Academic dishonesty in higher education is an increasingly visible problem throughout the world and in Romania in particular. A total of 1127 university students from six public Romanian universities were surveyed for their experiences and beliefs with 22 behaviors that might be considered academically dishonest. A five-factor solution to the frequencies of these behaviors was interpretable and accounted for more than half of the total variance. How acceptable students believed the behaviors were and how often students witnessed other students engage in these behaviors were consistent predictors of the frequency of the behaviors, with small to medium effect sizes. Demographic predictors of these behaviors, including gender, academic specialty, year in school, institution, grade average, and scholarship status, predicted very little variance in the behaviors. Implications and limitations of the study, as well as limitations of research in the field, are discussed.

This paper considers the case of the international migrants’ confidence in political institutions, from a social embeddedness perspective on political trust. We use country-level aggregates of confidence in institutions as indicators of specific cultures of trust, and by employing data from the European Values Study, we test two competing hypotheses. First, as confidence in institutions depends on the values formed during early childhood, the international migrant’s confidence in political institutions in the current country of residency will be influenced by the confidence context from the country of origin. Second, the host country may have different norms of trust in political institutions, and a process of re-socialization may occur. Therefore, the immigrants’ confidence in institutions is influenced by two confidence contexts: one from the origin country and one from the host country. The time spent in the two cultures, along with other characteristics from these contexts, shape the interaction effects we tested in multilevel cross-classified models.

Solidarity is core to Europe's societal organisation and was intensively addressed in recent research. Using data collected before and during the lockdown in spring 2020, we examine whether value orientations towards solidarity changed in three countries (Spain, Hungary, and Romania). Before the pandemic, people in Spain expressed higher solidarity than people in Hungary and Romania. Our argument claims that when facing uncertainty, people react negatively, and turn to egocentric values. However, successful state intervention decreases uncertainty and boosts solidarity. Personal experience of a crisis increases caring for others, at least in the short term. Our findings reveal increasing solidarity in Hungary and Romania and stagnant levels in Spain, thus decreasing the distance between these societies. Direct exposure to the virus and the negative experiences associated with it are related to higher solidarity but in different ways across countries. In Spain and Romania, personally knowing someone who is infected corresponds to higher levels of solidarity, while in Hungary being in confinement is associated with increased solidarity. The duration of the lockdown matters. In Romania and in Hungary, high levels of solidarity at the beginning of the lockdown decreased over time but started to increase again after several weeks into the lockdown.

This paper is the first exploratory analysis of the ideological features of extra-parliamentary radical-right populist parties in Romania, which, despite lacking parliamentary power, confirm the latent fertility of Romanian politics for populism. Using qualitative content analysis of programs and statutes, we identify a decreased relevance of ethnicity-based mobilization and an increased emphasis on cultural, religious, and/or gender-based criteria. All of the analyzed parties converge on the need for increased discipline and major anti-corruption measures, a smooth continuity with previous forms of populism. The extra-parliamentary group of Romanian radical populists resembles a phoenix, regularly rising from its ashes, although only partially renewed.

This article analyses and explains the rapid electoral success of an emergent populist radical right party in Romania—the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR). AUR’s definition of ‘a transnational people’ relates to a multi-layered community—native Romanians within Romania, co-ethnic communities in neighbouring countries, and Romanians living and working abroad—that create, together, a Romanianness in need of representation, and preservation. By focusing on AUR’s definition of ‘the people’ and on (trans)national mobilization, we unwrap a new dimension of populism which refers to broader fields of connectedness across borders in which bottom-up and top-down dynamics co-exist, acting as rhetorical and operational openings for the party’s development and success in the homeland arena.

We analyse Roșia Montană environmental activism as a critical case that brings together an unusual combination of high levels of transactional activism and high levels of mass protests. We build on the assumptions of civil society in post-communist Europe and the literature on environmental mobilization to investigate the ways in which environmental-based activism developed before and after Romania’s accession to the European Union (EU). Starting from the consensual interpretation of the indirect contribution the EU had in reinforcing the space of manoeuvring and the legitimacy of the pre-2007 Roșia Montană activism, we show that the post-accession period corresponds to an ongoing civil society empowerment despite the state actors’ strong resistance to open policy processes. Roșia Montană activism proves that, under certain conditions, the political actors can lose the total exclusivity in the policy-making in favour of more or less organized actors.