Individual self-determination or community control? : Who can elect European national-cultural minority autonomies?

Dobos, Balázs (2025) Individual self-determination or community control? : Who can elect European national-cultural minority autonomies? In: Identity, belonging and the law. Éditions L'Harmattan, Paris, pp. 123-143. ISBN 9782336544021

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Abstract

The aim of the chapter is to present and analyze in a broad outline the solutions offered and currently applied by the leading theorists of national-cultural autonomy, by earlier 20th century examples and by contemporary European practices in defining national-ethnic and indigenous belonging and group memberships. Among the existing practices, the study focuses on the eight countries where the issue of membership is most often raised in the context of elections, since the institutional custodians of autonomy are minority self-governments (Croatia, Hungary, Slovenia), parliaments (Finland, Norway, Sweden) and councils (Estonia, Serbia), established by voluntarily registered voters. It examines how these systems approach voter registration, how they manage group boundaries, how they ensure individual self-identification and group control, and how they ensure that the bodies are sufficiently socially embedded and democratically legitimized. Further questions are how these affect self-determination, participation and strategies within minorities in terms of the extent to which community boundaries become open or closed, whether the issue of possible fraud or ethnobusiness is raised.

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