Între constituire și restituire: regimul proprietății forestiere în România postsocialistă

Abstract

In this paper I challenge the concept of ‘transi-tion to democracy’ ideology that led to the policy of the 1990s. I lean especially on forest land allotment, revealing both the intricacies of this process and its effects. In Romania, the property regime has a complex tradition, given the fragmented nature of the various entities that made up the Romanian state in 1918, and specifc associative property forms, as joint property, compossessorates, border guards’ forests and communal forests.The situation is even more complicated due to environmental issues because forests, regardless of ownership, can be viewed as an issue of national security. I argue that, even at the discursive level the interwar period was taken as a benchmark, the com-plications of restitution process, communist legacy imprinted on public policy and the new confguration of actors involved in the process, all worked together on setting a unique system of property usage and ownership.