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Hungarian cultural autonomy in Vojvodina from the 1974 Socialist Constitution to the 2009 Statute of Autonomy: path dependence dynamics against the reversal of minority policies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Leonas Tolvaišis
Leonas Tolvaišis*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Political Science and Diplomacy, Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania
*
*Email: leonas.tolvaisis@gmail.com
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Abstract

Applying a historical institutionalist theoretical perspective to the ethnic minority policy domain, the article attempts to explain why state policies toward minorities may be difficult to reverse once introduced. Focusing on a case study of the cultural status of the Vojvodina Hungarian minority in Serbia, the article attempts to find out the forms taken by self-reinforcing dynamics associated with minority-related policies, once they are de-institutionalized. The paper deals with the evolution of the concept of Hungarian cultural autonomy in Vojvodina in the context of the transition from the socialist framework of minority rights protection, applied in the Socialist Autonomous Province of Vojvodina under the 1974 Constitution, to the system established by the Law on National Councils of National Minorities and the Statute of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina adopted in 2009, after the interim period of state centralization in the 1990s. The Vojvodina case study exemplifies the costs faced by governments aspiring to reverse these policies and allows the identification of path-dependent factors behind the collective action processes related to the main principles of these policies, and conditions that allow these principles to outlive the abolishment of respective institutional arrangements, persist across radical political and social changes over time, and re-emerge at later historical stages, in new institutional settings.

Keywords

historical institutionalismcultural autonomypath dependenceVojvodina HungariansSerbia minority policies
Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , January 2012 , pp. 63 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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