Tue
Nov
16

GLOBSEC Vulnerability Index 2021

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Vulnerability-Index_RomaniaDownload

Romania scores higher than other regional countries in terms of resilience to foreign interference, mainly thanks to its firm pro-Western orientation. The country’s primary vulnerabilities remain internal: elite capture by groups of interests that influence the political and social agenda, media ownership by corrupt businessmen and politicians, a drift toward social conservatism, etc. align with the interests of Moscow and Beijing to weaken the Euro-Atlantic alliance and create potential opportunities for malign influence.

GlobalFocus Center and its regional partner Globsec have published the Vulnerability Index, an analysis of eight countries in Central-Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans (Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia), with scores ranging from 0 (most resilient), to 100 (least resilient). Romania scores 29, equal to Czechia, whereas Serbia scores highest (55), closely followed by Hungary and Montenegro (44).

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Thu
Jan
28

Voices of Central Eastern Europe. Romania Country Report

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GlobalFocus Center partnered again last year with Globsec (Bratislava) for the fifth edition of GLOBSEC Trends 2020, assessing current perceptions in Romania towards a wide range of issues: from Covid-19 health crisis, all the way to the nature of relations Romania entertains with international powers like US, Russia or China.
As disinformation became more prevalent during the pandemic, a certain lack of coherent policies addressing it became more visible. We found out that 39% of Romanians are believing in one or more Covid-19 related conspiracies. We have also found out that only 26% of the Romanians are believing to be represented by the traditional political elites*.

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Mon
Feb
24

Monitoring Facebook during the Presidential Elections – Romania, November 2019

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Between 1 – 24 November 2019, GlobalFocus Center, in cooperation with MEMO 98, monitored 102 public Facebook accounts of political parties, candidates, politicians, media, and other influential actors involved in the presidential election. Analysis observed 168 posts dedicated to disinformation in relation to the presidential elections by various accounts, especially by media and influencers.

Read the report in PDF format.

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Sat
Nov
30

State capture is a joint venture, not a solo act: informal networks and democratic state building

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By Veronica Anghel | Bologna

In assessing the state of liberal democracy in contemporary Europe, significant scholarly and public attention has been paid to the role of leaders. Post-Communist countries in particular are often the focus of scholars who announce a ‘democratic backsliding’ engineered by populist ‘strongmen’. This article suggests that in consolidating EU democracies, such attention is disproportionate in reference to the actual de-democratising effect of the emerging ‘strongmen’. It draws attention to the systemic conditions that allow such leaders to surface, and focuses on state capture (the extraction of private benefits from the state by incumbent officeholders) as a joint-venture practice that precedes and outlives individual political lives and acts as a brake on further democratisation.

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