Jan Rovny’s book challenges the broadly held belief that ethnic heterogeneity poses challenges for democratic stability. It is notable for the originality of its argument and the strength of the evidence that supports it. He focuses on the states of postcommunist Europe who have joined the European Union.
The major theoretical claim is nicely summarized by the subtitle: “Circumstantial Liberals.” He shows that organized minority parties and communities organized as constituencies in postcommunist states that entered the European Union (EU) support the liberal rule of law, the protection of minority rights, and strong institutional checks and balances. He also shows their constitutional liberalism is not explicitly connected to other forms of liberalism – whether on distributional or on social issues. Often the minority populations he studies fall on the more conservative side of the spectrum, especially if they are religious.
The research design of the book uses a range of methods. It frequently uses conventional public opinion research, using both cross-national and national-level samples. He also ran several conjoint experiments in individual countries which he embeds within in-depth case study narratives. The strength of the argument is bolstered by how it works on multiple levels and how different methods arrive at congruent findings, giving the reader greater confidence in his claims.
At the national level, the constitutional proclivity of minorities works to bolster the prospects of stable democratic government in the face of challenges to democratic accountability. This part of the argument is made through the in-depth analysis of three cases – the Sudeten Germans, Slovaks in Hungary, and Russians in Estonia.
The Sudeten case is outside the sample of postcommunist countries who became members of the EU. Despite this, I found the case highly useful because it showed the dynamics of a change by the Sudeten German population from constitutional liberalism in the 1920s to anti-democratic and secessionist with the rise of Nazism.
In the Slovak case, parties representing the Hungarian minority were a key player in the wresting of power away from Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar, who attempted to expand his power unconstitutionally in the 1990s. In Estonia, an essentially conservative Russian minority consistently supported the Center Party, led by Estonian moderates, because of its consistent defense of minority rights.
Important findings that challenge the consensus, like Rovny’s, compel us to ask new questions. It is even more important in this case, due to the substantive importance of protecting democracy in the current climate. The questions raised here are not posed as challenges to Rovny’s findings but motivated by a desire to understand how ethnicity can work to strengthen democracy, especially when attacks on immigrants are central to right-wing populism.
The sampling on which his findings are based are well-defined, and he also discusses the scope conditions under which his findings are produced. However, there are further comparisons that might make it possible for us to understand when ethnic minorities are more likely to be circumstantial liberals. Several European postcommunist regions saw horrible secessionist warfare – the former Yugoslavia, Moldova, Georgia, Eastern Ukraine, and Azerbaijan. Four of the five had external actors who supported secessionist forces, which Rovny notes can undermine the liberalism of minorities.
Examining negative cases can also help us better understand positive outcomes. Rovny’s analysis is confined to countries that all joined the EU. The costs of antagonizing nationalist issues were thus high. Does this mean that an important additional scope condition of the theory is embeddedness in a liberal international order? This would seem to be born out by the Sudeten Germans, who became a destabilizing actor when the liberal order began to break down.
The one case of post-Cold War ethnic succession in the absence of a major external patron was Yugoslavia. These states ultimately wanted to join the EU, but that did not restrain them. What is it about these cases that makes them bad fits for the theory? Is it the complexity of the patterns of population? Should we see Serbia as the external actor in Croatia, Bosnia, Albania and Kosovo (or is it the Kosovar diaspora)? How do we make sense of the near civil war between Albanians and Macedonians in Macedonia? Explaining why these negative cases do not conform to the theory would allow us to further specify the scope conditions under which minority liberalism holds.
One important distinction not articulated explicitly in the book is that all the circumstantial liberals are long-settled minority groups. But today, in the postcommunist countries of the EU, immigration adds a new dimension to the issue of minority populations. Rovny argues that Poland and Hungary had a greater propensity for democratic backsliding because they had no minority parties to potentially bolster democratic coalitions. But backsliding in both countries was abetted by the European refugee crisis of 2015. It allowed Fidesz in Hungary to further consolidate its power. In Poland the refugee issue was central to the elections of 2015 that put PiS into power.
Rovny’s work stands in contrast to the findings of Lenka Bustikova’s Extreme Reactions: Radical Right Mobilization in Eastern Europe (CUP, 2019). Her work deals with what might be called the “majority problem.” She finds that when ethnic parties do well this provokes a counterreaction and a growth of xenophobic nationalist parties. In as much as ethnic minority parties benefit from their support of democracy, they may serve as fodder for the nationalist right. In order to make sense of the findings of both these fine works, I believe that the next phase in this research agenda would be to look at the impact of timing and sequencing.
Well-researched scholarship opens as many new questions as it answers. Jan Rovny’s Ethnic Minorities, Political Competition, and Democracy does both. Not only of interest to specialists in ethnopolitics, the book could well be used in graduate seminars, and holds insights from which activists and politicians could benefit.
