While many scholarly contributions have documented the socialist state policies deployed toward the Roma from Central and Eastern Europe, less attention was paid to how discourses and policies have aimed to turn the “non-European,” “backward Roma” into reformed and modernized subjects that were supposed to conform to an “European,” sedentary way of life. Thus, I discuss proletarization and sedentarization not as state policies but as programs and technologies of power, specific to a socialist governmentality. The article interrogates the programs, technologies of power and biopolitical regulations that allowed the state authorities to legitimize their intervention in the daily lives of the Roma, with profound depoliticizing effects. I analyze political programs, governmental reports on Roma and ministry regulations as instruments of governmentality through which the governance of the “Roma question” took shape. Special attention is given to data/knowledge production. Finally, the research pinpoints that the micro-scale and the everyday workings of the socialist technologies of power might explain the different trajectories of socio-economic adaptation among Roma groups, which some studies have revealed during post-socialism.

Over the years, China’s nationality policy tended to imitate the Soviet Union while also retaining its uniqueness. Existing scholarship has described three deviations the CCP made vis-à-vis the Soviet model: denying national self-determination, rejecting the supra-national union of nation-states, and undertaking constructivist classification of ethnicity. These features took shape around 1949. In this article, I survey China’s observations on Soviet nationality affairs from 1949 to 1991 and provide a perspective for understanding how these deviations from the Soviet nationality model both crystallized and varied. My findings show that after 1949, Soviet studies in China lacked a coherent agenda for studying the nationality question. The experts gathered rich materials but subordinated nationality questions to themes such as revolution, a centrally planned economy, border disputes, geopolitics, and ideological indoctrination. They also tended to reduce ethnopolitics to class struggle and economic modernization. Such systematic evasion of nationality questions persisted until the collapse of the Soviet Union. The USSR’s disintegration caused China to recognize the resilience of ethnicity and nationality, while before 1991, Soviet studies in China had lacked any systematic reflection on the Soviet nationality model.

There is a boom in the power of right-wing parties that are becoming government parties in Latin America and Europe. It has been pointed out that these are distinguished from traditional right-wing parties by their common ideology that transcends national contexts, which is why they have been grouped as New Right-wing parties. This article questions whether these parties share ideological themes or whether they are heterogeneous and obey national interests. This study systemizes the New Right-wing parties’ programs and classifies them to answer the question. This corpus is then studied through frequency, network, and principal component analysis. Two conclusions are reached from this. First, these parties agree on issues such as provider States and nationalist claims, and, second, their programs have diverse themes that do not show the formation of an identifiable transnational ideological agenda in their programs. Consequently, grouping these parties as an ideologically homogeneous phenomenon can make invisible the fact that they are parties that adjust to particular demands of their political environment, in a logic that obeys more catch-all parties than ideological and dogmatic parties.

This essay conceptualizes five recipes to solve secession conflicts that have taken place in postcommunist territories—federalization, land-for-peace, protectorate policy, reconquest, and the destruction of the parent state by the patron state—and investigates their merits and demerits. This essay provides case studies of the South Ossetian War in 2008 and its aftermath (as an example of the protectorate policy), the Second Karabakh War in 2020 (reconquest), and the Russo-Ukrainian War in 2022 (destruction of the parent state by the patron state). We observe the tendency that the ineffectiveness of federalization and land-for-peace induces parties of conflict to move on to unilateral or even coercive recipes.

The study addresses the absence of a comprehensive institutional analysis framework in the academic literature on state-minority relations. It does so by employing a framework of analysis based on Skocpol’s analysis of structural factors and Ostrom’s multi-level institutional analysis to understand the processes of radical and incremental institutional change. The article is empirically grounded in a case study of Roma communities in Slovakia. More specifically, it maps and analyzes the evolution and change of institutional frameworks of state-minority relations in the context of Roma communities in Slovakia from the 1960s to 2020. Drawing from archival materials, interview findings, and document analysis, this article shows how post-socialist Slovakia radically redefined and diversified its institutional framework for Roma communities at different institutional levels, which subsequently continued to change at an incremental pace. Overall, the study aspires to offer a more dynamic institutional approach to the study of state-minority relations, which are currently dominated by more static regime- and rights-based approaches, and to contribute with a prospectively useful framework for understanding the developments of state-minority relations in the broader post-Soviet space and beyond.

What factors influence the formation of threat perception among the masses? Can the public perceive that external threats exist yet also feel safe? This article investigates both how threat perceptions form, as well as what factors influence security perceptions, in ethnically diverse countries and societies. While drawing on data from two nationally representative surveys, this article inquires to what extent the views of the government and society align regarding whether Russia represents a security threat to Latvia. We find that the determinants of threat and security perceptions differ. Above all else, the views of our respondents are shaped by their ethnic identities and regional effects. Consumption of different forms of media also influence threat perception. Perceived asymmetry of power is an additional important variable shaping security perception. Importantly, there is a correlation between seeing Russia as a security threat and Russophobia or fear of Russians living in Latvia. Overall, this article demonstrates that threat perceptions differ between Russian-speakers and Latvians, shows that it is important to differentiate between perceptions of threat and security, and identifies key explanatory variables influencing development of these perceptions in ethnically diverse societies.

This article problematizes the study of religious nationalism, which lacks conceptual, religious, and nationalist “seriousness.” These problems of “seriousness” obscure the nature of religious nationalism as they overstretch and do not do justice to the concepts of religious nationalism, religion, and nationalism, respectively. Seeking for the nature of and a path to religious nationalism, it is suggested that the later writings of İsmet Özel, a well-known poet and public intellectual in Turkey, make an emblematic case for a religious type of nationalism, demonstrating not only religious seriousness with his Islamist ideology but also a central orientation to the nation through his exclusive focus on Turkishness and Turkey. In so doing, this article introduces a wide range of categories to specify the ways in which religious nationalism is operationalized and to measure the patterns of religious nationalism in an attempt to overcome the problems of “seriousness.” It identifies and examines six main patterns in Özel’s thinking and shows their interactions: religio-national identity, exceptionalism, religious territoriality, civilizational othering, sectarianism, and anti-secularism.

The Bosniak and Albanian minorities in postcommunist Montenegro have supported and been represented by mainstream Montenegrin parties more than by their ethnic parties. This stands in striking contrast to the situation in neighboring Serbia and North Macedonia where the Bosniak and Albanian minorities vote almost exclusively for their ethnic parties. The Montenegrin case stands out as deviant also when one considers a number of extant explanations, all of which would predict a different outcome. Montenegrin Bosniaks and Albanians constitute two native, sizeable and geographically concentrated minority groups inhabiting a country with an institutional framework and several special electoral arrangements favoring minority parties. Drawing on original data on Bosniak and Albanian legislators elected across 12 parliamentary elections in Montenegro (1990–2023), municipality and country-level parliamentary election results and 12 semi-structured elite interviews, I argue that what explains the deviance in the Montenegrin case is the peculiar nature of Montenegrin identity, specifically the fact that it does not pit the majority against minority, but rather it pits the Montenegrin and Serbian components of the Orthodox majority against each other and in such a context the non-Orthodox minorities become critical political allies of the Montenegrin bloc against the Serbian one.

Three case studies depict different attitudes of anthropologists toward the politics of nationalism promoted by the prewar Polish state. Ethnographer Stanisław Dworakowski, involved in a governmental Committee for the Issues of Petty Nobility in Eastern Poland, elaborated a study on this social stratum. Although based on reliable field research, it can hardly be considered scientific work, as it has many features of political propaganda. Quite opposite is the case of folklorist Joachim Chajes, secretary of the Ethnographical Commission of YIVO. Contemporary Soviet folklore was one of the fields of his research, which Polish anticommunist and antisemitic authorities found suspicious. Accused of communist activity, he was imprisoned. Social anthropologist Józef Obrębski can be situated between those two extremes. His field research among East Slavic peasants in Eastern Poland, concerning their developing national identity, although conducted within a national scientific program and financed by the state, is an example of intellectual independence. By revealing the negative attitude of the peasants toward Polish authorities, Obrębski achieved an outcome, which did not fulfill the official political expectations. These three trajectories show competitive coexistence of the meta-field of power and the scientific field, focused on their respective stakes: power and recognition.

The objective of the article is to establish why a financial bonus for Slovenian–Italian bilingualism was introduced in the District of Koper (comprising today’s Slovenian municipalities of Ankaran, Koper, Izola and Piran), which came under Yugoslav rule after 1954. Using Brubaker’s triadic nexus concept and analysis of newly discovered archival sources, the authors found that (a) on the federal level, Yugoslavia only focused on minority protection as much as it was required to by international agreements and treaties, (b) the Italian minority itself was not a relevant actor in the Yugoslav system of minority protection, (c) Italy had a marginal role in the process of protecting the Italian minority in Yugoslavia, and (d) the political elite in Yugoslavia introduced the bilingualism bonus to encourage the integration of the Italian minority when building a new (socialist) sociopolitical order. The Slovenian-Italian bilingualism bonus was therefore not an altruist measure directed at minority protection, but rather a self-serving measure by the authorities to reinforce their power.

This article analyzes Hungary’s kin-state policy starting from the premise that the concept of collective narcissism most succinctly captures its emotional foundations. I look to substantiate this claim by examining at a wide range of sources on how Hungary feels toward neighboring states and show the preponderance of emotions connected to collective narcissism. The real-life consequences of collective narcissism are demonstrated through a case study of the relationship between Hungary and Ukraine before and after the Russian attack of 2022. Overall, I find that anger is the master emotion of Hungary’s kin-state policy, resulting in a lack of solidarity and characteristic self-centeredness in Hungary’s foreign policy, which cannot be explained by rational factors alone.

In 1848, Habsburg Trieste became the target of German nationalists gathered in Frankfurt. The Frankfurt parliament, born out of the revolutions of 1848, has been widely depicted as a liberal experience. Yet its nationalist stances, which included the creation of a unitary German state through the absorption of vast multiethnic regions of the Habsburg monarchy, whose Austrian crownlands were part of the German Confederation, bear witness to the illiberal nature of the Frankfurt parenthesis of 1848–1849. Notwithstanding the assimilatory tendencies of the Frankfurt parliament, Italian activists in Trieste supported the inclusion of the Habsburg port in an enlarged Germany, hoping to break away from Habsburg rule, which they portrayed as oppressive. This article argues that the contradictory Italian support for the German Confederation highlights the paradoxes at the basis of nationalist movements at their onset, while also pointing to the difficulty that nation-states would soon witness in dealing with other ethnic groups within their borders. On the contrary, it was the Habsburg monarchy that, in its centuries-long tradition of accommodating different ethnicities into its fold, represented what to present-day observers comes closer to political liberalism than the so-called liberal national parties that opposed Habsburg rule.

After Ekrem İmamoğlu won as Istanbul’s mayor, the contestation between the city and central government resembled other cases of liberal mayors winning in illiberal populist regimes. To expand liberal democracy, the mayor sought to reinvigorate effective democratic citizenship by increasing access to information, creating more inclusive governance networks through public participation opportunities, limiting the regime’s clientelism and rent-seeking opportunities in real estate and contracting, and (re)creating social solidarity. The national government responded by extensively covering “scandals” and continuing populist rhetoric to maintain polarization, limiting the city’s financial resources, and moving power and projects to agencies they still controlled. This article uses Istanbul to develop this model and illustrate how İmamoğlu has made progress in each area despite the central government’s effort to constrain his administration.

The political landscape of the radical right has long been a major discussion point in the political and social sciences. By considering the variety of radical right organizations (movement parties and non-parliamentary organizations) and the particular national and transnational political and discursive opportunity structures, the paper aims at a comparative analysis of the main discursive frames present in political programs and manifestoes of radical right social movement organizations and movement parties in Poland (Konfederacja Wolność i Niepodległość and Obóz Narodowo-Radykalny) and Germany (Alternative für Deutschland and Identitäre Bewegung Deutschland). Moreover, based on approaches developed by Cas Mudde and Jens Rydgren, this article analyses how the features presumed essential to the radical right (nativism, authoritarianism and populism) are reflected and interconnected in the official discourses of the selected radical right organizations.

Image and reputation are key factors in how nations are perceived by global audiences. Current and historical issues can pose as challenges to a nation’s reputation prompting the need to save face. The Armenian genocide is one of the most critical issues the Republic of Turkey has had to manage in terms of its global image and reputation. While the vast body of literature on the subject borrows from history and political science focusing on the mechanism of denial, this paper offers a communication framework to understand the rhetoric of Turkey’s image repair. Turkey’s crisis communication strategies vis-à-vis the centennial of the Armenian genocide are analyzed by employing Benoit’s image repair theory through a content analysis of official statements and declarations by the heads of state given in 2014 and 2015. In response to the emerging political crisis, the Turkish government primarily employed image repair strategies of evading responsibility and reducing offensiveness with the aim to appeal to international audiences.

As an implication of the ethnically and nationally diverse nature of Mediterranean polities, identification-driven boundary-making strategies bear considerable relevance for their political processes, both in the contemporary context and in the historical past. By utilizing a Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA), this study provides an interpretative exploration of Greek-Cypriot elite discursive framing strategies regarding Turkish-Cypriot and Greek-Cypriot ethno-national identity during the Cypriot Civil War (1963–1967). The available historical interpretations of this period lead us to expect an exclusionary strategy of boundary contraction to be more prevalent than the inclusionary one of boundary expansion in the discourse of Greek-Cypriot elites. Through an examination of a sample of primary textual sources, the analysis disconfirms such an expectation, as elite figures primarily constructed broader, inclusive frames of ethno-national identity during the civil war. The relative absence of boundary contraction and the prevalence of boundary expansion indicate the applicability of Wimmer’s (2008) universalist approach to ethnic boundary-making, in contrast to the expectations that are built by the Cyprus-specific historical evidence. This study thus lays the groundwork for future research to delineate the discursive framing strategies of elite figures in Cyprus and beyond the ethno-nationally divided island.

Scholars frequently portray the end of the Habsburg Monarchy as driven by nationalist revolutions in the provinces. The experience of the Jiu Valley, Transylvania’s largest coal basin, demonstrates that nationalism was neither the only basis for revolution nor the most popular in all parts of the province. The multiethnic working class of Jiu embraced revolution as a response to state failures to provide basic services in a worsening wartime economy, even as state demand for coal rose. The miners created the Black Diamond Republic in October 1918 as Austro-Hungarian armies collapsed in an effort to actively negotiate their status after the war. The miners embraced revolution not as a bid for independence or ethnic secession but as a means to maintain local union power and negotiate the conditions of their inclusion in either Romania or Hungary. While “Romanian” and “Hungarian” councils were formed, such identities in Jiu were also linked to occupation (worker, peasant, or intellectual) rather than clear definitions of ethnicity.

This article analyzes tweets in the Turkish language from November 2020 to May 2021 in which Kurds are explicitly mentioned that feature negative animalization directed toward Kurds and pro-Kurdish organizations. It systematically compares ways of animalization attribution, to what entities the animalization is attributed mostly, and the attributors (actors) of animalization. First, it argues that animalizing dehumanization directed at Kurds in the data set principally occurs for attributing the lack of four human traits: agency, civility, morality, and rationality. Second, it shows in what different ways the lack of these traits is attributed to Kurdish people in general and to major pro-Kurdish groups such as HDP (the largest pro-Kurdish legal political party) and PKK (the largest pro-Kurdish armed group). Finally, it discloses three main political networks among Twitter users within the data set and characterizes how negative animal references to Kurds, pro-Kurdish groups, and each other were used by these actors. Thus, this research seeks to establish a framework to study other ethnic conflicts from the perspective of animalization and invites further research on whether the trends that were found imply a general tendency around the world.

The article analyzes the role of Ukrainian associations on construction of immigrant identity in Turkey at the intersection of diaspora politics and diaspora-lived experiences. Ukrainian immigrant associations – whose numbers and members rapidly increased after Russia’s annexation of Crimea – became critical players in immigrants’ ethno-national identity construction. This aligned with the Ukrainian government’s changing diaspora policy and shaped immigrants’ relationship with the homeland. The associations, therefore, facilitated diaspora activism from above and below. These associations are mainly engaged in activities related to the teaching of Ukrainian language, history, and culture so that immigrants can distinguish themselves from Russians and discover their own uniqueness. They also consider the migrant status of Ukrainians in Turkey and develop an awareness of ethno-national identity by negotiating transnational identities.

This article uses the French Rassemblement National (RN) as a case study to examine how the populist radical right (PRR) prepares for a world after COVID-19 dominated by climate change concerns. Research suggests that certain measures introduced to contain the virus – such as the establishment of strict border and travel restrictions – may legitimize the PRR’s protectionist and anti-immigration agendas, yet few have examined whether or how PRR parties have used COVID-19 to promote their environmental agenda. If anything, the expectation has been that the pandemic would hurt the PRR precisely because its effects, unlike climate change, cannot be dismissed as a “hoax.” This view overlooks not only the “environmental turn” recently taken by several PRR parties but also the possibility that public awareness of the causal link between climate change and COVID-19 may work to their advantage. The analysis presented in this article highlights this possibility, showing that the RN used COVID-19 not only to capitalize on anti-immigrant sentiment but also to bolster its self-image as a champion of environmental protection.