National Minorities in an Era of Externalization

Abstract

This article investigates how two processes of externalization—deeper integration into European institutions, and the extension of citizenship and voting rights offered by neighboring kin-states—impact national minority politics using the critical case of the ethnic Hungarian political community in Romania. It finds that external citizenship and voting rights may help strengthen ethnic political identity, but also reorients resources away from minority political projects toward the kin-state and encourages intra-minority stratification. Access to European political spaces offers additional arenas through which minority political actors can make claims and gain allies, but is of limited use as a mobilizational resource.

FUNDING

Research for this article conducted in the fall of 2013 was supported by a fellowship from the Central European University’s Institute for Advanced Study in Budapest.

Notes

^1. There are around 1.2 million people in Romania who identify as Hungarian according to the 2011 census (Kapitány 2015). This makes the ethnic Hungarian community in Romania the largest national minority community in Eastern Europe in terms of sheer numbers, if not in percentage of total population. Hungarians in Romania make up about 6.5 percent of the Romanian population.

^2. DAHR is known as Romániai Magyar Demokrata Szövetség (RMDSZ) in Hungarian. The two main challenger parties were the Transylvanian Hungarian People’s Party (Erdélyi Magyar Neppárt, EMNP) and the Hungarian Civic Party (Magyar Polgári Párt, MPP).

^3. Unlike resident Hungarian citizens, external Hungarian citizens cannot vote for individual mandate seats in Hungary’s mixed system. There are 93 party list seats and 106 single mandate seats in the 199 seat parliament.

^4. According to the Hungarian National Election Office, approximately 550,000 individuals had acquired Hungarian citizenship under the new regime, and of those, about 350,000 were non-resident citizens of voting age. Just under 200,000, or about 60 percent, of those 350,000 registered to vote in the April 2014 elections. Nearly half of the external votes received (approximately 129,000), came from Romania (over 58,000), followed by Serbia (17,500), and 1,500 from countries that do not allow dual citizenship, most likely Slovakia and Ukraine. Data can be found at http://valasztas.hu//hu/ogyv2014/index.html, accessed September 29, 2016.

^5. Interview with Levente Salat, president of the Ethnocultural Diversity Resource Center, Cluj, Romania (November 11, 2013).

^6. Interview with István Horváth, director of the Romanian Institute for the Study of National Minorities, Cluj, Romania (November 12, 2013).

^7. Interviews with István Horváth and Levente Salat.

^8. Interview with Tibor Toró, Department of Sociology, Sapientia University, Cluj, Romania.

^9. Tőkés was given the third slot on the Fidesz list. One representative each from the ethnic Hungarian communities in Ukraine, Serbia and Slovakia were also give slots on the list (the 9th, 10th, and 21st positions).

^10. Fidesz and its party list partner, the Christian Democratic People’s Party (Kereszténydemokrata Néppárt, KDNP), won 95 percent of the external votes (Herner-Kovács, et al. 2014).

^11. Fidesz had supported the creation of smaller Hungarian minority parties to challenge DAHR in the past.

^12. Interviews with Tibor Toró, and Tamás Kiss, researcher at the Romanian Institute for the Study of National Minority Problems, Cluj, Romania (November 11, 2013).

^13. Interview with Tibor Toró.

¹⁴ Interview with István Horváth.

^15. Interviews with Levente Salat and István Székely, president of the Cultural Autonomy Group, DAHR, Cluj, Romania (November 14, 2013).

^16. Interview with Tamás Kiss.

^17. There are 47 CoE member states, not all of which are members of the EU. The CoE has crafted the only significant treaties dealing with national and linguistic minorities, specifically the European Convention on the Rights of Minority Language in 1992 and the Framework Convention on National Minorities in 1995.

^18. Kinga Gál, Fidesz MEP, is currently the co-president of the Intergroup. Nineteen out of the 66 Intergroup members are of Hungarian origin.

^19. According to the organization’s website FUEN is “the largest umbrella organisation of the autochthonous, national minorities / ethnic groups in Europe,” at www.fuen.org/about-us/facts/, accessed September 29, 2016.

^20. The full text of the initiative can be found at www.fuen.org/key-topics/european-citizens-initiative/, accessed September 29, 2016.

^21. The initiative was generated by Balázs Izsák and Attila Dabis of the SZNT.

^22. The text of the initiative can be found in English at www.nationalregions.eu/detailed-information.php, accessed September 29, 2016.

^23. In 2009, the RMDSZ had a joint list with the EMNP, and ran with the cooperation of the MPP in 2014.

^24. Not surprisingly, this split on strategy revealed deeper divisions in the party. Toró resigned as EMNP president later in 2014.

Additional information

Funding

Research for this article conducted in the fall of 2013 was supported by a fellowship from the Central European University’s Institute for Advanced Study in Budapest.