Dampening The Powder Keg: Understanding Interethnic Cooperation in Post-Communist Romania (1990–96)

To better understand how interethnic violence can be prevented in new democracies, this article seeks to explain why ethnic cooperation prevailed in post-communist Romania, a multiethnic country supposedly predisposed to violent conflict. I contend that violence was averted due to the inclusion of ethnic minorities in the national political system. Contrary to what the literature suggests, this inclusion eerged without institutions specially designed to manage interethnic relationsand occurred outside of government, within the ranks of the democratic opposition.

Notes

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1. This issue has been addressed from various angles by scholarssuch as: Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, “Explaining Interethnic Cooperation,” The American Political Science Review, Vol. 90, No. 4 (1996); Michael S. Lund, “Why Are Some Ethnic Disputes Settled Peacefully, While Others Become Violent? Comparing Slovakia, Macedonia and Kosovo,” in Hayward R. Alker, Ted Robert Gurr, and Kumar Rupesinghe (eds), Journeys through Conflict: Narratives and Lessons: A Study of the Conflict Early Warning Systems Research Project of the International Social Science Council (Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), pp. 128–31; Carter Johnson, “Democratic Transition in the Balkans: Romania's Hungarian and Bulgaria's Turkish Minority (1989–99),” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Vol. 8, No. 1 (2002), pp. 1–28; Steve Saideman, “Where Have All the Irredentists Gone? Explaining Why East Europe Was Less Violent in the 1990s,” paper presented at the Midwest Political Science Conference, 2004.

2. Robert D. Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts: A Journey through History (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993), Samuel Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 72, No. 3 (1993), pp. 22–49.

3. Horowitz, pp. 141–84.

4. Rui De Figueiredo and Barry Weingast, “The Rationality of Fear: Political Opportunism and Ethnic Conflict” in Barbara F. Walter and Jack L. Snyder (eds), Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), pp. 260–302; V.P. Gagnon, “Ethnic Nationalism and International Conflict: The Case of Serbia”, in Michael E. Brown (ed), Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001), pp. 132–68.

5. Stuart J. Kaufman, Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War (New York: Cornell University Press, 2001), pp. 15–47.

6. The population of Transylvania historically included Saxons and Szeklers, the first of Germanic origins, the seconds of Hungarian or Hunic descent. This work does include these other two ethnic groups since in the early 1990s the main lines of conflict were between Romanian and Hungarians, with Szeklers siding with the Hungarian minority and the Saxon community counting only around 100,000 members (1992 data).

7. Greet Van der Vyver, “The Importance of Historical Myths for the Ethnic Consciousness of Romanians and Ethnic Hungarians in Transylvania,” Dialectical Anthropology, Vol. 21, No. 3–4 (1996), pp. 381–98; Alina Mungiu, Transilvania Subiectiva (Bucharest: Humanitas, 1999), pp. 85–129.

8. Zoltán Szász, “Interethnic Relations in the Hungarian Half of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,” Nationalities Papers, Vol. 24, No. 3 (1996); Laszlo Fey, “Radacinile Sovinismului Maghiar Anti-Romanesc,” Revista 22, Vol. 20 (2000).

9. Elemér Illyés, National Minorities in Romania: Change in Transylvania (New York: East European Monographs, 1982), pp. 86–114.

10. Kay Lawson, Andrea Römmele, and Georgi Karasimeonov, Cleavages, Parties, and Voters: Studies from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Romania (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999), p. 264.

11. See the Vatra Romanesc site at www.uvr.go.ro [accessed 2 May 2004].

12. Tom Gallagher, Romania after Ceausescu: The Politics of Intolerance (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1995), pp. 194–321; Michael Shafir, “Radical Politics in East Central Europe,” RFE/RL Report, Vol. 2, No. 6 (Aug. 2000).

13. Gallagher, “Romania: nationalism defines democracy” in Wojciech Kostecki, Katarzyna Zukrowska, and Bogdan Góralczyk (eds), Transformations of Post-Communist States (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000), pp. 185–201; Vladimir Tismaneanu, Fantasies of Salvation: Democracy, Nationalism, and Myth in Post-Communist Europe (Princeton University Press, 1998).

14. Jaap Donath, “The Hungarian Minority in Romania: Past, Present and Future,” Ethnic Groups, Vol. 10, No. 4 (1993), pp. 232–41.

15. Ana Maria Biro, Minority Policies in Romania (Budapest: Teleki Laszlo Foundation Institute for Central European Studies, 1996), section 3.3.1.

16. Gallagher, p. 88; Michael Shafir and Dan Ionescu, “The Minorities in 1991: Mutual Distrust, Social Problems and Disillusion,” Report on Eastern Europe, Vol. 2, No. 50, pp. 24–8.

17. Andrew Bell, “The Hungarians in Romania since 1989,” Nationalities Papers, Vol. 24, No. 3 (1996), p. 492.

18. Zsuzsa Csergo, “Beyond Ethnic Divisions: Majority-Minority Debate About the Post-Communist State in Romania and Slovakia,” East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 16, No. 1 (2002), pp. 1–31.

19. Will Kymlicka, “Western Political Theory and Ethnic Relations,” in Will Kymlicka and Magdalena Opalski (eds), Can Liberal Pluralism Be Exported? Western Political Theory and Ethnic Relations in Eastern Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 66–7.

20. Anita Inder Singh, Democracy, Ethnic Diversity, and Security in Post-Communist Europe (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2001), pp. 97–130.

21. Alfred A. Reisch, “Hungary's Foreign Policy toward the East,” RFE-RL Research Report, Vol. 2, No. 15 (1993), pp. 447–65.

22. RFERL Reports, 17 Aug. 1992.

23. Janusz Bugajski, Nations in Turmoil: Conflict and Cooperation in Eastern Europe, 2nd ed. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), pp. 168–9.

24. RFERL Reports, 19 Aug. 1992.

25. Rompres, 5 March 1992.

26. Romanian Television cited by Rompres, 6 April 1993.

27. Matyas Szabo, “Historic Reconciliation" Awakens Old Disputes,” Transition (1996), pp. 46–50.

28. Ted Robert Gurr, Peoples Versus States. Minorities at Risk in the New Century (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2000), pp. 37.

29. Lund, pp. 165–8.

30. For an excellent review of the shortcomings of international explanations see Saideman (2004).

31. Jonathan P. Stein (ed.), The Politics of National Minority Participation in Post-Communist Europe: State-Building, Democracy, and Ethnic Mobilization (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2000), p. 16. Minority rights were influenced by the prospect of admission in part because Eastern European governments knew they could be admitted in these institutions on promises only—promises they could renege on later—or on decisions they could overturn later. See Judith G. Kelley, Ethnic Politics in Europe: The Power of Norms and Incentives (Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004).

32. Michael Hechter, Containing Nationalism (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 136.

33. Jack L. Snyder, From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000), p. 327.

34. Valerie Bunce, Subversive Institutions: The Design and the Destruction of Socialism and the State, Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 105–29.

35. Snyder, pp. 313–53.

36. Arend Lijphart, The Power Sharing Approach,“ in Joseph V. Montville (ed.),Conflict and Peacemaking in Multiethnic Societies(Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1990), pp. 491–509.

37. For the undesirable effects of adopting an incomplete consociational package see: Donald D. Horowitz, “Constitutional Design: An Oxymoron?” in Ian Shapiro and Stephen Macedo (eds), Designing Democratic Institutions (New York: New York University Press, 2000), pp. 257–62.

38. Donald L. Horowitz, “Democracy in Divided Societies,” in Larry Jay Diamond and Marc F. Plattner (eds), Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict, and Democracy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), pp. 52–3.

39. Donald L. Horowitz, “Making Moderation Pay: The Comparative Politics of Ethnic Conflict Management,” in Joseph V. Montville (ed), Conflict and Peacemaking in Multiethnic Societies (Lexington, Mass: Lexington Books, 1990), p. 471.

40. Michael Shafir, “The Political Party as National Holding Company: The Hungarian Democratic Federation of Romania,” in Jonathan P. Stein (ed.), The Politics of National Minority Participation in Post-Communist Europe: State-Building, Democracy, and Ethnic Mobilization (Armonk, N.Y: M.E. Sharpe, 2000), p. 103.

41. Horowitz, “Democracy in Divided Societies,” p. 35.

42. Ivan Szelenyi and Szonja Szelenyi, “Circulation or Reproduction of Elites During the Postcommunist Transformation of Eastern Europe,” Theory and Society, Vol. 24 (1995), pp. 615–38; John Higley, Judith Kullberg, and Jan Pakulski, “The Persistence of Post-Communist Elites,” Journal of Democracy, Vol. 7, No. 2 (1996), pp. 133–47.

43. Vladimir Pasti, The Challenges of Transition: Romania in Transition (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1997), p. 108.

44. Herbert Kitschelt, “Formation of Party Cleavages in Post-Communist Democracies,” Party Politics, Vol. 1, No. 4 (1995), p. 453.

45. Sabrina P. Ramet (ed.), Eastern Europe: Politics, Culture, and Society since 1939 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), p. 205.

46. Tom Gallagher, “Romania: Nationalism Defines Democracy,” in Wojciech Kostecki, Katarzyna Zukrowska, and Bogdan Góralczyk (eds), Transformations of Post-Communist States (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000), p. 187; William Crowther, “Romania,” in Sabrina P. Ramet (ed.), Eastern Europe: Politics, Culture, and Society since 1939 (1998), pp. 190–223.

47. Despite the 1992 split of the FSN, the 1992 electoral success of Iliescu who won 61.43% of votes in the second round of the presidentials confirmed that control had remained in the same hands despite the slight setback suffered by the FSN wing loyal to Iliescu, renamed the “Democratic National Salvation Front.” Vladimir Tismaneanu, “Democracy, Romanian Style,” Dissent, Vol. 43, No. 2 (1995).

48. Vladimir Tismaneanu, “Romanian Exceptionalism? Democracy, Ethnocracy, and Uncertain Pluralism in Post-Communist Romania,” in Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrott (eds), Politics, Power, and the Struggle for Democracy in South-East Europe (1997), pp. 424–6; Juan J. Linz and Alfred C. Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), pp. 344–66.

49. I specifically focus on the political opposition instead of the entire civil society, since integration in the political process is most likely to inspire hopes of real influence within the ethnic minorities' ranks. While undoubtedly important, the role of civil society, and of non-governmental organizations in particular, falls beyond the scope of this project. The contribution of civil society in maintaining the channels of communication between ethnic majority and minority open has been thoroughly analyzed for the Romanian case by Gabriel Andreescu in a book where the author explicitly links the work of NGOs with the lack of Yugoslav style interethnic violence. Gabriel Andreescu, Ruleta. Romani Si Maghiari, 1990–2000 (Polirom, 2001).

50. Shafir, pp. 101–28.

51. Pasti, p. 135.

52. The FSN won 66.31% of votes in the Chamber of Deputies and 67.02% in the Senate, while Iliescu was elected with 85.07%. See Project Essex–IFES–ACEEEO: Elections in Central and Eastern Europe: Results and Legislation.

53. The PNL won 6.41% in the Chamber and 7.06% in the Senate, the PNTCD won 2.56% in the Chamber and 2.45% in the Senate. Ibid.

54. Gallagher, Romania after Ceausescu: The Politics of Intolerance, p. 148.

55. Ibid., p. 149.

56. Campeanu's attitude towards the Hungarian minority and its representatives was however idiosyncratic. His interest stemmed from his awareness of the number of potential voters he could gain, from his generally good pre-1989 contacts with the Hungarian emigration and from his conviction that Hungarian politicians could be controlled. Campeanu in fact managed to win the vast majority of Hungarian votes in 1990 by playing this card. However, when the Hungarian MPs proved less submissive and more assertive of their rights than anticipated, Campeanu changed his attitude embracing a more nationalist stance. It is doubtful that Campeanu played the Hungarian card prior to May 1990 because he had made a rational evaluation of the Romanian electorate, whom he ultimately knew very little about, given his exile. Once he realized the tendencies of the Romanian average voter, he decided to switch gear and embrace a more nationalist position.

57. FBIS, 25 March 1992.

58. Cotidianul, 24 June 1992.

59. RFERL Reports, 14 Sept. 1992.

60. RFERL Reports, 24 Sept. 1992.

61. RFERL Reports, 10 Nov. 1992.

62. Radio Bucureşti cited by Rompres, 14 Dec. 1992.

63. Express, 9 Dec. 1992.

64. Dreptatea, 16 Jan. 1993.

65. Gallagher, Romania after Ceausescu: The Politics of Intolerance, p. 175.

66. Rompres, 23 April 1992.

67. Michael Shafir, “The Political Party as National Holding Company,” in Stein (ed.), The Politics of National Minority Participation, p. 111.

68. Bucuresti Radio Romania, 5 Sept. 1994.

69. Miklos Bakk, “The Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania,” Pro Minoritate (1996), p. 17.

70. Michael Shafir, “The Political Party as National Holding Company,” p. 116.

71. Shafir, “Agony and Death of an Opposition Alliance,” Transition, Vol. 1, No. 8, pp. 23–8.

72. The party-list Romanian electoral system and the Hungarian group voting should lead, according to Ishiyama's criteria, to less inter-group cooperation and more extreme demands. Furthermore, while the strong Iliescu presidency did not have a moderating function, it did contribute to making Hungarians attractive allies for the weak Romanian democratic opposition. John T. Ishiyama, “Institutions and Ethnopolitical Conflict in Post-Communist Politics,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Vol. 6, No. 3 (2000), pp. 51–67; John T. Ishiyama, “Representational Mechanisms and Ethnopolitics: Evidence from Transitional Democracies in Eastern Europe,” East European Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 2 (1999), pp. 251–66.

73. This is why I do not consider the reserved seats for minorities for which the Romanian electoral system allows as meaningful minority participation. One seat is attributed to each party representing minorities unable to pass the parliamentary threshold.

74. Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis (Cambridge, UK/ New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976), pp. 300–304.

75. Bakk, p. 16.

76. For an internal point of view on UDMR moderation see Johnson, pp. 17–19.

77. Michael Shafir, “The Political Party as National Holding Company,” p. 116.