Time and crisis: framing success and failure in Romania’s post-communist transformations

Abstract

This article analyses the complex interplay between domestic systemic transformations in post-communist Europe and the reintegration of these countries in the global political economy, through a study of the relationship between successive Romanian governments and the international financial institutions in the 1990s. Conceptually, it seeks to overcome the dichotomies of realist and rationalist approaches to international relations by deploying fields, habitus and practices conceptual framework inspired by the work of Pierre Bourdieu. The article captures both the symbolic and material-structural dimensions of the interaction between domestic field-creation and the reproduction of global economic and political fields. It suggests that practices aimed at the reproduction of power hierarchies are also modulated by symbolic requirements, to save face and to avoid whenever possible open conflict, related to the logic of honour.