This chapter is concerned with issues that are essential to understanding the relationship between the state and marginal groups in general and the East European Roma in particular. The focus here is on the state, its different incarnations in various regime types (also referred to as political system types), and its policies toward minorities. The key theoretical issue in this section of the book is the dynamics of state policy toward marginal groups and ethnic minorities. Is state policy primarily driven by the nature of the regime type under which the individual state can be classified, or is there a set of country-specific variables that best solve this puzzle?

One of the main contentions of this book is that regime type provides useful guidelines to predict state minority policies because it demarcates the range of minority policies. Within a regime type, however, the spectrum of probable state minority policies is large enough to permit significant variation. Moreover, regime change – and especially the transition to democracy – does not necessarily entail either more enlightened minority policies or improved socioeconomic conditions for marginal groups. Particularly in the early stages of transition, democratizing regimes may not have much incentive to abandon the discriminatory policies of the ancien régime. Therefore, alternative explanations are necessary to better understand state–minority relations in general and the circumstances of the East European Gypsies in particular.