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Shifting linkages in ethnic mobilization: The case of RMDSZ and the Hungarians in Transylvania

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Tamás Kiss  and
István Gergő Székely
Tamás Kiss*
Affiliation:
Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities, Cluj, Romania
István Gergő Székely
Affiliation:
Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities, Cluj, Romania
*
∗Corresponding author. Email: t_kiss77@yahoo.com
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Abstract

The Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (RMDSZ) has been the most stable actor in the Romanian party system over the past two decades. However, in this article, we argue that beyond this apparent stability, the linkages between RMDSZ and its voters have undergone a gradual, yet significant shift. The ethnic block voting of Transylvanian Hungarians was closely connected to the concept of a self-standing and parallel “Minority Society,” and to the practices of institution building that the minority elites engaged in in the early 1990s. However, since its first participation in the Romanian government in 1996, RMDSZ has gradually departed from this strategy, a phenomenon that was also closely connected to a process of elite change within the organization. The present RMDSZ leadership puts less and less emphasis on policy programs that could reinforce the institutional system of the minority; consequently, it is unable (and unwilling) to organizationally integrate the community activists of the minority society who previously had played a key role in the process of (electoral) mobilization. At the rhetorical level, RMDSZ did not abandon the goal of building a parallel Hungarian minority society, but in its linkages to the Hungarian electorate, clientelistic exchanges have become predominant.

Keywords

ethnic politicsethnic partiesethnic mobilizationpolitical particularismpork barrelHungarians in Romania
Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , July 2016 , pp. 591 - 610
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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