National and ethnic conflict after communism: Why democratisation is now a panacea
Timofey Agarin
Since the collapse of 'really existing socialism' in the late 1980s, the political complexion of Europe
has undergone a number of fundamental changes. In general terms, these changes have been
subsumed under the heading of the 'return to Europe'. In effect what happened in the 1990s was
that post-communist Europe engaged in a relationship with Western Europe which resembled that
between a teacher and a pupil. This was apparent in a number of policy areas and in particular,
rhetorically at least, within the field of minority rights.
West European governments, both individually and collectively conveyed the curriculum to
the diligent student who in turn learned it and through the medium of accession to the Council of
Europe, Nato and the EU, passed the test and completed the 'return to Europe'. However, once again
form has been confused with content. To be sure, all EU member-states now have an impressive
array of guarantees that are designed to prevent and punish discrimination. Yet, it is equally clear
that just as the established democracies have flaws with regard to minority rights regimes, so do
their counterparts in post-communist Europe and that these flaws are more marked than some
would like to believe.
The issue is important for two reasons. Allegedly these prompted European organisations'
explicit interest in domestic relations between the majority and minority communities and result in
monitoring of the potentially destabilising ethnonational mobilisations. 25 years after the collapse of
Communism and ten years following the 'big bang EU enlargement' minority and majority
communities across the region continue to claim that nation-states are best bulwarks to protect
them against the tyranny of the 'other', despite the consistent evidence to the opposite. I focus on
those institutions of member-states tasked with the implementation of minority protection and nondiscrimination in order to analyse their 'lock-in' effects upon the European minority rights regime. I
assess the bottom-up impact of domestic institutional dynamics on the evolution of norms and
standards of European minority protection and will contribute to analyses of constituent institutions'
path-dependency on the European minority protection framework.