Ethnic or multi-ethnic parties?

Party competition and

legislative recruitment in Moldova

Oleh Protsyk and Ion Osoian

ECMI Working Paper #47

March 2010

EUROPEAN CENTRE FOR M INORITY ISSUES (ECM I)

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ECMI Working Paper #47
European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI)
Director Tove H. Malloy

© Copyright 2010 by the European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI)

Published in March 2010 by the European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI)

2
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ECMI Working Paper #47

European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI)

3
 Securing adequate representation of minorities in institutions of the state is commonly
described in the literature as an important mechanism for addressing issues of ethnic tensions
in culturally diverse societies1 . A proportional electoral system is generally perceived as more
friendly for representation of minority interests than a majoritarian single member district
system2 . The introduction of the former system in a number of post-communist countries
encouraged institutionalization of ethnic minority parties. These parties became a permanent
part of the political landscape in South Eastern European countries such as Bulgaria and
Romania3 .
Moldova, which is also often classified as belonging to the same geographic region,
did not witness the emergence of electorally successful minority parties. This is despite the
fact that proportional representation (PR) rules were introduced from the very start of the
post-independence transition and competitive politics evolved under conditions of high levels
of ethnic mobilization. Ethnic parties did not succeed even though political competition in
Moldova was relatively unconstrained by authoritarian practices employed throughout the rest
of the former Soviet Union. In terms of one frequently cited indicator, the Freedom House
index of democratic freedoms, Moldova performed better during most of the post-communist
4
period than any other post-Soviet successor state with the exception of the Baltic republics.
This paper attributes the lack of minority party institutionalization in the Moldovan
case to the success of political entrepreneurs engaged in constructing political organizations
capable of winning multi-ethnic support. These entrepreneurs have drawn on the resources
and legacies of the Soviet period in order to compete successfully for societal support in a
new democratic environment and in a new country where approximately 24% of the citizens
found themselves belonging to an ethnic minority population. In addition to having invested
in the development of programmatic profiles attractive to multi-ethnic constituencies, they
effectively implemented recruitment policies intended to build genuinely multi-ethnic
political organizations. The paper examines a key element of these policies – legislative
recruitment. As has been argued in the literature, legislative recruitment is an important

1
P. Norris, "Ballots Not Bullets: Testing Consociational Theories of Ethnic Conflict, Electoral Systems, and
Democratization", in A. Reynolds (ed.) The Architecture of Democracy: Constitutional Design, Conflict
Management and Democracy (Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York 2002), 206-248.
2
A. Lijphart, "Constitutional Design for Divided Societies", 15 Journal of Democracy (2004), 96-109.
3
J.K. Birner, Ethnicity and electoral politics (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007 ; W. Crowther,
"Romania", in S. Berglund, J. Ekman and F.H. Aarebrot (eds.) Handbook of Political Change in Eastern Europe
(Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 2004).

4
aspect of the political process which affects both popular perceptions of the legitimacy of the
political system and substantive policy outcomes generated by the political process 5 .
The paper first discusses the country‟s unexpected choice of the PR electoral system at
the start of the transition and the effects that this choice had on the strategies of political
parties and on electoral outcomes. It then turns to examining the patterns of legislative
recruitment and to comparing the ethnic profile of parliamentary deputies elected through the
lists of political parties belonging to the different ideological families. The disputed nature of
the ethnic affiliation of deputies belonging to a titular group, which is an interesting
phenomenon specific to the Moldovan case, is addressed next. The effects that recruitment
strategies of electorally successful parties had on the overall level of minority representation
in the national parliament are discussed in the final section of the paper.

Electoral system and party building in Moldova

Moldova‟s choice of electoral system was unusual in the post-Soviet context. This
country case illustrates how a specific political context rather than interests and preferences of
politicians in charge of drafting electoral laws can shape the design of electoral institutions6 .
The country‟s first fully free and competitive parliamentary elections, which were held in
1994, used the PR formula for seat allocation7 . The country was designated into a single
electoral district in which parties competed on the basis of closed lists and were required to
cross the 4% electoral threshold in order to gain parliamentary representation. All other
Western Commonwealth of Independent states (CIS) countries, as well as all other post-
Soviet states excluding Estonia and Latvia, opted for a mixed-member or single-member
district (SMD) system. Political forces that dominated the transition in post-Soviet republics
preferred the latter types of electoral system primarily due to the fact that this system builds

4
The Freedom House index registered a decline in Moldova's democratic standards since 2005. See: Moldova,
available at: http://www.freedomhouse.hu/images/nit2009/moldova.pdf , last accessed 30 June 2009.
5
P. Norris, Passages to Power: legislative recruitment in advanced democracies (Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge (1997) ; H. Best and M. Cotta, Parliamentary representatives in Europe, 1848-2000: legislative
recruitment and careers in eleven European countries (Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2000);
W. Crowther and I. Matonyte, "Parliamentary elites as a democratic thermometer: Estonia, Lithuania and
Moldova compared", 40 Comparative Political Studies (2007), 281-299.
6
S. Birch, F. Millard, M. Popescu, K. Williams, Embodying democracy: electoral system design in post-
Communist Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2002) ; O. Shvetsova, "Endogenous Selection of
Institutions and Their Exogenous Effects", 14 Constitutional Political Economy (2003), 191-212.
7
W. Crowther and S.D. Roper, "A Comparative Analysis of Institutional Development in the Romanian and
Moldovan Legislatures", in D.M. Olson and P. Norton (eds.), The New Parliaments of Central and Eastern
Europe (Frank Cass, London, 1996), 133-160; W. Crowther, "The Politics of Democratization in Post-

5
on the personalistic ties and networks which characterized much of later Soviet politics. At
the same time, parties were at a very early stage of development and societal support for
introducing a PR electoral system which would have favored parties was rather weak.
These general circumstances of the post-Soviet transition were also applicable to
Moldova. The record of this early period reveals heated debates about various draft laws
favoring a mixed-member or PR electoral system. The reason why PR was chosen was due to
the political need to have an electoral formula that could give at least a possible option of
electoral participation for citizens in the secessionist region of Transnistria. This consideration
was connected to the most salient issue on the political agenda of that period, the secessionist
conflict in Transnistria. The authorities of this breakaway region had almost complete de facto
control of the area by the end of 1992 and would have been able to prevent parliamentary
elections based on an SMD system. Introducing a PR system with a single national district
was thus seen by the Moldovan politicians as a way of avoiding an explicit acknowledgement
of the loss of Moldova‟s sovereignty over a part of the country‟s territory. PR was the
electoral system which would allow citizens from the Transnistria region to participate in
elections by casting their votes in locations controlled by the central government. Although
opinion polls show that a large proportion of citizens (70-80%) were in favor of electing
deputies in single-member districts, various attempts to conduct a referendum or to pass a law
on the introduction of a SMD or mixed-member system have not been successful.
The secessionist conflict shaped deliberations about the electoral law in another
important way. By the time the drafts of the electoral law were debated in the Moldovan
parliament in 1993 a large number of Transnistrian deputies had left the parliament. The
preferences of a majority in this group, which included a large number of state enterprise
directors, were in line with those law drafters who favored a personalistic and candidate
centered electoral system. The passage of the PR version of the electoral law was therefore
facilitated by the departure of these members of parliament.
The main provisions of the electoral law remained the same throughout the post-
communist period.8 The electoral threshold requirements, however, saw a number of
important modifications. The electoral threshold for individuals parties was raised to 6 % in

Communist Moldova", in K. Dawisha and B. Parrott (eds.), Democratic Changes and Authoritarian Reactions in
Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997), 282-330.
8
Independent candidates are also allowed to run in the elections but their position is clearly disadvantaged.
They face stricter registration requirements and need to gain 3% of the national vote to enter the parliament. See
O. Protsyk and I. Osoian, "Moldova: Party Institutionalization in a Resource-Scarce Environment", in S.D.
Roper and J. Ikstens (eds.) Public Finance and Post-Communist Party Development (Ashgate, London, 2008),
95-112.

6
the 2001 and 2005 parliamentary elections and the higher levels of electoral threshold for
electoral blocs were also introduced in the 2005 elections (9% for blocks consisting of two
parties and 12% for blocks of more than two parties).
In addition to electoral laws, certain provisions of the law on political parties also
favored national-wide political parties. Thus, since 1998, a party could only be registered with
the Ministry of Justice if it had at least 5000 members having residence in at least a half of
intermediate-level administrative-territorial units,9 but not less than 150 in each of the
mentioned territorial units. In terms of minority politics, this provision has had a major effect
only on the functioning of the ethnic Gagauz parties formed in the autonomous territorial unit
Gagauzia.
Overall, the passage of the first electoral law and the use of the same basic principles
in the subsequent pieces of legislation were of critical importance for the institutionalization
of the party system. Electoral system rules, which were combined with a constitutionally
weak presidency and party participation in the cabinet formation process, provided incentives
for parties to start investing in developing policy-making capacities and in constructing
coherent public images. These rules also led to the dominance of the party rather than
candidate-oriented campaigns throughout Moldova‟s entire post-communist period.
The electoral results produced by the Moldovan party system operating under these
institutional rules are summarized in Table 1:

Table 1. Moldovan Parliamentary Election Results, 1994-2005

Year 1994 1998 2001 2005
6%=1, 9%=2,
Electoral threshold, % 4% 4% 6%
12%>2 parties
Electoral contestants V% S% V% S% V% S% V% S%
Democratic Convention Electoral Bloc - - 19.42 25.7 - - - -
For a Democratic and Prosperous M oldova Electoral Bloc - - 18.16 23.8 - - - -
(Democratic) Agrarian Party 43.18 53.9 3.63 0 1.16 0 - -
Alliance of the Popular Christian Democratic Front 7.53 8.65 - - - - - -
Christian Democratic Peoples‟ Front/Party 1 - - - - 8.24 10.9 9.07 10.89
Democratic Party of M oldova2 - - - - 5.02 0 - -
Electoral Bloc Braghis Alliance - - - - 13.36 18.8 - -
Electoral Bloc Moldova Democrata - - - - - - 28.53 33.66
Electoral Bloc Patria-Rodina - - - - - - 4.97 0
Party for Renaissance and Conciliation of M oldova - - - - 5.79 0 - -
Party of Communists of the Republic of M oldova - - 30.01 39.6 50.07 70.3 45.98 55.45
Party of Democratic Forces - - 8.84 10.9 - - - -
Peasants and Intellectuals Bloc 9.21 10.6 - - - - - -
Socialist Party and Unitate-Edinstvo M ovement Bloc 22 26.9 - - - - - -

9
Moldova‟s administrative organisation currently includes 32 districts (raioane), 3 municipalities (Chişinău,
Bălţi, and Bender/Tighina), one autonomous territorial unit (Gagauzia), and one territorial unit (Transnistria) -the
status of the latter not being defined yet.

7
Others (parties, blocs and independent candidates) 18.1 0 19.9 0 16.34 0 11.5 0
Total 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100

Note: The electoral contestants who obtained more than four percent in at least one election are only listed.
1
In 1994 in a coalition named Alliance of the Popular Christian Democratic Front and in 1998 in the Democratic
Convention Electoral Bloc.
2
In 1998 in a coalition named For a Democratic and Prosperous Moldova Electoral Bloc and in 2005 in the
Electoral Bloc Moldova Democrata.
Source: data from www.e-democracy.md (accessed: 04.04.2007)

As Table 1 indicates, only four electoral contestants were able to enter the parliament
in the first two rounds of electoral competition. The change in the electoral threshold prior to
the 2001 elections had the effect of further decreasing the number of successful electoral
contestants to three in each of the subsequent rounds of elections. The 2001 rise of the
electoral threshold was a product of the legislators‟ intention to encourage party system
consolidation. Prior to 2001 the identity of parties and party blocs was very unstable,
especially in the early period of the post-communist transition. The majority of parties
represented through electoral blocs in the first parliament elected in 1994 chose different
alliances or even changed party labels to participate in subsequent parliamentary elections.
The creation of new parties and coalitions was the politicians‟ response to particularly acute
failures in governance during the 1994-2001 period.
The party system became somewhat more stable after the 2001 parliamentary
elections. The Communist Party (PCRM) has dominated the political process in the country
since its parliamentary victory in the 2001 elections10 . As the table indicates, the party had
already become the largest parliamentary faction after the 1998 elections. These were the first
elections the party contested after being re-established following the lifting of the ban on the
activities of the communist party. The communist party‟s 2001 victory was magnified by the
inability of several parties to clear a newly established 6% threshold. This enabled the PCRM
to control the constitutional majority of parliamentary seats between 2001 and 2005. The
party managed to retain power by winning the 2005 parliamentary elections, although with a
significantly smaller margin than in 2001.

10
S.D. Roper, "From semi-presidentialism to parliamentarianism: Regime change and presidential power in
Moldova", 60 Europe-Asia Studies (2008), 113-126; L. March, "From Moldovanism to Europeanization?
Moldova‟s Communists and Nation-building", 35 Nationalities Papers (2007) ; L. March and G.P. Herd,
"Moldova Between Europe and Russia: Inoculating against the Colored Contagion?", 22 Post-Soviet Affairs,
349-379.

8
 Neither of the political parties that individually or as a part of an electoral bloc entered
the Moldovan parliament throughout the analyzed period could be described as an ethnic
minority party. The operational definition employed in this paper categorizes a political
organization as an ethnic minority party when the organization competes primarily on ethnic
minority issues, relies electorally exclusively on the ethnic minority vote, and is sustained
organizationally by the ethnic minority membership. Ethnic minority parties are not listed in
Table 1, which summarizes the results for electoral winners only. Ethnic minority parties,
however, can be found in the Moldovan case among the electoral losers.
Organizations that meet the operational definition of an ethnic minority party
proposed here have been formed and have competed in a number of parliamentary elections in
Moldova. For example, the Socio-Political Movement “Ravnopravie” (SPMR), which is
translated as “equal rights” movement, contested both the 2001 and 2005 parliamentary
elections. The organization campaigned explicitly on the political agenda that prioritized the
protection of ethnic minority rights. The distinct feature of its campaign strategies was an
attempt to appeal to voters across minority groups. The choice of this form of ethnic appeal
was based on calculations rooted in the Soviet experience of inter-ethnic coexistence in
Moldova. Linguistic Russification of main minority groups in Moldova during the Soviet
period made appeals, first of all, for the introduction of Russian as a second state language, an
attractive strategy for ethnic entrepreneurs seeking to mobilize not only ethnic Russians but
also other minority groups.
Another notable example is that of the ethnic Gagauz parties that have existed in
Gagauzia regions before 1998, such as Popular Party “Vatan” and Gagauz People‟s Party.
The parties had their roots in popular movements in the region which fought for the rights of
the Gagauzian minority in the early 1990s and greatly contributed to the establishment of the
autonomous territorial unit Gagauzia. Despite all this, in the 1995 elections of the Gagauz
autonomy‟s legislature (People‟s Assembly) Gagauz voters preferred candidates nominated
by national parties, workers‟ collectives, and independent candidates rather than regional
parties‟ candidates.11

11
I. Botan, "Elections in Gagauzia - a new beginning or déjà vu?", 4 Democracy and governing in Moldova
[ADEPT] (2006), December 30.
Available at: http://www.e-democracy.md/en/comments/200612302/index.shtml
Accessed 4 August 2009 ; The two Gagauz parties secured only six seats out of 34, while the Party of
Communists of the Republic of Moldova won eight seats, the Democratic Agrarian Party – four seats, worker‟s
collectives – 11 seats and independent candidates – 5 seats.

9
 The inability of the Socio-Political Movement “Ravnopravie” to gain sufficient
electoral support to enter the parliament, as well as failures of other political organizations to
mobilize minority voters on purely ethnic appeals in the earlier rounds of parliamentary and
autonomy elections, is a product of the success that some mainstream parties had in attracting
and sustaining minority support. This success is partly attributed to the appropriation by these
parties of political slogans articulated by ethnic minority entrepreneurs. It is also a result of
the parties‟ recruitment policies. Some of the mainstream political parties provided ample
opportunities for politically active members of minority groups to rise through the party
ranks to positions of prestige and power in institutions of the state, thus denying ethnic
12
entrepreneurs the ability to claim exclusive rights to minority group representation.

Ethnic dimension of legislative recruitment

The adoption of the closed list PR system provided the leadership of political parties
with a high degree of control over the formation of electoral lists. The expectation that such
rules would strengthen the role of the party leadership vis-à-vis such bodies as the general
party conference or local party organizations is indirectly corroborated by the results of a
recent survey of experts on the Moldovan party system. Expert survey results indicate that
party leadership plays a much more important role than other party organs in all key aspects
of parties‟ internal decision making processes13 . Selecting party candidates for legislative
office is one of such key decision-making areas. Parliamentary posts are positions of high
political power and prestige, and are few in number. The number of parliamentary seats
available for any electorally successful party is always much smaller than the number of
loyalists the party would like to reward or the number of prominent individuals whose support
the party would like to ensure through granting them a secure position on the party‟s electoral
list. Pre-election public opinion polls provide party leadership with quite accurate estimates
on the number of seats the party can expect to win. The poll results thus set a limit on what
could be considered the winning portion of the electoral list of any given party. By allocating

12
For example, Nicolai Oleinic, chairman of the ethnic Ukranian association, had been an MP on the communist
party‟s list both in the 1994 and 2005 parliaments. Dmitrii Croitor, a prominent Gagauz leader, was an MP in
the 1998 term for the « For a Democratic and Prosperous Moldova » Electoral Bloc and was later elected as
Bashkan (Governor) of Gagauzia. Another Gagauz leader Gheorghe Tabunscic, was a communist party MP in
the 2001 term. He also served in 1995-1999 and in 2002-2006 as Bashkan (Governor) of Gagauzia.
13
O. Protsyk, I. Bucataru, and A. Volentir, Partiinaia konkurentsia v Moldove: ideologiia, organizatsiia, i.
podkhody k razresheniiu etno-territorialnykh konfliktov (Universitatea de Stat din Moldova [USM], Chisinau,
2008).

10
positions on electoral lists to individuals, the party leadership effectively decides which of the
available party candidates will become parliamentary deputies.
The composition of the parliamentary faction of political parties thus reflects the party
leadership‟s prior decisions on which individual politicians should represent the party in the
parliament. These decisions are a product of calculations based on numerous factors.
Examining the profile of parliamentary deputies provides us with some insight into what
factors shape these calculations. Given our interest in parties‟ strategies with regard to
winning the support of ethnic minority groups, ethnic affiliation of individual deputies is one
feature of deputies‟ profile that is examined in detail here.
Despite the fact that considerable difficulties are involved in classifying the
ideological orientation of many political parties that emerged in the post-communist space,
one influential recent study highlights similarities in the ideological profiles of these parties to
the profiles of traditional party families found in Western Europe 14 . Following this logic,
Table 2 below classifies all Moldovan parties that had parliamentary representation in one of
the five traditional party families. The table also lists the total number of deputies that served
in parliament on behalf of the parties belonging to each individual party family and provides
details on the distribution of deputies‟ ethnic identification.

Table 2. Ethnic Affiliation of Moldovan MPs, by Party Family (1994-2009)

Social Christian
Communist Democrats Centre Democrats Centre Right Total
Moldovan/Romanian 61.65% 66.67% 78.75% 100% 100% 74.18%
(125) (63) (63) (36) (77) (364)

Ukrainian 13.59% 8.69% 3.75% 0% 0% 8.2%

(29) (8) (3) (0) (0) (40)

Russian 10.68% 15.21% 5% 0% 0% 8.2%

(23) (14) (4) (0) (0) (41)

Gagauz 8.25% 4.35% 3.75% 0% 0% 4.92%

(17) (4) (3) (0) (0) (24)

Other 3.4% 1.09% 5% 0% 0% 2.46%

(7) (1) (4) (0) (0) (12)

No data 2.43% 1.09% 3.75% 0% 0% 2.05%

(5) (1) (3) (0) (0) (9)

14
M. Gallagher, M. Laver and P. Mair, Representative Government in Modern Europe, 4th ed. (McGraw-Hill,
Boston, 2006).

11
Total 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
(206) (91) (80) (36) (77) (490)
Legend: Communists: Party of Communists of the Republic of M oldova; S ocial Democrats: Socialist Party and
Unitate-Edinstvo M ovement Bloc, Socialist Party of M oldova, Labour Union, "Furnica" Party of Social Democracy ,
"Speranta-Nadejda" Professionals' M ovement; Centre: Democratic Agrarian Party, For a Democratic and Prosperous
M oldova M ovement, Democratic Party of M oldova, Centrist Union of M oldova, Civic Party of M oldova, Popular
Democratic Party of M oldova, "Forta Noua" Socio-political M ovement; Christian Democrats: Christian Democratic
Peoples‟ Front/Party , Democratic Christian Party , Women's Christian-Democratic League of M oldova, Christian-
Democratic Peasants' Party ; Centre-Right: National Liberal Party, Intellectuals Congress, Alliance of the Free Peasants,
Party of Democratic Forces, Party of Rebirth and Reconciliation of M oldova, Our M oldova Alliance, Social-Liberal Party
Note: the last column data includes several observations with missing info on party family
Source: author’s calculations

One of the most visible characteristics of Table 2 is that the share of minority deputies
that served in parliament on the tickets of parties belonging to different party families varies
significantly. As one moves from the left to the right of the table, the share of minority
deputies drops from more than 35 % to 0%. The communist party family includes only one
party in the Moldova case, PCRM. As discussed above, the party controlled the largest share
of seats in the last three consecutive parliamentary terms. As the table data reveals, more than
35% of deputies that served on the party‟s behalf in the parliament came from ethnic minority
groups. The share of minority deputies drops to about 30 % for the parties that were classified
as social democratic and to about 20% for the parties indentified as agrarian or center parties.
Minorities were not represented at all in parliamentary groups formed by the parties of
Christian democratic orientation or other types of center-right parties.
This pattern indicates that it is the parties of the left who recruit the members of
minority communities. These recruitment practices in turn contribute to the continuation of
minority support for the left parties and to these parties‟ persistent dominance on the national
scene. The parties of the Moldovan left varied in the degree of their programmatic support to
the political agenda articulated by minority activists. Neither of the leftist parties represented
in parliament, however, have made the minority-related issues a central focus of their
electoral campaigns. In other words, the leftist parties have not attempted to turn into ethnic
minority parties. They have not ceased their efforts to highlight the traditional concerns of the
left such as social justice, redistribution, and welfarism. Left appeals and an accommodative
stance on minority issues were combined by these parties with inclusive recruitment policies.
This combination has proved to be a winning electoral formula for the most of the post-
communist period.15

15
On programmatic aspects of party competition in Moldova see (O. Protsyk et al., Partiinaia konkurentsia v.
Moldove (2008); see also L. March, "From Moldovanism to Europeanization? Moldova's Communists and
Nation-building", 35 Nationalities Papers (2007), 601-625.

12
 The dominance of left parties is reflected in absolute number of deputies that entered
the parliament on the ticket of left parties. As the table indicates 298 out of 488 deputies that
served in the Moldovan parliament since 1994 belong either to communist party or to the
parties of social-democratic orientation. The presence of significant number of minority
deputies in the legislature across the individual parliamentary terms is largely due to the
significant presence of left-wing parties in each of the terms.
Table 3 below provides details on the share of titular group and minorities across
individual parliamentary terms. For post-independence terms, the titular share varied between
63.71% and 84.62% of legislative seats. The lowest share of titular group deputies was
recorded for the 2001-2005 parliamentary term, which is the period when the communist
party controlled the largest majority in parliament. The size of this majority has been, to a
considerable extent, a product of party‟s ability to defeat its various competitors for ethnic
minority vote.

Table 3. Distribution of MPs’ Ethnic Affiliation Across Parliamentary Terms

1990-94 1994-98 1998-01 2001-05 2005-09 Total
Moldovan/Romanian 71.24% 70% 84.62% 63.71% 79.49% 72.9%
(270) (91) (99) (79) (92) (631)

Ukrainian 8.71% 5.38% 5.13% 17.74% 4.27% 8.42%

(33) (7) (6) (22) (6) (74)

Russian 16.62% 12.31% 3.42% 8.87% 7.69% 11.88%

(63) (16) (4) (11) (10) (104)

Gagauz 2.64% 4.62% 5.13% 7.26% 2.56% 3.92%

(10) (6) (6) (9) (3) (34)

Other 0.26% 3.85% 1.71% 2.42% 1.71% 1.5%

(1) (5) (2) (3) (2) (13)

No data 0.53% 3.85% 0% 0% 4.27% 1.38%

(2) (5) (0) (0) (5) (12)

Total 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%

(379) (130) (117) (124) (118) (868)
Note: the count of deputies includes both term starters and late comers
Source: author’s calculations

Besides listing data for the all post-independence terms, the table also gives details for
the last legislature from the communist period. That legislature was dominated by the old

13
 Communist Party of the Moldovan SSR, which had been a highly multi-ethnic organization
on its own terms. The vast majority of minority deputies that served in the 1990-94 parliament
came from the ranks of the Communist Party. The party was banned following the August
1991 coup attempt in Moscow and was unable to contest the 1994 parliamentary elections.
Many of the Communist Party functionaries then took a part in creating the Socialist Party
and Unitate-Edinstvo Movement. Two organizations formed a bloc which was successful in
contesting the 1994 elections. Approximately 60% of deputies that the bloc put in the
parliament in 1994 came from ethnic minority groups, which accounts for the highest share of
minority deputies for any party or alliance that successfully contested parliamentary elections
in Moldova. Minority problems constituted one of the central campaign issues for the bloc.
Focus on minority issues, however, did not help either of organizations to enter the
1998 parliament. The votes they expected to win went largely to a newly established
Communist Party, PCRM. The party, formally, was not a successor to the Communist Party
of MSSR. In terms of personnel, structures, and policies the newly established PCRM
nevertheless showed a high degree of continuity with the old party. In its electoral campaigns
PCRM explicitly linked itself to the predecessor and used cultural capital and symbolic
recourses provided by the communist past.
Inclusive recruitment was a central part of the PCRM‟s overall electoral strategy. The
PCRM‟s electoral list for the 2001 parliamentary elections included, for example, 9 ethnic
Gagauz, all of whom eventually served as MPs in the course of the 2001-05 parliamentary
term. These were individuals with a strong reputation and standing in the minority
community. Among others, former governor of Gagauzia Gheorghe Tabunscic was in this
group. The PCRM‟s aggressive recruitment drive became one of the factors that led the
Gagauz community, which is the only minority group that was granted a territorial autonomy
status in the early 1990s, to vote overwhelmingly for the PCRM in 2001. 80.6% of votes in
the Gagauz autonomy in 2001 was cast for the communists. This was the highest result the
party received across the country. The average share of minority deputies that served on the
Communist Party‟s behalf in the different parliaments was about 35 %.

Titular group representation

The Moldovan case provides a very interesting variation in terms of titular group
representation. This representation reflects a disputed nature of titular group identity.
Moldovanism and Romanianism are two competing visions of the ethnic identity of the
majority group. They translate into two different types of ethnic majority nationalism, which

14
could be respectively termed as “state-seeking” and “unification” types of nationalism. Both
are comprised of well elaborated sets of values and beliefs that serve as a basis for political
mobilization and provide coherence for policy agendas and political goals articulated in the
public domain.
For Moldovanists, the essential unifying features of their identity complex are history,
culture, religion, and language, all of which are claimed as being distinct and different from
Romanian. The advocates of Romanianism question the distinctiveness of these
characteristics and see them, at most, as regional variations of a common Romanian history
and pan-Romanian culture. Thus Moldovan and Romanian identities are seen by
Romanianists as complimentary, while for Moldovanists they are competitive. Debates over
Moldovanism and Romanianism provided the strongest inspiration for political action in the
early 1990s. The Romanianist orientation of key leaders in the Popular Front, a mass political
movement that dominated political life in Moldova at the beginning of the 1990s, explains the
political salience of a policy agenda associated with a Romanian identity complex.
The rapid decline of the Popular Front‟s popularity and its organizational
disintegration dramatically decreased the political clout of groups and organizations
associated with Romanianism, but did not mean that political battles over the symbols
associated with different identity complexes ceased. At the same time, Moldovanists, whose
political victory over competitors from the ranks of the Popular Front was solidified by the
results of the 1994 parliamentary elections, chose to focus on only some of the potential
conflicts over identity-rooted policy issues with the proponents of Romanianism.
The 1994 consultative referendum on independence was one of these battles. Initiated
by the Moldovan president Snegur, who is often credited with providing programmatic
coherence to Moldovanism in his public speeches16 , the referendum marked, at least
temporarily, a closing of the window of opportunity for the active pursuit of the unification
agenda. The voters overwhelmingly rejected the unification option and supported
independence. The referendum results, which were easily forecasted both by referendum
supporters and opponents, had a demobilizing effect on the Romanianist camp and took the
unification issue off the active political agenda. The ambiguities over the nature of ethnic
identity, however, persist both on collective and individual levels. President Snegur, whose
position on the issue of identity subsequently shifted away from the strongly pro-
Moldovanist pole due to the electoral maneuvering in the up-run to the 1996 presidential

15
elections, for example, is identified in a number of published sources as „Moldovan
(Romanian)‟.
Identifying himself/herself exclusively as an ethnic Romanian became a political
statement indicating the person‟s political orientation and support for unification. Table 4
below provides details on the distribution of deputies in the titular group according to this
criteria.

Table 4. Ethnic Affiliation of Titular Group MPs in Moldova, by Party Family (1994-2009)
Social Christian Centre
Communist Democrat Centre Democrat Right No data Total

Moldovans 100% 100% 84.13% 25% 60.87% 66.67% 82.04%

(125) (64) (53) (9) (43) (2) (296)

Romanians 0% 0% 15.87% 75% 39.13% 33.33% 17.96%

(0) (0) (10) (27) (27) (1) (65)

Total 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%

(125) (64) (63) (36) (70) (3) (361)
Source: author’s calculations

None of the deputies elected on the ticket of the communist party or social democratic
parties identified themselves as Romanian. More than 15 % of deputies from the titular group
declared their ethnic affiliation as Romanian in case of centrist parties. The percentage of the
Romanian further increases when one moves to the parties of the centre right. A total of 75%
of Christian Democrats, which traditionally take the most pro-unionist stance, declared
themselves Romanian. When comparing the left wing and the centre right it is obvious that
there is more variation in terms of ethnic self-identification among deputies belonging to the
titular group in the parties of the centre right than in the parties of the left.
Overall, this data and the findings cited earlier in the paper suggest that ethnic
divisions and ideological left-right divisions overlap in the Moldovan case. Parties on the left
are strongly Moldovanist in their cultural orientation while parties on the right gravitate to the
pan-Romanian ethnic identification. Recruitment patterns reflect the more inclusive positions
that the left parties take on minority issues. The attempts by the centre right to develop a more
inclusive image by adopting programmatic statements committing the parties to the protection

16
Stefan Ihrig, “Romanian vs. Moldovanism-National Identity Negotiated in History Teaching in Moldova ”,
paper delivered at the ASN-Convention, April 2005.

16
of minority rights have not been supported so far by these parties‟ efforts to put minorities in
positions of power in their organizations.

Proportionality of ethnic representation

The continuing presence of a large number of ethnic minority deputies in the national
parliament is a product of continuing dominance of the left wing parties on the political scene.
These parties have been open to the idea of minority recruitment throughout the post-
communist period both because of interest in having minorities‟ electoral support and because
of more inclusive programmatic positions on identity issues. As a result of these recruitment
policies a large number of members of minority communities entered the parliament. In fact,
the aggregate data indicates a substantial degree of minority overrepresentation in the
Moldovan parliament in the post-communist period.
Table 5 combines data on ethnic distribution of the population with the data on ethnic
composition of the Moldovan parliament. It lists population and parliamentary shares of all
minority groups represented in the parliament and provides frequency information on a
number of deputies of each ethnic background. The last column gives scores for the
proportionality of representation index, which is calculated by dividing an ethnic group‟s
proportion in the parliament by its proportion in the population. This provides a single
summary figure where 1.0 symbolizes “perfect” proportional representation, more than 1.0
designates a degree of “over-representation” and less than 1.0 indicates “under-
representation”.

Table 5. Proportionality of Ethnic Representation in Moldovan Parliament

5a. Moldovan Census 2004/ Parliamentary Data 1994-2009
N of Proportionality
Group Percentage Number MPs Parl Share Index
Moldovans 75.80% 2564565.66 296 60.86% 0.80
Ukrainians 8.40% 284199.89 41 8.20% 0.98
Russians 5.90% 199616.59 41 8.20% 1.39
Gagauzian 4.40% 148866.61 24 4.92% 1.12
Romanians 2.20% 74433.30 65 13.32% 6.05
Bulgarians 1.90% 64283.31 7 1.43% 0.75
Others 1% 33833.32 5 1.02% 1.02
No answer/data 0.40% 13533.33 10 2.05%

Total 100% 3383332.00 489 100%

5b. Moldovan Census 1989/Parliamentary Data 1990-94

N of Proportionality
Percentage Number MPs Parl Share Index

17
Moldovans 64.40% 2790700.00 270 71.24% 1.11
Ukrainians 13.80% 599700.00 33 8.71% 0.63
Russians 12.90% 560400.00 63 16.62% 1.29
Gagauzian 3.50% 152700.00 10 2.64% 0.75
Bulgarians 2% 87700.00 1 0.26% 0.13
Others 3.40% 65600.00
No data 2 0.53%
Total 100.00% 4256800.00 379 100%
Source: Population data from the 2004 and 1989 Moldovan censuses; Legislative data is based on
author’s calculations.

The table lists separately data for the 1990 parliamentary term and for the rest of the
parliamentary terms. This is due to the fact that the breakaway region of Transnistria has not
been effectively part of Moldova since 1992, thus changing the composition of Moldova
population quite substantially. The results for the 1990 term, which include the Transnistrian
data and which are reported in Table 5b, indicate a degree of overrepresentation for ethnic
Moldovans. This overrepresentation came at the expense of all minority groups, except ethnic
Russians. The latter enjoyed a higher degree of overrepresentation than ethnic Moldovans.
The results for the post-communist period are summarized in Table 5a. The table
combines data on all deputies who entered Moldovan parliament during the 1994-2008
period. As the table indicates, the fortunes of the titular group have been reversed when
compared with the 1990 term: ethnic Moldovans became underrepresented in the parliament
during the post-communist period. The titular group was underrepresented even when one
combines those deputies who declared themselves Moldovans and those who self-identified
as Romanian. The degree of under representation in this case, however, is only minor -the
value of the proportionality index is .98. When the share of ethnic Romanian deputies is taken
separately, as it is in Table 5, this ethnic group is highly overrepresented. Proportionally many
more politicians claim to be ethnic Romanians than the census figures reveal to be the case in
the population. The census figure of 2.2% Romanians is, however, highly disputed in
Moldova by many politicians on the center right who claim that the communist government,
which is the ardent promoter of Moldovanism, manipulated the figures and reduced very
significantly the number of citizens declaring themselves Romanian and point to the fact that
16.5% stated Romanian as their mother tongue.
In terms of minority groups, the table indicates that the Russians, the dominant group
in the USSR, continue to be significantly overrepresented in the Moldovan parliament. As a
comparison of Tables 5a and 5b indicates, the level of overrepresentation for Russians is
higher for the 1994-2008 period than for the 1990-94 period. The Gagauz also enjoyed a

18
decree of overrepresentation in the post-communist period, albeit of a smaller magnitude than
the Russians. Ukrainians, which are the largest minority group in Moldova, were almost
proportionally represented. Among demographically large minority groups the ethnic
Bulgarians remain the only significantly underrepresented minority group in the post-
communist period.
Overall, these results indicate that the Moldovan party system has proven to be
sufficiently inclusive in terms of minority representation. This representation has been
achieved through multiethnic parties formed mainly by the political left and, to a smaller
extent, by the centrist forces. Recruitment practices of these parties have helped to ensure that
ethnic exclusion practices did not become a hallmark of Moldovan politics in what proved to
be a very difficult and conflict-prone transition from communist rule.

Conclusion
The ways in which societies‟ ethnic diversity is represented in the political sphere is
shaped by many factors. Whether minorities become integrated into mainstream parties or
establish electorally successful minority organizations might be affected by minority group
characteristics, history of co-existence with majority, the polity‟s levels of democracy, and
the nature of electoral rules. The paper provided a case study of the Moldovan party system,
which evolved in circumstances favorable to the emergence of viable minority parties. The
large demographic size of minority groups, their political mobilization in the early stages of
post-communist transition, democratic openness of Moldovan political system, and electoral
rules favoring party development all pointed to possibilities of party system
institutionalization along ethnic lines.
Yet the Moldovan party system has so far avoided formalizing the existing ethnic
divisions in the configuration of the party system. Minorities have become integrated in the
political process in Moldova in ways that are different from, for example, Bulgaria and
Romania, where electorally successful ethic minority parties became a permanent feature of
the political process. The paper provided an account of how this outcome came about by
examining the electoral strategies of politicians with stakes in the construction of multi-ethnic
organizations. These politicians capitalized on Soviet legacies of multi-ethnic organizational
life and on the positive historical experience of ethnic group co-existence in building their
organizations and attracting a multi-ethnic following. Their programmatic appeals and, what
this paper specifically focused on, their recruitment strategies enabled them to win the
competition with the emerging ethnic minority entrepreneurs for minority group support.

19
 The emphasis that this paper put on the role of agency, however, should make one
aware of the risks of accepting the current dominance of multi-ethnic organizations as a
reliable predictor of the absence of electorally successful minority organizations in Moldova‟s
future. The dynamic nature of the political process in new democracies provides a number of
reasons for being sceptical about the prospects of the party system „freezing‟ in polities such
as the Moldovan one. The paper‟s emphasis highlights instead the importance of analyzing
the interaction between majority and minority politicians and the value of examining their
recruitment and programmatic strategies. Such analysis and examination enrich our
understanding of supply side relations in minority politics.

20
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