Dr. Nicoleta Corbu and dr. Elena Negrea-Busuioc, Fulbright alumni from the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration in Bucharest, have co-authored (together with dr. Delia Balaban-Balas from Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca) a chapter that has been included in an edited book published as part of a COST-funded international research project. The volume (Aalberg, T., Esser, F., Reinemann, C., Strömbäck & de Vreese, C.H. (eds.). (2016). Populist Political Communication in Europe. New York: Routledge) gathers studies on populism in different countries, to which add introductory and theory-driven chapters on populist political communication. The book is a comprehensive and inclusive monograph of populist communication practices and particularities found in 23 European countries and Israel.

This book seeks to advance research in the field by focusing on three specific areas that are used to describe and explain populism and populist communication: populist actors, media and populism and citizens and populism. The chapter Populism in Romania: Ideology without Teeth discusses the emergence and the consolidation of populism in post-1989 Romania by means of comparison with established models of populism from Western Europe. Populism in Romania shares many features with populism in Western Europe; however, populist parties in Romanian seem to lack a clear ideological positioning between left and right, as is the case with many populist parties in the West; furthermore, Romanian populists, unlike the majority of their Western counterparts, are supporters of the European Union and of the integration project. From a communication point of view, populism in Romania seems to be quite successful in attracting the voters with a discourse loaded with emotions and symbolism. The authors of the chapter also offer an overview of the Romanian parties and politicians that have been scholarly labeled as populist in an attempt to better map the characteristics of populism in Romania onto the definitions and conceptualizations of populism in the literature.

Populist political communication in Europe (COST research project webpage)