1

Externally Induced Policy-making in the Education of National Minorities in Eastern

and Central European Countries: Limits and Possibilities

Anna Kyriazi

European University Institute

Paper presented at the 2014 SISP Annual Conference

Introduction

‘It is clear that the West has the power to impose any number of conditions on ECE [East-Central

European] countries, including minority rights conditions. Most ECE countries are sufficiently

desperate to get into the EU and NATO that they would accept virtually anything the West demanded in

this area.’ This is how Will Kymlicka (2002: 22) captures the nature of asymmetric interdependence

ten years in the transition. The ‘role of the West’ and especially the European Union (EU)1 in inducing

institutional change in the controversial domain of minority protection – and, by extension, the policy

area of my specific interest: minority education – has been identified as pervasive (Kelley 2004).

International approval and transmission of a positive image abroad was of crucial importance during

the years of transition, and especially those immediately before EU-accession. National governments

eagerly followed external advice, and, even when confronted with fierce domestic opposition, bypassed

not once normal legislative procedures, practically extorting cumbersome change (Grabbe 2001).

Despite of the condemnation of this method by the very institutions it was intended to please, it is

difficult not to take these incidents as evidence for prioritizing external demands over domestic ones.

But was the influence of the West practically unconstrained as Will Kymlicka implies? Hardly

so. 2

Apart from the general insight that the role of the EU in inducing domestic policy change might

have been overestimated in research (Haughton 2007), the related literature by rule refers to the twin

forces of both external and domestic determinants of institutional change (Schimmelphennig &

Sedelmeier 2005: 10, Spendzharova & Vachudova 2012). Nevertheless, the salience attributed to each

of these forces by researchers varies greatly. For example, domestic political factors have been

conceptualized as a filter through which normative pressure and conditionality eventually leads to

adoption of government policies (Kelley 2004: 3). It has also been argued that domestic politics seem

to be crucial in determining not whether Europeanisation pressures will have a domestic result, but

whether this result will be lasting (Spendzharova & Vachudova 2012: 43). Alternatively, the argument

regarding the salience of domestic factors to the detriment of external ones is taken to its extreme when

the role of the EU is identified as substantially irrelevant, as inducing a simulation of domestic change 1 The EU was not the only influential organization in the region that pressed towards positive changes in minority

protection. Moreover, international and European organizations often exerted influence in a cooperative, mutually

reinforcing manner. Yet, due to the complex structure of the integration process and the tremendous benefits of accession,

the EU has exerted much more extensive influence than all other organizations (notably, but not exhaustively the OSCE, the

CoE, and NATO) taken together. Thus, I confine the discussion to the EU as the primary external source of influence. 2 His description is obviously exaggerated. In the literature, however, one finds even harsher characterizations of power

inequality between West and East. Malová & Haughton for example compare post-Meciar Slovakia to ‘an obedient dog,

faithfully following its master’s instructions’ (2006: 326-7).

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and the adoption of ‘empty’ policies (Gallagher 2009).

Most researchers agree that the EU has had a differential impact in various policy-fields, at

different times regarding different issues. Minority policy is a domain where this influence was

relatively low, for a variety of reasons (Haughton 2007: 235). Consequently, in this paper I focus on

two related questions: First, what was the impact of Europeanization on minority education in ECE

countries? (possibilities). Second, what has constrained this impact? (limits). I argue that change was

driven externally mainly with regard to its ideational component, with multiculturalism taking over

previous ideas of diversity-management in education. Yet, this idea was taken up by domestic

organized interests and was dropped into the equation of domestic political cost-benefit calculations.

Moreover, due to the specificities of both the region and the policy area under examination, I argue that

the involvement of external ethnic homelands, which present themselves as protectors of the interests

of their co-ethnics in the near abroad has some explanatory power as well (Brubaker 1993). Finally, I

argue that pre-existing institutional legacies have also been crucial in determining the course of

institutional change. That is, traces of previous ideas of handling diversity, the state of minority

education at the point of the regime change, institutional memories and path-dependencies have all

played a decisive role in the way new, Europeanized institutional models worked in domestic contexts.

Conceptualization

This paper departs both from Europeanization literature, especially with regard to Eastern enlargement

(Börzel & Risse 2007, Featherstone & Radaelli 2003, Graziano & Vink 2006, Sedelmeier 2011) and

from the findings of transnational diffusion literture (Gilardi 2012, Meyer et. al. 1997, Simmons et. al.

2008), considering the former as a subset of the latter (Börzel & Risse 2012). I combine these insights

with a more area-specific literature that is based on Rogers Brubaker’s dominant theory in the study of

post-Communism (1993), according to which ethnopolitics in ECE states after the regime change has

been formulated in a nexus of multiply interrelated political fields: national, subnational, and

transnational. In Brubaker’s original formulation these included nationalizing states, national

minorities, and ethnic homelands. Strikingly absent from his model is the ‘international community’,

which was only subsequently incorporated by scholars that took up the theory in their own analyses

(e.g. Smith 2002).3 My starting point is this extended model, a quadratic nexus.

The analysis is confined – both due to practical and theoretical considerations – to the education

of sizable national minority groups4 in post-Communist MSs. More specifically, I am interested in

instances when education provision of these groups takes place in institutionally separated structures.

These are tracks of education that run parallel to the uniform public school-system and that

3 Given that Brubaker is talking about forms of nationalism, critique for not including international actors might be

misplaced. It is true, however, that these actors have been involved so actively in domestic policies that adding them to the

model approves the theory, which nevertheless still remains quite parsimonius. 4 I define ‘sizable’ as a minority group that makes up at least 5% of the total population of the country of residence; or as a

group that is concentrated in a specific geographic area of a country and there it makes up about 20% of the local

population. After Brubaker (1993: 10), the term ‘national minority’ is defined ‘[…] as a dynamic political stance […] not a

static ethnodemographic condition. Characteristic (though by no means exhaustive) of this political stance, or family of

stances, is (1) the public claim to membership of an ethnocultural nation different from the numerically and/or politically

dominant ethnocultural nation; (2) the demand for state recognition of this distinct ethnocultural nationality; and (3) the

assertion, on the basis of this ethnocultural nationality, of certain collective cultural and/or political rights.’

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accommodate minority students in ‘minority-only’ schools, offering education in the native language

and teaching ethno-culturally relevant content. I assume that fully-fledged separate education systems

running across all levels of education qualitatively differ from intermediate forms of some institutional

separation as well as from fully integrated systems. This is because of the importance of education in

both promoting and preventing assimilation into the titular nation. Indeed, while educational and

cultural rights are considered modest minority demands (especially in comparison to demands for

territorial autonomy or secession), education as a strategically positioned niche for a self-reproducing

ethno-national world constitutes a ‘multiplier’: the more educational institutions one national minority

group has the fuller the ‘institutional completeness’5 the ethnic community will be able to achieve.

Throughout the Western world, it is a common practice to provide education for relatively large

minority groups in ethno-culturally separated structures following the principle of multicultural

accommodation of diversity (Banting & Kymlicka 2004: 17). Importantly, this kind of separation is not

intended to be discriminatory in the negative sense and is not perceived as such by the minority group.

On the contrary, educational multicultural policies (EMCPs) not only ensure non-discrimination but

represent ‘special’ measures that protect and promote the minorities’ distinct identities in school.

Parallel education for large national minority groups has been present in Eastern-Europe as well, albeit

it was rooted in different ideational perspectives. After Communism, these educational structures –

provided they survived – were reconceptualized according to the principles of multiculturalism.

Case-studies

The aim of the paper is not else that to trace back how the idea of multiculturalism impacted already

existing educational structures for minorities, and what the EU’s role in this process was. For this, I

first examine single cases using process tracing methodology. Subsequently I conduct a controlled

comparative analysis between them. The case-studies include three former state socialist EU member

states (Romania, Estonia, Bulgaria), and the education of the largest national minority group in each of

them (Hungarians, Russian speakers6, and Turks respectively).

Historically, these states belonged to large multinational empires – a legacy that significantly

influenced the evolution of national identities and the dynamics of interethnic relations. Separate

educational institutions were set up in each country as part of the normal educational expansion for the

then dominant ethno-cultural group. Due to a sudden shift in sovereignty formerly dominant

populations became dominated, and mainstream schools became minority schools. Various macro-

social forces and even historic contingencies have sustained the Hungarian educational system in

Romania for more than a century, although assimilatory pressures grew considerably during the last

decades of communist rule. In Bulgaria, the initially well-developed school-system for students of

Turkish ethnicity was gradually phased out as part of an aggressive assimilation campaign that took

place from the 1970s on. The Estonian case is rather different in the sense that the parallel school-

5 The term was introduced by the sociologist Raymond Breton (1964) and refers to the degree to which an ethnic

community contains all relevant functional facilities, and is able to provide with all of the services demanded by those who

belong to it. The higher the degree of institutional completeness is, the lower the pressure to assimilate into the mainstream

will be. In reality, of course, complete separation is rare, and institutional completeness is often a matter of degree. 6 ‘Russian speakers’ is the preferred characterization instead of ‘Russians’ as the minority group is ethnically mixed with

common denominator the use of the Russian language (Laitin 1998).

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system there was set up quite recently, from the second half of the 20th

century on, but has developed

rapidly. By the time of the regime-change separate school-systems for national minorities were present

but had shrunk considerably in Romania, were totally abolished in Bulgaria, and were fully developed

and flourishing in Estonia.

Following independence minority policies were re-conceptualized in all of the examined

countries. This process was shaped mainly by the promise of EU accession, the impact of liberal

democratic ideas in general, and of multiculturalism as a new credible idea about diversity-

management in particular, but also by the interweaving of minority issues with security considerations

(Kymlicka 2001) and resurfacing nationalist aspirations (Brubaker 1993). In Romania the general trend

was reinforcement of separate minority education while in Bulgaria overall pluralization, but no

separation. By contrast in Estonia, despite the presence of a pluralist-multiculturalist discourse, a policy

of re-nationalization has taken place over the past decades in education. The historical development of

separate educational structures for minorities (and a rough prediction for the next decade) is presented

in the timeline below.7

Troubles with Hungarian education in Romania begun as ealry as 1991 when it became

compulsory to teach Romanian history and geography using exclusively the Romanian language in

minority schools. In 1994 a draft law was presented to the parliament by the Conservative Romanian

government that – apart from history and geography – now also required civics to be taught in

Romanian at Hungarian minority schools. The Hungarian minority party (DAHR) in clear

demonstration of its mobilizational potential, initiated the collection of around 450,000 signatures

against the law, the final passage of the which was followed by mass protests in Hungarian

communities. The course of events changed when a more accommodating coalition government was

formed after the 1996 elections, in which the DAHR also participated as a coalition partner. Positive

changes in the education system were significant but slow, marked by ’decreism’, and by the threats of

the minority party to leave the coalition. A compromise solution was finally passed in 1999, after

which education-provision for the Hungarian minority group was stabilized and expansion of the

parallel educational system continued, despite occasional minor episodes of conflict. In Romania today

there exists a fully-fledged, overwhelmingly state-funded minority school-system, which operates on

7 The timeline begins in 1910. A somewhat arbitrary distinction, this date is chosen as by this time general education had

become compulsory and free, and centralized, state-sponsored educational systems had been set up. The different colours

within the coutries represent changes compared to the previous and the following era. They give proportions relative to

each-other, but the correspondence is just indicative, not absolute. The aim is to compare the different trajectories, not the

exact numbers.

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all levels of education. There are more than 1000 kindergartens, 450 junior and more than 600 senior

primary schools, 22 vocational schools and 2 universities. Drop-out rates among students with

Hungarian background are low, and there are no significant inequalities in terms of achievement and

attainment between native and minority students (Pásztor 2010).

The separate school-system of the Turkish minority in Bulgaria on the contrary did not survive

the state-socialist period. Until the 1960s, hundreds of Turkish primary and several secondary schools

operated. There were three institutes for teacher training, and a substantial Turkish language press

(Petkova 2002: 43). A rather sudden change in the regime’s attitudes towards the Turkish minority

precipitated the adoption of radical assimilationist measures and pressures to emigrate (Dimitrov 2000).

By the 1970s Turkish-language separate education had been phased out, and all Turkish students were

integrated into the mainstream educational system. From the 1990s onwards, however, Bulgarian

minority policy went through another fundamental (yet quite timid and slow) transformation towards

pluralist accommodation and the enactment of educational MCPs. Turkish is now an official language

of instruction in Bulgaria. It is, however, made available in school as a subject, not as the medium of

instruction. Multicultural education is very underdeveloped both in theory and in practice, it is limited

in scope, and often actively discouraged (Kyuchukov 2009). Turkish-language instruction of other

subjects is not on the agenda (Rechel 2008: 336), and the same applies to institutional separation.

While in Bulgaria currently we witness modest attempts to restore the abolished minority

educational system, a retreat is taking place in Estonia. Historically, minority education played a major

part in the process of what was perceived as the ‘Russification’ of Estonia during the Soviet era.

Russian-speaking immigrants arrived in large numbers and were settled compactly while linguistic and

cultural integration was not encouraged (Kelley 2004: 12). Russian became the main language of

instruction in many primary schools and in higher education (Coulby 1997: 128). After Communism

the number of schools in the country decreased in general, but Russian schools were disproportionately

hit by this trend (LICHR 2010: 13). Nevertheless, Russian-language education in Estonia is still

extensive (www.Estonia.eu). It is available from pre-school to secondary education as well as in some

vocational schools and some tertiary level institutions. About 20% of all school children between the

age of 7 and 19 attend Russian-language schools. At the primary and mandatory level (grades 1-9) the

owner of the school (mostly the municipality) decides freely what language of instruction is used. At

the secondary level, however, the dominance of Estonian has been restored gradually. For example,

Estonian is currently the only official language of instruction at the secondary level, and all public

schools are obligated to conduct at least 60% of the classes in Estonian, with 40% of the remaining

subjects taught in any other language. This process, initiated in the 90s but finalized as recently as

2013, has been far from unproblematic. The Russian community laments ‘harassment’ of the

authorities and the lack of prospect associated with minority education (LICHR 2010: 27). The same

authorities claim that criticism is ‘populist and undue’ (www.Estonia.eu). Despite occasional protests,

the adoption of multiculturalist rhetoric by a significant fraction of the political elites, and moderate EU

involvement, separate education for the Russophone minority in the country is on the retreat.

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Externally induced policy-making: Possibilities

But what was the role of the EU in the development of these trends? By now it is well established that

European and international institutions have been engaged actively in shaping domestic policies on

ethnic issues in post-communist ECE through various mechanisms. First, on the level of legal

harmonization, the protection of human and minority rights became a precondition for EU membership

by the Maastricht Treaty, the Copenhagen criteria, the Europe Agreements, the Common Foreign and

Security Policy, and the Amsterdam Treaty. In addition, the protection of the same rights is the primary

focus of the Council of Europe, an institution that all EU candidates are obliged to join prior to

accession. There exists an impressive amount of self-reinforcing legal instruments that form part of the

acquis on anti-discrimination and minority protection. The EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights, the

European Convention on Human Rights, the Framework Convention for the Protection of National

Minorities, and Recommendation 1201 of the CoE – to cite only some of the most important

documents – are intended to promote substantive equality throughout the continent, and to create the

conditions through which minorities can preserve their distinct culture and identity. The Commission’s

1997 Opinions and the subsequent Regular Reports, as well as the workings of countless councils and

committees, transmitted domestically the EU’s expectations in this field. Ratification of the

international treaties was only the first step towards positive change, which was followed by the

establishment of various domestic institutions (standing committees, councils, advisory bodies, etc.)

safeguarding minority rights and recommending policies. Yet, deep-rooted transformation is only to a

limited extent a matter of law.

The most powerful evidence of the EU’s influence regarding minority policy is timing

(important decisions made immediately before key summits and milestones concerning membership);

the ‘frank’ explanations of policy-makers themselves, who not only attributed their decisions to

external factors but ‘rarely reflected any moral support for the policies at all’ (Kelley 2004: 181-182);

the success of the EU in supporting the pluralisation of the domestic political environment by

empowering domestic coalitions with liberal democratic objectives (Vachudova 2005) – in this specific

case amplifying the voice of minority representatives and organizations, who not only invoked EU

requirements when pressing for institutional change, but who also appealed to the EU and other

supranational institutions when their demands for reform were not met. On another front, membership

in the EU and NATO defused to a large extent the assertiveness of ethnic homelands, as in most cases

homeland states and states of residence of the national minorities became members or affiliates of the

same military alliance and of the same geopolitical community. Indeed, the slightly deviant case of the

Russian minority in the Baltic states can be partly explained by the Russian Federation’s non-existent

prospects for EU integration.8 Finally, if doubts concerning the exportability of multiculturalism to

Eastern Europe are taken seriously (Kuzio 2005), the logical consequence of this is to emphasize the

role of external actors. For if we assume that the forces of nationalism and multiculturalism are in

general incompatible, and this is to the detriment of the latter, then the most compelling explanation of

8 Mylonas (2010) stresses the importance of the type of alliance between host-states and homelands as a factor that

influences nation-building policies.

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the empirically observable shift towards minority accommodation in ECE countries is the active

involvement of international actors in this policy area.

Externally induced policy-making: Limits

The mechanisms that make it possible for the EU and other international organizations to influence

domestic policy-making are relatively well established, as are the general limitations (such as

recidivism, lack of monitoring, legal enforcement and actual implementation, contradictory demands

and non-credible incentives). What might be more interesting now is to look at the specific limitations

of the policy-field in question as well as some other factors that have received relatively less attention

in the literature.

First, there exists a significant difficulty regarding how to conceptualize the EU and the ways it

exerted its influence. This is because of the profound worldwide changes that occured since the second

World War and that have radically altered the way minority issues are addressed today: not only have

minority rights become more internationalized than ever, but, and in relation to that, the range and type

of acceptable models of diversity management have also profoundly changed. Earlier practices have

become obsolete, indeed inconceivable, in the second half of the 20th century in liberal democratic

settings. This makes it easier to conflate the ‘West’ as a set of international organizations and

institutions and the ‘West’ as a broader frame of reference that determines what is ‘accetable in

ethnopolitics now in Europe’ and what is not. It is an overestimation of the role of the EU to claim that

minority policies were introduced in ECE countries because of external pressure, as it is likely that

these policies might have been induced by the simple opening up of these states to the pool of Western-

type international norms. But this role might be underestimated as the EU did not simply constitute a

frame of reference, but a role-model, moreover, an actor actively involved in domestic politics. In the

first case we deal with emulative mechanisms, in the second with coercive ones (Gilardi 2012).

The picture is further complicated by the observation that signs of identification with ‘Europe’

and some of the accompanying institutional change well preceded direct involvement of international

institutions in the ECE countries’ domestic affairs. As Jon Elster (1998: 23) aptly remarks, the

unintended effect of the West was so strong that it ‘threatened the Comecon countries by its mere

existence, i.e. by undermining the loyalties of state socialist citizens through the deeply subversive,

media-related demonstration effect of the images and realities of prosperity, freedom, and democracy.’

‘Return to Europe’, at least in the first years of transition, was by no means equated to accession to the

European Community but was driven by a desire to replicate the successful economic and political

models prevailing there on the one hand, and by security considerations on the other (Haughton 2007:

236). To put it simply, European norms diffused even without the EU actively promoting them.

Further, a balanced view regarding domestic and external factors is crucial. Vachudova and

Spendzharova (2012: 46) point out that EU incentives are the most powerful when they align with

domestic political-electoral incentives, and when reward and punishment is clearly defined and

credible. Gallagher’s account (2009) also warns against being too ‘starry eyed’ about externally

induced institutional change. His analysis is centred on the strategic calculations of domestic political

elites that would do anything to preserve their power and privileges. According to this account, positive

minority protection measures in Romania were actually part of a larger trade-off whereby changes in a

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policy area of secondary importance were introduced so that governments would gain popularity and/or

bargaining power in more strategic domains (p. 51). Carstocea (2011) tells a similar story about the

manipulation of the legal framework for the protection of minorities for personal gains by elites – this

time the ‘representatives’ of the national minority group. These incidents are hardly explained by

socialization theories or the transnational diffusion of norms and ideas. They lead to the paradox that,

while some institutional change is empirically observable, this is induced by the EU in a clearly

unintended way, driven by the ‘wrong’ incentives, and presumably only of temporary nature.

Another phenomenon that is regularly taken to prove the influence of the EU is the

bureaucratization of politics to the detriment of the normal procedures of democratic deliberation.

Several scholars (Kelley 2004, Haughton 2007: 236, Grabbe 2001) assert that what lies behind the

relatively frequent issuing of emergency ordinances and presidential decrees is not else than the EU’s

‘executive bias’. They define this phenomenon as exogenous to domestic politics and as a sign of the

EU’s strength to induce policies even without internal political and societal consensus. This is

problematic for at least two reasons. The first objection stems from the very nature of human and

minority rights issues, that do not have to be subject to democratic deliberation, while passing related

legislation does not necessarily require parliamentary majority. If this were the case minorities would

stand unprotected to properly assembled majorities that decide to systematically and deliberately harm

the minorities’ interests. It is against these circumstances that minority protection bills and rights are

issued which place these matters beyond the reach of majorities (Schmitter & Karl 1991: 79). Second,

what scholars of Europeanization take as bureaucratization may well be a symptom of the imperfect

democratization process in transitional countries. Jon Elster (1998: 34) explains what he calls the

‘pathology of decreeism’ with limited governing capacity, disorder, fragmentation and authoritarianism

rooted in the political cultures of ECE countries. Thus, bureaucratic politics can be also seen as

endogenous, consequently has nothing to do with EU interference in domestic affairs.

Finally, another important limitation to EU influence concerns the lack of coherent, easily

transferable models in the area of minority education. This is hardly surprising as there is immense

controversy in both the academic and the political sphere about virtually every related issue, although

on the ground multiculturalism seems to be ‘the order of the day’ (Wimmer 2009).9 But lack of broad-

based international consensus has lead to low external legitimacy in this area, which in turn limited EU

influence (Schimmelfennig et al. 2006). In addition, a distinct characteristic of ECE countries is that

there the minority issue intertwines with security considerations. Rather ironically, the EU, contrary to

its intentions to attenuate, actually might have exacerbated this perceptual distortion, by emphasizing

the importance of minority protection in Eastern Europe not as an issue of justice, but out of fear of the

resurgence of ethnic conflict à la Yugoslavia. Not only is the pervasive rhetoric of disloyalty and

security threat that defines majority-minority relations in ECE countries largely absent in the rest of the

EU, but there are no obvious Western analogues to Eastern European ‘hard cases’ (Kymlicka 2001:

75), such as the post-imperial Russophone minority in the Baltic states. All in all, ECE governments

9 The shift to accommodating substate nationalisms from suppressing them has been the major trend throughout the ‘West’.

The Multiculturalism Policy Index for example casts empirical evidence to show that multiculturalism policies have

persisted and expanded during the last four decades (Multiculturalism Policy Index, http://www.queensu.ca/mcp/ accessed

on 2014-08-28).

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received at best two clues with regard to appropriate models of diversity management in education

from the EU: some vague guiding principles in the name of multiculturalism and the imperative to

avoid ethnic conflict. This has lead to a – seemingly – paradoxical situation whereby contrary to the

external influence hypothesis some ECE countries (Romania and Estonia) are actually overachievers in

the area of minority autonomy in education, as compared to such old EU MSs and consolidated liberal

democracies as France or Greece.

Histories

Analyses of institutional change are rightly focused on the twin forces of internal and external

incentives. The importance of pre-existing institutional legacies nevertheless is often overlooked, or

briefly referred to. In the area of minority protection, and especially minority education, however, I

find that pre-existing institutions have played an equally important role, as did domestic and

international forces, in determining policy choice and institutional change. I have already discussed the

issue of the historical experience that shaped majority-minority relations in the area, which prevail to

this day. In addition to this, what seems to be the condition most powerful in explaining present-day

separate organization in education is that of pre-existing separate systems.

Indeed, the idea of multiculturalism, while it certainly has redefined minority education and has

induced some degree of institutional transformation, was the most powerful where there was prior

experience with separate ethno-cultural organization and there were still surviving separate educational

institutions at the time of the regime change (as in the case of Romania), while it was insufficient to

induce the set-up of new parallel institutions where those had diminished completely throughout the

communist period (as in the case of Bulgaria). And it was because of the remarkably excessive degree

of institutional completeness characterizing the Russian speaking minority in Estonia – a nationalizing

state which strived to reassert its newly regained sovereignty partly by taking back the ‘undeserved

privileges’ of the Russophone minority – that the official policy aimed at shrinking the Russian parallel

educational system was constrained and by necessity incremental. All three cases show that in the long

term the inherited institutional landscape proved remarkably resilient, not least because the easy way to

go was to choose from a repertoire of available institutional solutions the one which was already in

place. In the end, amidst the uncertainty of the new political environment non-decisions might seem as

the best policy option, while the act of revoking already granted group rights most likely will lead to

resentment and contestation nationally, and to foreign condemnation internationally.

Conclusions

The aim of this paper was to trace how and why national governments chose separation in education

along ethno-cultural lines among an array of alternative institutional solutions, and what the role of the

EU was, if any, in determining this outcome. First, the idea of multiculturalism as the dominant

paradigm of minority accommodation in the Western world and part of a broader set of liberal

democratic norms was channeled into ECE states (1) via the general opening up to the global

marketplace of ideas concerning diversity management and (2) taken up and actively promoted by

various blocks of interests. The EU has played a significant role in diffusing this idea in prospective

MSs, by setting off two distinct mechanisms (coercion and emulation), and by empowering domestic

non-governmental liberal groups (by rule but not only minority organizations and representatives). Yet,

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these groups encountered the idea of multiculturalism also without EU mediation. Ethnic homelands of

these minority groups constituted another source of external influence that through various channels

(diplomacy, transnational agitation, advocacy and support of minority groups, financial aid) also

pushed towards the direction of separate ethno-cultural organization and autonomy in education.

Following the cost-benefit calculations of the recipients of these pressures for change, i.e.

domestic governments, final outcomes were brought about. These were more accommodating when

governments were less nationalistic and authoritarian, when the resonance of European norms of

minority protection was high, and when the domestic costs of compliance were low. Strong minority

parties especially as coalition partners in governments also pushed towards this direction. A crucial

determinant of the final outcome was the already existing institutional infrastructure. Institutional

memories, habitual ‘ways of doing things’, largely determined the preferred institutional model.

Characteristically, claims for cultural autonomy and demands for separation in education were often

framed as claims and demands to preserve pre-existing separate structures, and to a lesser extent to

restore them or to set them up from scratch. In other words, issues were framed only secondarily as the

introduction of the new and more as the preservation of the old. The mechanism described here is

presented schematically in the figure above.10

Reading some of the most influential works in the subject, one has the impression that

Europeanization/Westernization is a process of top-down imposition, whereby domestic governments

are almost blackmailed by international institutions into issuing reforms. It should not be forgotten that

this is to a large extent induced by domestic policy-makers themselves, who, engaged in the EU blame-

game of political survival, along with national sovereignty delegate to the supranational level part of

their own political responsibility. My hope is that from the analysis presented here it becomes clear that

apart from (direct) coercion to introduce broader political and institutional goals, such as minority

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The causal mechanism is inspired by the work of Beach and Pedersen (2013) on process tracing. The blue boxes represent

the actors as defined by Brubaker’s triadic nexus theory on ethnopolitics in ECE countries.

mult iculturalismInt ernat ional Community

coercion & emulat ionN at ionalizing state/ gvm

polit ical calculat ions

H omelanddiplomacy, agitat ion, advocacy

Domest ic N GOs, CSOs,minority group

agitat ion

Outcome

Previous inst itut ional set t ingsPath dependencies, models

1.1. Mechanismic approach to the policy-making process

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protection measures, (indirect) emulation too was an important mechanism leading to institutional

transformation. This is because the norms of liberal pluralism and multiculturalist minority

accommodation have become so dominant in the Western world that they are now by and large taken

for granted, while the ‘burden of proof’ of deviance from this orthodoxy has shifted to non-compliers

(Finnemore & Sikkink 1998). This process of adjustement of institutional designs occured mainly via

bargains and trade-offs between organized interests in the domestic arena with the EU’s influence

being present, but not extensive. Finally, explanations alternative to coercion and emphasis on

limitations are also necessary to understand why in some cases the education of national minorities in

ECE countries went actually further in granting cultural autonomy than the models Europe was

supposed to provide. In this case, the rationale behind separation in education has changed according to

the dominant idea of multiculturalism, but it was pre-existing institutional legacies that governed actual

institutional development.

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