Making the Case for Empathetic Governance in Romania

The Romanian Parliament

(Romanian language version linked below)

Since the 1990s, Romania has lived through a succession of necessary yet traumatizing reforms—imposed under external pressure and paid for socially at home. From the privatizations and layoffs dictated by the IMF and the World Bank, to the global financial crisis, the pandemic, and today’s budget-deficit crisis, each wave has deepened a cycle of fear and mistrust. “Modernization” has been the constant slogan, but it has rarely been given meaning for people. The state modernized on paper, but emptied itself of the human dimension that gives it life.

Romania suffers not only from budgetary imbalances, but also from the exhaustion of a society perpetually on the defensive, always adapting to a new “inevitable crisis.” In the absence of a vision that turns sacrifice into meaning, every policy adjustment becomes a collective trauma. Reforms do not happen only in budgets and organizational charts—they happen in people. Beneath every Excel table and speech about “efficiency” lies a story: a civil servant who no longer sleeps out of fear, a family recalculating its loan payments yet again, a young person wondering why they should stay in a country that treats them as a negligible quantity.

Thus, for many Romanians, repeated reforms have become a way of life, leading to a prolonged social mourning that no one officially acknowledges. Each wave of change brings not only layoffs, but fear and insecurity. In a country where the word “reform” has been emptied of meaning, politics feels like repeated loss—of trust, stability, and dignity.

The responses to these traumas are predictable, yet ignored by political leaders. Some people fight—they take to the streets, organize, protest. Others flee—seeking safety in different careers or emigrating. The most compliant submit, hoping passivity will protect them. More and more people disengage completely, becoming apathetic and uninterested in politics or civic life.

These unspoken, untreated emotional losses are fertile ground for populism and resentment. Authoritarian leaders do not emerge out of nowhere—they are born from collective fear and exhaustion, from people’s need to feel seen and protected. If governments continue to speak about numbers without speaking about people, Romania will repeat the same scenario: accounting reforms that produce social imbalance and a “modernization” that erodes precisely what it should save—trust in institutions and in the future.

Crises do not become toxic only because of bad decisions, but also because of how they are communicated. Authorities often treat people as spectators rather than as genuine partners—respected and involved. Official language remains cold and technocratic: deficit, adjustment, efficiency. When a minister announces job cuts as an accounting victory, the implicit message is that some people are “costs,” not contributors to the common good. In such moments, even the most rational measure loses legitimacy, because suffering goes unacknowledged.

A government that communicates only numbers generates panic and resentment, not trust. A government that explains only what it does, but not why, loses support even when it is right. And a government that speaks about savings rather than people risks governing a void—a country of alienated citizens absent from their own social contract.

The truth is that every reform produces loss. The question is not whether people will feel the pain of change, but whether the state has the maturity to manage it with meaning, empathy, and respect.

Empathetic communication does not mean weakness or a “woke” slogan; it is a strategy of governance and democratic survival. In a context of mistrust and social fatigue, the only form of authority that still works is one grounded in listening and honesty.

That means acknowledging stress, honoring contributions, and telling the truth with care. Naming losses, while also showing their purpose. A mature leader does not hide the pain of a reform or blame external pressure; they assume it and connect it to a higher goal: better public services, institutions in the service of citizens, fairer governance. Only then can a society accept sacrifice as an investment, not as humiliation.

Authentic reforms are built on three pillars: public value, legitimacy, and capacity. Public value means clearly showing what benefits changes bring to citizens—not just to budgetary arrangements. Legitimacy requires support built through trust and transparency, not fear or resignation. Capacity presupposes institutions with real resources and competencies, not indolence and nepotism. When these three dimensions are out of balance, reform becomes toxic: efficient on paper, devastating in reality.

Today, Romania needs empathetic leadership, not only technocrats. Leaders who do not confuse harshness with political stature, and who understand that protecting human dignity is a condition of political stability.

Empathy is not a moral luxury; it is the currency of credibility. Without it, no reform will succeed, because it will not be experienced as a shared construction, but as an imposition. With it, even the most difficult adjustments can become the beginning of a new understanding between state and society—a renewal of the social contract, based on mutual respect and shared meaning.

Ultimately, empathetic governance is not about pity, but about dignity. And dignity costs no money—but its absence costs everything.

This article was originally published in Romanian, on Republica.ro: România are nevoie de leadership empatic, nu doar de tehnocrați