<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>Held on 6–7 October 2018, the Romanian referendum on the topic of gay marriage was the fourth referendum of this kind organised in East Central Europe over a five-year period. Because turnout was low in all of them and demands explanation, this paper: i) discusses the common characteristics of these Eastern European marriage referendums, contextualising the Romanian referendum; ii) overviews the history of the Romanian referendum, emphasising the legal, political, ideological and societal aspects; iii) quantitatively examines the electoral geography of the voting patterns; and iv) interprets qualitative data seeking to understand the voters’ choices and why conservative mobilisation was so weak.</p></abstract>

Held on 6–7 October 2018, the Romanian referendum on the topic of gay marriage was the fourth referendum of this kind organised in East Central Europe over a five-year period. Because turnout was low in all of them and demands explanation, this paper: i) discusses the common characteristics of these Eastern European marriage referendums, contextualising the Romanian referendum; ii) overviews the history of the Romanian referendum, emphasising the legal, political, ideological and societal aspects; iii) quantitatively examines the electoral geography of the voting patterns; and iv) interprets qualitative data seeking to understand the voters’ choices and why conservative mobilisation was so weak.

When cultural strength means political weakness: Romania’s marriage referendum and the paradox of conservative mobilisation

Faculty of Journalism and Communication Studies

The Bucharest University of Economic Studies

Moravian Geographical Reports

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Held on 6–7 October 2018, the Romanian referendum on the topic of gay marriage was the fourth referendum of this kind organised in East Central Europe over a...

When cultural strength means political weakness: Romania’s marriage referendum and the paradox of conservative mobilisation

Published Online: Jul 09, 2020

Page range: 70 - 80

Received: Jan 24, 2020

Accepted: May 30, 2020

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/mgr-2020-0006

Keywords
referendum, same-sex marriage, electoral geography, East Central Europe, Romania

© 2020 Alexandru Racu et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

When cultural strength means political weakness: Romania’s marriage referendum and the paradox of conservative mobilisation

Published Online: Jul 09, 2020

Page range: 70 - 80

Received: Jan 24, 2020

Accepted: May 30, 2020

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/mgr-2020-0006

Keywordsreferendum, same-sex marriage, electoral geography, East Central Europe, Romania

© 2020 Alexandru Racu et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Keywords
referendum, same-sex marriage, electoral geography, East Central Europe, Romania