Abstract
The political integration of ethnic minorities is one of the most challenging tasks facing the countries of post-communist Europe. The roads to their political representation in the mainstream political process are numerous and diverse. The EU accession of the Central and East European countries has expanded the scope of the political participation of minorities by adding an electoral process at the regional level: the elections for members of the European Parliament. This article presents a comparative study of the ways in which EU-level electoral processes affect the scope and quality of minority representation on the example of the participation of ethnic political parties in Bulgaria and Romania in the 2007 and 2009 electoral cycles of the European Parliament.
The political representation of ethnic minorities is regarded as a key indicator of the level of minority rights in contemporary democracies. Representation can take a variety of forms: minorities can have their own self-government or participate in the majority government process by having representatives in the legislative institutions at both the national and regional level or provide experts in various consultative bodies to the government. Legislative representation can be achieved in several ways: minority representatives can be elected through non-minority-specific parties or they can form their own parties and achieve representation along ethnic lines. 1
In post-communist Eastern Europe, external factors, and particularly the European Union (EU) integration process, have played an important role in developing the framework of minority representation. As the EU established minority protection in the candidate states as one of the conditions for membership, the accession process has had a significant impact on the consolidation of minority-relevant institutional rules. While such structural influences weakened as the East European countries became member states from 2004 to 2007, new opportunities for European-level influences have emerged. The elections for the European Parliament (EP) now provide an additional arena in which minority parties can participate, gain visibility, and advance minority related agendas.
This article investigates the emerging new dimension of EU influence on the political representation of ethnic minorities in Eastern Europe by focusing on the electoral behavior of ethnic parties in the EP elections in Bulgaria and Romania. 2 Minority political mobilization in the EU-level electoral process is an important, but largely unexplored, research area. The European elections are conventionally regarded as second-order elections. 3 While they create no direct consequences for the distribution of power in the national government, these elections serve as important pointers for the direction of change in the party system. The European elections are usually characterized by lower voter turnout rates, ambiguous electoral mobilization, and the disproportionately high success of small and radical parties. 4 Most of these trends, already well established in Western Europe, have been validated in the European elections in the new East European member states since 2004.
The principal objective of this article is to explain how the 2007 and 2009 EP elections affected the programmatic outlook, electoral behavior, and capacity of representation of the major ethnic parties in Bulgaria and Romania. The two countries allow for meaningful comparison as they share relatively similar ethnic makeups, history of interethnic relations, and paths of post-communist transition and European integration. What makes the two cases especially useful for comparative investigation is their respective domestic legal and institutional frameworks, which treat ethnic parties in different ways. Bulgaria has banned ethnic parties, while Romania provides the most extensive form of positive discrimination by providing guaranteed seats to minorities, subject to some limitations. 5 In reality, however, both Bulgaria and Romania have ethnic political parties. The two analyzed here are the party of the Turkish minority in Bulgaria, Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF), and the party of the Hungarian minority in Romania, the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania (DUHR). Whether and how EU-level electoral processes may affect their electoral behavior are important research questions, both analytically and empirically. As the EU creates a uniform system of rules and opportunities, does this lead to convergence in the nature of minority representation in the EP in the context of significant national differences? The evidence presented here suggests that regardless of the prevalent national models of minority representation, EU-level political processes significantly affect such parties both at the programmatic and behavioral level. In contrast to the trends in Western Europe, success in the EP elections provides ethnic parties in Eastern Europe with an extra layer of legitimacy and is instrumental to the evolution of the ethnic minority agenda and minority party competition.
European Integration and Minority Electoral Politics
European integration is widely credited with the consolidation of a normative framework for the protection of minority rights in Eastern Europe. Synthetic and case study analyses conclude that the criteria for EU membership and the accession process have led to adoption of norms and policies at the national level, eliminating discrimination and ensuring the inclusion of ethnic minorities in the policy process. 6 Most studies view the EU as an agent of change in the area of minority protection and minority rights, especially effective where ethnic minority parties are part of the governing coalition. 7
Similarly, the Europeanization literature posits the influence of the integration process on party politics. Propositions emerge from the fundamental premise that European integration affects the configuration of national political space. Haas has argued that integration tends to fragment domestic functional interests. 8 With the deepening of the process, cross-cutting functional and political interests produce a new cleavage in domestic political space that is separate from the left-right cleavage and accounts for emerging new constellations of voter preferences and party-electorate linkages. 9
The Europeanization literature examines the format and mechanics of the party system to discern any direct European effects 10 and indirect effects. 11 It looks for EU-level influences on the organization, ideology, and coalition potential of individual parties in domestic politics and their relations in the party system. Findings show wide variation: that party politics have been “impervious” to change 12 or that the EU has had an impact on party politics at the national level. 13 The literature acknowledges that the EU’s influence on the countries of Central and Eastern Europe has been more pronounced than in the West, but also that it was more effective prior to accession. The general argument is that EU-level impact on the standards and implementation of minority protection at the postaccession stage has declined as membership conditionality no longer applies. 14
The Europeanization of party politics is identified along two dimensions: structural and process effects. As a source of structural influence, European integration changes the very nature of political parties. The transfer of competences toward the EU institutions erodes the influence of the governing parties and coalitions and limits their ability to initiate policy change. The prevalent European model, which emphasizes a mix of liberal market policies and social values in the context of the system of EU law, leads to mainstream party convergence toward the center. As a result, political space opens up at the fringes for radical opposition. Populist parties and rhetoric enter electoral politics and party programs, causing more nuanced positions on Europe on behalf of the mainstream parties. 15 Following such structural propositions, we should expect electoral support for ethnic minority parties to increase and their programmatic outlook to radicalize.
The core process-related proposition that links European integration to party politics pertains to the electoral process and the ways in which parties communicate their policy positions to attract voter support. European issues tend to shift the coalition of voters originally based on cleavage divisions, including the center-periphery and urban-rural cleavage, into less ideological groups composed of cross-sections of society. 16 Parties become more inclusive in their electoral platforms, thus limiting the chances of centrist and minority-based parties to compete. In the context of European integration, the electoral process would be expected to have a negative effect on ethnic parties as the nonideological, more inclusive agenda that European integration brings into domestic politics makes the majority-minority distinction less obvious and dilutes the rationale of ethnic minority parties to cater to the specific needs of minorities. In fact, the low connectedness between the two dimensions creates problems for political parties that tend to downplay the European agenda and orient their European electoral campaign along domestic issues even in the European elections. 17
An alternative process-related hypothesis, the second-order elections (SOE) proposition, 18 regards the European elections as a new arena of political competition that adds another dimension to the domestic electoral process, serving as a pointer to the direction of change in political competition in which small and radical parties are likely to gain a disproportionately high vote share. 19 In line with the SOE proposition, we should expect ethnic minority parties to be overrepresented in the EP relative to their respective national vote share.
The EP Elections in the Context of Ethnic Minority Representation in Bulgaria and Romania
Ethnic Turks constitute the largest minority in Bulgaria and account for about 9.6 percent of the total population. Bulgarians represent the majority group of around 84 percent. The ethnic situation in Romania is roughly similar. Romanians constitute about 89 percent of the population in the country. The Hungarian minority, 6.6 percent of total population, is the largest one and is concentrated in several regions, similar to the Turks in Bulgaria.
The two countries therefore have clear dominant majorities; a single, substantial, and concentrated minority (Turks in Bulgaria and Hungarians in Romania); a substantial but scattered second minority (Roma); and a multitude of smaller ethnic groups with which this article is only marginally concerned. 20 The two concentrated minorities of interest have established their own political parties, despite different institutional and political contexts. In many ways, these arrangements reflect the two sides in the debate on the desirability of ethnic parties for democratic politics.
Bulgaria has instituted the most restrictive form of institutional arrangements for ethnic parties by banning the existence of parties based on ethnic, racial, and religious allegiance, making any other electoral arrangements for minorities impossible. 21 It thus departs from the conventional consociational model, prevalent elsewhere in Eastern Europe, which grants ethnic minority parties bloc representation and segmented autonomy. 22
In contrast, Romania not only allows ethnic parties, but has introduced special provisions to guarantee that they have a seat in Parliament and does not limit the number of minorities that can get representation. 23 Legally constituted organizations of citizens belonging to a national minority, which have not obtained at least one deputy seat through the general rules of the elections, have the right to a seat in Parliament. The only stipulation is that they must have obtained, at the national level, at least 5 percent of the average number of the validly expressed votes needed for the elections of one deputy according to the general rules of elections. 24 Through that system about fifteen minorities have, on average, gained representation in parliament. 25
The presence of a constitutional ban on ethnic parties has not prevented the existence of such parties in Bulgarian politics. De facto ethnic parties have managed to maintain a stable position in the political process by not openly registering as ethnic political entities. The Turkish-dominated MRF was founded officially in 1990. Although it does not have an openly stated ethnic platform and includes ethnic Bulgarians in both its membership and its leadership, MRF has represented the interests of the Turkish minority in Bulgaria. It derives more than 85 percent of its vote share from ethnic minority voters, and its electoral support is concentrated heavily in the regions populated by the minority. Since its creation, MRF has gained a consistent share of the vote and has been present in all legislatures. Its standing input into the political process has been coterminous with the moderation of its programmatic positions reflected in the lack of autonomy demands. 26 As such, MRF fulfills only a minimalist minority-related agenda. 27 During the 2001–2005 and 2005–2009 national electoral cycle, it was an official coalition partner in the Bulgarian government. 28
MRF has functioned well in Bulgarian political life despite restrictive constitutional provisions and numerous challenges within the party system. 29 Political observers have praised the Bulgarian “ethnic model” represented by MRF’s incorporation into mainstream politics through de facto participation in all governing coalitions since 1991, the moderation of its policy positions over time, and its law-abiding behavior. 30 MRF maintains a high degree of encapsulation of its voters. About 45 percent of the entire Turkish minority (including nonvoters) voted for the Movement in 2001. 31
After 2001, MRF realized that it could not continue to expand its voter base unless it reached outside the Turkish minority. 32 It thus made a conscious effort to transform itself into a national party by including more ethnic Bulgarians in its leadership. It also defined itself more coherently as a liberal-centrist formation and joined the Liberal International. However, this strategy has failed to change public perceptions. Most Bulgarians do not associate the party with liberal values but with its strong commitment to defending the interests exclusively of the ethnic Turk minority.
Similar to the MRF in Bulgaria, the party of the most numerous ethnic minority in Romania, the DUHR, has had a substantial role in Romanian political life. As ethnic parties are not banned in Romania, it has openly displayed its ethnic basis, although it, too, is not officially registered as a party but as a minority organization. Until the first European elections, held in 2007, DUHR had managed to preserve itself as the exclusive party of the Hungarian minority. It was represented in all post-1989 parliaments at a level that roughly corresponds to the proportion of ethnic Hungarians in the Romanian population. DUHR has remained in many ways the only stable party in Romanian politics, besides the communist successor party in Romania. In addition, it was part of, or has lent critical support to, the governing coalitions from 1996 until 2008, a fact interpreted as a major step towards achieving ethnic harmony in Romania.
DUHR voter support is also very highly encapsulated. Its membership to electorate ratio was about 65 percent in 1996, a level much higher than the MRF and any other party in the region. 33 In contrast to MRF, DUHR has not made an effort to escape its ethnic nature. Autonomy features prominently in its political demands which have at times reached more extreme levels. DUHR threatened to leave the government coalitions in 1997 and 1998 “if demands for state funded Hungarian university were not met.” 34 This trend has been exacerbated with an internal split in 2003 whereby DUHR’s radical wing advanced the issue of territorial autonomy for Transylvania. The higher degree of radicalization along ethnic lines may be attributed to the acceptance of ethnicity as a legitimate political cleavage in Romania’s general legislation.
Election results from national elections presented in Figures 1 and 2 indicate that the two parties have been able to gain considerable visibility in political life. The figures report the percentage of the minority in the country as a baseline for comparison and the percentage of the popular vote won by the MRF and DUHR in the national elections from 1991 to 2009 and the two rounds of EP elections held in each country.
Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) Electoral Support, 1990–2009
Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania (DUHR) Electoral Support, 1990–2009
While institutional rules in the two countries differ substantially, the ethnic parties have managed to achieve a similar level of representation in the national political process. Variation across time is considerable, with a tendency toward higher vote shares and overrepresentation of the two minorities in more recent elections. The most pronounced differences have occurred within the European electoral cycle, which is partly due to lower general voter turnout rates. As second-order elections that have no immediate consequences for the creation of governing majorities, the EP elections are generally characterized by lower voter turnout. As the ethnic parties tend to maintain their level of mobilization even in these elections, this tends to produce substantial overrepresentation at the EP level. However, variation in electoral support at the two rounds of EP elections suggests that in addition to mechanical effects, typical of ethnic minority representation, 35 other factors, such as the scope and quality of electoral mobilization, and the coalition-building capacity of the ethnic parties may be relevant to explaining electoral outcomes.
MRF and DUHR at the European Elections
In line with the SOE thesis, we expect the European elections to be associated with higher visibility for the ethnic parties as they are small and, in some ways, radical parties. In the cases examined here, however, the minority parties were also members of the governing coalitions in Bulgaria and Romania (at the time of the 2007 elections). Such attributes yield contradictory expectations with regard to their electoral outcomes. We can thus expect DUHR and MRF to do both better and worse than the mainstream parties. While the European elections typically result in overrepresentation of small and radical parties, they are also characterized by lower levels of support for the governing parties, reflecting voter discontent with government policies. 36
In addition to the vote shares reported in Figures 1 and 2, Table 1 reports the number of votes and number of seats won by the MRF and DUHR in the 2007 and 2009 EP elections to determine potential difference in the descriptive representation of minorities in the European relative to national elections. The data reflect inconclusive trends relative to the respective national elections. 37 The number of votes cast for ethnic parties in 2007 (including independent candidate Tökés in Romania 38 ) was considerably lower than in the preceding national election cycle. Overall electoral support for candidates representing the ethnic Hungarian minority in Romania declined by more than 160,000 votes from the 2004 election, resulting in the loss of one seat for DUHR. 39 MRF lost 74,750 votes relative to 2005. In 2009, MRF’s support was in line with its national vote share, 40 while that of DUHR increased in absolute terms relative to the 2008 national election. This result may be explained by the consolidation of the ethnic vote as it formed an internal coalition with the alternative civic Hungarian organization (discussed below). However, DUHR lost more than 28,000 voters relative to the 2007 EP elections.
Ethnic Parties at the 2007 and 2009 EP Elections in Bulgaria and Romania, Measures of Electoral Performance Relative to National Elections
Source: Bulgaria, Central Electoral Commission: 2005–2007 electoral data, http://www.cikep2007.org/index.php?resh=266 and http://www.is-bg.net/cik2005/index.php; 2009 electoral data, http://rezultati.cik2009.bg/results/proportional/rik_00.html and http://rezultati.cikep2009.eu/results/index.html. Romania, Biroul Electoral Central: 2004–2007 electoral data, http://www.bec2007pe.ro/documente/REZULT_27_11_2007_ORA13.pdf and http://www.bec2004.ro; 2008–2009 electoral data, http://www.becparlamentare2008.ro/rezultate.html and http://www.bec2009pe.ro/rezultate1.html.
In comparison with the mainstream parties, the vote share of ethnic parties in both countries largely exceeded the share of the respective ethnic minority group, explained by higher voter turnout rates among ethnic minority voters. In 2007, when both ethnic parties were members of the national governing coalitions, they outperformed other coalition partners. 41 Such comparisons may be extended to the 2009 election, in which MRF was part of the governing coalition and DUHR was an opposition party. In line with the SOE proposition, as an opposition small radical party DUHR slightly increased its electoral support by around sixty-seven hundred votes while MRF lost support as part of the governing coalition.
Changes in the absolute levels of electoral support and vote share, however, do not permit a conclusive argument with regard to the nature of opportunities and constraints that the European elections create for ethnic minority parties. Several alternative measures pertaining to ideological position, potential for coalition formation, and individual party development are advanced to determine the impact of the European elections beyond the SOE proposition. First, the elections may be regarded as an arena for the advancement of reformed minority-related electoral platforms and programmatic outlook of the ethnic minority parties. Second, due to the enhanced proportionality of the European elections in which the national territory represents a single constituency, the EP elections simplified the context of electoral competition by creating an equal opportunity for the parties to gain national visibility regardless of the regional concentration of their constituencies. The European elections thus enhanced the ability of ethnic parties to compete, form coalitions, and gain influence within the party system. Such indicators represent important aspects of the enhanced legitimacy of ethnic minority parties as national parties—for their electorate, the party system, and the policy-making process.
Programmatic Outlook and Electoral Platforms
Analysis of the influence of the European elections on the ideological outlook of ethnic parties proceeds from several (conflicting) propositions about the importance of the European agenda for political competition at the national level. 42 One proposition posits that European issues are subsumed under the national political agenda and follow the left-right ideological divide of the party system because European issues are less salient, and the mainstream parties are in general pro-European. According to such premises, the European elections should make no difference for the ideological positioning of political parties.
The evidence from the European elections in Bulgaria and Romania does not validate the national ideological divide hypothesis. The elections acted as a source of change in the relatively stable political opportunity structure of national electoral politics with regard to minority representation. Although the 2007 and 2009 EP elections offered no new issues, in contrast to the principal dimensions of political conflict at the national level, they provided an arena for the ethnic parties to reformulate their electoral platforms and advance their values and interests in a European context. In contrast to that, the relevance of the elections to the mainstream parties was minimal. The parties campaigned along their usual policy positions, thus validating the SOE proposition that these campaigns tend to reflect European issues through the lens of the national political agenda. 43
MRF and DUHR used the 2007 European election campaigns to streamline their programmatic outlook, which suggests that they regarded the elections as an additional opportunity for vote maximization through ideological positioning. In the case of Romania, the elections were conducive to the radicalization of political conflict and marked the beginning of a long-term restructuring of the political representation of the ethnic Hungarian minority.
The 2007 European election marked the end of DUHR’s monopoly of the representation of the Hungarian minority in Romania. An important contender emerged during the November 2007 electoral campaign. 44 Having failed to negotiate a compromise with DUHR, former Honorary President László Tökés ran as an independent. An alternative party structure composed of DUHR members discontent with the leadership joined the Hungarian Civic Union (CMP) and later registered as a political party. The fact that more than 40 percent of the ethnic Hungarian electorate voted for Tökés, contrary to forecasts that he would not meet the threshold but instead would provoke a split within the Hungarian community, reflects the emergence of minority-based electoral competition consistent with an individual-rights conception of minority politics.
Tökés (and CMP) advanced an alternative to DUHR’s approach to autonomy in Transylvania. It was seen as both more radical and more democratic as it was based on a bottom-up, grassroots model. Tökés’s platform sought a regime change for the ethnic Hungarians in Transylvania and urged DUHR to decline its monopoly and to open up the process of subsidy allocation and increase the pluralism of public life in Transylvania. Its centerpiece was the territorial autonomy of Szeklerland. 45 As a partial result of this newly emerged competition, the position of both parties, DUHR and CMP, radicalized. Issues about autonomy, recovery of “the territory lost in 1918,” and the need for ethnic Hungarians to reacquire assets (material and decision-making rights) became central to the campaign.
The repeated reference to these issues was a departure from normal politics for the DUHR—especially against the backdrop of the lack of comparable DUHR policy initiatives in its capacity of a coalition partner in all governments since 1996. The need to formulate a more inclusive agenda and take responsibility for its prior failure to advance the autonomy agenda induced a more subdued autonomy rhetoric in the 2009 European campaign, as the party had to respond to criticism by ethnic-majority politicians, most notably Romania’s president. 46 By the time of the 2009 EP elections, the salience of the autonomy issue had declined and was formulated in more pluralist terms to include cultural, governance, and territorial aspects. 47
Outside the autonomy issue, DUHR strategically sought to position itself as a moderately conservative party within the political grouping of the European People’s Party (EPP-ED). In 2007, its primary objective was to secure the representation of the ethnic Hungarian community in the EP, but it also sought to ensure the representation of all minorities in Romania, 48 a development that can be linked to the challenge from Tökés. In 2009, the party became even more programmatically inclusive as it sought strict adherence to the electoral platform of the European People’s Party. At the April 2009 EPP congress in Warsaw, DUHR presented its programmatic document “Our Union, Our Europe” and received praise for its adherence to EPP fundamental principles. 49 The contrast between the radicalization of policy position and intragroup competition in the 2007 European elections, and the strategy of vote maximization and cohesion-seeking through a moderate ideological positioning in the 2009 elections, reflects the tension between the Romanian consociational model of minority representation and the European electoral process. The presence of intraminority competition in the 2007 election had important consequences for political mobilization in the 2008 parliamentary elections and for the 2009 European elections by introducing a new model of coalition politics within the ethnic Hungarian minority in Romania.
Similarly, the European elections were an opportunity for MRF to pursue a more definitive ideological identification as a liberal-centrist formation. In contrast to DUHR, this strategy moved the party further away from a minority-specific outlook. By the time of the 2007 elections, responding to rising criticism at home that it was an ethnic party, MRF had joined the political grouping of the Liberals (Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, ALDE) in the EP. In both the 2007 and 2009 elections, MRF advanced multiethnic party lists. Its European electoral platforms made no reference to demands and policies explicitly addressing the ethnic Turk community. The European dimension was subsumed under domestic ideological categories, such as the center-periphery cleavage in the context of EU regional policy, explicitly mentioning only the Roma community as a common European issue in its 2007 program. 50
In 2007, MRF advanced an electoral platform based on the concept of a unique Bulgarian ethnic model, which it sought to develop further through the resources and opportunities of European parliamentary politics. MRF campaigned on the parallel between the European values and principles of diversity, equality, rule of law, and nondiscrimination and the objective of integration of ethnic minorities in domestic politics. In the 2009 elections, the party campaigned on its record as a partner in the governing coalition. It stressed its contribution to Bulgaria’s EU membership in 2007 and its role as a power broker in Bulgarian politics, downplaying its image of an ethnic minority party that sought privileges for its core electorate. MRF’s 2009 electoral program was formulated as “an enrichment” of the platform of the European Liberals and made no reference to minority politics. The strategy was to develop the outlook of a liberal party of national importance. Such an ideological positioning was in line with the principles of the domestic liberal-democratic model based on individual rights.
Beyond ideological identification, MRF used the European elections to strengthen its position as an important power broker in Bulgarian politics. By pursuing an inclusive electoral platform, regardless of its sustained ethnic minority electoral base, it sought to demonstrate its relevance as a national party. The European elections were important to its consolidation as a political actor in the ideological competition but not as a vehicle of advancing specific ethnic minority politics. MRF labeled this approach “nontraditional.” 51
Coalition Politics and Mobilization Strategies
The European elections emerged as an important marker of the coalition-building capacity of ethnic minority parties. In Romania, the 2007 elections marked the beginning of a period of unsettled relations between the political organizations representing the ethnic Hungarian minority, which oscillated between conflict, competition, negotiations, unity, and strategic calculations. Most importantly, the Romanian case illustrates the limitations of intraparty competition and coalition-building in the case of minority parties.
Although the competition between DUHR and Tökés in the 2007 elections ultimately produced the positive outcome of a combined 9 percent vote share for ethnic Hungarian representatives, it also fragmented the opportunities for ethnopolitical mobilization and enhanced the divisions within the ethnic Hungarian community. As a result of the 2007 European elections, the likelihood of minority votes for the parties and representatives of the ethnic majority increased.
The realization that the diversification of the ethnic Hungarian vote was in conflict with the objectives of vote maximization produced a tendency towards building institutional ties among minority political organizations, coalition-building, and compromise. In April 2008, DUHR signed a strategic partnership agreement with Tökés within the EPP-ED group. 52 The two sides further shared the view of minority autonomy as a factor of European stability. In March 2009, DUHR and László Tökés (as CMP chairman) signed a cooperation agreement to participate in the 2009 European elections in Transylvania through a joint party list of “Hungarian solidarity.” Thanks to the agreement, the ethnic Hungarian representatives gained 8.92 percent of the vote and slightly improved their results from the 2007 elections. In forming the 2009 electoral coalition, CMP and DUHR based their cooperation on a single-issue campaign, not ideological proximity. That issue was the autonomy of Szeklerland, an area with a particularly high concentration of the ethnic Hungarian minority:
Mr. President Basescu pronounced against the territorial autonomy of Szeklers. This proves how difficult is it and only the full solidarity of Hungarians and joining together all our efforts we can reach a result on the autonomy issue. This is the idea driving us to the agreements and I am satisfied.
53
The process of initial pluralization of the Hungarian political organizations, their internal competition, and subsequent coalition-building contributed to the replacement of the one-party model of ethnic minority representation with “pluralistic unity,” more open to intragroup competition and, therefore, to individual electoral choice. The European elections initiated a process of change in the prevalent Romanian consociational model by placing more importance on party behavior and campaign strategies, rather than on policy outlook.
Similarly to DUHR, MRF experienced a conflict between its programmatic outlook and mobilization strategies. In the highly contested 2009 European elections, it advanced a targeted mobilization campaign that was regionally concentrated in rural areas to capture the support of its core electorate, the ethnic Turk minority. The loss of 28,453 votes from the 2007 European elections in 2009 was due primarily to lower electoral support for MRF among the Roma community.
Against the background of its vote encapsulation within the ethnic Turk minority, MRF’s strengthened ideological coherence in the European elections prevented it from forming electoral coalitions 54 and from reaching out to other minorities or the broader electorate. Despite an explicit emphasis on ideological centrism and liberalism emphasizing individual rights, cultural diversity, and economic prosperity, MRF attracted exclusively the ethnic Turk minority vote as it campaigned primarily in areas with higher concentration of ethnic Turk voters. Outside ethnicity, this segment of the electorate is composed predominantly of poor, lower educated, low-skilled labor and unemployed voters who only marginally may be expected to identify with its liberal-centrist ideology. The high level of electoral support for the party in the European elections suggests that minority voters experiencing insecurity (as in the case of the ethnic Turk minority in Bulgaria) are more likely to vote for an ethnic party even if the latter has no specific minority-related agenda. The targeted vote maximization strategy consolidated public perceptions of MRF as a typical ethnic minority party and therefore an anomaly in Bulgarian electoral politics, constitutionally anchored in an individual-rights model. MRF’s consolidation within the ethnic minority electorate evident in the 2009 European elections also demonstrates that the Bulgarian national model was weakened as a result of the elections. Although the contradiction between MRF’s inclusive liberal programmatic outlook and concentrated ethnic-minority electorate is a persistent feature of Bulgarian electoral politics, the European elections were conducive to the deepening of divisions within the party system with regard to the presence of a de facto ethnic party in a model of political conflict that deliberately excludes ethnicity.
Conclusion
While in a broader context the European elections in Bulgaria and Romania fulfilled Reif and Schmitt’s predictions for second-order elections—a lower turnout rate than in national-level elections, losses for the governing coalition (with the notable exception of MRF in the 2007 election), and electoral success for smaller parties—it may be argued that they had additional nontrivial effects on the modalities of domestic party competition. 55
The electoral behavior of ethnic parties in the 2007 and 2009 EP elections in Bulgaria and Romania provides evidence of important commonalities in the trends of political competition. Despite the overwhelmingly different policy preferences of MRF and DUHR, especially with regard to the issue of self-government of ethnic minorities and the role of ethnicity in electoral mobilization, the electoral fortunes of the two parties displayed similar trends. This outcome is indicative of a process of change in the prevalent national models of party competition made possible by the very nature of the European elections.
In the case of Romania, the European elections created opportunities for the diversification of elite and voter preferences within the ethnic minority electorate. The ethnic parties used the elections as an opportunity to advance their respective minority agendas. However, as Haas has pointed out, there was no coherent coalition based on EU-inspired values with regard to ethnic minorities, but rather a convergence of practices of using the common ground of the European elections for advancing individual parties’ agendas. 56 In the Bulgarian case, MRF’s electoral success was due to the mechanical effects of the European electoral process, as suggested by the second-order proposition about the performance of small (not necessarily ethnic) parties.
Both MRF and DUHR maintained their image of a typical ethnic minority party. However, in contrast to Bulgaria, the model of ethnic minority representation in Romania changed significantly in the context of the European elections. DUHR lost its status as the single representative of the ethnic Hungarian minority. In the process, the ethnic minority consociational model was modified to accommodate intraethnic competition. It opened a possibility for ethnic minority voters to support candidates of other parties. The established national model of monopoly minority representation was weakened. A moderate pluralist model emerged characterized by cross-cutting competition and accommodation within the ethnic minority.
The Bulgarian individual-rights model was also weakened. In the absence of a minority-specific electoral platform, the highly encapsulated electoral support for MRF suggests that the mainstream parties have failed to attract the vote of the ethnic minority electorate, regardless of the constitutionally created opportunities or intragroup competition. By contrast, the 2007 EP elections started a process of ideological pluralization of the political representation of the ethnic Hungarian minority in Romania. As second-order elections, the EP elections presented the political actors with an opportunity to test the possibility for diversification of electoral choice for the Hungarian community. The electoral outcome demonstrates that ethnicity is not the only political identity for minority voters. Sustained consociational models of minority representation therefore tend to freeze rather than simply guarantee and enhance minority representation. The election campaigns in the two countries demonstrated the relative convergence of two fundamentally different approaches to minority representation and minority-relevant policy agendas: integration of minorities through nondiscrimination, multiethnic competition, and individual rights versus radicalization of claims to territorial autonomy. Although nominally based on EU-level party platforms, campaign politics in the European elections suggest that the pluralization of ethnic minority representation under a consociational model is not inevitable. Similarly, pluralization did not take place under the liberal democratic model, although MRF campaigned on a multiethnic party list. In both cases, the European elections were consequential for the positioning of the ethnic minority parties within the party system and for the evolution of their programmatic outlook. Such effects point to the substantive relevance of the EP elections to individual party development, beyond their conventional role as second-order elections.