THE INVENTION OF THE ANTI-PASTEUR VACCINE: AN INSTANCE OF STATE DECENTRALISATION IN ROMANIA

Abstract

The paper deals with analyzing the privatization of the Pasteur Institute, seen as a national symbol, in post communist Romania, i.e. trying to understand the mechanism of the state regulatory practices and the ways that their absence influences the development of society. The Pasteur Institute was chosen as an example in order to show what kind of changes occur after the disappearance of the “standardization” imposed by the communist regime, a state of liminality which gives way to social changes, apparently following Neoliberal policies of the state’s withdrawal from the public life of institutions, and thus preventing the dominated from truly understanding the genuine nature of their submission. By comparing the case of the state reconstruction in the Republic of Georgia with a similar case in Romania, this essay shows the perverse effects of state decentralization which may seem to generate freedom, but instead do the exact opposite, turning reconstruction into disintegration.