Territorial-Administrative Reforms in 20th-Century Romania. The Political Construction of Spatiality and the Motivations Behind the Reforms

Abstract

The study examines the territorial-administrative reforms of twentieth-century Romania from the perspective of spatiality and the political motivations behind them. The analysis of the major reforms (1925, 1929, 1938, 1950, 1952, 1956, 1960, 1968) demonstrates that the delimitation of administrative space was never a neutral act: it was driven by an intertwined set of motivations, including integration, centralization, references to economic rationality and ethnicnational strategies. The changing administrative treatment of Szeklerland — from integration through atomization and controlled autonomy to a compromise-based county reform — exemplifies the political construction of space.