University of St Andrews

University of St Andrews

St Andrews, Scotland, UK

May 29, 2015, Friday

Conference

Between Federalism, Autonomy and Centralism: Central and Eastern Europe in the 20th and 21st Centuries

Centre for Russian, Soviet, Central and Eastern European Studies

and

Institute for Transnational and Spatial History

Commentators

Neal Ascherson is a world-renowned Scottish writer and journalist. His main books include, Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland (2002), Black Sea: The Birthplace of Civilisation and Barbarism (1995), The Struggles for Poland (1988), Games With Shadows (1988), The Polish August: The Self-limiting Revolution (1981), and The King Incorporated: Leopold the Second and the Congo (1963). He also wrote for the following television series and documentaries, Cold War (1998), The Struggles for Poland (1987), The Spanish Civil War (1983), The World at War (1973-1974).

Professor Colin Kidd, Head, School of History, specializes in the history of unionism in Britain and Scotland, and recently in the intellectual history of the English Enlightenment and its nineteenth-century aftermath. His publications include Union and Unionisms: Political Thought in Scotland 1500-2000 (Cambridge 2008), The Forging of Races: Race and Scripture in the Atlantic World 1600-2000 (Cambridge 2006), British Identities before Nationalism: Ethnicity and Nationhood in the British Atlantic World, 1600-1800 (Cambridge 1999), Subverting Scotland’s Past: Scottish Whig Historians and the Creation of an Anglo-British Identity, 1689-c.1830 (Cambridge 1993).

Abstracts and Biographies of the Participants

Professor Olaf Mörke holds the Chair for Early Modern History at the University of Kiel in Germany. He lectured and did research at various universities in Germany, the Netherlands and Britain focusing on governance in early modern Europe, especially in the Netherlands and around the Baltic littoral. His publications include, Wilhelm von Oranien. (1533–1584). Fürst und „Vater“ der Republik (2007), „Stadtholder“ oder „Staetholder“? Die Funktion des Hauses Oranien und seines Hofes in der politischen Kultur der Republik der Vereinigten Niederlande im 17. Jahrhundert (1987) and Rat und Bürger in der Reformation. Soziale Gruppen und kirchlicher Wandel in den welfischen Hansestädten Lüneburg, Braunschweig und Göttingen (1983). At present he is working on the history of the Baltic region.

From Insurrection to Confederation – Swiss Concepts of

(Con-)Federalism from a Comparative Perspective

Switzerland has been characterised as a ‘Nation of Will’ (Willensnation). This common will has the specific aim here to promote a maximum of political freedom. The Swiss Constitutions of 1848 and of 1999 emphasise the fundamentally federal character of the polity. Sovereignty rests with the cantons, not to the entire country. Subsidiarity is the main principle of state organisation in Switzerland. Frequent plebiscites are characteristic of the highly developed bottom-up-process of political decision-making. Multilingualism and polyconfessionality have been typical of Switzerland. However, the self-stereotype of the Willensnation recently resulted in a political climate strengthening a certain Swiss attitude of moral superiority over ‘the rest of the world’. In my contribution I will show that the principle of the Willensnation, the acceptance of a highly federalised political system, and the cultural diversity combined with the attitude of moral superiority constitute the ‘DNA’ of Switzerland. This has been the case since the confederation(s) started as an insurrection against the hostile environment, namely the political and social values different from those of the Confederates during the 13th and 14th centuries. The upheaval produced political and social techniques to negotiate the bonum commune, which might appear both archaic and (post-)modern.

Wilfried Swenden is a Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Edinburgh, specialized in comparative territorial politics, federalism and Indian Politics. He has published widely in this area, including in scholarly journals such as the European Journal of Political Research, Journal of Common Market Studies, Party Politics, Publius: the Journal of Federalism, Regional & Federal Studies, Regional Studies, Territory, Politics and Governance and West European Politics. Since 2008 he has been co-editor of Regional and Federal Studies. He is currently (2014-2017) heading a Leverhulme International network on Continuity and Change in Indian Federalism involving three UK and three India-based universities. Since 2012 he has been Vice-Chair of IPSA RC28, the Research Committee on Comparative Federalism and Multi-Level Governance of the International Political Science Association.

Built to Last? Why Belgium is Not the Next Czechoslovakia (or Scotland)

In the period between 2007 and 2014, Belgium went through a profound political crisis, the most visible sign of which was the – then – world-record setting federal government formation after the 2010 federal elections, lasting 541 days. Yet, in 2012, the newly formed federal government settled on further territorial reform and two years later, the main protagonist of such reform, the New Flemish Alliance even entered the federal government. In what remains a very unsettled continental political climate, Belgian politics therefore appears to have regained some calm. My intervention will try to explain what caused the onset of the crisis but also its subsequent decline. I will argue that for all parties, the short-term costs of disintegration outflank the long-term benefits. In the short term the political and economic costs of full scale independence are simply too large, while a long-standing culture of elitist politics ruled out a referendum on independence as possible mechanism for settling theconstitutional future of the Belgian state. In this regard, Belgium is neither a new Czechoslovakia, nor an alternative Scotland.

Dr. Alexander Osipov is a Senior Research Associate of the European Centre for Minority Issues (Flensburg, Germany) since September 2010. He is heading ECMI’s Justice & Governance Cluster. His research interests include ethnic and racial discrimination, non-territorial autonomy, and models of diversity policies; he is also doing research on post-communist transformation in Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova. His publications include: K Cordell, T Agarin, A Osipov (eds), Institutional Legacies of Communism – Change and Continuities in Minority Protection (Routledge 2013); and E Nimni, A Osipov, D J Smith (eds), The Challenge of Non-Territorial Autonomy: Theory and Practice (Peter Lang 2013).

Territorial autonomy as a tool of minority accommodation in the post-Soviet space: the cases of Ukraine and Moldova

Seven former Soviet countries include or recently included territorial autonomies while most of the latter are widely referred to as entities established on ethnic grounds. The paper focuses on two countries with democratic rule (namely Ukraine and Moldova) whose autonomous arrangements and related public deliberations combine, on the one hand, the features of Soviet institutional settings and, on the other, knowledge and values transferred from ‘old’ democracies. The author seeks to explain why some ideas pertaining to the accommodation of ethnic diversity in the framework of territorial autonomies are translated into practices while some demonstrate no direct impact on power relations and state-building processes. The author argues that the autonomous arrangements in Ukraine and Moldova to a large extend embody Soviet institutional legacies and techniques of government, such as silent symbolic recognition and also non-articulation of the autonomies’ ethnic underpinning; ‘fuzzy legality’; the prevalence of informal institutions and their symbiosis with the formal ones; systemic discrepancies between symbolic and instrumental policies; neo-patrimonial co-optation of minority spokespersons into the system of governance; mobilization and channeling of public activities on ethnic grounds into the cultural domain; or framing of social equality as predominantly the suppression of encroachments on the political stability.

Dr Pavel Tereshkovich is an expert of the Independent Belarusian Bologna Committee. His research interests include ethnicity, the theory and history of nationalism, and the study of minorities. He has published on these topics widely and edits the first Belarusian journal on minority issues Forum. For over a decade he supervised the Carnegie-supported international study of social transformation in Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova. In the past he established the Chair of Ethnography at the Belarusian State University in Minsk and headed the Department of History at the European Humanities University (‘Belarusian University in Exile’) in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Modern Belarusian State: A Case of Postmodern Soviet-style authoritarian centralism

Belarus is a particular postsocialist state which to a large extent has preserved the Soviet ideological rhetoric and mode of governance. It is a highly centralized unitary state where the concentration of power is enhanced by modern tools of telecommunication. The core element of the governance is the s- called “vertical of power”, meaning strict centralized control over not only all the state institutions, but also over all forms of economic and public activities. Belarus is ethnically a homogenous polity. At the same time there are some peculiarities observed between its western and eastern halves, mainly in the confessional composition of population, cultural legacy and geopolitical orientations. These peculiarities are not reflected in the state administration, as they are typically levelled out by the constant rotation of civil servants across the country. Despite this modern aspect, the system of governance nevertheless preserves some premodern features, for instance, giving privileged access to power for candidates from certain regions.

Ana S. Trbovich is Dean and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Economics, Finance and Administration-FEFA in Belgrade, Serbia. She teaches and writes on European integration, economic development, strategic and public administration. She consults for international organizations including the EU, OECD, World Bank and USAID. From 2002 to 2006, Dr Trbovich served as Assistant Minister of International Economic Relations, coordinating Serbia’s EU accession process, and in 2013/14 as Special Advisor to Minister of Economy in charge of entrepreneurship and competitiveness policy. Her publications include: A Legal Geography of Yugoslavia’s Disintegration (OUP 2008) and Public Administration and European Integration of Serbia (2010).

Federalism or Centralism? The Global Impact of Failed Regulation of Self-Determination in Former Yugoslavia

Self-determination can be expressed through a spectrum of legal forms ranging from human rights to minority rights, autonomy and the most extreme but also most frequently demanded - secession (usually termed "independence"). Whether federalism is a centrifugal or centripetal force influencing expression of "a minority's claim to self-determination" will be the subject of this discussion paper, focusing on the example of Yugoslavia and the tension between federalism and centralism that yielded to a vicious conflict. The author will also attempt to reference this discussion to present, active, or rather reignited, conflicts. The research question would additionally be juxtaposed to the role of the level of economic development and economic turmoil such as the global financial crisis, and how economics impacts regulation of self-determination in different countries. Finally the role of precedents would be evaluated - contributing to the vivid debate as to how different or similar are cases of Kosovo, Crimea, Quebec, Scotland and Catalonia, and how reaction of national governments and international community to those cases shape policy-making and attitudes toward federalism as a mode to regulate self-determination.

Soeren Keil, PhD, is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Canterbury Christ Church University in the United Kingdom. His research focuses on the political systems of the post-Yugoslav states, as well as territorial autonomy as a mode of conflict- resolution and the foreign policy of new states (particularly in the Balkans). His bookMultinational Federalism in Bosnia and Herzegovina was published with Ashgate in December 2013. He is also the editor of State-Building in the Western Balkans (Routledge, 2013) and the co-editor of The EU and Member State Building – European Foreign Policy in the Western Balkans (Routledge 2014).

Federalism as a Tool of Conflict Resolution: The Case of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia and Herzegovina became a federal country in 1995, as a result of the Dayton Peace Agreement, which ended the 3.5 year-long conflict. Its constitutional framework was part of an international peace treaty and divided the country into two entities, according to the cease-fire agreement of Summer 1995. Since then, the Bosnian state has become more centralised, albeit more as a result of international pressure than elite consensus and constitutional reform. The key features of Bosnia’s political system after 1995 have been the strong focus on power-sharing between Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats and the use of highly decentralised decision-making, which is characterised by a weak centre and ethnically defined territorial units which have a lot of autonomy.

The presentation will demonstrate how federalism can serve to pacify a violent conflict and hold a country together, despite substantial centrifugal tendencies. However, it will also emphasise the importance of a voluntary agreement on federal features and underlining federal values, which has been absent in Bosnia. It will explain how federalism was successful as a tool of conflict resolution but ultimately unsuccessful in building a modern state based on three constituent peoples. By doing so, it will also be discussed which lessons can be learnt from Bosnia, especially for other deeply divided societies.

Elena Marushiakova and Vesselin Popov, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, have worked in the field of Romani studies for more than 3 decades and published widely on Roma (Gypsies) in Bulgaria, Balkans and Central and Eastern Europe. They major publications include the first-ever monographs on Roma history and ethnography of the Roma in Bulgaria (1997) and on the Roma in the Ottoman Empire (2000); alongside a book Roma in the Black Sea region (2008). Elena is President of the Gypsy Lore Society, which is the world’s oldest organization of Roma studies. Both, Elena and Vesselin are members of the editorial boards of Romani Studies and of Grazer Romani Studien. From January 2015 Elena Marushiakova is a Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the University of St. Andrews.

Roma (Gypsies) in Central and Eastern Europe Between Different Models of Statehood

We discuss whether the model of statehood (federalism, autonomy, or centralism) affects the situation of Roma in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe that were formerly part of the so-called socialist camp. Firstly, we scrutinize the situation of Roma across the region in selected federal and centralist states, alongside autonomous regions during socialism. Secondly, we outline the change in the situation of the Roma after the fall of the Iron Curtain in countries that keep the former model of statehood and in countries that decided to change it. For the sake of comparison we also sketch the situation of Roma in the two non-socialist countries of Austria and (West) Germany. In conclusion we reflect on whether the model of statehood is of import for the situation of Roma, or maybe other factors exert a more decisive influence in this respect.