Elections for the princely throne of Wallachia were held on December 20–21, 1842 (New Style: January 1–2, 1843), marking the start of Gheorghe Bibescu's rule. They were the first of two such elections ever held in Wallachia, and historic in that they restored and modernized the elective monarchy, after a 112-year hiatus. While earlier elections took place under the Vlach law, the 1842–43 race was held under a modernized suffrage: there were multiple candidates, an electoral college, approval voting, and exhaustive ballot. The selection of voters extended beyond the inner circle of the Wallachian boyars, with consultation of the provincial landowners and the guilds. Such practices reflected the modernizing trend instituted by the Regulamentul Organic regime in both Danubian Principalities, under the shared custody of the Russian and Ottoman empires. In Moldavia, however, the regime did not permit princely elections, making Bibescu's the only Regulamentul reign to have been consecrated by a vote.
The 1842 election also aired disputes between various camps: the National Party versus the Russophiles, and conservatives versus liberals. These protracted battles had marked the rule of Alexandru II Ghica, deposed by collusion between Bibescu and his aging conservative rival, Alecu Filipescu-Vulpea. The electoral campaign, touched by corruption and slander, also opposed Bibescu to his brother Barbu Dimitrie Știrbei, who became a leading contender. Bibescu won when Știrbei effectively transferred him his electoral votes, leaving the senior boyar Iordache Filipescu in third-place.
Bibescu's reign was marked by concessions to the National Party, but later the prince asserted his independence, and, like Ghica before him, governed with a hostile Ordinary Assembly. He also broke with precedent by ruling without consultation and tampering with the legislative elections of 1846, but maintained a friendly rapport with the liberal camp. Eventually abdicating and leaving the country during the Wallachian Revolution of 1848, his brother Știrbei replaced him on the throne following the resumption of Ottoman control. Both brothers remained active in political life after the Crimean War, when, by renouncing their ambitions, they contributed to the union of the Principalities. This was achieved by the princely election of January 1859, when Moldavian Alexandru Ioan Cuza was granted the Wallachian throne.
Context
Ghica's ascendancy
During the early 19th century, both Moldavia and Wallachia were Ottoman vassals ruled upon by Phanariote princes (or hospodars). This era, inaugurated in 1714 by the ouster of Constantin Brâncoveanu, signified "150 years of Greek cultural predominance". This also led to the erosion of the elective monarchy—under the adapted Vlach law of the Middle Ages, electors included the boyardom and all bishops of the Wallachian Orthodox Church, thus opening the way for the erosion of princely powers. The Phanariote regime did away with elections from 1730, when Constantine Mavrocordatos was the last elected prince of Wallachia. Reigning for just one month, he was later restored without elections by Sultan Mahmud I. Although such appointments became the standard, the Phanariote regime developed into a boyar oligarchy, which was largely dominated by the local families—up to 80% of the Boyar Assembly were of indigenous descent. Their opposition to the immigrant Greeks produced the early forms of Romanian nationalism, which seeped into a liberal movement, feeding the Wallachian uprising of 1821 and the social philosophy of Dinicu Golescu.
The Phanariote era came to an abrupt end in 1829, when the Russian Empire occupied both principalities during a war with the Ottomans. The subsequent Treaty of Adrianople called for a new constitutional regime, under shared Ottoman–Russian custody: Regulamentul Organic was drafted by a special Commission of boyars, overseen by the Russian envoys Peter Zheltukhin and Pavel Kiselyov. In obtaining their mix of liberalizing and conservative articles, they repressed both the liberal current and the traditionalist boyars, leading them to compromise on the core issues. Regulamentul was adopted in Wallachia by May 1831, after two years of deliberations. With this, the old Boyar Assembly was refashioned into a 42-member "Ordinary National Assembly", based on the estates of the realm: 20 members were elected by plurality from among the 56 boyars; 18 more, similarly elected, were representatives of the counties, with one additional deputy for Craiova; the other seats were held by the Orthodox bishops. All eligible seats were contested in 1831—"the first time [in Romanian history] when elections were used for producing a deliberative assembly".