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UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Courting the Nation Abroad: Diaspora Political Incorporation Policies After Communism Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/99x1w1j1 Author Garding, Sarah Publication Date 2013 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Courting the Nation Abroad: Diaspora Political Incorporation Policies After Communism by Sarah Elizabeth Garding A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Jason Wittenberg, Chair Professor M. Steven Fish Professor Chris Ansell Professor Irene Bloemraad Spring 2013 Abstract Courting the Nation Abroad: Diaspora Political Incorporation Policies After Communism by Sarah Elizabeth Garding Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science University of California, Berkeley Professor Jason Wittenberg, Chair This dissertation investigates policies implemented by governments in emigration states to incorporate their diasporas into the homeland political community. While some governments enact expansive policies that enable their diasporas to easily acquire citizenship, vote overseas, and access the policymaking process, others try to insulate homeland politics from diaspora influence. I refer to these three interlocking policies as diaspora political incorporation policies because they define the diaspora’s relationship to the homeland political community. To explain variation in diaspora political incorporation policies, I pair data on global trends in citizenship, external voting rights, and diaspora representation with analysis of policy variation in Armenia, Croatia, and Serbia. These three countries have among the world’s largest emigrant populations relative to domestic population. Moreover, they grappled with devastating wars and steep economic decline in the 1990s. Nevertheless, diaspora political incorporation policies sharply varied across these three cases as well as within each case over time. While most scholars emphasize the homeland government’s need for economic aid or foreign policy support from the diaspora, I argue that diaspora political incorporation policies are firmly anchored in electoral competition. Homeland politicians support expansive diaspora incorporation policies when said policies increase their parties’ electoral resources, and reject them when their opponents benefit. The challenge for policymakers, who have limited knowledge of the diaspora’s political contours, is to gauge the political impact of an expanded electorate and citizenry prior to enacting reforms. Lacking reliable data on diaspora political orientations, Armenian, Croatian, and Serbian politicians’ perceptions of the diaspora as a political force were instead shaped by the manner of diaspora involvement in homeland affairs during communism’s collapse. Two factors were particularly important: 1) whether the diaspora supported the anticommunist opposition in the homeland or competed independently, and 2) whether the diaspora’s support was concentrated in one homeland party or was diffuse. 1 Table of Contents 1. Introduction: Diaspora Political Incorporation After Communism 1 1.1 Migrant transnationalism and sending state activism 4 1.2 Diaspora political incorporation policies 7 1.3 Alternative explanations of sending state activism 14 1.4 The electoral logic of diaspora political incorporation 17 1.5 Methodology and organization 26 2. Patterns of State-Diaspora Linkages 29 2.1 Patterns of state-diaspora linkages 29 2.2 The politics and profile of the Croatian diaspora 31 2.3 The politics and profile of the Serbian diaspora 46 2.4 The politics and profile of the Armenian diaspora 61 2.5 Conclusion 70 3. The Politics of Defining Membership 72 3.1 The meaning and uses of citizenship 73 3.2 Citizenship politics in Croatia 80 3.3 Citizenship politics in Serbia 89 3.4 Citizenship politics in Armenia 99 3.5 Conclusion 108 4. Voting From Abroad After Voting With One’s Feet 111 4.1 Voting rights and incorporation 112 4.2 Overseas voting rights: given or taken? 117 4.3 External voting debates in Croatia 122 4.4 External voting debates in Serbia 133 4.5 External voting debates in Armenia 142 4.6 Conclusion 146 5. Remote Representation 148 5.1 Conceptualizing diaspora interest representation 149 5.2 Remote representation in Croatia 152 5.3 Remote representation in Serbia 164 5.4 Remote representation in Armenia 171 5.5 Conclusion 175 6. Conclusion 178 6.1 The consequences of diaspora political incorporation 181 i 6.2 Conclusion 189 References 190 Appendix A: Policy Variation by Case 212 ii Acknowledgements This dissertation has been made possible by the encouragement and generous support of numerous individuals and organizations. At UC Berkeley, I have received ongoing financial support from the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship program, the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, the Berkeley Program in Eurasian and East European Studies, and the Institute of International Studies. The International Research and Exchanges Board, the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus, and the Peter N. Kujachich Endowment in Serbian and Montenegrin Studies provided generous financial and logistical support for my fieldwork. I am grateful to my advisors for their continuous support and feedback. My dissertation chair, Jason Wittenberg, has provided invaluable guidance on this project from its inception. Steve Fish has been a great source of ideas and fresh perspectives. I am grateful to Chris Ansell for sparking my interest in public administration and providing sage advice. Irene Bloemraad’s work on migration and citizenship inspires me, and she has been a true mentor throughout this project. I am also grateful to Cybelle Fox, Ned Walker, and Nick Ziegler for their advice and feedback during the writing process, and to Leo Arriola, who first suggested that I look at the diaspora angle of the transition from communism. I am fortunate to have been part of Berkeley’s collegial graduate student community. I am grateful for the friendship and support of Richard Ashcroft, Tara Buss, Betsy Carter, Devin Caughey, Adam Cohon, Tari Ellis, Tim Fisken, Kristi Govella, John Hanley, Lindsay Mayka, Anne Meng, Sara Newland, Ivo Plsek, Toby Reiner, and Mekoce Walker. They made the lows of writing a dissertation bearable and the highs worth celebrating. Marcy McCullaugh has been with me in the trenches for the last two years of dissertation writing. She is both a tovarish and a friend. I am very grateful to Jody LaPorte for her friendship and mentoring. Her sage advice has pulled me out of the dissertation doldrums on more than one occasion. I have been part of several informal writing groups since I returned from fieldwork. I never would have finished without the invaluable comments, firm deadlines, and moral support of Betsy Carter, Lindsay Mayka, Marcy McCullaugh, Brendan McSherry, Sara Newland, and Akasemi Newsome. I thank Adam Cohon for nearly eight years of insightful feedback on my draft fellowship proposals, prospectuses, and chapter drafts. This project has benefitted enormously from lengthy conversations with other scholars of Southeastern Europe and the Caucasus. Andrej Milivojević helped me decipher the former Yugoslavia over the course of many conversations and coffees in Berkeley and Belgrade. I am also grateful to Karlo Basta, Maja Catic, Mila Dragojević, Eli Feiman, Kruno Kardov, Andy Konitzer, Brigitte Le Normand, Milan Piljak, Tanja Vučković Juroš, and Daphne Winland. The staff at the University of Toronto’s Jacyk Center and the Immigration History and Research Center at the University of Minnesota helped me sift through their voluminous collections of immigrant newspapers, newsletters, and magazines. In Croatia, I am indebted to Saša Božić, Jasna Čapo, Ivan Čizmić, Goran Čular, Kruno Kardov, Simona Kuti, Danijel Lijović, Mate Meštrović, and Dragan Zelić for sharing their vast knowledge of Croatian politics, history, and migration. I am grateful for the assistance of the friendly staff at the Croatian Heritage Foundation, the National University Library, and the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies. Željka Banicek, Fran Jarnjak, Maja Kuharić, and Ana Manzin helped make Zagreb feel like home. I am particularly indebted to my friend Duško iii Vorkapić, who has helped me many times in and out of the field. In Serbia, I owe a great deal of thanks to Marko Blagojević, Vesna Djikanović, Petar Dragišić, and Tanja Pavlov for sharing with me their time and wealth of knowledge of Serbian politics, history, and migration. I am grateful to my friends Slavoljub Erić, Matt Lutton, Andrej Milivojević, Matija Milivojević, Vera Ovanin, Milan Piljak, and Marko Rondović for making life in Belgrade so much fun. Richard Antaramian, Gohar Shahnazarian, and Mikael Zolian helped me transition to my fieldwork in Yerevan. I am also grateful to the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus and the Caucasus Research Resource Center for their logistical support. Finally, in all three countries, as well as in Germany, Canada, and the U.S., I am very grateful to the many individuals who agreed to be interviewed by a stranger. I was touched by their generosity and openness. I thank them for all of the coffee and tea, the chocolate and cookies, and the stacks of books and articles. This project simply