Romania - Local government

Romania is divided into 41 counties ( judete ), as well as the municipality of Bucharest, which has separate status. Below the counties, there are three other categories of local authority: approximately 2,800 communes (with populations up to 5,000), 280 orase (with populations of approximately 5,000–20,000) and 86 municipalities. In the Ceausescu era the counties were administered by appointees of the central government, whose responsibility was solely to Bucharest. The Iliescu government attempted to reshape local government, but most sources agree that the result was to further remove authority from the countryside. Much of Romania is deeply rural, with almost no contact between localities or with the central government. The Iliescu government stopped the Ceausescu "systemization" plan and, in 1990, passed legislation intended to return land to individual peasant control. Indications were, however, that enactment of those provisions was spotty, suggesting that much of the countryside remained in a sort of administrative limbo, no longer tightly controlled by the center but not yet self-governing. Nevertheless, after nearly four years of rule by the DCR governing coalition, the PSDR, led by Iliescu, won a clear victory in local elections held in June 2000, including victory in Bucharest for the first time since the collapse of communism ten years earlier.