Building inter-ethnic bridges or promoting ethno-territorial demarcation lines? Hungarian minority parties in competition

Abstract

Parties of ethnic minorities are flourishing in a large number of ethnically divided democracies. While academic research has studied their emergence and success, we know little about intra-group party competition. This paper discusses the reasons for intra-group political plurality, with a focus on intra-party conflict and intra-group party competition: it explains the political orientation of ethnic minority parties and their intra-group challengers as a consequence of the inclusion of minority parties into government. The inclusion of minority parties into national governments produces an inherent conflict between pragmatic office-seekers and radical partisans. In minority parties that have governmental responsibilities, the pragmatist view overwhelms, while in those parties in opposition, radical voices dominate. The formation of two intra-Hungarian challenger parties in Romania and in Slovakia in 2007 and 2009 represents two very similar cases, which appear to be in line with our hypotheses.

Keywords:

• electoral competition
• ethnic minority parties
• government participation
• intra-ethnic competition

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Julian Bernauer, Christina Zuber, participants of the workshop “National Minorities and New Nationalizing States in the 20th and 21st centuries” at the ECPR Joint Sessions in Münster in 2010 and members of the European Politics Group at the ETH Zurich for very helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Notes

Parties of minorities, which run (almost) uncontested in elections, and gain the votes of the overwhelming majority of the voters who identify with the minority group. This gives them de facto a monopoly in representing the views of the minority in parliament.

2002 census of the National Institute of Statistics of Romania (http://www.insse.ro/cms/files/RPL2002INS/vol5/tables/t16.pdf [last accessed on 15 March 2010]). 2001 census of the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic (http://portal.statistics.sk/files/Sekcie/sek_600/Demografia/SODB/Tabulky/Tabulky_AJ_SODB/tab11.pdf [last accessed on 15 March 2010]).

The Romanian electoral system further foresees special seats for ethnic minority parties – amounting to 18 in the 2004 parliamentary elections. Each minority list that reaches a threshold of votes – just 10% of the votes usually needed for a parliamentary seats – is guaranteed a minority seat in parliament, but each minority group can obtain only one such seat (Alionescu 2004). These rules guarantee the representation of small minorities, but restrict representation to only one MP (and one party/organization per minority group), and jointly, the representatives of the small minorities relativize the importance of the Hungarian minority as the largest minority group.

In 2008, Romania has changed to a mixed compensatory electoral system, still keeping the 5% national legal threshold. While it is possible for a party to win single-seat districts, it is implausible that a dissident minority party will win six or more direct district seats – as much as would be exempted from the threshold requirement according to the new Romanian electoral law.

We measure radicalism in relative terms and compare the radicalization process of the parties across countries.

There has been a considerable speculation on the existence of a secret protocol on the conditions of co-operation between the UDMR and the other coalition parties. However, it is most likely that apart from the governmental program no other written documents existed which has also been signed by the UDMR (Kántor and Bárdi 2000, 162; Horváth 2002, 46–47).

Szekler Land is the part of Transylvania with a Hungarian minority and which encompasses Hargitha and Covasna counties and parts of the Mureş County.

Furthermore, Romanian could from now on be taught by special books and according to special plans to national minorities. Yet, the longstanding claim for the education of the subjects of history and geography in minority language remained unfulfilled (Bartunek 2010, 352–353).

The alliance included a third minor Hungarian party, the Hungarian People's Party which however has not managed to enter the parliament.

In 1995, the Hungarian People's Movement for Reconciliation and Welfare was formed. It ran in the national elections in 1998 but received only 0.19% of the votes (Millard 2004, 86).

The party did not even manage to collect sufficient signatures for registration, and gathered only a few hundred people in a demonstration in 2003 (Új Szó 2003).

In the forefront of the national elections in Slovakia the new conservative right Hungarian government announced the introduction of double citizenship for ethnic Hungarians abroad. This highly symbolic and controversial move of the Hungarian government was followed by the Slovak government's restriction of the law on citizenship threatening the Hungarians to lose their Slovak citizenship if they would embrace the Hungarian citizenship.