https://doi.org/10.47743/RRISXX.2025-3-4
Issue: 3/2025
Pages: 97-111
Language: English
Author: Victor RIZESCU
Author affiliation: University of Bucharest, Romania
Abstract: The article discloses the way one of the interwar European debates about the perceived
and purported shortcomings of parliamentary democracy was entrenched in the
Romanian public life of the period: namely, the debate about the adjustment of
parliamentary representation such as to make room for the expression of segmental
interests in society advanced by professional groups, without discarding entirely the
individualist and territorial representation staying at the basis of standard
parliamentarianism. Described as constituting a compartment of the strand of the
corporatist advocacy, the idea in question was embodied in the provisions of the 1923
constitutions regarding the special representation in the Senate of the Chambers of
Commerce and Industry, of the Chambers of Agriculture and the Chambers of Labor,
and also in the creation in 1926 of the Legislative Council with consultative functions
allowed by law to make use of special professional competences from outside the range
of its permanent members. It is shown how the searches of the kind featured as
expressions of technocratic moderation confronting the drive towards right-wing
authoritarianism characterizing the period and of which the radical interpretations of
the corporatist demands stood as an integral part.
Keywords: parliamentary democracy, professional representation, authoritarianism,
corporatism, technocratic moderation