Daniel Barbu

Daniel-Constantin Barbu (21 May 1957 – 18 March 2024) was a Romanian political scientist, publisher, essayist, journalist, and professor at the University of Bucharest's Faculty of Political Science. The head of the Research Institute at the University of Bucharest, and former dean of the Faculty, he was also director of Realitatea Românească, a daily newspaper, in 1991–1992. Barbu worked as a State Adviser for President Emil Constantinescu between 1997 and 1999. He was the author as of June 2007 of eight books and many more articles on political science, and a contributor to the magazine Sfera Politicii. He was also a member of the Romanian Senate from Bucharest and a Minister of Culture.

Early years
Barbu was born in Bucharest, and graduated from the Nicolae Bălcescu High School (the present-day Saint Sava National College) in 1976. In 1976, the Union of Communist Youth, official youth organization in Communist Romania, refused to grant him permission to attend either the Faculty of History-Philosophy or that of Law. Consequently, Barbu attended Art History in Cluj-Napoca, at the present-day Babeș-Bolyai University, graduating in 1980. He then was employed as a curator at the Village Museum (1980) and the National Museum of Romanian History (1981–1986). Between 1987 and 1992, he was a researcher at Bucharest University's Institute of South-Eastern European Studies.

Post-1989
After the Romanian Revolution of 1989, he took doctoral training in Germany, at the University of Fribourg's Faculty of Theology; he received a PhD in history from the Babeș-Bolyai University in 1991. In 1999, he took a second doctorate, in Philosophy, from the University of Bucharest, where he taught from 1991 onwards. Between 1990 and 1991, he was head of Editura Meridiane, a Bucharest-based publishing house. Barbu was the Dean of the Political Science Department of the University of Bucharest from 1994 to 2000 and from 2002 to 2004, and Chair of the Department since 2004.

Barbu was a visiting professor at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris, the La Sapienza University in Rome, the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Pittsburg State University, Jackson State University, and many others.

Barbu specialised in the Comparative History of European Civilizations, Political Science and Comparative Political Science, Social and Political Models of the State, Minorities and Confessional Groups in Romania, Constitutions, Government, and Politics in Europe, Totalitarian Regimes, Communisme et Socialisme d'État, and Political Anthropology.

In 2004, the European Anti-fraud Office (OLAF) notified the Romanian Government about irregularities found in a Phare programme headed by Barbu, as Dean of the Faculty of Political Science. The event was reported by an article on the BBC Romanian service on 5 May and appeared in the Daily Bulletin of the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs a day later. According to both sources, the program engulfed over 200,000 euros coming from PHARE TEMPUS grant money into civil servant training courses which never took place and which had nonexistent people enrolled. In an interview during the 2012 Parliament election campaign, as candidate from the Social-Liberal Union, Daniel Barbu dubbed the event as a misunderstanding and a "no penal matter". As a result of the 2012 Romanian parliamentary elections, Barbu was designated the new Romanian Minister of Culture by the same person who in 2004 headed the Government's Control Department, Victor Ponta, a department which investigated the OLAF notifications.

Barbu died on 18 March 2024, at the age of 66. His funeral mass was held at Saint Joseph Cathedral and he was buried at Bellu Catholic Cemetery.

Latest works

 * Die abwesende Republik [The Absent Republic], Frank & Timme, Berlin, 2009.
 * Politica pentru barbari [Politics for the Barbarians], Nemira, Bucharest, 2005.
 * Republica absentă. Politică și societate în România postcomunistă [The Absent Republic. Politics and Society in Post-Communist Romania], 2nd edition (revisited), Nemira, Bucharest, 2004.
 * Bizanț contra Bizanț. Explorări în cultura politică românească [Byzantium contra Byzantium. Exploring Romanian political culture], Nemira, Bucharest, 2001 (1st ed. 1999).
 * O arheologie constituțională românească. Studii şi documente [A Romanian constitutional archeology. Studies and documents], Editura Universităţii din București, București, 2000.
 * Byzance, Rome et les Roumains. Essais sur la production politique de la foi au Moyen Âge [Byzantium, Rome, and the Romanians. Essays on the political production of faith in the Middle Ages], Éditions Babel, Bucarest, 1998.
 * Șapte teme de politică românească [Seven Themes of Romanian Politics], Antet, Bucharest, 1997.
 * Au cetățenii suflet? O teologie politică a societăților post-seculare, Editura Vremea, București, 2016.