Reimagining the Boundaries of the Nation: Politics and the Development of Ideas on Minority Rights

The collapse of communism reshaped European debates on minority rights. By the 1980s, the different institutionalizations of turn-of-the-century perspectives created an ideational divide between East and West. Since 1989, Western norms have not simply transferred East, as intellectuals and politicians in the region challenged and reinterpreted the norms in novel ways. Fifteen years later, European minority norms are elaborated in much greater detail than ever before, but consensus on core issues remains elusive. The article first explores the roots of this ideational divide and how recent trafficking of ideas between East and West Europeans has caused both to reexamine their core assumptions on the rights of minority communities, particularly with regards to individualism, collective autonomy, and justice. The second part examines how these controversies over norm interpretation appear in minority policy debates in Eastern Europe, including minority autonomy, education, and the Hungarian Status Law.