Südosteuropa 63 (2015), no. 1, pp. 136-156
ThE RoManian PoliTiCal SySTEM afTER 1989
DRAGOș DRAGOMAN
Ethnic Relations in Mixed Communities in Romania after 1989
Abstract. Ethnic conditionality, along with democratisation and marketisation, has been a salient factor of the post-communist transition in Romania . It has concerned ethnically mixed communities as well as inter-state relations, and covers the whole period since 1989 . Actors, strategies and outcomes are to be differentiated, because ethnic matters are greatly dependent on internal and external contexts . The changing contexts in Romania turned it from a place of bloody ethnic conflict in March 1990, even before such conflict turned violent in Yugoslavia, to a level of “banal” everyday nationalism, with the overall characteristic of peaceful coexistence between ethnicities .
Dragoș Dragoman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Lucian Blaga University in Sibiu, Romania .
After the collapse of the communist regimes in 1989, many scholars expected to see institutional and economic transition follow the same pattern as it had in countries in Southern Europe and in South America during earlier waves of democratization there .1 In fact it took almost a decade before it became clear that former communist countries, and especially those in southeastern Europe, have supplementary obstacles to overcome . It emerged that besides harsh economic changes and a new democratic institutional design, those countries had inherited problems related to ethnic minorities, disputed borders, nationhood, and even statehood . Their transition had to balance national integration and secessionist threats, the legal recognition of inherited borders following the disintegration of previous multiethnic states in Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union, and a constitutional framework able to accommodate minorities 2.
1 Cf . for example Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market . Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America. Cambridge 1991; Juan J. Linz / Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation . Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe. Baltimore/MD 1996. 2 Taras Kuzio, Transition in Post-Communist States: Triple or Quadruple, Politics 21 (2001), no. 3, 168-177. Ethnic Relations in Mixed Communities after 1989 137
Romania also had to tackle the job of combining institutional, economic and ethnic factors . Although the exit from communism was certainly not as dif- ficult, ethnically speaking, for Romania as it was for Yugoslavia,3 Romania’s post-communist trajectory was still heavily influenced by ethnic considera- tions inherited from both its communist past and the time before that . Modern Romania was built up by the integration of provinces that had once been part of Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman Empires, with ethnic Romanians constituting the largest share of the population in the respective regions . Fol- lowing the 1859 alliance between the historical provinces of Wallachia and Moldova and subsequent independence, Romania engaged in a vigorous and rapid process of modernization to accompany its nation-building 4. Before 1918, Romania had been an ethnically rather homogenous country, apart from its Jewish and Roma minorities . Its present heterogeneity is ultimately a consequence of the First World War, which led to the creation of Greater Ro- mania from the ruins of the earlier empires . On the one hand, the integration of new provinces fulfilled the dream of Romanian national elites in Transylvania, Bukovina and Bessarabia that one day those provinces would be integrated into Romania .5 On the other hand, their integration brought with it large ethnic minorities with vigorous, well-educated, urbanized, and very active elites of their own . The new minorities soon became the targets of nationalist policies put in place by the Romanian elites, whose aim was to consolidate the Romanian element and to homogenize national culture and territory .6 Such policies were considered necessary – if for no other reason – for as long as ethnic Hungarians living in Transylvania continued to be supported by the neighbouring Hungar- ian state as part of the Hungarian nation . Throughout the 20th century, tensions between Romanian and Hungarian national elites were based on the parallel anxieties about the potential for brutal secession on one side, and the fear of slow but painful assimilation on the other . The history of the past century only served to consolidate the fears of both sides . As long ago as 1940, by the second Vienna Award that followed the se- cret protocol of the Non-Agression Pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, a large tract of Transylvania was attached to fascist Hungary, in spite of the fact that both Hungary and Romania were allies of Nazi Germany, only for it to be recovered again by Romania after the Second World War .7 At the same
3 Sabrina P .Ramet , Balkan Babel . The Disintegration of Yugoslavia from the Death of Tito to the Fall of Milošević. Boulder/CO 2002. 4 Keith Hitchins, Romania, 1866-1947 . Oxford 1994 . 5 Idem, The Rumanian National Movement in Transylvania, 1780-1849. Cambridge/MA 1969 . 6 Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania . Regionalism, Nation-Building and Ethnic Struggle, 1918-1930. Ithaca/NY 1995. 7 Denis Deletant, Hitler’s Forgotten Ally. Ion Antonescu and His Regime, Romania 1940- 1944 . Basingstoke 2006 . 138 Dragoș Dragoman time, the Hungarian population in Transylvania began to decline in a process that continued for the rest of the 20th century and not even the communist system under which both Hungary and Romania were governed managed to erase the continued suspicions in each country 8. Despite its internationalist scope, communism turned into fierce nationalism in Romania under Ceaușescu, a man who used nationalism to consolidate his own authority in a relentless effort to reconcile nationalism and universalist Leninism.9 Ceaușescu limited the rights of ethnic minorities by restricting the use of their native languages and by restricting even further the limited regional autonomy of the Hungarians in Transylvania . The regime brutally urbanized many rural areas and deliber- ately changed the ethnic balance in many cities by means of internal migration flows, causing the Hungarian population to decrease even further in districts like Târgu-Mureș, Oradea, Timișoara, Arad, or Brașov. 10
Ethnic Relations in the 1990s
The upheaval of 1989 cannot be seen as a turning point in Romanian ethnic relations, for although the fall of communism in that year brought significant change in numerous political, economic and social areas, nationalism remained an essential political vehicle .11 Indeed, the post-revolutionary period is marked by the birth of the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (in Hungarian Romániai Magyar Demokrata Szövetség, RMDSz; in Romanian Uniunea Democrată Maghiară din România, UDMR), the political party for ethnic Hungarians which would put up candidates in all the forthcoming elections . In response, Romanian nationalist parties organized and challenged the UDMR in Parliament and in numerous towns in Transylvania . One of the most vocal Romanian parties was the Romanian National Unity Party (Partidul Unităţii Națiunii Române, PUNR), which between 1992 and 2004 won all the mayoral elections in Cluj-Napoca, Transylvania’s largest town .12 In March 1990, ethnic conflict turned violent on the streets of Târgu-Mureș, bringing Romania to the brink of ethnic disaster only months before Yugoslavia began to be ravaged by a similar sort of bloodshed . It was the willingness of the more moderate political elites in Romania to co-
8 Elemér Illyés, National Minorities in Romania. Change in Transylvania. Boulder/CO 1982. 9 Katherine Verdery, National Ideology under Socialism . Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceaușescu’s Romania. Berkeley/CA 1995; Cheng Chen , The Roots of Illiberal Nationalism in Romania . A Historical Institutionalist Analysis of the Leninist Legacy, East European Politics and Societies 17 (2003), no. 2, 166-201. 10 Gabriel Andreescu, Schimbări în harta etnică a României. Cluj-Napoca 2005. 11 Tom Gallagher, Nationalism and Political Culture in the 1990s, in: Duncan Light / David Phinnemore (eds .), Post-Communist Romania . Coming to Terms with Transition . Basingstoke 2001, 104-126 . 12 Rogers Brubaker / Margit Feischmidt / John Fox / Liana Grancea, Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town. Princeton/NJ 2006. Ethnic Relations in Mixed Communities after 1989 139 operate and find political solutions which took the tension out of the situation and shepherded the problem towards Parliament . The inclusion of the Hungarian party into the political arena was one of nu- merous internal and external contextual factors that influenced ethnic relations in Romania, in this case favourably so . In Parliament, the UDMR was able to represent and defend the rights of the Hungarian minorities both leading up to the adoption of the new constitution in 1991 and then in the debates on the most important laws concerning public administration and education . Although the Romanian framework favours the parliamentary majority and largely expresses the official domination of the Romanians, the early decision to include the UDMR in the political framework proved highly significant. With the UDMR in parliament, the new institutional design at least kept open the possibility of improving the minorities’ rights through political and parliamentary strategies at some time in the future, so that there would be no need to resort to overt ethnic struggle .13 Romania was thus spared Yugoslavia’s fate 14. As a matter of fact, the new Romanian constitution and laws only partially acknowledged minority rights . The intention was to reconcile a desire for ethnic Romanian supremacy, national sovereignty, territorial unity, and the minimum international standards on minority rights, for example the requirements to be fulfilled in order to join the Council of Europe. Beginning with 1993 and full membership of the Council of Europe, alongside other countries in the region Romania accepted European conditions, which had serious effects on its demo- cratic trajectory .15 Earlier, in 1991, the constitution expressed ethnic Romanian domination by the proclamation of the nation state of Romania, its sovereignty based on the unity of the Romanian people in an explicitly ethnic definition. There was even to be exclusive use of the Romanian language . When such an ethnocentric approach generated protests from Hungarian political elites,16 the constitution acknowledged the existence of national minorities and their legitimate efforts for the preservation, development and expression of their own ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious identity (Article 6) . Moreover, the constitution guaranteed the right of any national minority, even if too small for
13 Mihaela Mihăilescu, The Politics of Minimal “Consensus” . Interethnic Opposition Coalitions in Post-Communist Romania (1990-96) and Slovakia (1990-98), East European Politics and Societies 22 (2008), no. 3, 553-594. 14 Vedran Džihić / Dieter Segert, Lessons from “Post-Yugoslav” Democratization . Functional Problems of Stateness and the Limits of Democracy, East European Politics and Societies 26 (2012), no. 2, 239-253; Sabrina P. Ramet / Ola Listhaug / Dragana Dulić (eds .), Civic and Uncivic Values. Serbia in the Post-Milošević Era. Budapest 2011. 15 Lynn M .Tesser , The Geopolitics of Tolerance . Minority Rights Under EU Expansion in East-Central Europe, East European Politics and Societies 17 (2003), no. 3, 483-532. 16 Catherine Kettley, Ethnicity, Language and Transition Politics in Romania . The Hungarian Minority in Context, in: Farimah Daftary / François Grin (eds .), Ethnicity and Language Politics in Transition Countries . Budapest 2003, 243-266 . 140 Dragoș Dragoman proportional representation in Parliament under the terms of the electoral law, all the same to return one Deputy and to be represented by one organization only (Article 62) . Those special provisions made Romania one of 32 nations that reserve legislative representation for ethnic minorities .17 However, the UDMR never actually made use of the provisions because the Hungarian party always managed to exceed the required electoral thresholds, which increased from 3% in 1992 to 5% in 2000 . The conflict in the early 1990s concerned the limitations of linguistic rights, as part of broader cultural rights . The Hungarian minority released a lengthy list of cultural and political claims, but for the time being the Romanian majority was not prepared to make further concessions . Subsequent laws, based on the foundations established in the constitution, granted technical rights to national minorities but limited them in practice by making additional requirements . For example, although the Local Administration Act from 1991 granted minorities the right to use their native languages in communications with local authorities, written requests had to be accompanied by translations into Romanian. Local authorities were entitled, at their own discretion, to publish their decisions in mi- nority languages only in localities where minorities were numericall y significant. The same applied to the Education Act of 1995 . Although minority languages were accepted when teaching specific matters pertaining to the preservation of a minority’s identity and culture, especially at primary and secondary levels, certain subjects such as history and geography were required to be taught only in Romanian, regardless of the pupils’ native tongue . Moreover, the history to be taught was the history of the Romanians, which included much that was controversial among the ethnic minority communities who historically had been the enemies of ethnic Romanians – something particularly true for Transylvania . Geography too was taught in exclusively Romanian terms, despite the fact that minorities had their own specific toponomies. The restrictions aimed at asserting the primacy of ethnic Romanians in fact remained more symbolic than practical because ethnic Hungarian teachers continued to use Hungarian names for geographical features and did not fully embrace the official historical version. In spite of their continued restrictive ele - ments, the rights granted by early post-communist laws in Romania surpassed similar provisions set up by other post-communist countries, especially in the fields of culture and education. Romania was worlds away from the bitter -ef forts made by the former Yugoslav and the Baltic states to support their official languages, which effectively turned those new democratic regimes into ethnic democracies 18. Even if during the first years of its democratic transition the
17 Ronald F . King / Cosmin Gabriel Marian, Minority Representation and Reserved Legislative Seats in Romania, East European Politics and Societies 26 (2012), no. 3, 561-588. 18 Priit Järve, Language Battles in the Baltic States: 1998-2002, in: Daftary / Grin (eds .), Ethnicity and Language Politics in Transition Countries, 73-106; Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship Ethnic Relations in Mixed Communities after 1989 141
Romanians set up a hegemonic model that claimed the primacy of Romanian as the official language; their willingness to accept minority languages and create room for future improvement in the status of minorities represented a major difference between Romania and other countries in the region. Romania’s eager- ness to join NATO led to the signing of a political treaty between Romania and Hungary in 1996, with mutual recognition in both countries of existing state borders and the rights of minorities . The biggest opportunity for expanding minority rights came between 1996 and 2000, when a newly favourable internal circumstance arose. For the first time, following the defeat of the ruling Social Democratic Party (Partidul Social Democrat, PSD) which was the successor of the communist party, a new coalition included the UDMR . Their participation in government was seen by the coali- tion as helpful for joining NATO, while simultaneously the Hungarian minority found itself in a much more favourable position to apply a reasonable amount of pressure to improve minority rights . The two acts regulating education and public administration were amended so that language rights were significantly expanded with new provisions allowing more use of minority languages in education, from primary to university level, and in public administration .19 All those expanded rights are comparable to and sometimes even exceed minority rights anywhere, both at EU level and at the level of internal provisions within certain member states .20 Caught up in the process of European integration, some candidate countries managed in effect to surpass internal conditions in older EU member states, which have remained fearful of granting similar rights to their own ethnic minorities .21 Such essential improvement in minority rights has turned Romania into a regional model, and similar language laws were subsequently adopted by, for example, Slovakia .22 Ethnic and political relations in Romania have changed out of all recognition from how they were in the early 1990s as a result of Ro- mania’s inclusion of the Hungarian party into the governing coalition, and the good relationship between Romania and Hungary as expressed by a number
Struggles in Soviet Successors States, International Migration Review 26 (1992), no. 2, 269-291; Igor Stiks, The Citizenship Conundrum in Post-Communist Europe . The Instructive Case of Croatia, Europe-Asia Studies 62 (2010), no. 10, 1621-1638. 19 Dragoș Dragoman, Linguistic Pluralism and Citizenship in Romania, in: Dagmar Richter / Ingo Richter / Iryna Ulasiuk / Reeta Toivanen (eds .), Language Rights Revisited . Berlin 2012, 267-280 . 20 Oana-Valentina Suciu, Ethnic Minorities in Romania in the Light of EU Integration . London 2006, available at
Ethnic Relations after 2000
Although the UDMR was not co-opted into government by the governing Social Democratic Party in 2000, with the promise of further improvements of minority rights a special agreement was reached to enable the UDMR to sup- port the government . New steps forward were taken, previous government acts, issued as emergency decrees between 1996 and 2000, were passed into law . According to the new law of 2001 on public administration, the use of minority languages is permitted wherever the relevant minority exceeds 20% of the local population . Since then, citizens from minority ethnic groups have been able to communicate with official personnel in their own native language, and elected officials may themselves speak a minority language during meetings, and local institutions may use them to disseminate information . It is a compromise that maintains the primacy of the official language but allows the use of minority languages in appropriate circumstances 25. Moreover, localities where minori- ties surpass the 20% threshold may adopt multilingual public inscriptions, for such things as nameplates and road signs. However, the influence exerted by Fidesz on the Romanian-Hungarian relationship and its symbolic support for the Hungarian minority has rapidly changed the course of interethnic relations in Transylvania. New matters were debated, ranging from symbolic commemora- tions, street names and statues of national heroes, to the claims for autonomy of counties in Transylvania inhabited by large proportions of ethnic Hungarians .26 The new symbolic turn came in 2001 with the Hungarian special Law on the Status of Hungarians Living in Neighbouring Countries, or as it was known at
23 Dan Chiribucă / Tivadar Magyari, The Impact of Minority Participation in Romanian Government, in: Monica Robotin / Levente Salat (eds .), A New Balance: Democracy and Minorities in Post-Communist Europe . Budapest 2003, 73-97 . 24 The expression is borrowed from Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism . London 1995 . 25 István Horváth, Evaluarea politicilor lingvistice din România, in: Levente Salat (ed .), Politici de integrare a minorităţilor naţionale din România. Aspecte legale și instituţionale într-o perspectivă comparată. Cluj-Napoca 2008, 203-213, 207. 26 Dragoș Dragoman, Ethnic Groups in Symbolic Conflict. The “Ethnicisation” of Public Space in Romania, Studia Politica. Romanian Political Science Review 11 (2011), no. 1, 105-121. Ethnic Relations in Mixed Communities after 1989 143 the time, the “Status Law” . The law was designed to grant special rights like seasonal work permits, social assistance, travel, education and health benefits to ethnic Hungarians living in the nearby diaspora . Since all the countries in- volved had emerged from the ruins of the former Austrian-Hungarian Empire at the end of World War I, the law excited much criticism . What raised so many questions was its symbolism, its demonstrated willingness symbolically to ex- pand the nation by turning the Hungarian diaspora into a Hungarian political subject instrumentalized in Hungarian politics .27 In the end, the need for internal electoral support for Fidesz went hand in hand with symbolic expansion of the nation, with serious effects on the way Hungarians from both Hungary and Transylvania have conceived citizenship, nationhood, and statehood 28. The nationalist politics promoted by Fidesz and their implications for the Hungarian diaspora must be interpreted in the light of emotionally charged campaigning and commemorations 29. As components of national symbolism, commemoration keeps alive national myths, which is another way ethnic groups establish and determine their own origins and systems of values 30. Through myth, boundaries are established both within the community and between it and others, in a constant effort of “imagining” the community.31 That is espe- cially true when myths and commemorations conflict, when ethnic communi- ties celebrate historical events from opposite angles . The commemoration by ethnic Hungarians of the national revolution that took place in 1848 to re-unite Transylvania and Hungary after a long period of separate statehood, and the commemoration by ethnic Romanians of the secession of Transylvania from Hungary in 1918 are two important celebrations in Hungary and Romania respectively, and as turning points in their historical development they also bear clearly opposite meanings, the conflicting significance of which formed the background to a highly symbolic affair in 2004.
27 László Kulcsár / Cristina Bradatan, Politics without Frontiers: The Impact of Hungarian Domestic Politics on the Minority Question in Romania, Communist and Post-Communist Studies 40 (2007), no. 3, 301-314; Stephen Deets, Reimagining the Boundaries of the Nation: Politics and the Development of Ideas on Minority Rights, East European Politics and Societies 20 (2006), no. 3, 419-446. 28 Mark A . Waterbury, Internal Exclusion, External Inclusion: Diaspora Politics and Party-Building Strategies in Post-Communist Hungary, East European Politics and Societies 20 (2006), no. 3, 483-515; Agnes Batory, Kin-state Identity in the European Context: Citizenship, Nationalism, and Constitutionalism in Hungary, Nations and Nationalism 16 (2010), no. 1, 31-48. 29 Brigid Fowler, Nation, State, Europe and National Revival in Hungarian Party Politics: the Case of the Millennial Commemorations, Europe-Asia Studies 56 (2004), no. 1, 57-83; Agnes Rajacic, Populist Construction of the Past and Future: Emotional Campaigning in Hungary between 2002 and 2006, East European Politics and Societies 21 (2007), no. 4, 639-660. 30 George Schöpflin, The Functions of Myth and a Taxonomy of Myths, in: Geoffrey Hosking / George Schöpflin (eds .), Myths and Nationhood . New York 1997, 19-35 . 31 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism . London 1983 . 144 Dragoș Dragoman
The commemoration of the 1848 Hungarian revolution was literally carved in stone in the form of statuary raised in the town of Arad in 1880, following the Austro-Hungarian compromise of 1867 . Arad was in Hungary until 1920, but is now in Romania . Known as the “Liberty Statue”, the massive monument depicts 13 Hungarian revolutionary generals who were executed as mutineers by the Austrian imperial army in 1849 when the revolution was defeated with the support of the Tsarist Russian army .32 After World War One and the integra- tion of Transylvania into the Kingdom of Romania, the Romanian government dismantled the group of statues, mainly because Hungarian revolutionaries had killed many Romanians in the rising of 1848-1849 against Habsburg rule and subsequent civil war . The “Liberty Statue” had in fact been placed in storage in the city fortress and was finally restored to public display in 2004. Following months of tense negotiations, it was placed in a “Romanian-Hungarian Recon- ciliation Park” alongside architectural symbols of ethnic Romanians, raised in order to diminish the element of Hungarian symbolism . The symbolic domination of urban space is central to the strategies used by ethnic groups, as long as such symbolism is to be seen as fitting into practical categories, classificatory schemes and cognitive frames.33 In Cluj-Napoca, the former capital city of Transylvania shared by ethnic Hungarians and ethnic Romanians, Mayor Gheorghe Funar (PUNR) used an ethnically symbolic com- petition to secure the votes of the Romanians who make up the majority of the city’s electorate . He did everything he could both to assert the Romanian char- acter of the centre of the city and to neutralize its Hungarian past .34 Continuing the symbolic race that began with Fidesz’s diaspora politics, he threatened to remove the historic equestrian statue of Mathias Corvinus, the most important Renaissance era king of Hungary. The figure dominates the central square of the city, and the mayor sponsored archaeological excavations there in a bid to assert Romanian primacy in Cluj by emphasizing its Roman history . Finally, he erected towering flagpoles flying Romanian flags on each side of the statue. When Funar left the city’s town hall in 2004 after three mayoral terms, still trying to dominate the urban space ethnically, he replaced the white-painted benches in the central square with new ones in Romanian national colours . The climax of the symbolic confrontation came with the much more sensitive matter of autonomy for ethnic Hungarians living in Transylvania. Although not new, having been advanced by the UDMR since the early 1990s, the subject was emphasized by Hungarian autonomists as soon as almost all other other basic
32 István Deák, The Lawful Revolution . Louis Kossuth and the Hungarians, 1848-1849 . New York 1979 . 33 Rogers Brubaker, Rethinking Nationhood: Nation As an Institutionalized Form, Practical Category, Contingent event, Contention 4 (1994), no. 1, 3-14. 34 Brubaker / Feischmidt / Fox / Grancea, Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town . Ethnic Relations in Mixed Communities after 1989 145 linguistic and patrimonial rights had been granted,35 especially after Romania ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in 2008.36 In acquiring its cultural rights supported by important patrimonial restitution, the Hungarian community recovered many of the proper conditions for the preservation of its cultural identity. In many city centres such as Timișoara, Cluj- Napoca, Arad, Brașov, or Oradea, the Hungarian churches, both Roman-Catholic and Protestant, donated or rented many of the historic buildings returned to them by the Romanian property restitution act to Hungarian-language schools and high schools . As compensation, new school buildings were required for ethnic Romanian pupils in other urban areas, sometimes in peripheral and semi-peripheral areas, and more and more schools that were previously mixed Romanian and Hungarian were now separated as monolingual ones . The Hungarian community’s willingness after 1989 to adopt separate schools after decades of forced ethnic cohabitation during communist rule, combined with the symbolic matter of whether their location was peripheral or central urban led to protests by Romanian teachers and pupils about having to use separate school buildings in various towns in Transylvania . Many Romanians saw the situation as a defeat after the effort made for centuries by their own elites in Transylvania, who had struggled to promote Romanian culture as being equal to Austrian and Hungarian culture 37. That effort was symbolized soon after 1918 by the building of Romanian orthodox churches in many city centres in Transylania, especially Cluj-Napoca, Târgu-Mureș, and Timișoara. The matter of territorial autonomy is more sensitive, because it is in conflict with both the 1991 Constitution and the 2001 Law of Public Administration, both of which acknowledge that Romania is a unitary nation state . According to those two laws, the largest territorial unit is the county, and the current ter- ritorial design is the one put in place in 1968 . Before that, the Hungarian com- munity benefitted from autonomy under the Soviet-style administration, in the framework of an autonomous region called the ‘Hungarian Autonomous Region of Mureș’. That autonomy ended with the nationalization of communism, the homogenization of the socialist nation and the settlement of the county as a ter - ritorial unit 38. It was only in 1998 that the Romanian Parliament adopted the
35 Monica Călușer, Carta europeană a limbilor regionale sau minoritare în România. Între norme și practici. Cluj-Napoca 2009; Marian Chiriac, Provocările diversităţii. Politici publice privind minorităţile naţionale și religioase în România. Cluj-Napoca 2005. 36 The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages is a document issued by the Council of Europe in 1992. The document has been signed and ratified since then by certain countries, including Romania, whereas a number of countries (France, Italy, Russia) only signed the document without proper ratification, and other countries (Greece, the Baltic States, Belgium, Portugal) refused even to sign it . 37 Keith Hitchins, A Nation Affirmed: The Romanian National Movement in Transylvania, 1860-1914 . Bucharest 1999 . 38 Cheng Chen, The Roots of Illiberal Nationalism in Romania . 146 Dragoș Dragoman
Law on Regional Development and accepted eight macro-regions in order to comply with the requirements of the European territorial statistical units system (NUTS, from the French Nomenclature des unités territoriales statistiques) 39. The new approach was more of a development tool than a regionalization in terms of restructuring the regional administration, and was similar to early measures adopted by other EU candidate countries at the request of the European Com- mission .40 The new approach never involved effective regionalization, and successive governments postponed concrete steps towards full autonomy for the regional units .41 The government’s indecision is closely related to symbolic actions and claims to territorial autonomy . In 1998 the government decided not to overlap admin- istrative and ethnic inner borders when shaping regional units in Romania . Considering the brief autonomy of the Hungarian community in Transylvania between 1952 and 1968 under the umbrella of the Hungarian Autonomous Region, which more or less covered the current mostly ethnic Hungarian coun- ties of Harghita, Covasna and Mureș, the government decided to include those counties into a larger regional unit and place them alongside Alba, Brașov and Sibiu, counties inhabited by majority ethnic Romanians . That regional design was constantly challenged whether in power or in opposition both by Hungar- ian autonomists and the Hungarian UDMR party . They claimed autonomy for the historical “Székelyland” (Székelyföld in Hungarian and Ţinutul Secuiesc in Romanian), covering more or less the Harghita, Covasna and Mureș counties. The name recalls the medieval administrative organization of Transylvania, when Szeklers, a Hungarian population defending the Eastern borders of the Hungarian Kingdom, benefitted from extensive autonomy granted by the Hun- garian king 42. The relationship between ethnic Hungarians and Szeklers is of great symbolic importance, since Transylvania became the shield of the Hungar- ian nation when western areas of the former Hungarian Kingdom were occupied by the Ottomans after the historic defeat of 1526 and subsequent dismantling of the medieval Hungarian state 43. Before that, Hungary had been a wealthy and important regional power encompassing the whole Carpathian Basin and including the principality of Transylvania . Its borders were defended by au- tonomous communities, the Szeklers and Saxons, who with noble Hungarians formed the bulk of the upper classes (medieval états) . The historic autonomy of
39 Dragoș Dragoman, Regional Inequalities, Decentralisation and the Performance of Local Governments in Post-Communist Romania, Local Government Studies 37 (2011), no. 6, 647-669. 40 Martin Ferry, From Government to Governance: Polish Regional Development Agencies in a Changing Regional Context, East European Politics and Societies 21 (2007), no. 3, 447-474. 41 Dragoș Dragoman / Bogdan Gheorghiţă, European Conditionality, Ethnic Control or Electoral Disarray? The 2011 Controversial Territorial Reform Attempt in Romania,Polis. Journal of Political Science 2 (2014), no. 1, 72-90. 42 Gyula Kristó, Histoire de la Hongrie médiévale . Le temps des Arpads . Rennes 2000 . 43 Paul Lendvai, The Hungarians: A Thousand Years of Victory in Defeat. Princeton/NJ 2004. Ethnic Relations in Mixed Communities after 1989 147
Szeklers is still invoked today for the recognition of a special autonomous status for the Hungarians in Transylvania and for a special design for regional units inhabited in large shares by ethnic Hungarians . This is the purpose of a new Hungarian party in Transylvania, the Civic Hungarian Party (Hungarian, Magyar Polgári Párt, Romanian, Partidul Civic Maghiar, PCM), which is challenging the long-established Hungarian UDMR party, partner of the Romanian parties in parliament and government . The PCM unilaterally set up a Szekler National Council as a representative body of Szeklers in Transylvania with the stated goal of working for autonomy for “Székelyland” . They wish to adopt the use of ethnic symbols like a national anthem, flag and a separate national coat of arms. Additionally, the council intends to make an official proposal for a law regarding an autonomous Székely territory, defined as a distinct and indivisible territorial unit that should not be merged into a larger territorial unit, unlike as things are today with the three counties, Harghita, Covasna and Mureș, which are parts of a larger regional administrative unit . Symbolic conflict has become even more visible since 2007 when the council of the 73 .79% ethnic Hungarian Covasna county decided to set up eight tourist road signs at its borders, to mark entry into “Székelyland” . Immediately, au- thorities from neighbouring Harghita inhabited by 84 .61% ethnic Hungarians expressed their willingness to set up similar signboards for the benefit of tourists at their borders . The legal dispute, between the two county councils dominated by elected councillors of Hungarian ethnicity and the Romanian State Road Company which initially removed the signboards, ended with the permanent installation of road signs at the borders of the two counties . Under pressure from the UDMR on its coalition partner PSD, in 2014 the government finally agreed that local authorities, town councils and county councils should be entitled to raise flags specific to each town or county, in addition to the Romanian and EU flags. Moreover, the Association of the Hungarian Regions, a lobby institution in Brussels designed to keep the Hungarian Regional Development Agencies in touch with European institutions, decided in 2011 to include the “Székelyland” office among the other regions it represents, which almost amounts to official recognition of representation of the province by Hungary . The increasing symbolism that defines relations between ethnic Romanians and ethnic Hungarians very often emphasizes unresolved conflict. Pushing to ex- pand minority rights by exceeding the current linguistic regulations, the UDMR faced a clear refusal to accept separate public university teaching in Hungarian from all its political partners during its periods of participation in government (1996-2000, 2004-2008, 2010-2012, 2014-) . The current legal framework allows for full education in Hungarian, but no Romanian government has yet taken the difficult decision to dismantle the bilingual university “Babeș-Bolyai” in Cluj-Napoca . All governments have instead preferred to encourage private 148 Dragoș Dragoman universities to teach in Hungarian, financed by private subsidies and financial allocations from the Hungarian government . The Franz Joseph University in Transylvania, named after the Emperor himself, was founded in Cluj-Napoca in 1872 by the Hungarian government, following the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 and the formal political unification of Hungary with Transylvania.44 The university ended its activity upon the dismantling of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the unification of Transylvania with Romania, when taking control over it was one of the top priorities for the new Romanian authorities . In 1919, the Hungarian university symbolically and officially moved across the new border to Szeged, in Hun - gary, yet all the material assest including the buildings and laboratories of the old university remained in Cluj-Napoca at the disposal of the new Romanian University . For a brief period after World War Two, emphasizing the friend- ship between the socialist Hungarian and Romanian people, the Hungarian university was restored to Cluj-Napoca and was re-named after the illustrious Hungarian mathematician Janos Bolyai . However, the Hungarian university’s period of autonomy was short, for it was forcibly merged with the Romanian “Victor Babeș” university in the aftermath of the Hungarian uprising of 1956. Since then, the state university in Cluj-Napoca has been bilingual in Romanian and Hungarian and has borne the combined names of the two scientists, “Babeș- Bolyai” . From then on, Hungarian speaking professors and students have been able to organize themselves into dedicated study-groups and departments, but cannot form distinctive faculties using Hungarian as the teaching language . Although it is first of all a practical question, the possibility that Hungar- ian-speaking professors and students might group themselves into autono- mous faculties or even split off from the current university to form a separate Hungarian-speaking public university in Cluj-Napoca is highly symbolic . In the past, one of the purposes of the new university created in 1872 was to fully emancipate Hungarian culture and science and to signal their primacy in Transylvania . The Hungarian community received similarly symbolic answers to its requests to reshape or split up the existing Babeș-Bolyai University. The Romanian-dominated ruling body’s main argument against the proposal for autonomous organization of the two faculties currently housing the Hungarian departments, was the preservation of multiculturalism and scientific competi - tiveness. Both would be better promoted by the current organization of chairs and faculties, they said . Despite pressure in favour of autonomous organization of Hungarian-speaking faculties coming from the central government formed by UDMR and Romanian parties, the ruling body of the university consistently rejected the idea .
44 Victor Karady / Lucian Nastasă, The University of Kolozsvár/Cluj and the Students of the Medical Faculty (1872-1918) . Budapest 2004 . Ethnic Relations in Mixed Communities after 1989 149
The highly symbolic turn of ethnic relations between Hungarians and Ro- manians in Transylvania during the last decade relates to mechanisms of dif- ferentiation and power in the field of cultural production,45 but it also works as a narrative of banal nationalism 46. This kind of nationalism is “banal” as long as it encompasses non-material issues and is opposed to direct, hard, hot nationalism expressed by violence and bloodshed 47. Such a sort of banal nationalism, working to mark public space symbolically, contrasts the “other” and thereby strengthens an ethnic group’s identity 48. Born at the same time as growing ethnic symbolism, the competing idea of a transnational identity that generates a “civic regionalism” was a plausible alternative to both banal and violent nationalism . In an optimistic environment with both Hungary and Romania gaining full membership of the EU and joining NATO, with strong cooperation between national governments and the expansion of minority rights in both countries, “civic regionalism” was presented in 2000 by a handful of Romanian and Hungarian intellectuals in Transylvania as a plausible alternative to the current political representation of Transylvanian citizens .49 The new Transylvanian regionalism was based on the alleged existence of “Transylvanism”, a cultural peculiarity related to the multiethnic history of Transylvania and to its proximity to Central and Western Europe . By its dif- ferent traditions, history, and especially by its multiethnic composition, Tran- sylvania has been said to be essentially different from the rest of Romania. In Transylvania, the coexistence of Western and Oriental Christianity has allowed the expression of the great styles of European culture: romantic, gothic, renais- sance, baroque, and classical . Moreover, Transylvania appears as a space of religious tolerance and renewal, especially when one notices that many ethnic Romanians in Transylvania display religious beliefs different from those of their counterparts in other Romanian provinces . The point was made by the Greek- Catholic Romanian United Church with Rome, a major part of the Orthodox Church in Transylvania, when in 1699 it symbolically accepted the supremacy of the Pope as leader of the Holy Church . The Greek-Catholic Church in fact played an essential role in the history of Romanians in Transylvania and is considered both a factor in its progress and a distinctive feature differentiat- ing Transylvania from the rest of Romania . The Greek-Catholic Church was
45 Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production. Cambridge/MA 1994. 46 Billig, Banal Nationalism . 47 Michael Ignatieff, Blood and Belonging . Journeys into the New Nationalism . London 1994 . 48 Anthony Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction . London 1979 . 49 Gusztáv Molnár, Regionalism Civic, Provincia I (2000), no. 2. 150 Dragoș Dragoman outlawed by the Communist regime in 1948 and its patrimony donated to the Orthodox Church, but since 1989 has been fighting for its restitution.50 Taking cultural difference as a sufficient basis for a regional party that fights for decentralization and state reform, Transylvanian intellectuals have proposed a regionalist solution for the harmonious development of Romania that would consider the historical, economic and sociocultural identity of its regions . They submitted a Memorandum to Parliament Regarding the Regional Structuring of Romania, which triggered a public debate . However, unambiguous refusal by the government to consider civic regionalism as the basis for regionalization and the negative reactions from Romanian nationalist parties put the project on hold . The failure of civic regionalism consolidated ethnic symbolism, fuel- ling identity strategies to ensure domination of the public space in many urban contexts in Transylvania 51.
Ethnic Relations with Small Minority Groups: the German Minority in Context
Beginning in 2000, a parallel and different relationship developed between ethnic Romanians and ethnic Germans in Transylvania . Once again, context proved to be decisive . In 2000, Klaus Johannis, the candidate of the Demo- cratic Forum of the Germans in Romania (in German Demokratisches Forum der Deutschen in Rumänien, DFDR, in Romanian Forumul Democrat al Germanilor din România, FDGR) managed to win the mayoral elections in Sibiu, a medium-sized town in Southern Transylvania, despite the scant share of ethnic Germans in the city .52 He won the subsequent mayoral elections in Sibiu in 2004, 2008 and 2012, turning the city into a psephological phenomenon, and thus marking an essential difference from the Hungarian candidates in Transylvania, who are voted for exclusively by ethnic Hungarians .53 Although comparing relations between ethnic Romanians and ethnic Hun- garians on the one hand with those between ethnic Romanians and ethnic Germans on the other hand might carry some risk given the demographic sizes and symbolic power of the different communities, the comparison is important to an understanding of the evolution of ethnic relations in Romania . The normalization of relations between Hungarian and Romanian parties in
50 Chiriac, Provocările diversităţii. 51 Dragoș Dragoman, Ethnic Groups in Symbolic Conflict. The “Ethnicisation” of Public Space in Romania, Studia Politica. Romanian Political Science Review 11 (2011), no. 1, 105-121. 52 Idem, La recomposition du champ politique régional en Roumanie . Le succès du Forum Allemand à Sibiu/Hermannstadt”, Studia Politica. Romanian Political Science Review 5 (2005), no. 1, 181-201. 53 Andreea Zamfira / Dragoș Dragoman, Le vote (non)ethnique en Roumanie, 2000-2008 . Les performances électorales des partis des minorités allemande et hongroise en perspective comparée, Revue d’Etudes Comparatives Est-Ouest 40 (2009), no. 2, 127-156. Ethnic Relations in Mixed Communities after 1989 151 parliament, but also between Romania and Hungary, paved the way for ethnic cooperation in other contexts, as was the case in Sibiu . The comparison could be made on limited electoral grounds, taking into account the potential of ethnic mobilization, but it could be made from a broader perspective too, taking into account larger favourable factors like the general process of democratization and Europeanization 54. The Transylvanian electoral success of the German candidate came in a very special urban community, where ethnic relations seem to differ greatly from the overall ethnic environment . First of all, the history of Sibiu is very much related to the persistence of the German ethnic element. Founded by Western settlers in the 12th century close to what was then the Eastern border of the medieval Hungarian kingdom,55 the city of Sibiu (Hermannstadt in German, Nagyszeben in Hungarian) enjoyed considerable autonomy for centuries . It was a distinct political unit, under its own jurisdiction and directly subject to Hungary’s king, who undertook to guarantee its rights .56 The colonists were referred to as “Sax- ons” (Hospites saxonicarum), although in fact they had come from a large area of the Rhine and Mosel basins to defend the Hungarian crown (ad retinendam Coronam); from Cologne, Trier, Luxembourg and the Westerwald.57 They were united by their destination, not by their different origins, for they were actually from Franconia, Wallonia, and Luxembourg . The unity and the autonomy of the settlers unus( sit populus) were successively accepted by the king, with the final unification of the jurisdiction of all towns inhabited by Saxons under the capacious umbrella of the Nationsuniversität (Universitas Saxonum) . For a long time, the autonomy of the Saxon community, which adopted the Lutheran brand of Christianity in the 16th century, was defended in the frame- work of medieval power structures when the Nationsuniversität was represented in the Transylvanian House of Commons, alongside the Hungarian nobility and the Székely community, and each group could defend its interests and privileges by use of a veto (curiatvotum) . The medieval power system excluded ethnic Romanians, very many of whom were peasants of Christian Orthodox faith . It was a Medieval injustice, perpetuated into modern times and lived through by many generations of Romanians in Transylvania and never forgotten. The Saxon community gradually lost its autonomy in the face of dramatic historical developments in the region . There was the crushing defeat of the Hungarian kingdom in 1526 by the Ottoman Empire and the limited autonomy of Transylva- nia although it survived as a distinct principality subject to the Ottomans. Then came the hegemony of the catholic House of Habsburg and religious conflict in
54 Sherrill Stroschein, Ethnic Struggle, Coexistence, and Democratization in Eastern Europe . Cambridge 2012 . 55 Kristó, Histoire de la Hongrie médiévale . 56 Harald Roth, Hermannstadt: Kleine Geschichte einer Stadt in Siebenbürgen . Köln 2006 . 57 Ernst Wagner, Istoria sașilor ardeleni. Bucharest 2000. 152 Dragoș Dragoman
Transylvania, until modernization imposed by Emperor Joseph II finally put an end to the range of privileges inherited from the Middle Ages, and in 1781 the Saxon community lost its exclusive right to citizenship of Sibiu .58 Moreover, the Nationsuniversität could no longer use its veto and was reduced to a small minority when the curiatvotum was transformed in the House of Commons into individual vote almost proportional to its ethnic share . The national idea promulgated by the 1848 revolution consolidated the modernization, putting an end to the medieval administrative system of laws which was replaced by the Austrian civil code, and following the Austro-Hungarian Compromise Hungarian became the only official language.59 Finally, a law of 1876 broke up the territorial unity of the Saxon community and turned the Nationsuniversität into an ordinary private foundation, in charge of the administration of the community’s patrimony . The formation of the Romanian national unitary state and its struggle to achieve cultural homogenization of the newly enlarged Romanian territory se- riously affected the economic situation of the German community after 1918. 60 Monetary unification with Romania and land reform diminished German wealth in both currency and land, with a huge reduction in bank deposits and Church land properties .61 The situation became even more serious after 1945, when the entire German community in Romania was held responsible and collectively sanctioned for its alleged support of Nazi Germany during World War Two . All ethnic Germans were deprived of their civil and political rights, while 30,000 of them were deported to the Soviet Union . Tens of thousands of German farmers, craftsmen and merchants were deprived of their property, while their banks, factories, shops, and houses were nationalized by the Romanian state .62 On the basis of the Ostpolitik promoted in the 1970s by the German Federal Govern- ment, many ethnic Germans decided to pay a sum of money to allow them to leave Romania. The German migration only intensified after 1989, when legal and administrative restrictions were lifted, leaving behind a very long history of conviviality and struggle, of cooperation and conflict, of ethnic and religious diversity . At the end of the 20th century, the German community constituted fewer than 2% of the overall population in Sibiu and fewer than 0 .5% of the overall population in Romania . How can the great success of the German Forum in Sibiu be explained? Gherghina and Jiglău identified a number of key factors that influence ethnic
58 Angelika Schaser, Josephinische Reformen und sozialer Wandel in Siebenbürgen . Die Bedeutung des Konzivilitätsreskriptes für Hermannstadt. Stuttgart 1989. 59 Thomas Nägler, Românii și sașii până la 1848. Sibiu 1997. 60 Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania . 61 Vasile Ciobanu, Contribuţii la cunoașterea istoriei sașilor transilvăneni. 1918-1944. Sibiu 2001 . 62 Konrad Gündisch, Siebenbürgen und die Siebenbürger Sachsen . München 1998 . Ethnic Relations in Mixed Communities after 1989 153 mobilization in post-communist countries .63 Things like territorial concentration, past relations of conflict between the dominant group and the ethnic minority, successful anti-minority parties, the influence of the kin-state and formal and informal discrimination generally lead to a political mobilization of a given minority group. With no ethnic competition in the current urban setting, with no successful anti-minority parties, with no effective discrimination and with a biased memory of past conflicts, ethnic Romanians in Sibiu overwhelmingly voted for the German Forum, expressing in fact a nostalgia that overempha- sized positive ethnic characteristics .64 In the memories of Romanian voters two decades after the German emigration from 1990-1991, ethnic Germans were serious, trustworthy, and hard-working people 65. Moreover, voting for a Ger- man candidate could also be motivated by a rational choice . Voting in 2000 can be seen as expressing hope for closer ties with the German Federal Republic, significant German investment and future economic growth after decades of bit- ter economic contraction, social uncertainty, unemployment, and deprivation,66 expectations almost fulfilled in the subsequent development of the city. Boosted by important direct investments in local industry, as well as by massive public investment in transport infrastructure and by a rise in tourism after 2007 when Sibiu was a European Capital of Culture,67 the city saw impressive economic growth . Sibiu today is one of the most important cultural destinations, as well as one of the most economically attractive cities in Romania. All these economic features became electoral assets in 2008 and 2012, when the FDGR maintained its power at local and county levels and emphasized its politically neutral profile. 68 The electoral model put forward by the city was duplicated on a smaller scale in other urban settings in Mediaș, Cisnădie and Avrig, some of the most important cities in Sibiu county. The German Forum’s influence not only helped consolidate local democracy by offering viable political alternatives to mainstream parties and avoiding relying on extremist anti-system parties, but
63 Sergiu Gherghina / George Jiglău, Explaining Ethnic Mobilisation in Post-Communist Countries, Europe-Asia Studies 63 (2011), no. 1, 49-76. 64 Dragoș Dragoman / Andreea Zamfira, L’influence des stéréotypes sur les performances électorales des partis des minorités ethniques en Roumanie . Allemands et Hongrois en perspective comparée, Transitions 48 (2008), no. 1, 135-161. 65 Dragoș Dragoman, Capital social et tolérance ethnique. Coopération, confiance et préjugés ethniques en Roumanie, Studia Politica. Romanian Political Science Review 5 (2005), no. 3, 733-751. 66 Ivan T . Berend, Social Shock in Transforming Central and Eastern Europe, Communist and Post-Communist Studies 40 (2007), no. 3, 269-280. 67 Florica Vasiliu / Dragoș Dragoman, Evaluating the Economic Impact of Large Cultural Events . A Case Study of Sibiu, European Capital of Culture 2007,Studia Politica. Romanian Political Science Review IX (2009), no. 2, 317-327. 68 Dragoș Dragoman, The Success of the German Democratic Forum in Sibiu: Non-Ethnic Voting, Political Neutrality and Economic Performance, Transitions 53 (2013), no. 1/2, 97-117. 154 Dragoș Dragoman shaped state politics as well .69 In October 2009, Klaus Johannis was supported by a large coalition formed by the PSD and the National Liberal Party (PNL) as a candidate for Prime Minister after the dismissal by Parliament of the previ- ous Democratic Liberal (PDL) Prime Minister . Only the controversial refusal of the Romanian President Traian Băsescu (formerly the PDL leader) prevented Klaus Johannis from being appointed . In March 2014, the PNL nominated Jo- hannis, then PNL vice-president, for Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Affairs Minister, to force reform of the governing alliance between PNL and PSD . The Social Democrat Party refused to accept the nomination whereupon the PNL withdrew from the governing coalition . President Băsescu was not the only one to express populist attitudes, when he mocked the decision of the parliamentary majority to appoint Klaus Johannis following the dismissal of the PDL government . The President’s scorn was in line with his general attitude of constantly undermining Parliament, which twice suspended him from office, in 2007 and 2012. During his two consecutive terms, the President initiated referendums seeking to reduce drastically the number of MPs and to turn the existing bicameral assembly into a single chamber . He sought stronger majoritarian electoral systems in local and national elections and the consolidation of executive power, launching his counteroffensive by pitting his own personal popularity against the low esteem in which Parliament was held 70. Once in power following the 2012 general elections, the PSD initiated a nationalist and populist rhetoric based on the party’s allegiance to both the dominant Romanian ethnic group and the Orthodox Church . Their aim was to justify the PSD’s opposition to external pressure and criticism coming from the European Commission and the US Embassy in Bucharest . Its rhetoric is even more striking in the context of the presidential elections in 2014, when the new PNL-PDL alliance was represented by Klaus Johannis, who is neither an ethnic Romanian nor an Orthodox Christian . This turn of events has to be integrated into a broader picture of democratic backsliding following the ending of ex- ternal pressure once accession to the European Union had been secured 71. In the whole region, populists in power have refused to respect the separation of
69 Idem, Partide regionale și democraţie locală în România, in: Sergiu Gherghina (ed .), Voturi și politici. Dinamica partidelor românești în ultimele două decenii. Iași 2011, 319-345. 70 Idem, Populism, autoritarism și valori democratice în opinia publică din România, in: Sergiu Gherghina / Sergiu Mișcoiu (eds.) Partide și personalităţi populiste în România postcomunistă. Iași 2010, 267-207; Cosmin G. Marian / Ronald F. King, “Plus ça change”. Electoral Law Reform and the 2008 Romanian Parliamentary Elections, Communist and Post- Communist Studies 43 (2010), no. 1, 7-18. 71 Dragoș Dragoman, Post-Accession Backsliding: Non-Ideologic Populism and Democratic Setbacks in Romania, Southeast European Journal of Political Science 1 (2013), no. 3, 27-46; Paul Levitz / Grigore Pop-Elecheș, Why No Backsliding? The European Union’s Impact on Democracy and Governance Before and After Accession, Comparative Political Studies 43 (2010), no. 4, 457-485. Ethnic Relations in Mixed Communities after 1989 155 powers, nor do they acknowledge the existence of politically neutral institutions like the Courts of Justice, constitutional courts, or supervising and regulating institutions for mass media . The populists have claimed to speak for the true, sovereign people and therefore openly despise all liberal democratic institutions standing between the people and their representatives .72 They make claims for direct democracy and support charismatic leaders who channel social discontent against opposition elites whom they depict as biased against ordinary people .73 Populist political action could fuel the irrationalism and anti-intellectualism of an economically frustrated middle class and finally help the resurgence of harsh nationalism and xenophobia . The enormous influence of the small German party underlines the special relationship between ethnic groups in Sibiu . In contrast to the tense ethnic con- text in mixed Romanian-Hungarian communities, ethnic Germans are seen as trustworthy fellow citizens, defined by Protestant values as hard-working and persevering . Moreover, a number of contextual factors seem to work together for their success . Their ethnic size no longer represents a threat on the labour market, unlike at the beginning of the 20th century when Sibiu was still a Saxon city .74 In addition, the kin-country does not use discriminatory policies when dealing with its kin minority in Romania, and Romania has no fear of territo- rial threat from the allegiance of the minority group . The symbolic presence of the German minority is therefore largely accepted, along with all the public inscriptions in German and the large signs saying “Hermannstadt” at the city boundary. The local community in Sibiu has avoided significant symbolic confrontations by largely accepting the use of the German language in primary schools and high schools, where the overwhelming majority of pupils are in fact ethnic Romanians who gladly learn German as a language of culture, science and business, to improve their prospects on the labour market .
Conclusions
Ethnic relations between Romanian and minority groups differ by and large depending on the local context . The contextual factors explained above all shape the way ethnic Romanians perceive their bonds with ethnically different communities in Romania, in a period marked by essential social and economic change. Following a period of overt and bloody conflict at the beginning of the
72 Bojan Bugarič, Populism, Liberal Democracy, and the Rule of Law in Central and Eastern Europe, Communist and Post-Communist Studies 41 (2008), no. 2, 191-203. 73 Ivan Krastev, The Strange Death of the Liberal Consensus, Journal of Democracy 18 (2007), no. 4, 56-63. 74 Dragoș Dragoman, Modernizare și naţionalism: Sibiul la începutul secolului XX. Competiţia elitelor într-un oraș multicultural (1905-1945),Studia Politica. Romanian Political Science Review 7 (2007), no. 1, 31-69. 156 Dragoș Dragoman post-communist transition period, relations between ethnic Romanians and ethnic Hungarians, as the largest ethnic minority, moved towards a more peace- ful setting with the acceptance of minority rights, although with the powerful ethnic domination of the majority group . After 1989, it took almost ten years to find a reasonable compromise for the unrestricted use of language rights and the fulfilment of the standards required for effective cultural rights. Favourable conditions, both internal and external, have been the willingness of the two neighbouring countries, Romania and Hungary, to accept EU conditions on minority rights, as well as the inclusion of the Hungarian party in Romania in almost every governing coalition from December 1996 onwards . The changing political context in Hungary and the rise to power of the populist Fidesz party turned the previously negotiated compromise between the ethni- cally defined parties in Romania into a very tense symbolic conflict. Matters at stake ranged from public inscriptions and street names in Hungarian to ethnic commemorations, historical statues and buildings; until finally there was the question of territorial autonomy for the Székely region and its political repre- sentation abroad. In fact, the new symbolism affecting ethnic relations has been considerably favoured by the internal context in Romania, where for many years President Traian Băsescu and his governing party PDL cooperated electorally with Fidesz, its fellow member of the European People’s Party . They supported each other for internal elections as well as for the European elections in 2009 and 2014. Viktor Orbán, the Fidesz leader, strongly supported Traian Băsescu when he was impeached by Parliament in 2012 and persuaded the Hungarian community to boycott the legal referendum for Băsescu’s dismissal. With the essential help of the Hungarians, the referendum was therefore invalidated on the technicality of not reaching the legal numerical threshold, despite a crushing 90% of votes being cast against Băsescu. Although the symbolic conflict worked electorally in favour of the populists, it undermined existing good relations between ethnic Hungarians and ethnic Romanians and fuelled extremist parties on both sides . Hungarian extremists are now pushing at the standard European limits for cultural rights, and they exploit fears of territorial autonomy and secession in an environment dominated by general suspicion and hatred . This is very much in contrast with relations between Romanians and Germans, who came to a reasonable accommodation in various urban settings and, in Sibiu, even managed to surmount ethnic bar- riers when considering major political and electoral concerns . Indeed, that is why Sibiu was designated a European Capital of Culture in 2007, the year of Romania’s accession to the European Union .