Comparative Case Studies on the Implementation of the Recommendations of the High Commissioner on National Minorities (HCNM) of the OSCE

Contact Person: Dr Wolfgang Zellner

This project analyses the effectiveness of the HCNM’s minority regime by the This project, which was funded by the German Research Association/DFG, was started in 1999 and concluded in July 2002 with the submission of the final report to the DFG. The case studies in this project include Estonia, Latvia and the Ukraine for Russian-speaking minorities and Romania for the Hungarian minority. The research was based on two ostensibly simple questions: How effective was the HCNM in implementing his recommendations to the governments of the countries where he was active? And secondly, what are the reasons for the HCNM's apparently different success records in different countries?

The first question is answered in country studies authored by the project's local researchers in the countries analysed. The analysis of the effectiveness of the HCNM requires, first, the identification of a correlation between his recommendations and the actions of the state in question. Second, if such a correlation exists, this raises the question whether state action was in fact influenced by the HCNM or by other internal or external actors. Both these steps require a detailed comparison of the HCNM's recommendations on state actions in each of the countries researched in that period in addition to a thorough analysis of the political process which concentrates on the motives of actors at the state and sub-state levels. The country studies on Ukraine, Estonia and Romania were published in 2002; the one onLatvia and Macedonia in 2003.

The second set of questions was elaborated by analysing the relative importance of a series of domestic, international and transnational factors that may give reasons for the success or failure of the HCNM. For this comparative analysis, three main (groups of) explaining variables were analysed: (a) the chances of Western integration of a given country, (b) the characteristics of the conflict constellation and the type and level of escalation and (c) the relative strength of moderate actors and the number and cohesion of factions involved. The experiences of the project show that the variation of the HCNM's effectiveness in the different countries can be well explained with these three (groups of) process-related variables.
This project, which was funded by the German Research Association/DFG, was started in 1999 and concluded in July 2002 with the submission of the final report to the DFG.