The participation of minorities in public life: practices and challenges in Central Europe
Joint academic workshop by the ELTE CSS Institute for Minority Studies and the Institute for Ethnic Studies
Ljubljana, March 20, 2026
CONCEPT NOTE
At the beginning of the 21st century, there is growing scholarly interest in issues of group recognition, identities, boundaries, and equality, as well as in theories that emphasize new participatory and deliberative forms of democracy, which are best able to represent the will of the electorate. New areas of research also examine the role of both elections and minorities in hybrid, semi-authoritarian regimes, which do not necessarily serve democracy, but rather the maintenance of power. Nowadays, the idea of effective participation in public life has become one of the key cornerstones of international minority protection, but it is by no means evident why and how representation, and in particular parliamentary representation alone (descriptive representation) would necessarily lead to policy influences in matters that are likely to serve the interests of the constituents (substantive representation).
However, as regards the latter, the unavoidable theoretical and practical question is how to define, measure, and even compare the impact of individual minority MPs in parliaments, which, incidentally, is becoming increasingly important with the personalization of politics in the 21st century, with politician personalities and individual communications in social media coming to the fore instead of parties. Furthermore, it is not only the extent of the impact that matters, but also the fact that it can occur on several levels simultaneously, and that the results can be quite diverse in practice in terms of their content. In relation to these issues, according to the modernist-constructivist approach that has prevailed in recent decades, minority interests cannot be taken for granted or assumed to be self-evident, just as the groups concerned themselves are far from being well-defined social entities with clear-cut boundaries, but rather diverse entities with different layers, affiliations, and preferences.
In light of the above, the major aim of the workshop is to discuss the possibilities of how to capture and compare the ways in which MPs with declared minority affiliations, who have gained their seats through various representative mechanisms (e.g. ethnic or mainstream parties, reserved seats, etc.) act beyond their mere presence and how they act on behalf of those they represent, and in whose interests, and what individual, external political and institutional factors influence their ability to achieve symbolic or substantive results for their constituents. Thereby, with the extensive expertise of scholars from Slovenia and Hungary, the workshop aims to contribute to the better theoretical and practical understanding of minority representation and to future policy reforms that could enhance its effectiveness for the minority groups concerned in Central and Eastern Europe.
The key questions and themes include, but not limited to:
- Does the mere presence of minority MPs (descriptive representation) elected through various mechanisms (ethnic, mainstream parties, guaranteed seats, etc.) have an identifiable and even measurable, comparable impact on issues likely to be important to minorities (substantive representation)? In other words, whether and how substantive representation can be achieved from descriptive representation, how can we define, measure, and compare the effectiveness of minority representation?
- If so, how, to what extent, and under what circumstances and conditions (nature of the political system, state of democracy, party constellations, etc.) and to what extent do minorities benefit from their parliamentary representation?
- Which institutional mechanism (ethnic, mainstream/multiethnic parties, lowered thresholds, preferential/guaranteed seats, etc.) and what conditions seem most effective in terms of representing minority issues? What are the main characteristics and effects of each mechanism?
- Background and context of representation mechanisms: what considerations led to their creation, is there any public debate about them?
- How do minority MPs construct and frame minority-related issues, and how and to what extent do these issues appear in their activities?
- To what extent do they reinforce social polarization or integration?
- Minority MPs often need to have a unified voice: is it possible to represent differing interests, priorities, and strategies within the minority?
- How do they relate to the nation-state model, to what extent is minority representation controlled, captured by the state, especially in hybrid regimes?
- Minority (parliamentary) representation in the documents and activities of international organizations. Countries’ commitments and monitoring procedures.
- Group recognition and membership: to what extent are national, ethnic, racial, etc. categories relevant in discourses on political representation? Which minorities are officially recognized and which have access to representative mechanisms? Who can vote and who can be nominated, and how is minority affiliation defined? Does ethnobusiness occur, and if so, how?
PROGRAM OF THE WORKSHOP
9:00-9:05: welcome address by Sonja Novak Lukanovič (INV)
9:05-9:10: welcome address by Balázs Dobos (ELTE CSS Institute for Minority Studies)
SESSION I: the participation of minorities in public life: international perspectives, theoretical aspects and current challenges
9:10-9:30: Keynote lecture
Petra Roter (University of Ljubljana): The effective participation of persons affiliating with national minorities in political life
9:30-9:50: Balázs Dobos (ELTE CSS Institute for Minority Studies): The parliamentary representation of minorities: presence, effectiveness, and the problem of evaluation
9:50-10:30: Roundtable
Participants: Balázs Dobos, Noémi Nagy (MSCA/ERA Postdoctoral Research Fellow, INV), Petra Roter, Balázs Vizi (ELTE CSS Institute for Minority Studies, Ludovika University), Mitja Žagar (INV)
10:30-10:45: Coffee break
SESSION II: the political participation of minorities: case studies
10:45-11:00: Damir Josipovič (INV): The reformed approach to the minority representation in Slovenia
11:00-11:15: Noémi Nagy: The parliamentary representation of minorities in Slovenia, in light of the practice of UN treaty bodies
11:15-11:30: Danijel Grafenauer (INV): The model and form of political participation of the Slovene minority in Austria
11:30-11:45: Nóra Baranyai (ELTE CERS Institute for Regional Studies): The decline of minority representation in an illiberal context: the German community in Poland
11:45-12:00: András Morauszki (ELTE CSS Institute for Minority Studies): Barriers to representation: electoral challenges for ethnic minorities in Slovakia
12:00-12:20: Q&A
The workshop is funded by the Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office – NKFIH under grant no. K143523.