National Sovereignty and Territorial Unification of the Romanian Space: An Intergenerational Concept

Abstract

The Romanian Constitution of 1923 is framed on the backdrop of a long historical journey, lasting more than a century, of state-building and the emergence of a specific Romanian constitutional tradition. The aim is to retrace this path in its broad phases, attempting to explain it in the light of an interpretative scheme based on a generational approach, taken as a measure of periodization and as an expression of historical and political continuities and changes. The article shows the relevance in Romanian political culture of the principle of national sovereignty, expressed in the concepts of the unity of the state’s territory and independence. Going back to the first reform projects in the first half of the nineteenth century, the article outlines the main attempts at political change based on the link between national integration and territorial unification: from the Romanian national initiatives of the first half of the century (with special attention to the 1848 Revolution) to the Constitution of 1866 and the new reality of Greater Romania after the First World War. A substantial continuity of values and ideas is outlined, assessing the intergenerational dimension of the concept of national sovereignty in Romanian political culture.