This article is the second in this series, following “Part 1: The Legacy of Early Institutionalism: From Gypsy Fiefs to Gypsy Kings”, which covered the period from the arrival of Gypsies to Europe until the mid-nineteenth century and was published in Volume 32, Number 3 of Nationalities Papers. Part 2 describes the birth of the first modern forms of ethnically-based political and social organizations established by Romani elites from the nineteenth century up until the Second World War (WWII). The main pattern of the development of Romani representation and administration until the mid-nineteenth century—as described in Part 1—distinguished between institutionalization from within and without. In the time period described here, the pattern changes because the majority of organizations and institutions established in order to represent and administer Roma are started upon the initiative of Romani leaders. Some are, however, created under the umbrella or patronage of non-Romani authorities or organizations and their activities are controlled by these patrons; others are created in (various degrees of) cooperation with non-Romani authorities or organizations and a few are created and operate independently. In addition, during this period the first few non-Romani non-governmental organizations start to take interest in the plight of Roma, and some organizations are specifically created to address their plight and lobby “on their behalf.” The other pattern of the development that emerges in this period is the gradual ascent of the institutionalization to higher levels. While until the nineteenth century most of the Gypsies organized themselves locally and regionally (with the exception of the Polish Office of the Gypsy Kings and the Chief Voivods in Transylvania and Hungary), in this period we see the first attempts by Roma themselves to expand the institutionalization countrywide and even internationally. These patterns are again explored in the conclusion (and summarized in Table 1), while the main body deals with the various arrangements in a more or less chronological and geographical order.

The registration of citizens' ethnicity (“nationality”) in official documents was commonplace and often obligatory in the Soviet Union, and the practice continued in the Russian Federation through the 1990s. In 1997, the Yeltsin government replaced the Soviet internal passport with a new one not featuring the “nationality” entry. The new document was met with an instant wave of protests from Russia's regions, above all the ethnically defined federal subjects. They objected to the removal of the “nationality” entry, and also because the passport (unlike the Soviet one) did not have a section in the federal subject's own language(s) besides Russian, and did not display the emblems of the region in question.

What role, if any, does kinship play in modern political life? Recent work in comparative politics has focused on a variety of informal relationships. It is striking that kinship has not received similar, sustained attention. The broad assumption of most theoretically-driven work is that kinship is the domain of the anthropologist; to the extent that political scientists consider kinship, they do so as something for modern institutions to overcome, as something in fundamental opposition to the state apparatus.

This paper seeks to analyze the nature of the German minorities in the Czech Republic and Poland. In order to achieve this goal, the relationship between Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic and Poland with the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany/FRG) forms an essential intellectual backdrop to our main theme. Reference to the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German Democratic Republic/GDR) will be made as and where appropriate. As we shall see, tensions simmered between the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (Socialist Unity Party of Germany/SED) and the Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza Zjednoczona (Polish United Workers' Party/PZPR), and in reality relations between the two sides were poor. Reference will be made to wartime German occupation policy in both Poland and the Czech lands. Due attention will also be paid to the consequent expulsion of ethnic Germans from Poland and Czechoslovakia. However, due to limitations of space these themes, that have been exhaustively dealt with elsewhere, do not form part of our main focus of study.