Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This research identifies fifty-seven European ethnopolitical groups’ mobilization in their respective domestic arena and abroad. I explore the factors that have prompted their transnational activism, as well as shed light upon the strategies that these groups employ to further their causes internationally.

Currently, there are two theoretical schools at debate regarding what prompts the occurrence of transnational mobilization. Supporters of the macro-structural thesis argue that the process associated with globalization has facilitated transnational cooperation among groups that are promoting the self-determination cause. The micro thesis, by contrast, pays attention to the attributes inherent in each public interest group, such as group resources and ideologies.

Both theses offer important, but partial, explanations to the trans¬national phenomenon that I am interested in exploring. In this research, I propose a niche theory, borrowed from population ecology and human ecology to comprehend ethnopolitical contention. The kernel of my argument is that ethnic politics constitute unique and interesting ethnopolitical “ecology” where ethnopolitical groups, their agent organizations, and the decision-makers of their host states interact in a triadic relationship. An agent organization undertakes activism to negotiate or bargain an alternative settlement for the status of an ethnopolitical group. For agent organizations to continue their operation and to gain further bargaining power vis-à-vis state representatives, they need to have niches that can demarcate themselves and their ethnopolitical groups from other claim-making groups in a society.

Agent organizations usually have a variety of strategies to create their niches. For instance, they can raise the salience of the national self-determination issue. Transnationalizing the contention has the merit of raising such salience. Decision-makers will assess the group’s degree of transnational activism to gauge how many constituents in the country desire a policy change in favor of the ethnopolitical group. Knowing the salience of the collective spirit, and fearing that the contention would continue to expand or even spill over to more corners of the world, state representatives might consider making concessions.

By quantitatively analyzing the primary data from the European Survey of Ethnopolitical Groups (ESEPG), I confirm that although some ethnopolitical groups have presented their issues in the international arena, the domestic realm is still the main locus for ethnopolitical contention to take place: Many European ethnopolitical groups are more active domestically than internationally. Many of the studied groups that have transnational activism also have domestic actions. This seems to imply that when groups are already active in tackling their national governments, they are also more likely to consider exploiting international channels to advance their interests.

High salience of the national self-determination issue is necessary for ethnopolitical groups to consider taking transnational actions. But group resources, such as capitals, are even more significant for the occurrence of international actions. In addition, in many European countries, ethnopolitical groups’ resources are not only dependent on the support of their members and sympathizers, but also on the buttress from governments, which are usually more endowed with resources. Accordingly, resources and domestic opportunity structures are often connected.

Lastly, while opportunities arising from the international level matter, their utility requires the justification of elites. International structures are important but not because of their pure existence, it is because domestic actors and international actors have looked to the utilities of international cooperation and networks that help spread their beliefs, create solidarities, and form leverages to make the changes that they desire. If international structures exist, activists will try to exploit them; if not, they could seek to create some. This is why I believe we should move beyond the debate over micro thesis and macro thesis, but to search the linkages (e.g. identifying framing process) and pathways that weld these two types of factors together.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Focusing on both Romanian and Hungarian elections and electoral discourses, I will try to show how, as former communist countries get closer to the “gravitational attraction” of the European Union, and communist nomenklatura metamorphoses itself into an economical elite, ethnic and nationalistic discourses move rather rapidly out of fashion. From an instrumentalist perspective, there are three ‘layers’ of explanations to be taken into account - external, internal, and economical.
These results contradict several studies that suggest a direct linear relationship between democracy and political violence, while supporting the ones that report the relationship in an inverted U-shape form such as Ellingsen’s (2000) who also confirmed the inverted U-shape, finding that the highest frequency of conflicts occurs in ‘semi-democracies’. This paper will investigate the reasons for such a dramatic change in popular opinions and why the very political success of UDMR can become the cause for its future failure.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In post-communist Europe, globalization has specific geographic, institutional, and normative implications. In its most positive light, globalization means rejoining the West economically, becoming members of Euro-Atlantic institutions, and internalizing democratic principles. These multifaceted processes have affected the former Eastern bloc differently from other parts of Europe because globalization in this region has occurred suddenly, as these countries emerged from communist isolation in the late 1980s. Globalization has also been pushed, though most in the West prefer the word promoted, on the East by Western governments, intergovernmental organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), as well as by business. Yet, just as elsewhere, globalization has both benefited these countries and contributed to new challenges. This paper will examine the broad effects of globalization and global governance to understand the specific issue of ethnopolitical conflict in Eastern Europe. It does so by identifying the multi-layered strategies developed by external actors and discussing the evolution of ethnic politics from 1990-2000

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Through quantitative analysis, we address the relationship between an ethnic minority's level of political and economic grievance and their presence on the web. Research in ethnopolitics has established a clear relationship between the levels of grievance and their levels of mobilization (Gurr 2000). In this paper we hypothesize that the type of relationship that exists between grievance and off-line reported mobilization, holds true between grievances and search engine placement in the ether. We contend that search engines mediate the relationship between grievance and political mobilization on-line, the same way that off-line news media mediates the relationship between grievance and mobilization. Whilst any marginalized individual, or group, may build a website for the purpose of political discourse and organization, the key to successful political mobilization, as online commercial marketing studies illustrate, is getting others to visit, or hit, your site. Publicity, therefore, off- and on-line, is the key for successful political mobilization. Off-line, the news media, both mainstream and radical, provide the necessary link between action and message delivery. How does ethnopolitical mobilization work in cyberspace? We posit that search engines are key to getting potential recruits to visit, or hit a marginalized group's website, and allowing the effective dissemination of the ethnic minority's message. Succinctly, a website's numerical placement, within a search engine's results, determines if a website's message is heard or, if it amounts to a silent scream that goes unheard and unheeded. Location is key. To test our hypothesis we draw on data from both The Minorities At Risk Project, which identifies 275 such groups worldwide, and our own collected data on virtual ethnopolitical advocacy that comprising analysis of 16,500 websites.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In this paper we argue that the heuristic framework of Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) represents a path towards models of explanation of ethnopolitical mobilization with an eye towards generalizable explanatory model-building. The CAS approach focuses attention on the analysis of critical moments of adaptation and the dynamics and recursive processes taking place across different interconnected systems (e.g. ?levels of analysis?) that produce these moments. This approach demonstrates that the relative importance of individual factors varies as a result of a never-ending process of adaptation, evolution, and co-evolution in which ethnopolitical movements, states, and the international system are simultaneously and recursively engaged with each other, affecting an ongoing change in the contextual (normative, economic, political, organizational) structures within which ethnopolitical mobilization unfolds. An emphasis on moments of phase-transition in particular may represent the most value-added of a CAS model: focusing on critical moments permits the relaxation of analyses of periods of relative stability and facilitates cross-case comparisons of comparable moments in trajectories of ethnic activism. The added value of this approach is demonstrated using illustrative examples of ethnopolitical mobilization in Europe.