| Publication |
2011.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article relies on cases from new EU member states in postcommunist Europe to integrate two overlapping debates about majority-minority relations. Since the Second World War, political theorists and international institutions have tended to discourage group-rights approaches in favour of individual rights; meanwhile, policy-makers who achieved interethnic peace in postcommunist Europe have often opted for group-rights approaches. On the basis of political theory, international norms and the conduct of political elites in this region, we argue that both the individual-rights and group-rights approaches can be differentiated internally along the dimension of pluralism - that is, their willingness to accommodate multiple processes of cultural reproduction. Moreover, both group-rights and individual-rights approaches can offer justifications for restricting minority cultural opportunities; furthermore, restrictive group-rights approaches sometimes cloak their efforts behind 'Western-sounding' individual-rights rhetoric. Likewise, both group-rights and individual-rights approaches can permit group accommodation that can lead to political integration. We find that de facto pluralist approaches to minority accommodation - often spearheaded by moderate parties of the majority in coalition with minority-group parties - encourage ethnic peace, regardless of their foundation in individual or group rights.
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