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

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

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.