The old and new paths of defending democracy. Reflections on the Romanian presidential elections

Abstract

This paper aims to analyse the events related to the Romanian presidential electoral process, focusing in particular on the role played by the Romanian Constitutional Court within this process, in light of the broader concept of defensive democracy. Starting from a descriptive approach to the concept itself, after categorising the threats to democracy as «analog» and «digital», the paper will offer a nuanced reading of the ruling by which the Court excluded the candidate Diana Iovanovici Șoșoacă from the electoral competition due to her political positions deemed anti-democratic, on the one hand, and of the ruling by which the Court annulled the entire electoral process because its integrity was deemed compromised by online disinformation, on the other