The rise of authoritarianism: the romanian case,

Abstract

2025 was an election year, with elections in Portugal, Poland and Romania. However, in the latter case something different and unprecedented happened not only in the history of the country but also in the European Union. After the first round of the elections that took place in 2004, when an authoritarian candidate unexpectedly came in first place and, when the second round of elections had already started for the Romanians that were living abroad, the Constitutional Court of Romania decided to annul the elections
and restart them from the beginning. That was due to some documents that were declassified and proved that there were Russian interferences in the campaign and also that there were some irregularities in the campaign of Calin Georgescu. The purpose of this paper is to study, from a historic view, what occurred in Romania, to analyse the candidates, why were the elections annulled and the development and outcome of the new elections.