A STRANGE LAW IN COMPLICATED TIMES: RETRACING THE POLITICAL CONTEXT OF THE ROMANIAN ELECTORAL REFORM OF MARCH 1926

The Romanian Electoral Law of March 1926 embodied a surprising, uncanny, revolutionary, and controversial juridical innovation with a spectacular procedural trajectory. It was not designed to accurately detect and process the voters’ will, but to artificially produce comfortable monochrome parliamentary majorities in the Assembly of Deputies. Thus, it had a profoundly inequitable apportionment method. In a broad theoretical landscape, the particular perspective proposed by the present paper is that of reform as a product of its epoch. Therefore, we will try to reconstruct the complex political context of mid-1920s Romania as an essential puzzle piece for understanding some of the elements that determined the emergence of an unprecedented electoral algorithm. Both domestic and foreign policy issues will be discussed from a historical approach that starts with the fundamentals and goes to provide a more in-depth overview of the matter. Herewith, some areas of analysis somewhat undervalued by previous research endeavors will be addressed: the Romanian political thinking in the mid-1920s, the party system internal dynamics, the tumultuous events within the Royal House of Romania, the international relations, as well as the post-World War I evolution of the European political regimes.