The theory of ethnopolitical conflict argues that violent inter-ethnic conflicts are the result of politics deliberately using ethnicity in the struggle for power and resources of certain states. Central to this theory is the notion of the politicization of ethnicity, a process by which ethnic differences are emphasized and then utilized by political entrepreneurs to achieve political ends. Through the process of politicization, the psycho-cultural power of ethnicity can be turned into a source of hatred and stereotyping that can be ultimately mobilized into a particularly confrontational form of nationalism. 
The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of political rhetoric as one tool that political entrepreneurs can use to manipulate or transform ethnicity into destructive political force. Based on the study of the Yugoslav ethnopolitical conflict, it may be hypothesized that the rhetoric used by Slobodan Miloševic played a prominent role in the politicization of ethnic identity among the Serbs in Serbia and other parts of the former Yugoslavia, mobilizing their grievances to dispose of a number of political enemies and to fight against perceived dangers coming from other ethnic groups. Consequently, Miloševic's rhetoric contributed to the creation of defensive attitudes and mistrust toward the Serbs among other national and ethnic groups within the former Yugoslavia.
This study will analyze two of Milosevic's speeches in detail: the first public speech of April 24, 1987, in Kosovo Polje, and his last public speech before the break out of the war, June 28, 1989, in Gazimestan. These speeches offer an opportunity to follow the rise of Miloševic into a charismatic and dogmatic orator who managed to persuade his ethnic kinsmen to perceive their destiny in ethnic rather than in individual or class terms. Rhetorical criticism will be used as a method of analysis of the speeches due to its emphasis on the political context, the centrality of the speaker and of the audience and the overall effects of the speeches. 
 
What is an Ethnic Conflict? 
About Fashionable Labels and Rational Politics 
 
Albert F. Reiterer 
(Büro für Sozialforschung, Austria) 

30 years ago, at the times of revolting students, every social and political conflict was considered a »class conflict« . Today, nearly all social movements risk to be pinned at the table as » ethnic« .
This paper has two purposes. Firstly, it wants to demonstrate that political categories like ethnic, etc., are heavily - but not entirely - dependent upon intellectual fashions. Secondly and mainly, it asks for the distinguishing criteria of conflicts which are categorized as ethnic in analytical as well as in everyday regards.
 

Manageability of Ethnic Conflicts: Conditions and Limits
 
Eero Loone
(University of Tartu, Estonia)

Conflict avoidance might be a positive value, although its price could be too high: economic competition involves conflicts. Some conflicts between individuals are unavoidable. Conflicts can be managed under definite circumstances and need not always be destructive. In some cases, once the conflict has already arisen, force is the only solution. If A wants to kill B, then B either has to exercise self-defence by forcible means even if this means killin A, or let him/herself be killed. Conflict avoidance is but one strategy of conflict management.
Are there group conflicts? For strict individualistic liberalism and for various forms of nominalism, there are no supraindividual essences or entities, although organizations can be accommodated within this kind of thought. Therefore, given these approaches, there are no ethnic or racial or other 'group' conflicts. While there are certainly no essences and no supraindividualistic causal entities, there are categories of humans with shared cultures and cultural needs. Ethnicity is a subkind of culture. Cultural incompabilities or differences can produce significant divergences of value sets and goal-sets. These divergences can become conflict-generating factors both discursively and because they are involved with different need-structures.
A 20th century British diplomat and writer, Harold Nicolson, pointed out that there are two major schools of conflict resolution: the warrior and the merchant kinds. Non-violent solutions are possible within the latter strategy. A mild nationalism on issues of state setup and political regime (core political choices) is compatible with merchant strategies and non-violent conflict resolution. Within cultures which have warrior strategies embedded, a mild nationalism could grow into strong or even nazi nationalism. If a culture has merchant strategies embedded within its core positively valued behavioural traits, then negotiating minority rights for cultural or ethnic minorities becomes possible. An effective and caring conflict management has to steer solutions away from the warrior school strategies.
Sometimes ethnicity and race are overlays to other sources of conflict. Agrarian societies are based on unequal access to land-ownership. This may be protected or supported by racial and ethnic differences. Politicians may just express common feelings or exploit these feelings for their own personal and party-political aims, thus creating a second overlay. Estonian land-reform in 1920s and land claims by Blacks in Zimbabwean are examples of these overlays.
 

The use of minority languages: recent developments in EC-law and judgements of the ECJ
 
Francesco Palermo
(European Academy of Bolzano/Bozen, Italy)

About one European citizen on eight speaks a language, that differs from the official language of his State. Nonetheless, the European Union formally does not recognize (linguistic) minorities. The paper deals with one of the most sensitive issues in the relationship between national and European law and jurisdictions. The linguistic rights and, more generally, the protection of minorities in EC/EU-law, may certainly become one of the most characteristic features of the future developments of European law. Furthermore, the legal situation of minorities can serve as a proof in order to better understand the real nature of European constitutional law, by investigating the ideological underpinnings of the European legal order.
The first part of the paper outlines the legal framework concerning (linguistic) minorities in the European Union, before and after the Treaty of Amsterdam. Until Amsterdam, there was no single treaty provision dedicated to the protection of minorities, whereas the present article 13 ECT prohibits » discrimination based on sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation«. Nonetheless, on the one hand, to some extent an indirect protection of minorities was guaranteed under the old system, and, on the other hand, article 13 does not refer to » linguistic« minorities, nor it is presently implemented.
Then (part two) the jurisprudence of the ECJ in the eighties will be analized, in order to find out the impact of the fundamental freedoms of the Treaty on the sphere of minority protection. From the analysis of the the cases Mutsch and Groener will result, that protection of minorities, in spite of being a matter falling within the exclusive competence of the member States, can be influenced by European rules and principles.
In part three particular attention will be paid to two recent judgements of the ECJ, indirectly but deeply affecting linguistic rights of the minorities. Both the cases Bickel-Franz and Angonese, concerning linguistic rights in the autonomous province of Bolzano-Bozen, show that the European Union can no longer ignore the minority issue. As a matter of fact, also the member States must take into account the principles of European law in drafting and, even more, in interpreting the legal provisions on their minorities. The particular case of the autonomous province of Bolzano-South Tyrol, where a complex and very evoluted system of minority protection is established, can be considered paradigmatic for the new intaractions among national and supranational rules in minority issues.
The final part tries to draft some conclusions on the future of linguistic diversity in Europe, resulting from the combination of national and to European law. This section discusses on the one hand the possible future developments of an European law on minorites and, on the other hand, the future of special national provisions aiming to protect minorites. Thus, if there is an acquis communautaire in the field of minority protection, this can be particularly relevant for applicant countries.
The paper attempts to argue that the issue of minority protection inside the EU-system is characterised by contradictions but also by a considerable potential of development. As the national provisions on minorities are concerned, a new balance shall be found not only between the principles of equality and protection of minorities with special provision, but also between the results of the mentioned principles at national constitutional level and the European rules. This might be considered a decrease of legal protection of minorities, but at the same time offers new prospectives for a modern, integrated, European law on minorities.
 

Plurinational Democracy. Accommodating nations in the European Commonwealth
 
Michael Keating
(University of Aberdeen, Scotland; European University Institute, Italy)

My paper will look at the prospects for managing nationality issues within the emerging European order or European Commonwealth. It will examine the possibilities for symbolic recognition of nationality; the challenges to the doctrine of state sovereignty; the possibilities for legal pluralism; and the opportunities for stateless nations to gain a degree of self government in the new European order, without separatism.
 

The Management of Ethnic Relations and the Management and Resolution of Ethnic Conflict in South Eastern Europe
 
Mitja Žagar
(Institute for Ethnic Studies, Ljubljana, Slovenia)

Tragic wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s made the Balkans a major trouble spot of the international community. The article discusses the efficiency of undertaken international attempts for the restoration of peace and rehabilitation of multiethnic societies in this region. The hypothesis that the lack of an elaborate strategy and coordination in the international community (including the UN, EU, great powers) played an important role in the escalation of the » Yugoslav crisis«  is confirmed. The absence of such a strategy resulted in often inadequate and delayed reactions. Although the crisis developed over several years, the international community failed to apply preventive measures. The international intervention was not followed by necessary activities for confidence building and social integration in these divided societies. If the international troops withdrew from Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo in such a situation, the fighting would resume immediately. There is not enough factual evidence to confirm the second hypothesis that the use of adequately accommodated frameworks, models, methods, and techniques for the regulation and management of ethnic relations, peacemaking (e.g., Zartman & Rasmussen, eds., 1997), and resolution of ethnic conflicts (e.g., Rothman, 1992, 1997; Ross & Rothman, eds., 1999) would have improved the situation. Nevertheless, considering the specificity of the region the author develops an accommodated model for the management and resolution of crises and conflicts (» Strategy EE + 4Ps + ARIME« ), possibly applicable in other cases. Based on Rothman's ARI framework, this model includes an elaborate international strategy for the management and resolution of the conflict that clearly defines the mandate and responsibilities of actors. In different stages it requires Prevention, Peace-Making, Peace-Keeping and Policing activities by the international community. Additionally, the forth component is added to the ARI framework, namely, the strategy and mechanisms for permanent monitoring and evaluation of conflict management and resolution processes.
 

Reconciliation Mandated for Australia's Indigenous Owners.
 
Peter Lavskis:
(University of South Australia, Australia):

Adequate protection of indigenous peoples: How can it affect ethnic relations. The word 'ethnic' has aquired negative connotations and we are changing the names of bodies from »Ethnic Affairs« to »Community Relations« and in any case »ethnic« was never used of Aboriginals. The public mood, expressed in the press and at demonstrations is about not protection but restitution for past injustices after an appropriate apology from the Prime Minister.
 

Laws of Return and the Problem of Citizenship and Ethnic Conflict: The Case of Eritrea and Ethiopia
 
Robert Schaeffer
(San Jose State University, California, U.S.A.):

In 1992, Eritrea adopted a nationality proclamation that promised citizenship to ethnic Eritreans in the diaspora. One year later, Eritrea officially proclaimed its independence from Ethiopia, after a 30-year war of succession. Like other »Laws of Return« in Israel and the Baltic States (also West Germany), the Eritrean law was designed to promote the immigration of ethnic nationals living abroad. Insofar as they promote immigratin, they are relatively unremarkable. But because they also make it difficult for residents of other ethnic groups to obtain citizenship, they are sometimes 
used as a way to encourage the exit or emmigration of non-national, ethnic minorities. Although the Eritrean law is similar to other Laws of Return in many respects, its meaning and import changed after war erupted between Eritrean and Ethiopia in 1998. After war broke out, the Ethiopian government used the Eritrean law to justify the forcible deportation of Ethiopian citizens of »Eritrean« descent. Essentially, Eritrean law was used by the Ethiopian regime as a legal means of »ethnic cleansing,« resulting the expulsion of nearly 70,000 residents. The Eritrean government, of course, refused to recognize many deportees as sufficiently »Eritrean,« treating them instead as non-national, enemy aliens. 
This paper will provide a comparative discussion of various laws of return, with particular attention to the Eritrean/Ethiopian case. It will explain how laws passed to manage ethnic relations can have complex and unanticipated consequences. I thought it would be appropriate for a conference on the constitutional and legal management of ethnic relations. In this case, a law designed to promote immigration became an instrument of war. 
This paper is based on research I have recently done as an expert witness for political asylum cases in U.S. Federal Courts. Immigration attorneys in Memphis asked me to provide testimony after reading my book, Severed States (1990), which includes a chapter on Eritrea/Ethiopia. They asked me to apply my research on partition to a study of the Eritrean Nationality Proclamation. This led to a comparative study of various Laws of Return, the problems associated with them, and the ways that the Eritrean law has been used by both Eritrean and Ethiopian governments to deprive ethnic minorities of their rights. They then used this research to argue in court that Ethiopians of Eritrean descent were at risk if deported from the United States to Ethiopia. 
 

Early Sanity Wanted: States, Minorities, and Genocide
 
Thomas W. Simon
(Illinois State University, U.S.A.)

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN GENOCIDE AND DISCRIMINATION
Thesis: Genocide forms a continuum with discrimination against minorities. 
Corollary: Early warning mechanisms ignore connections between discrimination against minorities and genocide. INCREASE IN GENOCIDES 
Thesis: While ethnic violence may have declined over the past decade, genocide and grave injustices have increased and will probably continue to do so unless abated by radical policy changes. 
Corollary: The international community must give priority to increased and enhanced efforts to combat potential genocides 
MORAL PRIORITY OF GENOCIDE
Thesis: While genocide forms a continuum with discrimination, it constitutes the worst international crime and uniquely threatens the underlying fabric of humanity. 
Illustration: International risk assessment analyses unjustifiably treat genocide as just another harm directed against groups. 
Corollary: The international community must give priority to those indices of discrimination that have the greatest likelihood of leading to genocide. 
PRIORITY OF ADJUDICATORY AND ECONOMIC APPROACHES 
Thesis: The international community should assure that genocides decrease by enabling adjudicatory mechanisms and by implementing wealth redistribution policies in high risk areas.
Illustration: Policy makers give an inordinate amount of attention to democratic reforms, particularly electoral devices (Bosnia and Kosovo), and to formal protection of minority rights. Corollary: Policy makers should place more emphasis on enabling adjudication of discrimination claims and to public welfare efforts. 
FACING THE PAST 
Thesis: The risks of having grave injustices inflicted upon a group tie closely with recent historical events regarding that group. 
Illustration: Policy analysts, for example, in Bosnia and Kosovo, too often take action a-historically or based on distorted histories of a region 
Corollary: Every minorities issue has a history that must be understood, analyzed, and confronted. Illustration: Recent condemnations of Rwanda clearly show insensitivity to its history. ANALYZING PAST HARMS 
Thesis: Genocide is a worse harm than any of the following: mass-revenge killings, crimes stemming from mass-political repression, mass-deaths resulting from political ineptitude, mass-deaths resulting from warfare, and ethnic cleansing. 
Corollary: However distasteful, policy analysts inevitably make (most often implicitly) critical decisions based on unjustified comparisons of group harms. 
Illustration: Political movements often distort perceptions of group harms (for example, Nazi-inflicted harms are on par with communist-inflicted harms).
FACING THE FUTURE
Thesis: At a fundamental level, all nation states give undue favoritism to some groups over others.
Corollary: Rather than ignoring structural affirmative action, feigning neutrality, or excusing group favoritism (»we are only a new country,« »we are such a small country,« »you don't understand our history,« »you do not know what it is like to be a member of our group«), states should confront their structural forms of group bias. 
Illustration: Overall, refugee policies, including citizenship and asylum determinations, of all states are nothing less than deplorable.
Corollary: States should adopt supererogatory policies regarding internal and external minorities.
Note Bene: The paper will address the last two issues (» Analyzing Past Harms« and » Facing The Future«), but the oral presentation might consist in presenting this or a similar outline to stimulate discussion. If needed, the title » Ethnic Disarray: Distorting the Old and Closeting the New« might serve for the paper covering these last two sections.
 

To be or not to be an alien... 
- the influence of subjective and structural factors when the Russian 
speakers of Estonia choose to study Estonian
 
Tove Lindén
(Department of East European Studies, Uppsala University, Sweden)

Once invited by the Soviet authorities as labour for the re-developing industry after the Second World War, moving to Estonia was for the Russian speakers to move within the country where they were citizens. They were indoctrinated since childhood to believe that Estonia had joined the Soviet Union out of free will, and that Russian was the language to use wherever they went. Today they are looked upon as representatives of the former occupational force. They are in many ways excluded from society until they learn enough Estonian to obtain citizenship. To this day very few have succeeded in doing so. As a result hundreds of thousands of people have the status of aliens, de facto being stateless.
Many aliens can be found in the north-eastern corner of Estonia where Narva, the third largest city in the country, is situated. With no more than 3.8 % ethnic Estonians and 34 % Estonian citizens, this is still a »Russian« city, with few opportunities to use the national language Estonian. Here we find linguistic isolation, a higher unemployment and a lower average salary than in the rest of the country, combined with feelings of hopelessness, despairand no understanding of the post-Soviet society. 
In such a hostile environment there are many rational reasons for not even trying to study Estonian. However, still some people do this. This paper is focusing on the Russian speakers studying Estonian at courses in Narva. Who are they? What are their intentions with learning the language? Which factors influenced them to learn Estonian in a city like Narva? In order to answer these questions, the author has carried out a survey among those Russian speakers in Narva who attended courses in Estonian at the city's different language centers or firms during the summer of the year 2000. 
The concepts of social capital and social networking were used when operationalizing the research questions. The notion social capital builds upon the idea that an individual makes his/her desicions in a social context as a reaction to social stimuli, where interaction between individuals promote certain attitudes and behaviours. Factors such as gender, income, identity and self-esteem are also important, but only as a way to strengthen the effect of the social ties created by the ongoing relationship between friends, neighbours, co-workers and family.
The expected outcome of the survey whas that a majority of the respondents would be male aliens with the ambition to learn Estonian in order to obtain Estonian citizenship. Instead the survey reveals that a majority of the students, 81 %, are women. Moreover, almost two thirds of the respondents already possess Estonian citizenship. Their motive for studying Estonian is to improve their varying knowledge of this language in order to strengthen their status at the local labour market. 
Further, membership of social networks with roots in the Estonian cultural sphere seems to play an important role when deciding to study Estonian. In a city with only 3.8 % ethnic Estonians more than half of the respondents have Estonian friends, and 18 % an Estonian spouse or other relatives. As many as 79 % have someone close who has studied or is studying Estonian. A great majority of the respondents also identify themselves with Estonia or the Baltics, and feel that they have strong ties with his/her neighbourhood, region or Estonia as a country. 
The survey finally reveals that economic considerations are an important factor for the respondents when deciding to study Estonian. Since 90 % of the respondents live under a constant financial pressure, and two thirds find the courses offered to be more expensive than they could really afford, it is not surprising that as many as 50 % go to classes fully sponsored either by the EU Phare-programme for teaching Estonian, or by their employer.
 

Regulation of Ethnic Relations in post-Soviet countries: the cases of 
Latvia and Moldova compared
 
Vladimir Solonari.
(Parliament of Moldova, Moldova) 

-an outline-

Moldova and Latvia have several similarities in terms of historical experience, comparable territory and population, as well as important cultural and other differences which make comparative analysis of their records in the fields of minorities-related legislation potentially fruitful.
Vladimir Solonari's paper starts with the enumeration of those similarities and differences which are relevant to the problem at hand and then goes on to analyse in comparative perspective Moldovan and Latvian legislation relating to minorities, and namely in the fields of constitutional fundamentals, citizenship, use of minority languages in public sphere, education in minority languages, names of persons belonging to minorities in official documents, use of minority languages in electronic mass media. In all those domains it ascertains pronounced differences both in letter and spirit of the legislation and interprets them as evidence of promotion of »civic programme« in Moldova and of » culturalist programme« in Latvia by the respective ruling elites (those terms were initially suggested by David D. Laitin in his seminal book on Russia-speaking nationality in post-Soviet world).
The author then ponders about how those differences could be explained. He discards what he calls » essentialist« approach which is based on the invocation of the notion of » national character« or supposedly »inherited cultural traits« as tautological and he remains skeptical in respect of » demographic explanations« which stress demographic trends and immigration as a rationale for more vigorous promotion and support for »autochthonous nation«. Instead, he proposes his own explanation based on rational choice theory.
This hypothesis stresses the importance of the decision taken by Moldovan political elite in June 1991 to grant citizenship of the Republic to all its residents (pure »territoriality principle«), which was in its own turn due to the sheer impossibility to devise any other criteria in case of a new state which never existed previously. Because, further on, the majority of Moldovan political elite which opted for independence, had to constantly fight to isolate and marginalise pro-unificationist (with Romania) minority, it had to somewhat grudgingly accept minorities (feverishly anti-unificationist) as smaller partners in pro-independence coalition. This made a move to » civic programme« inevitable. 
 

Nation-formation, Nation-building and »Nationalizing Minorities«: 
the case of Hungarians in Romania
 
Zoltán Kántor
(Teleki Laszlo Institute Center for Central European Studies, Hungary)
- outline -

Value judgements and uncritically accepted truths heavily load the terminology used in the study of nationalism. The concept of nationalism is used in so many ways that an unambiguous use of it is impossible. Similar assumptions are true also for other related concepts, so for nation-building, the subject of my paper.
I am looking for an interpretative framework for the study of the Hungarian national minority in Romania, a framework that could help us to understand the ongoing processes. My ambition is, nevertheless, broader: I hope that this theoretical framework can be employed also for other matching cases. Obviously, many possible frameworks can be employed to analyze a national minority, but to understand the essence we have to concentrate on the questions related to the nation and nationalism. We have to analyze the process how a particular group became a national minority, and the institutionalization of that national minority. I analyze the process of institutionalization of the national minority on ethnocultural basis.
This analysis has not the aim to offer tools for » nation-builders«; it simply analyzes the processes and patterns of nation-building, especially those of the national minorities.
In order to analyze the national minority within the framework of nation-building, first we have to see which are the involved processes. Analyzing the process and the mechanisms helps us to avoid the hypothetical final stage: the built nation or the formed nation. The author of this paper agrees with those who say that there are no objective criteria for the formed nation; this is true also for national minorities. I take nationalism a value free and descriptive concept. There are no criteria we can say that the nation-building process has stopped, or reached its 'final' level. Once 'awakened' it must not asleep again – is the credo of nationalists.
There is no example of any state or nation that does not strengthen the boundaries of the nation or gave up the nationalizing project. It has started, but there are no criteria that once met, prove that the project was successfully accomplished. Moreover, even if people (politicians, intellectuals, etc.) consider that it is finished, one has to maintain, sometimes to 're-build', and to 'refurbish' the nation. Since nationalism appeared, that process is constant. There are authors who spend much energy to demonstrate that the nation-state, the nation, the state is dying or loses its importance. I take the point of Michael Mann, that nation-states are diversifying, transforming, but the foundation remains, more or less, untouched. I do not intend to enter in debates about the future of the nation-state, considering that guesses on that issue does not help at all in the analyses of processes. I consider, and I will show why, the processes of nation building are different in different regions and historical periods 
Even if we are looking for descriptive concepts, our questions arise from the present world issues that we try to understand. Many empirical facts force us to think and re-think our views on the world. A contemporary sociologist or political scientist has to ask questions like: why did nationalism not die, as it was predicted (i.e. Hobsbawm)? Why some national tensions lead to violence while other not? What is the link between nationalism and democracy, especially in the present day East and Central Europe? Are there general (national) preconditions that favours the emergence and consolidation of democracy or there are not? One answer lies in the proper understanding of nation-building.
In the paper, I will analyze the process of nation-formation. I deliberately do not analyze the concept of nation-formation (or its older, but more popular version nation-building), because the concept meant many things, and I am interested in one aspect of the concept. I analyze what are the mechanisms employed to achieve the » state of the nation«. I am interested in the mechanisms and patterns, because my hypothesis is that we have to analyze the same mechanisms for the national minorities. If we take the actors and the agents involved, we can understand the interplay of different types of nationalism, but we cannot understand the policy of the national minority.
I would like to draw the attention of the reader that I am not analyzing only (and primarily not!) the nations that became/already are a nation, but the nationalizing processes of the majority or minority groups within a state or within a larger territorial and political unit. To analyze that process, in my view, is as legitimate as the analysis of nationalism or the nation, because no one of these concepts can be clearly and univocally defined. Analyzing the nation-formation (nationalization) of a certain group means that we narrow our approach and analyze only one process among many, which, however, is based on the nationality principle.
Using the term process, I suggest that I will focus on the mechanism, and not on the outcome. Obviously, I have to answer how can I analyze an unfinished process, and how can I know what the outcome will be. In my view, this question cannot be answered with scientific rigurosity. What are the criteria for a nation? When can we say that the nation exists? We know that the German, the French, the Hungarian, the Romanian, etc. nations exist, moreover, we have no doubt about this. The question is if there was ever a doubt? Did the first nationalists ask if they nation exists? The later emerged small nations had also no doubt of their existence. It existed, but had to be, in their view, 'awakened', and shaped to the modern requirements. Of course, there are theories on the emergence of nations, and of the nationalisms that formed them. One can explain it by industrialization, war, print capitalism, etc. However, all describe only the mechanism, and no one gives – and cannot give - any answer on the question when the actually emerged. Walker Connor is right stressing the » when« question, but he does nothing else but narrows the period, by introducing the criteria that nationalism is a mass phenomenon, and only if the masses are in the nation we may consider the process finished. Miroslav Hroch and Walker Connor both emphasize the importance of the mass character of nationalism.
» The process of nation-forming acquire an irreversible character only once the national movement won mass support, thereby reaching phase C.« (Hroch)
In Eugene Weber's famous work we also can see that process how the modernization of rural France was accomplished by the nation-builders, and the salience of nationalization. Lynda Colley for Britain describes a similar process.
I am looking for a theoretical framework for the interpretation of the ongoing political processes inside the Hungarian community in Romania. There are several possible angles of approach, but, in my opinion, no one touches the essence of the question, no one gives a satisfactory theoretical framework. Moreover, to my knowledge, there is no theory of national minorities that could provide such an account. One of the answers lies in the fact that the concepts used in the literature on nationalism are ambiguous, what is also true for the literature on national minorities. National minorities are usually seen as a second range factor, and not as an equally important determinant. Obviously, one can speak about national minorities only after the formation of the nations. National minorities either emerged (awakened, became conscious) later within the framework of a state that usually had a titular nation, or became a national minority by the consequences of border revision. 
One possible interpretation of nationalism is Eastern Europe is the parallel and often conflictual projects of nation building. Once the ideal of the nation became important there seems not to be any sign that this will die. It may be transformed, but its importance remains. 
As I mentioned, theories of nationalism are centered on the nation and pay less attention to the national minorities. For most theoreticians of nationalism, national minorities are only a sub-case of nationalism. The issue of national minorities has sense only in relation to the nation and to the state. To the state in which they are, but also, if there is, to the homeland; the nation they belong to and the titular nation of the state they live. The literature on nationalism handles national minorities as a marginal phenomenon. They are important usually only as far as they play an explanatory role in the nationalism of the majority nation. The cause is probably because theories on nationalism are very much (too much) concerned with the relationship between the nation and the state. Members of that national minority (many times in emigration) write the literature that focuses on the national minorities usually, and is loaded with claims and presents the injustices made by the majority. Another aspect of that literature is that it handles the national minority as a homogeneous body with a common will. They perceive national minorities as collective actors and do not take into account the internal dissents. These works on national minorities also are looking for solutions of their problems and very often sets legal proposal for minority protection. Summarizing up, this literature is very rarely analytical, it does not (or very rarely) focus on the dynamic of the national minority, and does not look for deeper explanations.
What Brubaker says on the nation and nationalism is valid also for the national minority:
» Nationalism can and should be understood without invoking » nations« as substantial entities. Instead of focusing on nations as real groups, we should focus on nationhood and nationness, on » nation« as a practical category, institutionalized form, and contingent event. » Nation is a category of practice, not (in the first instance) a category of analysis. To understand nationalism, we have to understand the practical uses of the category » nation«, the ways it can come to structure perception, to inform thought and experience, to organize discourse and political action«
We also have not to consider the national minority as a substantial entity. It is also constructed and imagined as the nation. We should analyze the national minority also as practical category, institutionalized form, and contingent event. 
I think that a theory (or theories) focusing on national minorities has to focus on the national minority and analyze all the other aspects as external factors. In this way it may be possible to describe the changes within the national minority taking into account the other changes in the larger society and international arena. For this one has to start with the emergence of the national minority (how it became a national minority), the internal boundaries of the minority, and its latent or openly expressed goals. For the Eastern European case, I consider that can be done best if we transform Rogers Brubaker's theoretical framework (nationalizing state, national minority, and external national homeland), and we should analyze the nationalism of the national minority as a nationalizing minority. In this way we can capture the internal dynamics of the national minority, and we are able to analyze the long-term processes. The situation is a little different then in the case of nations, but the mechanisms are similar. 
Brubaker's account can help us in the understanding of national conflicts in Eastern Europe, but I consider that his model is insufficient, mainly because he considers that the nationalism of the majority (the nationalism of the nationalizing state) and that of the national minority are of different categories. We can only analyze the two in one framework, if we transform them to be categories of the same type. That is the reason I propose to use the concept of nationalizing minority for describing the nationalism of the national minority. In that case we have two similar categories. In that case we can analyze two competing (and unequal) nationalizing processes, having similar motivations, but different means. This, however, transforms Brubaker's triadic nexus to a dyadic nexus, considering the nationalism of the external national homeland as an external factor.
In my view, this transformation can best done with the support of Miroslav Hroch's account. My approach is that the ongoing political actions of the small nations are in many respects similar to those of national minorities.
To understand the official claims and statements of a national minority, the internal debates within different groups, the unwillingness to assimilate, and the creation or maintenance of a separate subculture/sphere/field one has to propose an approach that incorporates all these elements and explain them in one rationale. Methodologically, this requires the following steps:
1. Explanation of the historical background. We have to refer to the nation-formation of the particular nation, highlighting the context. We have to describe the patterns of nation-building and the tensions created by it.
2. The new setting. How did a part of a formed nation become a national minority?
3. The answers to the new situation, what is used to be called minority nationalism.
The important elements we have to analyze are the transitions, the interpretation of the new situations, the institutionalization of the national minority, the internal political organization, the internal divisions, the relationship between the national minority and the state, and also with the external national homeland, and the boundaries of the national minority.
Methodologically we have to distinguish between two major issues. The first one, is the description and the analysis of the internal logic of a national minority, that in my view may be captured by analysing it as a nationalizing minority. The second one, is the analysis of how this is realised, how is constructed, and re-constructed nationness (or » national minorityness«).
Hungarians in Romania are not nationalizing on territorial, but on ethnocultural basis. The 'nationalizers' seek to mobilize the ethnic Hungarians (even if these category is very loose) despite their territorial settings. The problem is made complicated by the fact that Hungarians live dispersed in Transylvania. The most compact group (about 75-85 % Hungarians) is in the centre of the country. There live Hungarians also in the northern part of Transylvania, and in the Partium and Banat (near the border to Hungary). Hungarian politicians do no see any possibility to develop a single possible resolution for all the Hungarians. The question has also territorial aspects, but that is possible to apply only for the more homogeneous region. 
To describe the nationalizing policy of the national minority we have to analyse the decisions taken of the leaders of that particular minority and the political support of the members of that national group. Again we have to make an analytical distinction. First (a), decision taken on important issues (to be discussed later which are these) and second (b), debates and decisions concerning the internal organization of the group.
(a) On political level, the representatives (elected or accepted leaders) base their decisions on the supposed will of the group, more exactly they try to bargain with the majority group, that basically represents the state, different forms of (national) self-government. That means that co-nationals should rule the institution of the national minorities. One can subsume that these are actions toward the creation and recognition of a sub-society, governed by the national minority.
(b) In the same time the political elite is concerned with the building of a parallel »society«. This society is not considered as fully independent from the whole society, especially in ethnically mixed regions, but it is autonomous in many respects from it. This autonomy is based on a separate system of institutions. One could call it also a quasi-society, that satisfies all the needs (real or imagined; or »imposed«) of the members of the national minority, except those which are not possible to realise in ethnically mixed regions, or because it is par excellence a state function.
The above-described policy may be analysed in a contextual framework. On the one hand, the different attempts for realising the minority institution system, and, on the other hand, the political activity of the representatives on national (state) level (here I mean also the lower political levels: county, city and village administration).
Historically we may go step by step and take the important dates for that national minority (a chronology of important events). The can be: debate over and vote for the constitution, laws concerning the national minorities, electoral law, elections, changes of government, changes of homeland government, visit of officials of the homeland country, war, party congresses, abrogation or creation of an important institution, important articles in the media, change of international power-balance, etc. (to be developed).
In each case we have to analyse the constellation of the actors involved. Just for example the basic Treaty between Hungary and Romania signed in September 1996 would probably be shaped different if it would be signed just now (if it would be signed at all). The Treaty was signed in that form and then because there was not yet a decision on which countries will be invited to treaties with NATO. In Hungary the social-liberal coalition was on power and in Romania the post-communist parties ruled.
By this example I only intended to show the contingency of certain political steps. But once taken, they reshape the further politics.
My hypothesis is that in the future the basic logic, of the nationalizing state and the nationalizing minority, will not change. That is the essence of my approach. The contextual analysis of the events and actors will prove or falsify my hypothesis.