Marius Mureșan’s new book From liberalism to neoliberalism in Romania (1875-1938), published in 2024 at Mega Publishing House in Cluj-Napoca, marks the latest academic attempt to reopen the debate on Romanian liberalism in the national historiographical circuit. The 211-page work written in Romanian is structured in three parts – an introduction to the liberal doctrine based on the work of economist Ștefan Zeletin, followed by an exposition of the liberal governments’ activity in the above-mentioned period, and an addenda reproducing Zeletin’s text entitled “Neoliberalism”.

This book aims to be an exploration of the political and doctrinal changes undergone by the liberal association, later the National Liberal Party (after 1875), from its formation until 1938, when King Carol II introduced the regime of royal dictatorship and abolished the parliamentary system. The beginnings of the liberal movement, with its prominent representatives – Ion C. Brătianu, C.A. Rosetti, P.S. Aurelian, Vintilă Brătianu, I.G. Duca etc. – were closely linked to the French revolutionary ideas of 1789 and the resulting principles of “liberty, equality, fraternity”. The abstract ideal of this liberal motto was later transferred into political practices that took the form of a certain national context in which they were to be introduced. The Romanian liberals upheld the principle of equality of all before the law through a constant effort to broaden the country’s electoral base. They also supported private property and respect for the innate freedoms of the citizen, but applied trade protectionism in order to favour businesses with Romanian capital, supported the financial bourgeoisie at the expense of the industrial bourgeoisie, and combined the nationalist spirit with interventionism and etatism, achieving a synthesis that was to be contained in the motto “by ourselves” [„prin noi înșine”]. This is but one instance of the ramifications that arose between liberal theory and its national applicability, and there are many other suggestive examples throughout the book.

As for the sources on which the documentation was based, newspapers, periodicals and press articles constitute the factual foundation from which we started both in exposing the draft laws adopted by the liberal governments and in highlighting the multiple perspectives on the effects that these projects had on the modernization of the Romanian economy. Periodicals such as Adevărul, Dimineața, Viitorul or Voința Națională, to mention only a few from an extensive list, encapsulate the discourse of that time in relation to some political decisions and social events that marked the liberal policy. However, Mureșan’s conscious choice to rely mainly on the press may be restrictive at times, given the subjective and often partisan dimension of the articles written either to support a government measure or to criticize it, if it came from the political opposition. The literature cited in the bibliography is limited to a series of general titles from the Romanian historiography, which provide an overview of the evolution of the liberal group, without neither attempting to provide a doctrinal depth into the issue, nor diving into the debate of liberalism and neoliberalism from a western perspective using its prominent representatives: John Locke, Adam Smith, Montesquieu, Benjamin Constant, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Ludwig vom Mises and others.

In fact, a too detailed ideological analysis of classical liberalism and European neoliberalism would have diverted the thread of the argument from its main purpose, namely to “explore the metamorphoses through which liberalism and, implicitly, the National Liberal Party […] went through from its formation in 1875 to 1938”. One can thus observe that the research method is explicitly expository, following a very clearly established axis of events, with particular emphasis on the laws and economic laws adopted by the Liberal Party when in power. At times, the recall of a legislative measure is followed by a presentation either of the content of these policies or the criticism they aroused from the opposition – mainly from conservative politicians or internal liberal dissents. In addition to the informative dimension addressed to the general public, the work also implies a pedagogical dimension that is useful for students interested in deepening their understanding of the history of the National Liberal Party, of Romanian political life at the end of modernity and the beginning of contemporaneity, and of modernization as the sum of the gradual accumulation of reforms designed to regulate Romania’s economic life: from the modernization of the railway network and the cancellation of the concession granted to the German Strousberg consortium, to the establishment of the National Bank of Romania in 1880, to the constitutional revisions of 1884 that led to the reduction of the number of electoral colleges and to the limitation of the working day to eight hours, the entire interval is characterized by political decisions that often escape the attention of the historian and whose review we consider timely.

We conclude that the purpose of Marius Muresan’s work was to provide the common reader or the curious student a basis for the historical understanding of liberalism as well as to open a path for further deepening of the subject. The attractive theme of Romanian liberalism, which involves a historiographical, methodological and theoretical vastness that still awaits to be researched and documented through a systematic collective effort, has been condensed to two hundred pages in an effort to trace the guidelines of a movement of great importance. We argue that the merit of the book is to open a doctrinal Pandora’s box that has lain dormant in Romanian academia. It is not so much the ivory tower of abstract theorizing that is desirable in such a work but the descent into the citadel through a discourse that is accessible and implicitly transformative through the information contained in the exposition. Last but not least, the re-actualization of liberalism (not to be mistaken with the activity of the current National Liberal Party) in the public space of the years of grace 2024-2025 represents, in fact, a reminder of the importance of European values in the formation, development and consolidation of modern Romania, as well as a firm reinforcement of the Euro-Atlantic option of a country haunted by the spectre of Euroscepticism, post-communism, autochthonism, ultra-nationalism, pseudo-science and hybrid warfare that undermines the confidence in the democratic establishment.

Andrei Dălălău, PhD, Associate Professor at the Faculty of History and Philosophy, Babes Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania