War of Words: Securitizing Democracy in Romanian Politics

Played on the background of economic austerity, the 2012 political crisis in Romania has worried domestic, European and global elites alike, due to its virulence and discourse of existential threats. President Basescu framed the political and legislative measures passed by Parliament as an “attack to Romanian democracy,” an assault on “the rule of law” and “democracy under threat,” while his opponents also presented themselves as champions of freedom, ridding the country of the “dictatorial regime” of Traian Basescu, "saving" Romania. This paper investigates the 2012 political crisis in Romania through the prism of securitization theory, tracing the mutual construction of political opponents as threats to democracy and the uses of "Europe" in the construction of these discourses.

This paper relies on Romanian crisis to showcase the ordering power of securitization, whereby the securitizing discursive arsenal appeals to a number of past and present threats to build up the case for securitizing the referent object (nation, political order).  The historical Russian threat, the exit from the European Union, as well as references to communist authoritarianism are established metaphors and past threats whose relevance was harnessed in making the case for current securitization of democracy. Securitization in this context does not just produce a fusion of pasts and present threats, but also ranks them, forming a pyramid of threats. Hence, the danger to democracy trumps economic or other types of threats, which are replaced or subsumed into the wider discourse of threats.