Giordano Altarozzi
în vol. România după Marele Război. Reconstrucții politice, instituționale și culturale, coord. Maria Tătar-Dan, Corina Teodor, Nicolae Enciu, Cluj-Napoca, Editura Mega, 2025, ISBN: 978-630-372-013-5, pp. 15-29.

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The Debate on Administrative Decentralisation in the Romanian Press (1918-1920)

The year 1918 was a special moment in Romanian history. Between March and December, several territories inhabited by Romanians proclaimed their desire to unite with the mother country. The acts of union were an uplifting moment of great national effervescence, and the successive proclamations seemed to represent a form of manifestation of what Jean-Jacques Rousseau called the “general will.” The proclamations of 1918 and their ratification during the following year led to the fulfilment of a project and, at the same time, of a political dream cultivated by several generations of patriots. However, the new, unified national state that emerged from the events of the war, and especially from the peace negotiations, was called upon to face new challenges, as the union had to be followed by the real integration of the newly annexed territories into the social, economic, and political context of the country. Reforms, dictated by the experience of war and the new challenges of the contemporary world, became a necessity, one of which concerned the very model of organisation of the new state. This topic sparked intense debate, both within institutions and among the public, especially regarding the concept of “decentralisation.” This contribution aims to analyse the debate on administrative decentralization that took place in the columns of Romanian newspapers in the period from the end of the First World War to the signing of the Treaty of Trianon, highlighting the different positions held by local and central political and cultural elites and thus attempting to capture the complexity of the political project represented by the creation of Greater Romania.

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