European integration, regional change and ethnic minority mobilisation: an introduction.

• Author: Anagnostou, Dia

Abstract:

The aim of this introductory chapter is to provide an overview of the theoretical framework informing the case studies presented in this issue. In the context of nation and state building, it describes and analyzes the presence of minorities in Europe, their politicisation at the regional-local level in post war Europe, as well as the role played by EU regional economic processes and human rights policies since the early 1990s. European integration extends to minority-inhabited areas through processes of regional development change, implementation of structural funds, cross border co-operation, and in CESE pre-accession funds. It furthermore affects minorities through human rights norms and minority protection conditions, a regime that has developed over the past fifteen years in conjunction with the Council of Europe (CoE). Our case studies explore how changing opportunities and constraints in the context of EU regional economic processes and human rights norms, alter patterns of local political participation and economic activity of local ethnic minorities and national majorities, their relations with national and ethnic political parties and state administration, as well as minority political mobilisation and cultural demands vis-a-vis the central state. They also examine their influence on how local minorities and majorities view their identification with a national or ethnic community, their rights and obligations as citizens of a state, as well as how they conceptualise 'Europe.'

Keywords: ethnic politics, minorities, European integration, regions, nationalism

Introduction

This special issue examines the effects of European integration on territorially concentrated minorities inhabiting border areas and their relations with national majorities and the state in EU member states and accession countries. We are centrally interested in regions inhabited by large historical minority populations. The term 'historical minority' is used here to distinguish between the minority populations that were part of a national or multinational state since its creation, from the minority groups that are the outcome of international migration flows; the research presented in the contributions to this issue focuses only in the former type of minorities. The contributions cover six cases of minority inhabited regions in Southeast Europe, four EU member states (Greece, Italy, Slovakia and Slovenia) and two accession countries (Bulgaria and Romania).

European integration processes extend to minority-inhabited areas through regional development policies such as structural funds, cross border co-operation, and pre-accession funds to prepare CESE states to implement cohesion policy. They furthermore affect minorities through human rights norms and minority protection conditions, a regime that has developed over the past fifteen years in conjunction with the Council of Europe (CoE). Our case studies explore how changing opportunities and constraints induced by EU regional economic and human rights policies, alter patterns of local political participation and economic activity of local ethnic minorities and national majorities, their relations with national and ethnic political parties and state administration, as well as minority political mobilisation and cultural demands vis-a-vis the central state. We also examine their influence on how local minorities and majorities view their identification with a national or ethnic community, their rights and obligations as citizens of a state, as well as how they conceptualise 'Europe.'

The aim of this introduction is to provide an overview of the empirical and theoretical framework informing the case studies presented in this issue. In the sections that follow we outline the general process of nation state building and minority formation in Europe, the politicisation of regional minorities in post war Europe, and the role played in this context by EU regional economic and human rights policies. We furthermore identify ways in which territorial-regional restructuring and the minority question have been intertwined, and probe the changing socio-economic and institutional context in minority inhabited regions, as well as the changing configuration of minority and majority relations and interests (both political and economic). In section 9, we further discuss the regional implications of the EU enlargement in Central Eastern and South East European (CESE) countries with special reference to the human rights and minority protection regime, and the preparation of new member states and accession countries for joining the EU.

1.1 Nation-state building, border regions and minorities in Southeast Europe

The rise of modern national states in Europe was a century long historical process that involved the creation of bounded geopolitical, cultural and economic entities out of myriad of fragmented, overlapping and quasi-autonomous territories and communities that comprised the pre-existing feudal and imperial systems. It advanced through two parallel, contested and inter-related processes of consolidating an external and clearly demarcated territorial border and simultaneously internally creating an integrated national society. As state borders became increasingly secure and relatively fixed, national leaders channelled the state's capacity and power for creating a unified and homogeneous national society out of dispersed and culturally diverse local communities. Besides cultural standardisation and political incorporation, such unification also involved processes of political-administrative centralisation and regional economic integration.

In the 20th century, Western European states dealt with ongoing regional protest through attempts to incorporate minorities in systems of representation defined by national political institutions (Urwin and Rokkan 1982). Drawing upon the work of Stein Rokkan (1970), Albert Hirschman (1970) and Rokkan and Urwin (1982), Bartolini analyses the historical formation of nation-states as a gradual process of incorporation of ever larger sectors of the population through political participation and social citizenship rights in national institutions (Bartolini 1998; 2000). The expansion of democratisation and internal opportunities for political representation (voice) with the centre yielding to popular pressure went hand in hand with the consolidation of the state's external boundary and consequently with strong limitations to the possibility to secede (exit). Nation building bolstered the state's ability to control its border, less through force and increasingly through the endowing of citizenship rights and the elaboration of a discourse highlighting the 'will of the nation'. This strengthened cultural loyalties towards the centre and provided it with a new account of political legitimacy of the state as the embodiment of the nation (Bartolini 2000: 12-18; Calhoun 1997: 71).

In the internal system of political representation and differentiation that emerged, functional interests and individual rights were privileged over the claims of peripheral regions and ethnic-cultural minorities, which withstood assimilation and were regarded as threatening. Governments sought to diffuse or solve conflict with peripheral regions and minorities by channelling it through the centralised administrative structures and national political parties.

In Central-East and Southeast Europe (CESE), state unification was specifically shaped by belated process of nation-state building that spanned over a century of empire dissolution and did not produce secure borders until well in the 20th century. The complex multiethnic mosaic in the Habsburg and Ottoman territories, with language and religious differences irregularly spread and thoroughly intermeshed, made national unification and territorial consolidation particularly antagonistic and bound to remain incomplete. The presence of large and regionally concentrated ethnic minorities in border areas that are often territorially contiguous to an external national homeland continues to this day to bear testimony to this legacy (Brubaker 1996).

In the inter-war period, the project of economic modernisation and state centralisation, with which state elites embarked towards unification, came up against ethnic fragmentation, institutionalised through international treaties aiming to protect minority cultures. The resulting tensions and growing revisionist sentiment contributed to the collapse of liberal institutions and the democratisation processes in the region in the inter-war period, which precluded forms of political incorporation of territorial minorities available in Western Europe (Mazower 2000: 109-110). The project of state-led modernisation, nationalisation and political-administrative centralisation did not resume until the 1940s with the advent of communist regimes in CESE.

States in CESE are home to sizeable ethnic minorities concentrated near or along border regions. During the communist period, state socialism consolidated ethnic-national identities and their regional concentration not only in the federal socialist states that explicitly institutionalised such identities, but also in unitary states. While communist regimes politically suppressed nationalism, a series of policies unintentionally contributed to strengthening ethnic and national identities (Anagnostou 2005). Communist ideology left little room for the expression of culturally distinct identities, and even less for ethnic mobilisation. In this way, ethnic conflict was prevented and neutralised. Nonetheless, the post-1989 experience has shown that ethnic and national identities retained part of their strength or appeal. They were relatively easily revived in the 1990s during the process of democratic transition and economic transformation in CESE.

1.2 Regional minority politicisation in post-war Europe

In post-war West Europe, national governments...