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

这项拟议的研究的灵感来自于正在进行的关于中东欧前共产主义国家(CEE)经常被称为“民族”或“少数群体”问题的讨论：即如何根据民主原则在现有国家边界的框架内整合不同种族的社会。自共产主义垮台和多国苏联、南斯拉夫和捷克斯洛伐克灭亡以来的二十年里，国际组织(尤其是欧洲委员会、欧安组织和欧盟)作出了持续努力，以制定一个可信的少数民族权利制度，以防止该区域内出现或再次发生种族冲突。当然，少数群体权利不仅仅是一个与中东欧有关的问题：这一区域的讨论可以在关于少数群体社区融合和按照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。中东欧最近少数民族权利发展的一个特殊特点是，几个国家根据非领土文化自治原则通过了法律。20世纪之交在奥匈帝国首次提出的《少数民族自治法》的前提是，在一个种族混杂的聚居区，少数民族自治权不能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，其基础是公民个人自由地选择登记在国家登记册上，并选举自己的机构，负责少数民族教育和其他文化事务。这一模式吸引了当代少数群体权利学者和实践者越来越多的兴趣，他们认为这是一种在概念上将族裔与领土分开的可能方式，从而缓解了人们对更大的少数群体权利可能破坏现有国家的稳定和完整的担忧。然而，尽管有这样的兴趣，但仍然缺乏关于NTCA的详细比较研究，这些研究试图确定NTCA法律复兴背后的因素和议程，已经建立的NTCA机构所发挥的实际作用，以及NTCA对后共产主义中东欧地区的身份和国家地位和政治共同体建设的影响。拟议研究的广泛目的是通过对近期该模式特别突出的五个国家围绕NTCA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：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确定这些中东欧国家的调查结果，参加研讨会的有NTCA的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，在这些国家，NTCA被用作或被提议作为管理种族多样性的模式。这些发现将是新颖、有趣和相关的，不仅在学术上，而且对致力于发展欧洲少数人权利制度的组织也是如此。从整个中东欧地区的一系列背景来看，包括欧盟成员国、潜在成员国和伙伴国，这项研究将让人们更全面、更细致入微地了解NTCA是在帮助社区融合，还是实际上实现了种族分裂。

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.