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Building inter-ethnic bridges or promoting ethno-territorial demarcation lines? Hungarian minority parties in competition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Daniel Bochsler  and
Edina Szöcsik
Daniel Bochsler
Affiliation:
NCCR Democracy, University of Zürich, Switzerland
Edina Szöcsik
Affiliation:
Center for Comparative and International Studies (CIS), ETH Zürich, Switzerland, Email: eszoecsik@gmail.com Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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Abstract

Parties of ethnic minorities are flourishing in a large number of ethnically divided democracies. While academic research has studied their emergence and success, we know little about intra-group party competition. This paper discusses the reasons for intra-group political plurality, with a focus on intra-party conflict and intra-group party competition: it explains the political orientation of ethnic minority parties and their intra-group challengers as a consequence of the inclusion of minority parties into government. The inclusion of minority parties into national governments produces an inherent conflict between pragmatic office-seekers and radical partisans. In minority parties that have governmental responsibilities, the pragmatist view overwhelms, while in those parties in opposition, radical voices dominate. The formation of two intra-Hungarian challenger parties in Romania and in Slovakia in 2007 and 2009 represents two very similar cases, which appear to be in line with our hypotheses.

Keywords

electoral competitionethnic minority partiesgovernment participationintra-ethnic competition
Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 41 , Issue 5 , September 2013 , pp. 761 - 779
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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