Diversity in Action Local Public Management of Multi-ethnic Communities in Central and Eastern Europe DIVERSITY IN ACTION LOCAL PUBLIC MANAGEMENT OF MULTI-ETHNIC COMMUNITIES IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE Edited by ANNA-MÁRIA BÍRÓ AND PETRA KOVÁCS LGI Books First edition published by Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative Open Society Institute Nador utca 11 H-1051 Budapest Hungary tel: (361) 327-3104 fax: (361) 327-3105 http: //www.osi.hu/lgi Production by Tom Bass Design by Arktisz Studio © 2001 LGI/OSI All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or translated, in any form or by any means, without the permission of the Publisher ISBN 963 7316 70 1 ISSN 1586-1317 Printed in Hungary by Arktisz Studio Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative (LGI), as one of the programs of the Open Society Institute (OSI), is an international development and grant-giving orga- nization dedicated to the support of good governance in the countries of Central Eastern Europe (CEE) and Newly Independent States (NIS). LGI seeks to fulfill its mission through the initiation of research and support of development and operational activities in the fields of decentralization, public policy formation and the reform of public administra- tion. With projects running in countries covering the region between the Czech Republic and Mongolia, LGI seeks to achieve its objectives through: · Development of sustainable regional networks of institutions and professionals engaged in policy analysis, reform-oriented training and advocacy; · Support and dissemination of in-depth comparative and regionally applicable pol- icy studies tackling local government issues; · Support of country specific projects and delivery of technical assistance to imple- mentation agencies; · Assistance to local Soros foundations with the development of local government, public administration and/or public policy programs in their respective countries; · Publishing of books, studies and discussion papers dealing with the issues of decen- tralization, public administration, good governance, public policy and lessons learnt from the process of transition in these areas; · Development of curricula and organization of training programs dealing with specific local government issues; · Support of policy centers and think-tanks in the region. Apart from its own projects, LGI works closely with a number of other international organizations (Council of Europe, Department of International Development, USAID, UNDP and World Bank) and co-funds larger regional initiatives aimed at the support of reforms on the subnational level. Local Government Information Network (LOGIN) and Fiscal Decentralization Initiatives (FDI) are two main examples of this cooperation. For additional information or specific publications, please contact: Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative P.O. Box 519 H-1397 Budapest Hungary E-mail: [email protected] · http://www.osi.hu/lgi Tel: (361) 327-3104 · Fax: (361) 327-3105 CONTENTS Acknowledgements ix List of Contributors xi List of Tables and Figures xv List of Case Studies xvii PREFACE Anna-Mária Bíró and Petra Kovács Diversity in Action: Local Public Management of Multi-ethnic Communities xix PART ONE THE CONTEXT:POLITICAL, ADMINSTRATIVE AND LEGAL PERSPECTIVES 1 George Schöpflin Minorities and Democracy 3 Tony Verheijen Public Administration Reform: A Mixed Picture 19 Patrick Thornberry An Unfinished Story of Minority Rights 45 Appendix A Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities 75 Appendix B Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National, Ethnic, Religious or Linguistic Minorities 83 Appendix C Lund Recommendations on the Effective Participation of National Minorities in Public Life 87 viii PART TWO THE PRACTICE:STRUCTURES, POLICIES AND MULTI-ETHNIC DYNAMICS 95 Elena Gyurova Emerging Multi-ethnic Policies in Bulgaria: A Central – Local Perspective 97 Laura Laubeová The Fiction of Ethnic Homogeneity: Minorities in the Czech Republic 135 Jenô Kaltenbach From Paper to Practice in Hungary: The Protection and Involvement of Minorities in Governance 171 Piotr Bajda, Magdalena Syposz and Dariusz Wojakowski Equality in Law, Protection in Fact: Minority Law and Practice in Poland 205 István Horváth and Alexandra Scacco From the Unitary to the Pluralistic: Fine-tuning Minority Policy in Romania 241 Ján Bucek Responding to Diversity: Solutions at the Local Level in Slovakia 273 Viktor Stepanenko A State to Build, A Nation to Form: Ethno-policy in Ukraine 307 PART THREE 347 GLOSSARY OF TERMS 349 BIBLIOGRAPHY 359 INDEX OF TERMS 385 INDEX OF MINORITY GROUPS 389 ix ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The editors would like to thank to Violetta Zentai, LGI Project Manager; Gábor Péteri, LGI Research Director; and Adrian Ionescu, LGI Program Director, for their continuous support and enthusiasm in making this project happen. We are grateful to our contribu- tors for agreeing to undertake their tasks and for delivering the finished products in rea- sonable time. Thanks are also due to the expert-readers, Éva Heizer, Éva Orsós, Tamás M. Horváth, Metin Kazak, Teodora Noncheva, Dan Oprescu, Károly Tóth, Klara Orgovanova, Valentina Pavlenko, Martin Potu˚cek, Tatjana Sisakova and Béla Varga, for providing careful critical comments on the various aspects of the chapters. We owe grat- itude to Csilla Kató, Zsuzsa Katona and Judit Benke for carrying out administrative work for the book’s completion. Tom Bass’s advice, encouragement and patience in the pro- duction of the book were invaluable. Every publishing service that required in the course of bringing this book to press he provided. Alexandra Scacco, LGI Research Associate, helped us with her enormous commitment, expertise and patience in style, content-edit- ing, compiling the glossary of terms and indices, fact-checking and final clarifications for which we remain indebted. xi CONTRIBUTORS Piotr Bajda is the Deputy Director of the Polish Institute in Bratislava, Slovakia. He holds an M.A. in Political and Social Science from the Academy of Catholic Theology in Warsaw. Previously, he worked on human and minority rights at the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights in Poland and worked on promoting minority culture and Polish-Slovak relations at the Stefan Batory Foundation. Anna-Mária Bíró is the Central and Eastern Europe Project Manager at the Budapest Co- ordination Office of Minority Rights Group International. She studied human rights and advocacy as an intern with the International Service for Human Rights near the United Nations in Geneva. She holds an M.Sc. in Public Administration and Public Policy from the London School of Economics and she is currently doing her Ph.D. at the Political Science Department of the Faculty of Law, University of Sciences (ELTE), Budapest. For two years, she was adviser on international relations to the President of the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania. Ján Bucek is researcher and lecturer at the Department of Human Geography, Comenius University in Bratislava. His primary research focus is political geography, with par- ticular emphasis on public administration issues. His research interests reflect the new challenges and various problems of post-communist transformation at the local level. Since the mid-1990s, he has addressed issues of multi-ethnic co-existence at the local level. Bucek received his Ph.D. from Comenius University in Bratislava in 1996. He has been a researcher in residence at the London School of Economics (1992) and Cambridge University (1997-1998). István Horváth is a lecturer at the Sociology Department of Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj, Romania. He is Deputy Director of the Research Centre for Inter-Ethnic Relations in Cluj. He conducts research and teaches various courses on inter-ethnic relations and ethno-political evolution in Romania. He is also a Fellow of the New Europe College in Bucharest. Jenô Kaltenbach is Parliamentary Commissioner for Minority Rights in Hungary, former chairman of the German Minority Self-Government and a constitutional lawyer. He was one of the initiators and later a spokesperson of the Roundtable of National and xii Ethnic Minorities in Hungary. Kaltenbach has made great efforts to modernise the sys- tem of representation of minorities in the national decision-making process. Petra Kovács is Researcher at the Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative (LGI). Since 1997, she has directed the Managing Multi-ethnic Communities Project (MMCP). She holds an M.A. from the ELTE/UNESCO Ethnic and Minority Studies Program and a D.E.A. Degree in Public Policy from the University Paris I Pantheon- Sorbonne. She is a Ph.D. candidate in public policy at ELTE University in Budapest. Her main fields of interest are multi-ethnic community management, public policy analysis and minority access to public services. Elena Gyurova has an M.A. in Sociology fromWarsaw University and has continued post- graduate studies in Society and Political Science at the Central European University, Prague, and completed an M.A. in European Integration at the New Bulgarian University. She has worked as a research fellow at the Institute of Culture, as the chief expert at the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Amenities in charge of local and regional development, social issues and groups in disadvantaged positions. She was also programme co-ordinator at the Inter-ethnic Initiative for Human Rights