Cătălin Augustin Stoica, “Our Martyrs of 1989 Did Not Die for This!”: Political Capitalism in Post-Communist Romania [Abstract]

As historical evidence shows, there are multiple roads to such different forms of capitalism as “traditional commercial capitalism” and “political capitalism.” And, following Weber, not all of these forms can trigger the long term stable economic growth associated with Western rational capitalism. Although previous sociological analyses have improved our understanding of post-socialism, they have generated more controversy than theoretical convergence. This is because, I contend, many sociological studies have neglected the political and historical aspects involved in the construction of markets in the former communist bloc. In this paper I discuss the features of political capitalism in post-communist Romania, a case that has been infrequently addressed by mainstream analyses of Central and Eastern Europe. Specifically, I analyze the rise of political capitalism as an effect of Romania’s communist and post-communist political-institutional histories.