V.I Pre-1989 Institutional Framework

The pre-1989 institutional framework for minorities was conceptually inspired by the Soviet rationale of categorization between nations, nationalities, and ethnic groups. The most significant framing period was the one around 1968 and 1969, during the Prague Spring and federalization of the state. Therefore, the focus is primarily on the period between 1969 and 1989, for it was this institutional framework that was changing in the transformation processes following 1989. The framework in Czechoslovakia, as highlighted in figure 2, was notably characteristic of the division between institutional framework in terms of cultural policy for the officially recognized nationalities, specifically Hungarian and Ukrainian, and developmental assimilationist policy for Roma. While a more detailed historical overview of the former can be found, for instance, in the work of Šutajová (Reference Šutajová2019) and Gabzdilová (Reference Gabzdilová2013), this study is going to focus on the latter, the case of Roma. For the purposes of mapping of the evolution and change, the previously outlined definition of an institutional framework is used: 1) policy and legal basis, 2) state institutional structures (general and specialized) and other organizations, and 3) policy initiative, design, decision-making and implementation

From the policy and legal perspective, the pre-1989 institutional framework for Roma was characteristic of the changing nature of the policy as well as practically non-existent legislative grounding. Firstly, the policy transformed from focusing on forced assimilation in the 1950s and 1960s to a more proactive multi-facet assimilation strategy from the 1970s onward. Jurová (Reference Jurová and Vašečka2003) describes how the initial measures targeted the dismantling of settlements, immediate participation in the economy and education, and subsequently from 1965, the relocation of Roma. Due to the lack of success of the earlier policy and temporary change of circumstances prone to reforms surrounding the Prague Spring period, the new strategy was restructured to a more complex set of measures. These included 1) pre-school and primary school participation; 2) enrollment in high schools, vocational training, and universities; 3) cultural development and social activities of Roma youth; 4) edification; 5) employment; 6) living conditions; 7) social mobilization and relations with the majority (42/1976 SSR Government Resolution). Although the wording used in the strategy implied social and cultural integration, the policy was essentially assimilationist, aiming to raise the socioeconomic status of Roma to that of the majority population, and not the cultural development of Roma as such. In addition, there was also a separate strategy for Roma delinquency (234/1977 SSR Government Resolution), which was still primarily overseen by the Ministries of Interior and Justice and the Prosecutor General. These were meant to cooperate with other ministries, such as the Ministry of Culture, or local bodies and actors including boards of commissioners and social workers, to provide basic legal education to Roma. Therefore, there was a clear change from a repressive to a more proactive socioeconomic policy focus.

Secondly, in contrast with the legislative basis for the officially recognized nationalities, there was a genuine underdevelopment in the case of Roma. One of the very few pieces of legislation was the 74/1958 Zb. Law on the Permanent Settlement of Nomadic Individuals, as pinpointed by Jurová (Reference Jurová and Vašečka2003) and Lužica (Reference Lužica2016). Even though neither the title nor wording in the law mentions Roma or Gypsies, as they were called at the time, the law specifically targeted these communities. Similar to the case of the nationalities in the earlier period described above, the resolutions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party constituted important documents that directed the policies. However, from 1960s onward, the policy was grounded exclusively in the numerous government resolutions, from which above-mentioned 42/1976 included Principles of the Nation-wide Socio-Political Measures Concerning the Societal Care of the Gypsy Population is only one example. Such form of legislative grounding provided the state with a considerable extent of flexibility, which can be observed also in the respective documents that were continuously being adapted. In addition, Roma communities should not be perceived only as passive recipients of these policies for as early as from the 1950s. Indeed, there were efforts from amongst Roma appealing to the government for recognition and more rights. Such efforts were unsuccessful however, with the exception of the brief period from the late 1960s to the early 1970s (Donert Reference Donert2017; Jurová Reference Jurová and Vašečka2003).

Regarding the role of institutional structures and organizations in policymaking and implementation, the initiative and design were primarily led by the Communist Party in the initial years. (For a detailed organizational overview, see figure 3.) From the late 1960s onward, these processes were led by the specialized consultative bodies, most notably the Government Committee for Addressing the Question of Gypsy Population under the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. In the brief period following the Prague Spring, the policy initiative was instead arguably driven by the Roma organizations. The policy implementation was delivered predominantly by the general institutional structures of the state, shifting from the Ministry of Interior in 1950s and 1960s to the Ministry of Labor from late 1960s onward. In the case of Roma, the institutional structures and organizations were the following: 1) Government Committee on the federal level from 1965 to 1968 and subsequently Government Committee for Addressing the Question of Gypsy Population under the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs of the Slovak Socialist Republic from 1969 onward, as advisory bodies to coordinate the relevant activities were examples of the specialized state institutional structures; 2) organizations, namely a) the Communist Party and b) Association of Roma/Gypsies that operated from 1969 to 1973, as well as Butiker, which was a state enterprise under the management of the Association of Roma/Gypsies in the same period (Lužica Reference Lužica2019); c) general organizations, such as trade unions, state enterprises, youth organization, housing collectives etc., and 3) general state institutional structures, with hierarchies and inter-connections outlined in figure 3.

Figure 3.

Institutional Framework for National Minorities and Roma in Slovakia, 1969–1989. Institutional structures and organizations reflected the socialist policies vis-à-vis national minorities, with a strong hierarchical state in the middle as well as division between specialized structures and organizations for Roma and other minorities, which can be observed on the positioning of the Committee for Addressing Gypsy Question under the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. The small arrows display influence or agency in between different structure, either in one or both directions, while the large arrows show overarching but necessarily direct influence.

In terms of the role of institutional structures and organizations in policy initiative, policy design, and decision-making, the relevant documents, such as the 74/1958 Central Committee of the Communist Party Resolution on Work in Gypsy Population highlighted by Jurová (Reference Jurová and Vašečka2003), suggest these processes were overseen by the party in the initial years. From 1965, the responsibility moved to the federal-level Government Committee and following federalization, to the Government Committee for Addressing the Question of Gypsy Population under the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs of the Slovak Socialist. Additionally, from 1969 to 1973, a representative of the Association of Roma/Gypsies had a seat on the committee. It was therefore arguably this association, as Lužica (Reference Lužica2019) shows, that was the driving force of the policy initiative. The design was primarily pursued by Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs as the institutional structure overseeing the committee, but notably in consultation with other ministries and bodies – not only due to their presence on the committee but also, as the archival materials suggest, because of the complexity of the policy agenda requiring their input and resources. However, more in-depth archival research into the meetings would be needed to identify exact policy agency or agencies in this regard. Furthermore, similar to the case of the national minorities, it is hard to identify exact loyalties on an individual or even organizational basis. Jurová (Reference Jurová and Vašečka2003) and Mann (Reference Mann and Rafael2020) show that the Secretary of the Government Committee, who was himself Roma, was in favor of assimilation and against any initiatives focused on Roma culture. Based on archival research, Lužica (Reference Lužica2019) explains how disagreements amongst the leadership of the Association of Roma/Gypsies contributed to the end of the organization. As for the decision-making, these were done formally by the government, as the government decrees suggest, yet the Communist Party still played a key role in the most important matters. For instance, it was the decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party to dismantle the Association of Roma/Gypsies in 1973 (Lužica Reference Lužica2019).

Finally, the implementation was delivered predominantly by both general and specialized state structures as well as other organizations. In the initial years, the policy of forced assimilation and relocation was under the auspices of the Ministry of Interior, for example, as outlined in article 5 of the 74/1958 Zb. Law on the Permanent Settlement of Nomadic Individuals, where the Ministry of Interior and Justice were to oversee the delivery of the principles state in the law. Therefore, the shift of responsibility for the agenda under the Ministry of Labor was an important one and corresponded with the changing understanding of the policy as multi-faceted, focusing particularly on proactive socioeconomic rather than repressive measures. Furthermore, the archival documents show that the Government Committee had assigned representatives at regional, county, and local level boards of commissioners, which thus constituted another form of important institutional structure within the state hierarchy involved in the implementation process. More generally, given the broad scope of the policy, the involvement of a particular institutional actor delegated in the implementation depended on the concrete policy area such that the Academy of Sciences was responsible for research, the Ministry of Education for schools, and the universities for education, the housing organizations and construction enterprises for housing, the labor unions for state enterprises, and the collective farms for employment, and so on. In addition, another important implementation mechanism was funding, which was all directed from the state budget. According to Lužica’s (Reference Lužica2016) research, the annual costs of the programs in the period 1976–1984 were 247,65 million CSk. To put it into perspective using the inflation and conversion calculator of the Institution of Economic and Social Reforms (INEKO n.d.), the sum would nowadays equal slightly more that 78 million euro.

V.II Post-1989 Institutional Framework

Following the outline of the pre-1989 institutional framework of state-minority relations, this section will discuss the one that developed in the period after 1989, with a focus on Roma communities.

Firstly, the policy vis-à-vis Roma after 1989 has prompted diverse understanding. The three primary categories, which appeared across the interview responses, can be described as following: 1) socioeconomic integration; 2) cultural rights and emancipation as a new distinct feature coming with the recognition of Roma as one of the 13 official national minorities; and 3) human rights. These are displayed in figure 2 for the relevant time periods. It was a lengthy process following 1989 until these were understood as interconnected rather than separate policy areas. The primary features of the post-1989 policy in the initial years had been diversification and change, with three phases: 1) cultural emancipation with socioeconomic dimension omitted (1990/1991–1995), 2) socioeconomic assimilation (1995–1998), 3) socioeconomic and cultural integration (1998 onward). The first two are comfortably summarized in an interview with the former Plenipotentiary for Roma Communities (2010–2012) and civil society activist, Miroslav Pollák:

The initial policy targeted cultural emancipation and identity of Roma via a focus on language, the development of cultural activities and organizations, press, and so on. These were all areas that were developed for officially recognized nationalities under socialism but not for Roma. At the same time, the socioeconomic policies characteristic of the socialist period were rejected. The 1991 Principles of Governmental Policy of the Slovak Republic vis-à-vis Roma underlined the official recognition of Roma as a national minority, and in the section on economic provisions, it argued against “special assistance to Roma based on belonging to Roma ethnicity, only to socially endangered strata of the population,” which effectively meant no policy in this sphere.

However, as Jurová (Reference Jurová1999) argues, with the worsening socioeconomic conditions in the first half of 1990s and international and civil society pressure, there was a need to address this issue. This led to the establishment of the Government Representative for Citizens Needing Special Help in 1995 (see figure 6). The latter’s strategy, outlined in the 796/1997 Government Resolution, reversed the earlier notion from 1991 and effectively associated poverty with Roma as a group. However, as shown in figure 2, this did not mean the rejection of Roma as a national minority in the general cultural policy of the state. Nonetheless, one of the interviewees, former Roma parliamentarian (1990–1992) and civil society activist, Anna Koptová, who was involved in some of the meetings stated that “they were cheated” when describing the outcome. The position under the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, together with the policy priorities – namely 1) upbringing and education, 2) culture, 3) employment, 4) housing, 5) social care, 6) health, and 7) prevention of anti-social behavior – was indeed a “déjà vu” from the past (Jurová Reference Jurová1999).

Finally, with the change of government in 1998, the Government Representative was renamed to the Plenipotentiary for Roma Minority and subsequently for Roma Communities, positioned under the Deputy Prime Minister for Regional Development and National Minorities and a strategy with a new set of policy areas, which combined the rights-based, socioeconomic, and cultural dimensions, was outlined: 1) human rights and rights of national minorities, 2) upbringing and education, 3) language and culture, 4) employment, 5) housing, 6) social affairs, and 7) health (821/1999 Government Resolution). An important difference from the earlier approach is that the target of such socioeconomic measures is labelled as Marginalized Roma Communities. Thus, Roma are defined by a deprived socioeconomic status. In other words, Roma are defined based on distributional grounds rather than ethnic affiliation. These areas remain effectively in place as the policy focus until today in all the other subsequent more or less developed strategies, which have, however, varied across different Plenipotentiaries and governments in office. In this regard, several interviewees highlighted lack of policy continuity, referring, for instance, to the Strategy of the Slovak Republic for Integration of Roma up to 2020 (2012), which was developed by a Plenipotentiary (2010–2012), Miroslav Pollák, then ignored by the subsequent Plenipotentiary (2012–2016), Peter Pollák, who had his own strategy targeting 150 selected municipalities, and returned to by a Plenipotentiary that followed (2016–2020), Ábel Ravasz.

Secondly, the legal framework for national minorities, including Roma, moved from “under-legislation” under socialism to “over-legislation” in the post-1989 period. One of the interviewees, the Secretary of the Committee for National Minorities and Ethnic Groups and the Director of Department of Rights and Status of National Minorities in 2019, Alena Kotvanová, described the legal situation in the following way:

Indeed, the Title 2 Section 4 of the Constitution of the Slovak Republic is dedicated to the rights of national minorities and ethnic groups. However, article 1 states that “A law shall lay down details thereof.” Unlike in the case of the pre-1989 period, the relevant provisions were outlined in numerous general laws, thus making the legal provisions difficult to understand or recognize for ordinary citizens belonging to national minorities. As described in the Legislative Intent of the Law on National Minorities – Rationale for a new legislation: Law on National Minorites ( 2020 ), the exception to this is the 184/1999 Law on the Use of Languages of National Minorities or 365/2004 Anti-Discrimination Act, yet a law defining the status of national minorities has not been passed since 1992. Another legislative dimension that emerged and arguably also shaped the national level legal framework is the international one. Notably, the two main documents, were the Council of Europe’s European Charter of Regional and Minority Languages in 1992 and the Framework Convention for Protection of National Minorities in 1994. Apart from the protection of the rights of national minorities, which the above provisions outline, socioeconomic policy vis-à-vis Roma continued to be grounded in government resolutions.

Thirdly, in terms of the role of institutional structures, organizations and mechanisms in policymaking and implementation, the whole institutional framework diversified and has also since been characterized by continuous change, as can be observed in figures 5 through 10. The milestones in the organizational change (1995, 1999, 2006, 2010, and 2012) reflect changes in the positionality of the Government Plenipotentiary for Roma Communities (highlighted in figure 4), which itself was an outcome of a change of government and commonly associated with changes in policy or at least implementation mechanisms. Based on the categorization I outlined, the sub-divisions in the post-1989 institutional framework changed in the following way:

1. 1) The specialized state institutional structures are: a) consultative and governmental policy-coordinating body for Marginalized Roma Communities, whose position within the state structures moved from Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs (1995–1998) to under the Deputy Prime Minister from 1998 to 2010, then Prime Minister from 2010 to 2012, from where the office came under the Ministry of Interior, where it remains till 2021, when it moved back under the Office of Government; b) Government Council for National Minorities as an advisory committee to the government reviewing policy and legislation regarding rights of national minorities with all 13 officially recognized minorities, including Roma, from 2010 turned to a Committee for National Minorities under the Government Council for Human Rights, National Minorities and Gender Equality, and thus to an advisory body of an advisory body, which includes representatives of different state agencies and civil society; c) consultative and governmental policy-coordinating body for national minorities, firstly under Deputy Prime Minister (1998 to 2012), and from 2012 a separate office of Plenipotentiary for National Minorites under the Government Office was created; d) a parliamentary committee, consisting of members of the parliament, with the remit to review relevant legislation on rights and policy vis-à-vis national minorities as a part of the parliamentary legislative procedure; and e) Fund in Support of National Minorities’ Culture established in 2017 as an independent public fund self-governed by national minorities, previously under the Ministry of Culture and the Government Office.

2. 2) Organizations are a) political parties b) civil society organizations.

3. 3) Public institutional structures are a) Apart from respective ministries, state institutional structures have operated at the below-national level either at regional or county level or both in different periods; b) self-governing regions (from 2002) and municipalities (towns, villages, city districts) as public institutional structures with directly elected leadership overseeing certain agenda delegated from the state as a part of decentralization process; c) President; d) human rights bodies – National Human Rights Centre and the Public Defender of Rights (Ombudsman); and e) courts.

4. 4) International organizations constitute of a) public (e.g., European Union, Council of Europe, World Bank, OSCE); b) private (e.g., Open Society Foundation).

The diversification occurred on all levels of institutional mechanisms of both policymaking (initiative, design, and decision-making) and implementation. First, the sources of policy initiative after 1989 have ranged from international organizations primarily via soft power, expert advice, political pressure and funding opportunities, through civil society organizations or municipalities with their own micro-level policies or via various consultative mechanisms, to the state bodies, parliament, government and political parties. Second, the responsibility for design of the nation-wide policy has been primarily in the hands of specialized institutional structures, namely the Plenipotentiary for Roma Communities and a specialized institutional structure overseeing the agenda of national minorities, together with relevant consultative mechanisms. Third, in contrast with the socialist framework, decision-making dispersed across different levels of governance with each possessing electoral legitimacy as a result of decentralization and democratization, and with political competition among multiple political parties, and thus the institutional framework being potentially amended with every electoral term.

Figure 4.

Changes to the positionality of the specialized state structure, an advisory body on Roma communities, within the government in independent Slovakia. Since 1999, the Plenipotentiary for Roma Communities of the Government of the Slovak Republic. Other milestone events, such as the Velvet Divorce, the EU accession, and the process of economic transformation are also highlighted on the timeline.

Figure 5.

Institutional Framework for National Minorities in Slovakia, 1990–1995. The transformation period was defined by significant restructuring of the institutional framework, at the level of both general and specialized structures. The specialized structures for Roma disappeared. However, a number of new actors outside of the state hierarchy emerged, such as civil society organizations, political parties, international organizations and municipalities. This period was characteristic of economic transformation as well as the Velvet Divorce in 1993.

Figure 6.

Institutional Framework for National Minorities in Slovakia 1995–1999. Specialized state structures for Roma were reintroduced, similar to pre-1989 positioning under the Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs and Family. From this period, the institutional change takes place at an incremental pace. In terms of political context, this period was defined by the rule of an authoritative Prime Minister, Vladimír Mečiar, who subsequently lost elections in 1998.

Figure 7.

Institutional Framework for National Minorities in Slovakia 1999–2006. The specialized structure of the Plenipotentiary for Roma Communities is created and positioned under a Deputy Prime Minister. In terms of general structures, further decentralization of state power takes places, which is delegated to the level of Self-Governing regions. The Office of Ombudsman is established. In terms of the broader context, Slovakia joined the European Union in 2004.

Figure 8.

Institutional Framework for National Minorities in Slovakia 2006–2010. No significant restructuring of institutional framework takes place, except for widening of the agenda of the Deputy Prime Minister, under whom the Plenipotentiary for Roma Communities is operating.

Figure 9.

Institutional Framework for National Minorities in Slovakia 2010–2012. Governmental Council for National Minorities is merged with other agendas, and the issue of national issue demoted to the level of a committee.

Figure 10.

Institutional Framework for National Minorities in Slovakia 2012–2020. The Office of the Plenipotentiary is repositioned under the Ministry of Interior, and the general agenda for national minorities is demoted from the level of Deputy Prime Minister to the level of Plenipotentiary for National Minorities. Independent Public Fund in Support of National Minorities’ Culture is established in 2017.

Finally, the implementation process in this area equally diversified in terms of actors involved as well as funding mechanisms. After 1989, the responsibility for the implementation moved from the general structures of the state to the municipalities and civil society actors, in accordance with the 1991 Principles of Governmental Policy of the Slovak Republic vis-à-vis Roma. Moreover, while the state was active in cultural identity building (and thus schools, theater, and media were established), there was little state support in the socioeconomic dimension in the initial years. As the interviews highlighted, the network of field social workers affiliated with the county level labor offices and committees was dismantled without any replacement introduced until 1996. In addition, the funding, which was previously exclusively provided by the state budget in the socialist period, observed a trend of a diminishing role of the state and an increasing role of international public and private mechanisms, which are dominated by the EU structural funds. Perhaps even more importantly, it changed from direct investment to a project-based system of financing, which will be discussed below. To put this into perspective, the EU contribution to the integration of Roma communities in the last programming period (2014–2020) constitutes around 400 million euro (European Commission n.d.,). This is slightly less on an annual basis than the amount dedicated to this policy area by state funds in the pre-1989 framework based on the figure mentioned earlier (Lužica Reference Lužica2016), using the inflation calculator.

VI.I Radical Change: Institutional Transformation

The main analytical focus of radical change is not on decision-making but rather on the larger processes and context in which the institutional change of state-minority framework for Roma in Slovakia took place. The focus lies more specifically in state-economy, state-society, state-politics, and state-international politics. Naturally, such large-scale changes do not happen often – they were arguably started but not finished in the brief 1968–1969 period, or in the 1990s, which will be the focus of the analysis. Although each of these processes had its own time span, and though they practically lasted until the last wave of economic transformation was completed in the early 2000s, new functioning of civil society developed, the last decentralization measure was put in place, and Slovakia joined the EU. I will focus on the processes that carried relevance for state-minority relations, and specifically Roma, based on interview findings and secondary literature.

VI.I.I State-Economy Transformation in Slovakia

This section analyzes the transformation of the institutional framework for Roma in the context of state-economy relations. The primary focus will be the significant increase in unemployment among the Roma, which is contextualized within the rapidly declining role of the state in the economy and the transformation of the public policy and welfare system.

Much has been written about the economic transformation, including liberalization, privatization, and other associated processes in 1990s. There is now a general consensus on its negative impact on society, including on the Roma, which was evidenced primarily through a significant rise in unemployment (Jurová Reference Jurová1999; Radičová Reference Radičová2001; Marcinčin and Marcinčinová Reference Marcinčin and Marcinčinová2009). Table 1 outlines the total registered unemployment figures and the proportion Roma represented. The available data is only indicative as it includes the “registered” numbers. The actual numbers for Roma were likely higher. There is also a regional dimension to Roma unemployment, as Roma communities primarily reside in regions in the east of the country, which were hit by the transformation the most, as outlined in the National Bank of Slovakia’s Annual Report (1993). A Helsinki Watch report outlined that in one locality in eastern Slovakia, Rimavská Sobota, according to Dr. Okošová, “a worker at the local employment office… as of the end of 1991, out of 6,530 known unemployed persons in Rimavská Sobota, 4,289 were Romanies,” equating to roughly 66% (Human Rights Watch and Helsinki Watch 1992). In some localities, the employment among Roma was up to 100% (World Bank, S.P.A.C.E. Foundation, and INEKO 2002).

Table 1.

Registered Unemployment, GDP growth, and private sector contribution to GDP in Slovakia, 1992–1999

Source: World Bank et al. (2002) based on original sources data from 1992–1998: National Labor Office and National Bank of Slovakia annual reports (1993–Reference Jurová1999)

Two interviewees explained the significant rise in unemployment, and particularly in the case of Roma, by the fundamental redefinition of the role of state in the economy. The state-economy dynamics was moving from paternalism in the pre-1989 framework to individualism in the case of after 1989. Roma parliamentarian at the time (1990–1992) and subsequently Roma cultural activist, Anna Koptová, explained the process of economic transformation in the following way:

Because the Democrats said that everyone is responsible for themselves since this is characteristic of democracy. Then, when you are self-sufficient and decide for yourself, you have freedom. But the conditions for it were not created. Businesses began to fire their employees, the Labor market relaxed in such a way that it did not need this kind of workforce, even though the men were qualified. (Koptová Reference Koptová2020)

This view was also shared by a former World Bank economist (2000–2008) and later Advisor to the Minister of Interior and Plenipotentiary for Regional Development, Anton Marcinčin, who represents an example of an interviewee from the center:

They were the first victims of the recession that occurred, perhaps necessarily, shortly after the Revolution, as they did not have sufficient qualification. Many new investments were poured into new technology that replaced them on the market… All in all, I think that paternalism was replaced by hard individualism. This individualism could have been there before, of course. (Marcinčin Reference Marcinčin2020)

The role of state in the economy was radically diminishing in the transformation years, as shown in increasing share of the private sector in GDP indicated in table 1, from more than 50% in 1994 to almost 85% in 1999. This happened through the privatization of state enterprises and a growing number of private ones, as well as rationalization, which led to an imbalance between the number of jobs lost and the number of jobs created. The state thus lost control over industrial policy and the labor market. As such, the central planning element disappeared, and therefore the state was no longer able to mitigate regional disparities. The result of these processes was a scarcity of jobs, which naturally led to competition between Roma and non-Roma, and essentially, a distributional conflict.

Marcinčin argued that “individualism” although present also before 1989 “was balanced by the presence of public policies of the state, which went into recession after 1989 to make way for a new naive form of capitalism. Consequently, … issues of equal opportunities and equal access have not been touched on since then” (Marcinčin Reference Marcinčin2020). Koptová added that, as a result, “Many Roma went for financial and social support, which was silly because it supported their inaction. Maybe those who made the decisions meant it well, but it turned out to be bad in those socioeconomic processes. They demoralized them” (Koptová Reference Koptová2020).

In line with the above, the transformation of the social welfare system happened in parallel to the decline of the state’s role in the economy. A Roma historian and politician, Zuzana Kumanová, outlined that

after 1989, as all the institutions were undergoing transformation, the committee was dissolved. I am not sure if it was dissolved in 1990 but I think it was, and so the system of social workers disappeared too. At the same time, there were certain structures operating under regional offices before 1989, which was later on taken over by Labor offices. But it was all dissolved in 1990s, because we were undergoing transformation, and so nothing in the social affairs (welfare) was left untouched and everything was changing. (Kumanová Reference Kumanová2020)

The 444/1990 Law on the Establishment of Labor Offices, without specifying the details, moved the remit over labor issues away from former regional boards of commissioners under the Ministry of Labor and from the county-level boards of commissioners under the county-level labor offices. The 1/1991 (Federal) Law on Employment claimed that these bodies were responsible for the facilitating of “full, productive and freely chosen employment,” which was defined as “one of the basic goals of the economic and social policy of the state.” The initial lines of the law followed: “Citizens have the right to employment irrespective of race, skin color, sex, language, religion, political or other beliefs, membership in political parties and affiliation to political movements, nationality, ethnic or social origin, property, health or age.” The legislation stated that this right was provided either via 1) “facilitating employment,” 2) “requalification,” or 3) social benefits, meaning the mechanisms through which the former system guaranteed employment were technically replaced with new ones.

However, in 1992 Helsinki Watch already reported practice of institutional racism both from employers and state bodies: “a significant amount of discrimination against Romanies by both state-owned and private enterprises, as well as a failure by some government employment offices to take action against companies with discriminatory hiring practices. Many Romanies complained that employers directly told them that they weren’t interested in hiring any Romanies” (Human Rights Watch and Helsinki Watch 1992). Therefore, if the labor office had not facilitated the employment or requalification, the last option was social benefits. As the interviewees highlighted, on the one hand this further heated the perceptions of the majority. On the other hand, as the employment benefits were limited to a period of 12 months, unemployed Roma were left without a source of income and pushed to unofficial economy and/or other coping mechanism, such as reliance of benefits of other kind (child care, disability benefits, etc.).

VI.II Incremental Change: Institutional Mechanisms and Political Settlement

The complexity of the incremental institutional change following the post-1989 transformation can be demonstrated by an example: On June 27, 2019, the parliament passed the 209/2019 Amendment to the Law introducing compulsory pre-school education. The measure was the initiative of the Government Plenipotentiary for Roma Communities, Ábel Ravasz. As his office does not have the remit of a legislative proposal, it was proposed by a group of three coalition members of parliament, although the agenda falls under the Ministry of Education; and thus the Minister of Education would traditionally oversee the governmental legislative proposals in this sphere. Even though the law applies to all children, the goal with respect to Roma communities is to ensure integration with the majority population and a smooth entrance to the mainstream educational system – as opposed to specialized one for pupils with mild mental disabilities. Roma children are often wrongly diagnosed and placed in such schools, a phenomenon which was highlighted in several interviews and for which Slovakia has been facing Infringement Proceedings from the European Union. The Plenipotentiary recognized that “the law constitutes only the elementary framework, which needs to be developed with relevant support measures. Kindergartens need to be built, new teachers and assistants hired, and work with families accentuated” (Ministry of Interior of Slovakia 2019). This essentially corresponds with the distinction between formal institutional change, and one implemented in practice. One of the interviewees from the periphery, a Roma mayor of a village in Eastern Slovakia with a population of roughly 3,000 people, half of whom are Roma, described the local-level complexities over the course of the implementation of this law. He drafted a project proposal for the construction of a new kindergarten in response to a funding call by the Operational Program Human Resources, made for this purpose and administered by the Ministry of Interior, as the capacity of the existing kindergarten was not sufficient to accommodate all the children in the village, including Roma. When the proposal was drafted, it stated that 30% of the capacity would be dedicated to Roma children, but it was rejected by the financial committee of the municipal assembly, as the majority population did not want their children to attend the same kindergarten as Roma children. As a result, they drafted another proposal for the construction of a new kindergarten in the proximity to Roma settlements in the village. The outcome is that there are currently two kindergartens, one for Roma and one for non-Roma children – thus going against the goal of the intended institutional change (Anonymous Roma mayor 2020).

In order to analyze the decision-making dimension, I apply Ostrom’s (Reference Ostrom1990) three-level analytical framework of collective choice. In this regard, she distinguished between three levels of analysis, namely constitution-choice rules, collective-choice rules, and operational rules. Firstly, as Ostrom outlines, “constitutional-choice rules affect operational activities and results through their effects in determining who is eligible and determining the specific rules to be used in crafting the set of collective-choice rules that in turn affect the set of operational rules” (1990, 52). Therefore, the constitutional-choice rules refer to the broader institutional framework and hierarchies, which are effectively outlined in the diagrams. The only times when these were amended in the case of Slovakia was the period of 1968–1969 when the federalization and constitutional recognition of nationalities was introduced, and in the 1990s possibly extended to the early 2000s when the institutional transformation was taking place. In the case of the pre-1989 institutional framework, they were the constitutional pieces of legislation setting the status of national minorities, the leading role of the Communist party, as well as the top-down hierarchical structure of the state. Following this logic, within the respective constitutional-choice arrangement, Roma should not have had the Association of Roma/Gypsies, yet interestingly they did. In contrast, the constitutional-choice rules of the post-1989 framework, apart from defining the position of national minorities, can be understood as a multi-party, democratic, parliamentary system with partial decentralization in place. As such, in the case of the compulsory pre-school education described above, the constitutional-choice rules define that such a rule or law needs to be passed in a parliament and determines which institutional structures or individuals can make such legislative proposal, e.g., government ministers or parliament.

Secondly, Ostrom defines “collective-choice rules” as the rules “that are used in making policies” (1990, 52), thus decision-making mechanisms through which the policies are made. In the period from 1968–1969 to 1989, the collective choice-rules were stable with the Government Committee for Addressing the Question of Gypsy Population responsible for the policy design, which had to be approved by the government in accordance with the party line, as shown by the archival document. That is not to say that there was no element of collective decision-making, even during the normalization period. For instance, Lužica (Reference Lužica2016, 44) describes how in 1985, the Ministry of Finance did not approve the proposal to increase the budget recommended by the committee. In comparison, the collective-choice rules after 1989 in terms of the policymaking vis-à-vis Roma, or national minorities more generally, were continuously changing based on the results of almost every national election and the given political settlement, which was being adjusted even during electoral terms. This has had an impact on the position of the Plenipotentiary for Roma Communities and the institutional structure responsible for the agenda of national minorities, as well as the political leverage the concrete representatives holding these offices had in given political settings. This arguably provides an explanation why the law was proposed by the three coalition parliamentarians and not the Ministry of Education. In this regard, an official from the Office of the Plenipotentiary for Roma Communities highlighted in an interview that “the introduction of a compulsory pre-school education… happened only after the change of Prime Minister (in 2018),” when the Plenipotentiary Ábel Ravasz had an “unprecedented” position (Anonymous official from the Office of the Plenipotentiary for Roma Communities 2020).

Thirdly, Ostrom defines “operational rules” as those that “directly affect the day-to-day decisions” (1990, 52), therefore referring to implementation mechanisms. The pre-1989 framework was characteristic of top-down hierarchical structures and mechanisms through which the policy was implemented, as described above based on the archival documents and secondary literature (Lužica Reference Lužica2016; Jurová 2003). On the other hand, the implementation in the post-1989 framework has been pursued in a decentralized manner, and by the municipalities and civil society organizations in particular. However, such model was pursued without sufficient financial provision due to project-based financing through various funding mechanisms, predominantly the EU structural funds in recent years. The above-described case of the mayor implementing the collective-choice rule of the compulsory pre-school education, facing obstacles by the boundaries of decision-making in the financial committee, clearly demonstrates his position and boundaries within the operational-choice rules on the municipal level. This equally applies to the relevant financing mechanisms. The construction of the kindergarten facility was funded by the EU structural funds, which constitute the dominant source of funding in this area. The drafting of such a project proposal, as well as applying, implementing, and accounting for the project, if successful, constitute administratively burdensome processes. As the majority of interviews highlighted, this is especially the case for small municipalities and civil society actors who possess limited human or financial resources and who potentially have expertise in such matters. One of the interviewees suggested that because of these limitations, many municipalities or civil society actors turn to other private sources of funding. Additionally, another interviewee stressed that the funding calls often do not reflect the needs of given localities, but the municipalities still apply, even if not in need of the funding call’s focus. The reason for this is that those funds represent the main possibility of receiving extra support, as summarized by one of the interviewees, a Former Plenipotentiary for Roma Communities Miroslav Pollák:

Furthermore, the interviewees agreed that the EU funding continues to be assessed based on spending rather than impact. This shows that the project-based system of financing as a form of collective-choice rules significantly limits the operational-choice rules the local actors have for addressing their needs and a successful implementation of an intended policy, without any monitoring in place.