National Minority Rights & Democratic Political Community: Practices of Non-territorial Cultural Autonomy in Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe

拟议中的研究是由什么通常被称为“民族”或“少数民族”的问题，在中欧和东欧（中东欧）的前共产主义国家正在进行的讨论的启发：即，如何根据现有的国家边界的框架内的民主原则整合种族多元化的社会。自共产主义垮台和多民族的苏联、南斯拉夫和捷克斯洛伐克解体以来的二十年里，国际组织（特别是欧洲理事会、欧安组织和欧盟）一直在努力制定一个可靠的少数民族权利制度，以防止该地区出现或重新爆发种族冲突。当然，少数群体的权利不仅仅是中欧和东欧的一个问题：对这一区域的讨论可以放在关于少数群体社区融合和沿着民主多元文化主义重新配置现有民族国家的可能性的更广泛辩论的背景下进行。中欧和东欧最近少数群体权利发展的一个特点是，一些州通过了基于非领土文化自治原则的法律。《民族自治法》最初是在世纪之交的奥匈帝国制定的，其前提是，在族裔混居的地区，不能将少数民族自治权分配给特定的领土区域;相反，这些权利必须分配给公共集体的人，其基础是公民个人自由选择在国家登记册上登记，并选举自己负责少数群体事务的机构，教育和其他文化事务。这一模式引起了当代学者和少数群体权利实践者越来越大的兴趣，他们认为这是一种可能的方式，可以在概念上将族裔与领土分开，从而减轻人们对少数群体权利的增加可能破坏现有国家的稳定和完整的担忧。然而，对于所有这些兴趣，仍然缺乏对NTCA的详细比较研究，旨在确定NTCA法律复兴背后的因素和议程，NTCA机构已经建立的实际作用以及NTCA对身份认同和国家地位和政治社区建设的影响。拟议的研究的主要目的是通过对NTCA在五个国家的辩论和实践进行彻底的比较分析，以解决文献中的这一差距，这些国家的模式在最近一段时间特别突出：爱沙尼亚，匈牙利，罗马尼亚，俄罗斯和塞尔维亚。该项目还将在更广泛的背景下，通过涉及NTCA学术理论家以及在其他国家（例如比利时，加拿大，以色列，土耳其）工作的学者和政策制定者的专家研讨会，从这些中欧和东欧案例中得出结论，NTCA被用作或被提出作为管理种族多样性的模式。调查结果将是新颖的，有趣的和相关的，不仅在学术上，但也为从事欧洲少数群体权利制度的发展组织。从跨越整个中东欧地区的一系列设置，包括欧盟成员国，潜在成员国和伙伴国，研究将提供一个更全面，更细致入微的了解NTCA是否有助于整合社区或它是否实际上具体化种族分裂。

The proposed research is inspired by ongoing discussion of what is often called the the 'nationality' or 'minority' question in the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE): namely, how to integrate ethnically diverse societies according to democratic principles within the framework of existing state borders. The two decades since the fall of communism and the demise of the multinational USSR, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia have seen sustained efforts by international organisations (most especially the Council of Europe, OSCE and EU) to enact a credible national minority rights regime capable of preventing the emergence or resurgence of ethnic conflicts within this region. Minority rights are of course not simply an issue in relation to CEE: discussion of this region can be situated within the context of broader debates on integration of minority communities and the possibility of reconfiguring existing nation states along lines of democratic multiculturalism. One particular feature of recent minority rights development in CEE has been the adoption by several states of laws based on the principle of non-territorial cultural autonomy (NTCA). First elaborated in Austro-Hungary at the turn of the 20th century, NTCA is based on the premise that in an areas of ethnically mixed settlement, rights to minority autonomy cannot be allocated to particular territorial regions; rather, these rights must be allocated to public collectivities of persons, constituted on the basis of individual citizens freely opting to enrol on a national register and elect their own institutions with responsibility for minority schooling and other cultural affairs. This model has attracted growing interest from contemporary scholars and practitioners of minority rights, who see it as possible way of conceptually separating ethnicity from territory and thereby alleviating fears that greater minority rights might undermine the stability and integrity of existing states. For all of this interest, however, there is still a lack of detailed comparative research on NTCA that seeks to determine the factors and agendas behind the revival of NTCA laws, the actual roles performed by NTCA institutions that have been established and the implications that NTCA carries for identity and the construction of statehood and political community within the post-communist CEE region. The broad aim of the proposed research is to address this gap in the literature by conducting a thorough comparative analysis of debates and practices around NTCA in five states where the model has had particular salience in recent times: Estonia, Hungary, Romania, Russia and Serbia. The project will also set the findings from these CEE cases within a broader context through expert seminars involving academic theoreticians of NTCA as well as scholars and policymakers working in and on other states (e.g. Belgium, Canada, Israel, Turkey) where NTCA is either used or mooted as a model for managing ethnic diversity. The findings will be novel, interesting and relevant not only academically, but also for organisations engaged in the development of a European minority rights regime. From a range of settings spanning the entire CEE region, including EU member, prospective member and partner states, the research will give a fuller and more nuanced understanding of whether NTCA is helping to integrate communities or whether it in fact reifies ethnic divisions.