Ethnicization or de-ethnicization? Hungarian political representation in the Romanian parliament

Abstract

The main goal of the paper is to understand how substantive representation of minorities works through ethnic parties and what the relationship between substantive and descriptive representation is in this specific case. Focus on the traditional understanding of substantive representation is common when analyzing the representation of minorities and marginalized groups, but only a few studies look at the substantive representation of national minorities from a constructivist approach, and even fewer are centered on Central and Eastern Europe. The paper argues that besides ethnicizing their demands, representatives of minorities have a wide array of strategies to achieve their goals. Using the parliamentary representation of Hungarians in Romania as a case study, I show that the strategies chosen in ethnic claims-making are context-dependent: ethnicizing messages are used only in specific cases, while de-ethnicization is applied in debates thought to be important for their community. These are part of a bargaining process that help representatives to achieve their goals. Thus, the paper broadens the debate on substantive representation and has implications in coding, as most of the studies addressing the issue assume that descriptive representatives, in order to provide substantive representation, must ethnicize their demands.

Keywords:

• descriptive representation
• substantive representation
• ethnic parties
• minorities
• Hungarians in Romania

ORCID

Tibor Toró http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4920-7777

Notes

1 Pitkin differentiates among four types of representation: descriptive, substantive, formalistic, and symbolic; however, the last two are less relevant from this paper's point of view.

2 See, among others: Bird (2007); Black and Hicks (2006); Gamble (2007); Minta (2012); Minta and Sinclair-Chapman (2013); Mansbridge (1999); Saalfeld (2011); Saalfeld and Bischof (2013).

3 According to the 2011 census, the second largest minority is the Roma (3.3%), all other minorities being under 1% of the population (See the results of the census – http://www.recensamantromania.ro/).

4 Although other Hungarian parties have appeared, none have managed to break the hegemony of DAHR on the national level, the party remaining the only Hungarian organization capable of winning seats in parliament so far.

5 The electoral system in the 2008–2016 period was mixed, with single-member constituencies and a proportional-like seat allocation system for parties that passed the 5% or an alternative threshold (see Székely 2009; Marian and King 2010).

6 Freely chosen written or oral declarations on general or particular political issues delivered in parliament once a week.

7 Although there could be some voters who voted for them exactly because of their gender or ethnic origin, this cannot be generalized to their supporters as a whole.

8 In the sense used by Jane Mansbridge, who refers to situations when a representative embraces the representation of people or groups from other districts (Mansbridge 2003, 524).

9 In a reversed logic, this explains why those nonminority MPs who represent constituencies with a large percentage of minority residents are more active when issues concerning the rights and problems of ethnic minorities are on the agenda (Saalfeld and Bischof 2013; Saalfeld 2011).

10 All the interventions can be downloaded from the website of the House of Deputies: http://www.cdep.ro/pls/parlam/structura.fp?idp=5&cam=2&leg=2004&prn=0 – last accessed on 5 April 2017.

11 The parliamentary development of the draft can be downloaded here: http://www.cdep.ro/pls/proiecte/upl_pck.proiect?cam=2&idp=6470 – accessed on 5 April 2017.

12 All the transcripts are in Romanian and were translated by the author.

13 For details, see the program of DAHR (“Az RMDSZ programja” 2013).

14 See, for example, the intervention of Máté András Levente, who argues for the restitution of church properties (24 May 2005), or the speech of Toró T. Tibor on behalf of those who tried to organize an internal referendum on the autonomy of Szeklerland and were harshly attacked in the Romanian media (27 February 2007).

15 For a detailed presentation of the political environment in Romania, see Horváth (2002) or Csergo (2007). Although both these books are based on research from the 1990s and early 2000s, many of their arguments are still valid.

16 Despite its positive aspect, this strategy is not always successful. For example, in the 1996–2000 period, a central demand of DAHR was the re-establishment of a Hungarian language state university that was abolished in the 1950s. This claim was rejected by the coalition parties. In response, DAHR threatened to leave government. After difficult talks a compromise arose: the Romanian parties proposed the establishment of a multilingual Hungarian–German university called Petőfi-Schiller, which was accepted by DAHR leaders as well (Horváth 2002, 47–48). Although even a governmental decision was adopted on the issue, neither the multilingual, nor the independent Hungarian university has ever been established. The strategy of de-politicization helped in solving the political deadlock, but the minority claims were not met; thus, the action cannot be considered an act of substantive representation.