By Cristian Pîrvulescu, National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest.
This article was first published in Hotnews on the 16th of June 2025. Link to the original article in Romanian: De ce nu e suficient să „funcționeze mai bine”: nemulțumirea românilor în argumente – HotNews.ro.
Political Scientist Cristian Pîrvulescu Responds to Sociologist Dumitru Sandu:
“The Explanation Ignores Essential Dimensions of Contemporary Political Life: Affect, Narrative, Fragmentation, and Emotional Manipulation”
Political scientist Cristian Pîrvulescu responds, in an opinion piece published by HotNews, to sociologist Dumitru Sandu, who recently explained — with data — “why Romanians are so dissatisfied with the lives they lead.” Pîrvulescu argues that Professor Sandu’s explanation “ignores essential dimensions of contemporary political life: affect, narrative, fragmentation, and emotional manipulation.”
Renowned sociologist Dumitru Sandu has recently offered an explanation for the high level of dissatisfaction expressed by Romanians toward their own lives, drawing on data from the latest Eurobarometer and other quantitative sources. His central argument is that institutional dysfunctions, low educational attainment, and objective economic difficulties directly correlate with the population’s heightened sense of discontent.
It is a serious and methodologically rigorous approach — yet one that deserves a deeper critical discussion, from four converging perspectives: economic, social, political, and theoretical.
1. The Economy of Resentment
Recent macroeconomic data does not directly support the hypothesis of a generalized material decline. Between 2022 and 2024, Romania recorded robust economic growth, with rising average wages and a relative stabilization of inflation. At the same time, indicators such as the Economic Sentiment Index placed Romania above the EU average in 2023.
This observation is confirmed by further data: in October 2023, Romania registered its highest level of economic sentiment since March 2022, according to figures published by FocusEconomics.
And yet — dissatisfaction is on the rise.
How can this dissonance be explained?
The answer lies in what political scientists call “the paradox of resentful prosperity” (Inglehart & Norris, 2017): the perception of social decline does not necessarily correspond to the deterioration of material conditions, but rather to a symbolic erosion — of predictability, representation, and a sense of control. In other words, discontent is not only about unpaid bills but about lost meanings.
This dissonance — described in political science literature as the “paradox of resentful prosperity” (Inglehart & Norris, 2017) — suggests that deep dissatisfaction does not necessarily stem from material deprivation, but from the perceived loss of cultural control, social status, and identity in a society that is changing rapidly and unpredictably.
Thus, even in contexts of relative prosperity, broad segments of citizens become affectively radicalized, feeling symbolically marginalized.
2. The Absence of the Symbolic and Affective Dimension
The explanatory model proposed by Professor Sandu remains anchored in an institutional–functional paradigm, overlooking the affective and symbolic dimension of politics. In reality, social discontent is filtered and expressed through affective and narrative networks that cannot be captured by questions such as “How satisfied are you with your life?”
The works of Arlie Hochschild (2016) or Zizi Papacharissi (2015) show that citizens experience politics through emotional frameworks: anger, shame, weariness, resentment. To ignore this level is to reduce the human being to a rational operator — something that no longer corresponds either to the cognitive or political reality of the twenty-first century.
3. Neglecting the Social and Cultural Diversity of Contemporary Romania
Romania is often portrayed as part of an Eastern European region still dominated by post-communism, relatively poor and culturally homogeneous. In fact, however, there is a profound fragmentation between generations, regions, social classes, and life trajectories. A young entrepreneur from Cluj does not share the same social references and expectations as a pensioner from Vaslui — even if both are “Romanians from the Eastern EU.”
Moreover, the diaspora and the constant external comparison effect (“how it is abroad”) continually rewrite the subjective standards of a ‘successful life.’ These dimensions escape any analytical grid anchored merely in environment and income.
For instance, the Romanian diaspora is a deeply heterogeneous social category, yet one extremely influential in the national imagination. In a sense, the diaspora functions as Romania’s mirror image: it reflects an idealized external reality (“how it is abroad”) while simultaneously embodying a desire to revalorize one’s own belonging.
This community, however, is divided between one segment that advocates for ‘taking the country back’—driven by an affective, conservative logic oriented toward restoring lost values (faith, national identity, order)—and another that remains attached to the European project, to freedom of movement and value pluralism, even if critical of EU bureaucracy or neoliberal policies.
This split between a ‘sovereigntist diaspora’ and a ‘cosmopolitan diaspora’ has become increasingly visible in elections, social media, and participation patterns. Moreover, both modes of relating to Romania are constructed through a permanent comparison with the West—either as a model to emulate or as a corrupt, globalist antithesis.
Thus, the diaspora is no longer merely a source of remittances or external votes, but an active symbolic actor that reconfigures society’s relationship with itself, with its future, and with its institutions. These affective and ideological tensions escape any sociological analysis that measures only income or education levels.
4. The Minimization of the Political Dimension of Discontent
Professor Sandu treats social dissatisfaction almost exclusively as the effect of institutional dysfunction — a passive phenomenon generated by poor administrative performance, lack of representation, or limited access to public services. From this perspective, discontent appears as a state of affairs, not as an active political resource. Yet it is precisely this omission that severely limits our understanding of contemporary democratic mechanisms.
In reality, discontent is not merely a reaction but a strategic raw material. In 2024–2025, parties such as AUR have shown how diffuse affect can be converted into electoral mobilization, using a combination of extremist discourse, digital aesthetics, and conspiratorial narratives. This ability to instrumentalize frustration is no accident, but part of a broader pattern of affective digital populism (Moffitt, Papacharissi), in which collective emotions are cultivated and orchestrated to build a form of legitimacy parallel to institutional authority.
Voters did not simply cast ballots against a weak state — they voted for the restoration of an emotional order in which they feel seen, validated, and in control. What Professor Sandu calls “social dissatisfaction” is, in fact, the symptom of an affective recalibration of representation, in which the feeling of institutional abandonment is exploited to justify the rejection of political elites and classical democratic norms.
This emotional and expressive transformation of politics, unfolding in the digital sphere, cannot be quantified in standard socio-economic terms. It implies a shift in democratic logic: from rational deliberation to affective feedback loops, from the aggregation of interests to the articulation of anger. To minimize this dimension is not merely a theoretical oversight — it is a failure to grasp an era in which politics has become both algorithmic stagecraft and culturalized affect.
5. Institutions Are Not Mere Mechanisms — They Are Expressions of History and Power
Professor Dumitru Sandu explains Romanians’ social discontent through the lens of an institutional–functionalist vision: institutions “should work better,” and when they don’t, social frustration emerges. Yet this logic is questionable from the perspective of neo-institutionalism — a theoretical framework that examines the formation, persistence, and political effects of institutions, rather than their mere “functionality.”
- Institutions are not neutral; they are the expression of historical conflicts.
Romanians’ discontent cannot be explained solely through “institutional inefficiency,” but through the way these institutions were built after 1989 — through exclusion, clientelism, and lack of representativeness. To “make them work better” means little without redefining their relationship with citizens. - Informal institutions matter. Helmke and Levitsky (2004) show that informal practices — nepotism, corruption, influence networks — can undermine formal institutions. In Romania, low institutional trust likely reflects direct experiences of exclusion, not merely abstract “perceptions.”
- Institutional legitimacy is not only procedural, but also symbolic and affective.
March and Olsen (1989) remind us that institutions provide more than rules: they shape collective identity. Legitimacy thus derives not only from performance, but from the capacity to symbolically and emotionally represent society. To be legitimate, institutions must offer more than efficiency — they must offer meaning. - Ideas matter. Ideational neo-institutionalists argue that dominant discourses about “state failure” can become self-fulfilling prophecies. In Romania, the narrative of constant decline is amplified by media and politicized, fueling a chronic erosion of trust.
From a neo-institutionalist perspective, then, Romanians’ discontent is not merely the outcome of dysfunctions, but the symptom of an institutional order that has lost contact with society. The solution is not “optimization,” but the cultural and symbolic reconstruction of democratic institutions.
Conclusion: From Statistical Sociology to a Critical Analysis of Discontent
Professor Sandu’s explanation is valuable but incomplete. It overlooks essential dimensions of contemporary political life: affect, narrative, fragmentation, and emotional manipulation. A modern sociological approach must connect quantitative data with the symbolic and digital contexts that give those numbers meaning.
Romanians are not merely poor or undereducated; they are, above all, citizens of an age of narrative insecurity — of a politics of resentment and a deeply mediatized democracy. The affective and symbolic transformations shaping their dissatisfaction cannot be understood outside a context in which the logic of visibility and engagement has replaced democratic deliberation (Strömbäck, 2008; Van Dijck, Poell & de Waal, 2018).
Digital platforms are no longer just channels for transmitting messages, but algorithmic actors that prioritize emotion, conflict, and virality, thereby reshaping the very forms of political legitimacy.
Therefore, to truly understand collective discontent, we must analyze it not merely as the effect of structural dysfunctions, but as the symptom of a broader shift in the affective and media regime of democracy.
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Cristian Pîrvulescu is the dean of the faculty of political science of the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration in Bucharest. His research interests lie in political theory, comparative politics and political economy.