Democratic transition in the Balkans: Romania's Hungarian and Bulgaria's Turkish minority (1989–99)

This article is a comparative analysis of the Hungarian minority in Romania and the Turkish minority in Bulgaria during the first ten years of their transition to democracy. Despite austere assimilationist campaigns during the communist‐era and the unstable political region of the Balkans in its post‐communist‐era, both countries have avoided protracted, inter‐ethnic violence. This article examines three internal factors that have played an instrumental role in facilitating democratic transitions in these plural societies: (i) state control of minorities; (ii) political institutions chosen for their nascent democracies; (iii) and the accommodative role of each minority's ethnopolitical party.