for example, România liberǎ, 24 June, 29 June, 7 September, and 24 November 1990.
33. See, for example, Berindei, Combes, and Planche, Roumanie, le livre blanc;
34. Mihai Sturdza, "The Miners' Crackdown";
35. and Ruxandra Cesereanu, "Fenomenul Piata Universitǎtii 1990," 22 687 (12 May 2003), http://www.revista22.ro/html/index.php?art=445&nr=2003-05-12. Although the involvement of the National Salvation Front (FSN) is now widely acknowledged, culpability is still denied by Iliescu - who remained president of Romania through November 2004. Iliescu's denial has received academic support from
36. Vladimir Pasti in The Challenges of Transition: Romania in Transition, trans. Fraga Cheva Cusin (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1997), 278.
37. Charles King, "The Micropolitics of Social Violence" (Unpublished paper, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, 2004), 10.
38. Stephen Crowley, Hot Coal, Cold Steel: Russian and Ukrainian Workers from the End of the Soviet Union to the Post-Communist Transformations (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 4-22.
39. Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency 1930-70 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), chap. 1.
40. Such an argument, known as the "relative deprivation" approach, is most closely associated with the work of Ted Gurr. See Why Men Rebel (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970) and
41. Minorities at Risk: A Global View Of Ethnopolitical Conflicts (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1993). For Kideckel's application of this line of thinking to the mineriade of the 1999, see
42. Kideckel, "Storm and Stasis";
43. and Kideckel et al., "A New 'Cult of Labor.' "
44. Kideckel et al., "A 'New Cult of Labor,' " 145.
45. McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly, Dynamics of Contention.
46. Doug McAdam, John D. McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald, eds., Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), Introduction.
47. Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965), 53-58.
48. Russell Hardin, Collective Action (Baltimore; JHU Press, 1982), 343.
49. Tarrow, Power in Movement, 119.
50. Ibid., 113.
51. Friedman, Ambiguous Transitions, chap. 4.
52. Imireanu, Romania in the 1990s, 36.
53. For a thorough treatment of the theoretical basis of this argument, see Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984). For a sociological application of a similar argument to the case of the Jiu Valley miners, see
54. Vasi, "The Fist of the Working Class," 139-43.
55. Thomas Kiel and Jacqueline Kiel, "The State and Labor Conflict in Post-Revolutionary Romania," Radical History Review 82 (2002): 14.
56. Maria Larionescu, Cosima Rughinis, and Sorin Radulescu, Cu ochii minerului (Bucharest, Romania: Gnosis, 1999), 193.
57. David Kideckel, "The Unmasking of an East-Central European Working Class," in C. M. Hann, ed., Postsocialism: Ideals, Ideologies and Practices in Eurasia (London: Routledge, 2002), 122-23.
58. Kideckel et al., "A New 'Cult of Labor,' " 147.
59. Expres 36 (September 1990), as cited in
60. Berindei, Combes, and Planche, Le livre blanc, 200.
61. Berindei, Combes, and Planche, Le livre blanc, 193.
62. Berindei, Combes, and Planche, Le livre blanc, 193 Ibid.
63. The author is grateful to an anonymous reviewer for this input.
64. Jack Friedman, Ambiguous Transitions, chap. 4.
65. McAdam, Political Process, xxv.
66. McAdam, Political Process, xxv Ibid., 43-48.
67. Kiel and Kiel, "The State and Labor Conflict," 15.
68. Flonta, "Valea Jiului: un caz atipic."
69. Pasti, The Challenges of Transition, 273.
70. Tismaneanu, "Homage to Golania," 17.
71. Berindei, Combes, and Planche, Le livre blanc, 198.
72. The Guardian, 21 June 1990.
73. Also, Washington Post, 20 June 1990;
74. and The Times, 21 June 1990.
75. Ronald R. Aminzade, Jack A. Goldstone, and Elizabeth J. Perry, "Leadership Dynamics and Dynamics of Contention," in Ronald R. Aminzade, Jack A. Goldstone, Doug McAdam, Elizabeth J. Perry, William H. Sewell Jr., Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, eds., Silence and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 127.
76. Helsinki Watch Report, Romania: Aftermath to the June Violence (New York: Helsinki Watch, 1991), 2.
77. Helsinki Watch Report, Romania: Aftermath to the June Violence Ibid., 19.
78. Helsinki Watch Report, Romania: Aftermath to the June Violence Ibid., 20.
79. Sturdza, "The Miners' Crackdown," 27.
80. Sturdza, "The Miners' Crackdown," Ibid., 31.
81. Berindei, Combes, and Planche, Le livre blanc, 213.
82. Tom Gallagher, "Ceauş escu's Legacy," National Interest 56 (Summer 1999): 196.
83. Sturdza, "The Miners' Crackdown," 28.
84. România liberǎ, 7 September 1990.
85. Sturdza, "The Miners' Crackdown," 28.
86. Cited in Berindei, Combes, and Planche, Le livre blanc, 209.
87. The origins of a focus on mobilization of resources for action can be traced to Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution (New York: Routledge, 1978); and
88. John McCarthy and Mayer Zald, "Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory," American Journal of Sociology 82:6(May 1977): 1212-41.
89. Jack Goldstone and Charles Tilly, "Threat (and Opportunity): Popular Action and State Response in the Dynamics of Contentious Action," in Aminzade, Goldstone, and Perry, Silence and Voice, 182.
90. Imireanu, Romania in the 1990s, 23.
91. Cited in Berindei, Combes, and Planche, Le livre blanc, 199.
92. Berindei, Combes, and Planche, Le livre blanc Ibid., 203.
93. This is an ongoing series of texts published by Cambridge University Press.
94. McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly, Dynamics of Contention, 5.
95. See Olson, The Logic of Collective Action.
96. The basis for this understanding is that people take to the streets when they "lack regular access to institutions." Tarrow, Power in Movement, 3.
97. On the weakness of post-communist civil society in Romania, see Freedom House, Nations in Transit: Romanian Country Report, 1990, www.freedomhouse.org;
98. and Marc Morjé Howard, The Weakness of Civil Society in Post-Communist Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
99. Such an arrangement is, in essence, in line with Adam Przeworski's definition of a consolidated democracy. See Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 25.
100. Taken from the Web site of the University of Strathclyde's Centre for the Study of Public Policy at http://www.cspp.strath.ac.uk/index.html?romelec.html.
101. Mary Ellen Fischer, "The New Leaders and the Opposition," in Daniel Nelson, ed., Romania after Tyranny (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1992), 50.
102. M. Weiner, "Democracy in Romania," in Levinia Stan, ed., Transition in Romania (Aldershot, UK: Dartmouth, 1997), 17.
103. Verdery and Kligman, "Romania after Ceauşescu," 138.
104. Pasti, The Challenge of Transition, 262-73.
105. This view of collective violence as merely "instrumental in nature" builds on the arguments of Hannah Arendt, who holds that violence is neither "brutal nor irrational" but a functional tool of social movements. See Hannah Arendt, On Violence (New York: HBC, 1969), 86.
106. A similar view of collective violence has more recently been articulated in David Laitin and Rogers Brubaker, "Ethnic and Nationalist Violence," Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998): 423-52.
107. David Meyer and Suzanne Staggenborg, "Movements, Countermovements and the Structure of Political Opportunity," American Journal of Sociology 100:6(May 1996): 1630.