Author:

Keywords:

Minorities, Political participation

Abstract:

International  standards  on  national  minority  protection  in  Europe  often  encourage,  implicitly  or  explicitly,  states  to  adopt  institutional  models  that  foster  and  regulate  the  political  participation  and  representation  of  minorities.  But  how  do  governments  know  which  minority  organizations  are  representative  of  a  particular  minority  group  or  minority  “identity”?  And,  once  organizations  have  been  selected  (or  elected)  to  form  an  official  body,  what  does  that  say  about  the  extent  to  which  these  organizations  are  deemed  representative  and  legitimate?  Can  governments  measure  and  monitor  the  overall  quality  and  representative  character  of  these  associations?  These  questions  sound  straightforward  and  follow  implicitly  from  the  current  international  standards,  but  they  require  a  complex  answer.  This  paper  has  two  objectives.  First,  it  locates  the  concept  of  ‘minority  representative  organization’  against  the  background  of  related  concepts,  such  as  minority  self‐governments,  domestic  national  minority  supportive  organizations  and  transnational  advocacy  networks.  Second,  the  paper  offers  a  comparative  study  of  a  number  of  crucial  cases  in  new  as  well  as  old  EU  member  states.  Since  a  number  of  years,  several  European  countries  have  implemented  institutional  arrangements  aimed  at  establishing,  fostering  and  monitoring  the  political  representation  and  participation  of  minorities.  By  exploring  similarities  and  differences  in  these  arrangements,  the  paper  offers  a  number  of  tentative  conclusions  about  their  opportunities  and  limitations.  The  cases  include  the  government’s  consultative  body  for  national  minorities  in  the  Czech  Republic,  the  Sami  parliament  in  Norway,  the  Hungarian  minority  self‐government  system,  and  the  board  of  minority  self‐organizations  in  Belgium  (Flanders).