Minority Rights and Minority Protection in Europe

Timofey Agarin, Karl Cordell

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9798216227595
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In order to gain access to the EU, nations must be seen to implement formal instruments that protect the rights of minorities. This book examines the ways in which these tools have worked in a number of post-communist states, and explores the interaction of domestic and international structures that determine the application of these policies.

Using empirical examples and comparative cases, the text explores three levels of policy-making: within sub-state and national politics, and within international agreements, laws and policy blueprints. This enables the authors to establish how domestic policymakers negotiate various structural factors in order to interpret rights norms and implement them long enough to gain EU accession. Showing that it is necessary to focus upon the states of post-communist Europe as autonomous actors, and not as mere recipients of directives and initiatives from 'the West', the book shows how underlying structural conditions allow domestic policy actors to talk the talk of rights protection without walking the walk of implementing minority rights legislation on their territories.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The Workings of the International Regime
• 2 Nation-State Building in the Transition from Communism
• 3 European Nation-States and Minority Representation
• 4 Extoling Minority Rights and Implementing Policies
• 5 Excluding Roma from the Scope of Minority Policy
• 6 Policies for Minority Settlement beyond State-Bounded Territories
• 7 Minority Rights for Migrant Communities
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index