Post-communist states aiming to join European organizations such as the Council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the European Union felt pressure early on after 1989 to adopt emerging European norms on minority rights. Though scholars have already noted frequent acceptance of these standards, the question remains of how European norms actually affect the political salience of identity. Pressure to adhere to them undoubtedly reigned in potential conflict over the Hungarian minority in Slovakia as well as over Russians in Latvia and Estonia. Yet such beneficial results can be offset, first, when political elites' strategic acceptance of European standards undermines the legitimacy of liberal values, and second, when such norms create friction by unintentionally encouraging ethnic groups such as Moravians in the Czech Republic and Silesians in Poland to transform themselves into “nationalities.”
While foreign land ownership has become a post-Cold War security concern for East-Central Europe, it has been neglected in security studies focused on more traditional topics. This article offers a comparative analysis of: (1) the post-1989 development of policy towards land sales to non-citizens, (2) why foreign land ownership has been the most controversial in Hungary and especially Poland, and (3) why foreign ownership can be a useful tool for nationalists. Mining the land issue ultimately strikes a deeper tension between foreign-driven pressures to liberalize land markets within a pan-European free market and the still-strong belief that states should control land sales for the good of the nation.
Scholars of nation-building and secession tend to
prioritize elite or broader nationalist activism
when explaining the proliferation of nation-states.
Yet, recent historical research reveals a major
finding: the influence of great powers tended to
eclipse nationalist mobilization for new states in
Latin America, the Balkans, Anatolia, and Central
and Eastern Europe. Drawing on recent trends in
historical research largely unknown in other fields,
this article examines context, timing, and event
sequencing to provide a new approach to multi-case
research on nation-state proliferation. Major power
recognition of new states in the Balkans also
emerges as transformational for the post-World War I
replacement of dynastic empires with nation-states
in Europe. These findings suggest a shift of focus
to the interplay of nationalist activism and great
power policy for explaining the spread of
nation-states.
Borders in Central and Eastern Europe witnessed stark changes in recent decades. Frontiers went from high security zones during the Cold War to far more open borders as socialism retreated. Yet, the subsequent eastward shift of the European Union"s Schengen border control system returned some borders to high security status, with only a few later shedding such status as the system moved further eastwards. Beyond discerning how the Schengen border undercuts the EU"s effort to promote non-discrimination and other liberal values, this article also shows how Schengen holds the power to further entrench perceptions of ethnic hierarchy.
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