The Dynamics of Human Rights and Corruption in Romania

Human Rights Research Center
1 day ago
9 min read

Author: Calvin Mouw, PhD

June 24, 2026

Demonstrators in Bucharest in December 2025 hold signs that read “All for Justice.” [Image credit: Cristi Ștefănescu/DW]

Human rights and public corruption are inextricably linked; not surprisingly, countries with public corruption problems also have human rights limitations. They share analytical foundations dominated by institutional or “rules of the game” approaches—pass the right laws, and everything will improve. This approach creates static, fixed explanations that emphasize how rules/laws structure incentives and dictate behavior.

To learn about stability, change, or how inputs affect outputs in dynamic ways, one must look beyond traditional methods for theoretical guidance. One dynamic pattern often ignored in the social sciences is hysteresis. Hysteresis refers to situations in which an input affects the output even after the input itself has faded.

In Romania, the Social Democrats’ attempt to relax anti-corruption laws in 2017 shows a clear pattern of hysteresis; the effects of the shock persist to this day, long after the law was nullified.

Introduction

In 2025, Transparency International documented that the vast majority of countries are failing to keep corruption under control. Since 2012, only 31 out of 182 countries “have significantly reduced their corruption.”¹ Public corruption is increasingly recognized not just as a good governance issue but also as a human rights issue. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) claims that corruption “undermines States’ ability to meet their minimum core obligations and their pre-existing legal obligations to maximize all available resources to respect, protect and fulfil Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ESCR).”²

Building on this, Anne Peters, in a 2024 article for the International Journal of Constitutional Law, sees corruption and human rights as “two sides of the same coin, as they frequently have common root causes such as weak legal frameworks and institutional frailties.”³

This analytical connection is not surprising; human rights discussions center on uneven practice, and anti-corruption discussions center on uneven enforcement. The solutions are the same: build strong institutions,⁴ enforce existing laws, and increase transparency.

Nobel Prize winner Douglass C. North best conceptualizes this type of “institutionalist” approach as performing three functions:⁵

Institutions constrain action.

Human Rights protections in the European Union (EU) are described in Title II of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. Some freedoms are constrained; some are not. For example, Article 6 sets a basic foundational parameter: “Everyone has the right to liberty and security of person.” On the other hand, the principle of National Procedural Autonomy formally states that “It does not replace national constitutions or legal systems; it only applies when national authorities implement EU law.”⁶

Institutions create order.

The European Parliament views the Charter as “a legally binding instrument that was drawn up in order to expressly recognise, and give visibility to, the role of fundamental rights in the legal order of the Union.”⁷

Institutions reduce uncertainty.

Article 12, Part 2 of the Charter protects political parties because they help to express the political will of citizens.

North would add that parties are important because they reduce transaction costs and make it relatively easy for the public to play the electoral game. As with firms in economic markets, electoral markets without political parties are incredibly inefficient.

In general, North uses the rules of the game to identify the equilibria that result when people pay attention to them. As an economist, he demonstrated that the good ones, such as property rights, lead to economic growth, while the bad ones—essentially anything that increases the costs to participate—lead to economic decline.⁸

In a causal context, this is straightforward. Formal rules create incentive structures that dictate economic performance over time. The rules are explanatory or independent variables, standing outside of what he is trying to explain. But we are missing some elements of the machinations we are trying to explain, specifically, how the agents look at these rules and process them into beliefs and behavior. In most equilibrium analyses, the focus is on how that behavioral configuration leads to self-enforcement.

Stanford economist Avner Greif offers a model that allows us to do this.⁹

Institutions as Equilibria

Greif sees institutions as embedded in a mental framework that develops over the repeated play of games. Players learn and adapt over time by watching other players and observing the strategic environment; beliefs form and, if universally shared, can serve as the foundation for stability.¹⁰

This all happens under uncertainty, as the players have incomplete information about the environment, the rules of the game, and the other players' motivations.

Learning takes place over time, but all decision-making is probabilistic; nothing is definitive. Uncertainty especially arises when there are information shocks, something happens that forces a recalculation, be that a surprise move by another player or a new rule that constrains behavior in a special way.¹¹

Shocks alter the dynamics of learning and can have a ripple effect, causing linear patterns to be nonlinear. One possibility is hysteresis, a concept used in many disciplines to capture a lag between cause and effect, or input and output.¹² The response to a shock may have a lasting effect on beliefs and behavior that lasts well beyond the shock itself. Shocks create noise; they generate uncertainty. The logic of hysteresis suggests that these effects will not disappear immediately. It may take several more iterations and additional evidence before people adapt their beliefs and, consequently, change their actions.

Figure 1: Hysteresis Dynamics

Hysteresis in Romania

Let us take a closer look at the beliefs and behavioral patterns in Romania. Transparency International’s 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) rates Romania at 45 out of 100, one of the lowest scores in Europe.¹³ This fits the broader pattern, as the CPI indicator shows that Romania generally remained in the 44-48 range over the last decade.¹⁴

Looking at the CPI trend before 2016, it appears that Romania was moving toward a new positive equilibrium on matters of corruption. The 2016 Transparency International Romania report stated that Romania was taking “important steps toward integrity.” This assessment was largely based on the “anticorruption efforts of public institutions” and the productive activities of civil society organizations.¹⁵

Then came the parliamentary elections of 2016. In what was generally considered a surprise, the Social Democrats won 46 percent of the vote.¹⁶ The newly elected PSD-ALDE governing coalition—composed of the PSD (the Social Democrats) and the ALDE (Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe)—immediately adopted Ordonanța de Urgență 13/2017 (OUG 13), a government emergency ordinance that decriminalized certain types of corruption. OUG 13 was not well-received; citizens took it to the streets.¹⁷ In response, Romania’s Chamber of Deputies rejected OUG 13 and approved a new emergency ordinance, OUG 14, which nullified OUG 13 on February 21, 2017.

There was a confluence of events that shocked the system. Claudiu Crăciun, writing in the Green European Journal, saw this “disturbance” as the product of several events: the surprise election outcome; the emergency ordinance; the mass protests; the ousting of Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu six months after the election (largely because he failed to deliver the corruption measures the PSD wanted); the salience of the corruption issue in Romania; and extensive international media coverage. The rest of the world saw this as another “test case” in the rise of illiberalism in Europe.¹⁸

Hysteresis and Perceptions of Corruption in Romania

An easy way to test for hysteresis effects on perceptions is to examine pre-shock and post-shock patterns in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI).¹⁹ The measure is based on the perceptions of bribery and other corrupt practices among public officials and politicians. It is an aggregate measure derived from surveys of business and public-sector experts.²⁰

Figure 2 shows the measure for Romania from 2012 to 2025. The pre-shock (pre-OUG 13) trend indicates that perceptions were moving in a positive direction. Then the shock occurred, and post-shock perceptions have never returned to pre-shock levels.

Figure 2. Romania CPI Scores with Shock (2012 – 2025).

(Created by Microsoft Copilot. CPI data source: https://business-review.eu/news/romanias-corruption-perception-score-stalls-as-institutional-weaknesses-persist-transparency-international-293265)

Friction in updating may also appear as an internal resistance to new information, manifesting as emotional inertia. In Romania, there is not just disaffection with the PSD but a broader mindset regarding what it represents. A PSD-created shock, especially one related to corruption, serves to remind people of Romania’s past. In most cases, this is not a positive memory. Dennis Deletant sees the continued presence of the PSD as a manifestation of a “deep malaise in Romanian society.”²¹ An unhealthy attachment to the exchange politics of the past, mostly by peasant farmers and pensioners, hinders economic and social development, as well as the advancement of Romania in NATO and the EU.

Hysteresis in Judicial Activity

Perceptions have changed, and so has behavior. The Romanian National Anti-Corruption Directorate (DNA), a law-enforcement agency tasked with investigating and prosecuting high-level corruption offenses, publishes an annual report on the number of indictments.

The DNA was created in 2002 and restructured in 2003 when Romania was applying for EU membership. It has an interesting history. Not surprisingly, PSD politicians see the DNA’s actions as politically motivated. Other actors—including non-governmental organizations, the EU, and the United States—have defended its independence. The general sentiment is that, before the shock, it was highly effective.²²

In July of 2018, the PSD-led governing coalition moved to interfere with the “independent” practices by dismissing Laura Codruța Kövesi as chief prosecutor of the DNA. Article 133 of the Romanian Constitution protects against this type of political interference, but that did not stop the PSD Justice Minister, and the party forced President Klaus Iohannis to carry out the dismissal. Once again, citizens demonstrated, and the EU voiced its disapproval.²³ According to Kövesi, her dismissal “will leave a big question mark hanging: Will there be a discretionary subordination of prosecutors to the justice ministry?”²⁴

Figure 3: Number of Indictments by the DNA and the Shock (2011-2024)

(Created by Microsoft Copilot. DNA data from Annual Reports from DNA. Source: https://www.mai-dga.ro/eng/early-reports)

Figure 3 shows the number of annual indictments from 2011 to 2024. The evidence fits the hysteresis pattern. Once prosecutors learned that political interference was probable and difficult to reverse, they acted on those beliefs. Even after the nullification of OUG 13 and the PSD's departure from power in 2019, the number of indictments did not automatically return to previous levels. The current rebound in activity reflects, in part, the attempt to reduce a backlog of cases.

Why This Matters

Many disciplines have embraced the concept of hysteresis; delayed effects appear in a variety of contexts. Human rights and anti-corruption reform share important characteristics with these other areas of study.

It is important that we better understand, with greater accuracy and predictability, how laws and the rules of the game affect outcomes. Reforms, policy changes, and policy implementation must target expectations and behavior, not just laws.

In the context of rising illiberalism, the response requires restructuring rather than restoration. Simply returning to the old rules will not solve the problem; hysteresis locks in the new system and creates a new equilibrium. Waiting for a change in public preferences or an electoral shift to change the actors involved has limited strategic value.

We need to ask different questions: Why are some changes transitory, while others are permanent? Why are some outcomes products of a collective memory, while others are not?

Understanding these dynamics is more than an analytical sidestep. Shocks can have lasting effects. Even if reform pressure intensifies or accelerates, the system may respond only partially.

Glossary

ALDE (Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe): A Romanian political party that formed a coalition with the PSD in Romania and is generally considered centrist and liberal.
Chamber of Deputies: The lower house of Romania’s parliament
Corruption: Transparency International defines it as the “abuse of entrusted power for private gain.”
Corruption Perceptions Index: A measure of perceived public-sector corruption. Published annually by Transparency International and covers 182 countries.
Dynamics: The study of how phenomena change in behavior over time. Used here to describe changes in the behavior and equilibrium of social and political systems.
Explanatory Variable: In a causal model, a factor that explains variation in another variable.
Governing Coalition: In parliamentary systems, political parties may form a coalition to secure legislative support and facilitate governance. In Romania, governments may also govern without holding a parliamentary majority.
Hysteresis: when the effects of an event persist even after the event has been removed. Used in many disciplines, but best understood here in the context of a shock. Even after the shock disappears, its effects remain.
Illiberalism: A political tendency that rejects or limits key principles of liberal democracy, often emphasizing nationalism, majoritarian rule, and centralized authority.
Independent Variable: A variable whose effect on a dependent variable is being examined.
Information Shocks: Unexpected information that alters participants' understanding of a strategic environment or repeated game.
Institutions as Equilibria: Defined by economist Avner Greif as self-enforcing behavioral patterns that emerge from the strategic interactions of players in a game.
National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA): Direcția Națională Anticorupție (National Anticorruption Directorate), the Romanian agency responsible for investigating and prosecuting high-level corruption offenses.
Nonlinear: In statistics, a relationship in which changes in an input do not produce proportional changes in an output.
OUG 13 (Ordonanța de Urgență 13/2017): A government emergency ordinance introduced by the PSD-led coalition that reduced or eliminated penalties for certain corruption-related offenses.
PSD (Partidul Social Democrat): The major center-left political party in Romania.
Shock: A temporary disturbance from an established pattern or trend.
Uncertainty: A condition in which decision-makers have incomplete information about the strategic environment in which they are making choices.

References

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