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

拟议的研究受到中欧和东欧（CEE）前共产主义国家中经常被称为“民族”或“少数民族”问题的持续讨论的启发：即如何在现有国家边界的框架内根据民主原则整合种族多样化的社会。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20年里，国际组织（尤其是欧洲委员会、欧安组织和欧盟）一直在努力制定一个可信的少数民族权利制度，以防止该地区种族冲突的出现或重新抬头。少数民族权利当然不仅仅是一个与中东欧有关的问题：对该地区的讨论可以放在更广泛的关于少数民族社区融合的辩论的背景下，以及沿着民主多元文化主义的路线重新配置现有民族国家的可能性。中东欧最近少数民族权利发展的一个特别特点是若干国家通过了基于非领土文化自治原则的法律。在20世纪之交的奥匈帝国，NTCA首先被提出，其前提是在种族混合的定居地区，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，这些集体是在公民个人自由选择在国家登记册上登记和选举他们自己的机构负责少数民族教育和其他文化事务的基础上组成的。这种模式引起了当代学者和少数民族权利实践者越来越大的兴趣，他们认为这是一种从概念上将民族与领土分离的可能方式，从而减轻了对少数民族权利扩大可能破坏现有国家稳定和完整的担忧。然而，对于所有这些兴趣，仍然缺乏对NTCA的详细比较研究，以确定NTCA法律复兴背后的因素和议程，已建立的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身份认同和国家地位和政治共同体建设的影响。拟议研究的广泛目标是通过对爱沙尼亚、匈牙利、罗马尼亚、俄罗斯和塞尔维亚这五个国家（该模型近年来特别突出）围绕NTCA的辩论和实践进行彻底的比较分析，来解决文献中的这一差距。该项目还将通过专家研讨会，将这些中欧和东欧案例的研究结果置于更广泛的背景下，研讨会的参与者包括NTCA的学术理论家，以及在其他国家（如比利时、加拿大、以色列、土耳其）工作的学者和政策制定者，这些国家或将NTCA作为管理种族多样性的模式加以使用或讨论。这些发现将是新颖、有趣和相关的，不仅在学术上，而且对从事欧洲少数民族权利制度发展的组织也是如此。从跨越整个中东欧地区的一系列环境中，包括欧盟成员国、潜在成员国和伙伴国家，这项研究将更全面、更细致地了解NTCA是否有助于社区整合，还是实际上使种族分裂具体化。

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.