Romania can – under conditions that are favorable though not unlikely – become a fixed element of an Eastern European growth syndrome that receives its initial impulses from foreign companies that produce for export. This development is further boosted by transfers from the many Romanian working abroad. Both factors have gone into the making of a powerful boom in the domestic economy. Persistently high economic growth – some six percent p. a. – serves to underline this potential, one that could be realized more sustainably if the country undertook efforts to improve is education system and to engage in a prudent »industrial policy.« Economic growth is changing society, and the challenge facing Romania today is to transform a still largely agrarian society into an urban society. A new social stratum has already formed in the country’s urban centers, and its members, expecting little of the state, put much initiative into arranging their lives in a growing market that offers numerous opportunities and little by way of security. This new, growing stratum, highly differentiated in income terms, must be distinguished from the mass of those who, still rooted in traditional worlds of work, mainly in rural areas, largely lead materially modest lives devoid of any real perspective, and often in poverty. They have very little from the country’s growing prosperity have little to expect from official social assistance. The country’s growing prosperity, may thus be said to go hand in hand with increasing social polarization. Romanian politics shows little interest in this phenomenon, mainly because Romanian politics is largely determined by the interest of a postcommunist elite in securing its own positions and wealth. This elite has become established as a new »state bourgeoisie« whose business is based in essence on interventions in the market by a state apparatus manipulated by it – a field of activity for which this elite enjoys generous political scopes. This elite counters calls – coming not least from the EU – for more rule of law by »staging« anticorruption actions that are certain not to endanger the interests of the well-networked »state bourgeosie.« In this environment countermovements devoted to the rule of law are just as conceivable as the political rise of a new brand of populist demagogues.