Consolidating Political Community in Central and Eastern Europe: Meanings, Uses (and Abuses) of National-Cultural Autonomy

Over the past 25 years, a range of states in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have introduced institutional arrangements for the governance of ethno-cultural diversity that are labelled as either national-cultural or non-territorial autonomy (NCA). Recent scholarship on ethnic conflict regulation has assigned considerable potential to the NCA model as a means of desecuritising historically problematic ethnic relations within CEE., and it is similarly referenced in key international documents as a possible mechanism for boosting minority participation in public life and supporting the developments of integrated democratic political communities. Until now, however, there is still a lack of comparative work that matches the actual practice of NCA in the region against these theoretical and normative claims. This paper introduces preliminary findings from a three-year (2014-17) research project at the University of Glasgow comparing existing NCA arrangements and ongoing debates around this model in 6 CEE countries. Drawing on examples taken from all the country case studies, the paper addresses the following themes: how and why NCA arrangements have been adopted; the roles performed by extant NCA institutions within overall systems of minority recognition and representation; how the arrangements can be situated in relation to broader theoretical frameworks on diversity governance and the norms promoted by international organisations; how NCA is evaluated within different communities; and the claim that NCA can be considered viable as a ‘one size fits all’ approach to diversity governance.