Research project on the OSCE HCNM

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From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1999 21:03:14 +0200 (EET)
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Subject: Research project on the OSCE HCNM

From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>

Original sender: Wolfgang Zellner <[email protected]>

Research project on the OSCE HCNM


Dear Madame, dear Sir,
 
Allow me to ask a great favour of you.
 
Since the beginning of this year I have been working together with my
colleague Klemens Büscher on a research project on ”The effectiveness
of the OSCE minority regime: comparative case studies on
implementation of the recommendations of the High Commissioner on
National Minorities (HCNM) of the OSCE”, which is sponsored by the
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Association). Mr van
der Stoel supports the project.
 
This analysis will be conducted in Estonia, Latvia and Ukraine for
Russian minorities, in Romania and Slovakia for Hungarian minorities,
and in Macedonia for the Albanian one. In each of these countries we
are looking for a domestic research scholar who is cooperating on the
basis of a consultancy contract. As the Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft unluckily did not approve funds for press
advertisements and interviews in the respective countries, we are
forced to improvise: We will try to spread the advertisement text to
as many suitable persons and institutions as possible in order to
reach possible applicants.
 
Therefore I would like to ask you to make the attached advertisement
text public within your mailing list. You would help us a lot.
 
With many thanks in advance for your kind support.
 
Sincerely yours
Wolfgang Zellner
--------------------

The Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University
of Hamburg will conduct, in 1999 and 2000, a research project on the
subject of:

The effectiveness of the OSCE minority regime: Comparative case
studies on implementation of the recommendations of the High
Commissioner on National Minorities (HCNM) of the OSCE

The case studies will involve Estonia, Latvia and Ukraine for Russian
minorities; Romania and Slovakia for Hungarian minorities; and
Macedonia for the Albanian minority (for a short description of the
project, see attachment). For the empirical field work in these
countries, we are seeking, on the basis of a consultancy contract,

a research scholar (male or female) each from Estonia, Latvia,
Ukraine, Romania, Slovakia, and Macedonia

a) Job profile
· empirical research on issues related to minorities policy, demoscopy
and the transformation process, conducted independently but in
coordination with other portions of the project;
· collaboration on the solution of conceptual and theoretical
questions;
· collaboration on the publication of project results;
· the project languages are English and German;
· place of work is the place of residence of the applicant; access to
a PC and to E-mail is required;
· a 14-day seminar will be held in Hamburg in May 1999 on project
cooperation;
· the work contract will have a duration of 20 months (May 1999 -
December 2000).
 
 b) Requirements
· knowledge of the majority and minority language, and of English
(oral and written). Knowl-edge of German is desirable but not a
condition;
· familiarity with empirical and analytical work, as a rule to be
confirmed by an appropriate uni-versity certificate or degree;
· willingness to do cooperative work on an international basis; if
possible, experience in such work;
· willingness and ability to regard this project as one's primary work
focus for the duration of the contract;
· applicants should not themselves be so heavily involved in an
ethno-political conflict situation in their country that they are
unable to investigate the problems in an objective and scientific
fashion.
 
 c) Payment
· The contract provides for pay in the sum of up to DM 16.000,- for
the years 1999/2000.

d)	Applications, including the usual supporting documentation
(curriculum vitae, certificates, list of publications, references) as
well as copies of relevant publications should be directed, at the
latest by 15 February 1999, to: Institute for Peace Research and
Security Policy at the Uni-versity of Hamburg, c/o Dr Wolfgang
Zellner, Falkenstein 1, D-22587 Hamburg.

e)	Additional information as well as the long version of the project's
research design can be ob-tained by telephone: ++49 40 866 077 63 or
Fax: ++49 40 866 3615 or under e-mail: [email protected]
 

Short Description of the Project

On the effectiveness of the OSCE minority regime. Comparative case
studies on the implementa-tion of the recommendations of the High
Commissioner on National Minorities (HCNM) of the OSCE


1. Objectives of the project

The objectives of the project can be described in three successive
steps.

The first objective is to analyse the principles, norms, rules and
procedures of the OSCE minority regime, its links with other normative
and instrumental elements in the OSCE context, especially those of the
security dimension, as well as its connection with and delimitation
from other minor-ity regimes, e.g. that of the Council of Europe. In
this process, the precedent-setting interpretation of the HCNM mandate
by the current holder has to be taken into account. On this basis a
consis-tency analysis of the regime will be made, a high level of
regime consistency serving as an indica-tor for effectiveness and
robustness of the regime. A theoretical analysis of the OSCE minority
regime's value or preference structure will create the basis for
comparing the specific preference structure of the regime with the
preference structures of the ethnic majority and minority in the
respective countries.

The second objective is to analyse the effectiveness of the OSCE
minority regime on the basis of the implementation of the HCNM's
recommendations for the period from 1993 to 2000. We will concentrate
on the Russian minorities in Estonia, Latvia and Ukraine, the Albanian
minority in Macedonia, and the Hungarian minorities in Romania and
Slovakia. The first two groups of cases represent the HCNM's actual
main focus, the latter one was an important focus of the CSCE when the
HCNM started to deal with the Hungarian minorities in 1993.

The analysis of the effectiveness of the regime requires first the
identification of correspondences or similarities between the rules of
the regime and the actions of the state in question. Second, if there
are correspondences this raises the question whether state action was
really influenced by the rules of the regime or by any other factors.
The analysis of the first step requires a detailed comparison of the
HCNM's recommendations with state action in each of the six countries
over the whole period. The second step requires an analysis of the
political process which concentrates on the motives of actors at the
state and sub-state levels. Together, both steps constitute the first
part of the empirical section of the project.

The third objective is to explain the established effectiveness or
ineffectiveness of the regime by the identification of factors which
give reasons for the observance or non-observance of the re-gime's
rules by state actors. For this purpose we will take the following
analytical steps.

a) The strategies of ethnic majorities and minorities as well as the
OSCE minority regime itself represent specific ethno-political
preference structures. In a three-dimensional model we define an
ethno-political preference structure as the result of an actor's
state-building strategies (inclusive vs. exclusive), his
nation-building strategies (differentiated vs. standardising) and his
attitude towards territoriality (territorial vs. non-territorial
strategies). The differences and contradictions between the preference
structures of majority and minority constitute the ethno-political
conflict potential of the respective country, the preference structure
of the OSCE minority regime offers a possible solution.
Our basic hypothesis on preference structure says that the
correspondences and differences be-tween these three ethno-political
preference structures can explain the effectiveness of the OSCE
minority regime. We expect, however, that state and sub-state actors
will instrumentalize prefer-ence structures for other purposes. This
raises the question whether and under what conditions the manifest
ethno-political preference structures must be seen as independent
variables (which can only be changed on a long-term basis) or as
dependent variables which can be manipulated on a short-term basis. We
assume that both aspects will combine with one another.

b) In a second step we will examine whether and to what extent
ethno-political preference structures and their possible
instrumentalization are influenced by the transformation process and
es-pecially by the different phases of democratic consolidation. Our
starting hypothesis here is that as the consolidation process goes on
the room for manoeuvre in instrumentalizing ethno-political preference
structures will narrow, whereas in later phases the room for changing
the preference structure itself will widen.

c) In a third step we will analyse on the international level the
impact of asymmetrical interde-pendence on the development of domestic
majority-minority relations. We distinguish between non-complex
interdependence in the sense of classical power superiority and
complex interde-pendence on the basis of deepened cooperation and/or
integration. Our starting hypothesis here is that complex
interdependence has a different and stronger impact on
majority-minority conflicts than non-complex interdependence, although
the pattern of the different interdependence rela-tionships has to be
taken into account.

d) In a fourth step we will examine the (relative) influence on the
domestic relationship between majority and minority of trans-national
communication processes between a minority and its 'kin state'. Here
our starting hypothesis is that the relative density of the
trans-national versus the do-mestic communication process and the
closeness versus remoteness of the communicated value structures are
indicators of whether trans-national communication intensifies or
reduces the do-mestic conflict between majority and minority.

The general theoretical question is in what way these different
dimensions of explanation are in-terrelated and mutually dependent.
The search for an answer requires us to formulate a series of
hypotheses, to operationalize and test them for plausibility, first in
a one-dimensional way, later combined in a multi-level approach. This
analysis constitutes the second part of the empirical sec-tion of the
project. By better linking different sectoral theories and stating
more precisely the pa-rameters for new elements of theory we will try
to contribute to a better understanding of secu-rity-relevant minority
regimes. On this basis, we will try to formulate policy
recommendations.

2. Implementation of the project

The project is financed by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).
For carrying out the project two researcher positions in Hamburg as
well as six local research fellows in the above-mentioned countries
are at the Institute's disposal. The two research fellows at the IFSH
are re-sponsible for the implementation of the empirical and
theoretical part of the project. This includes, inter alia, the
analysis and evaluation of the international literature, carrying out
of expert inter-views in the six countries to be analyzed and with
OSCE officials, dealing with the kin states which are not covered by
local researchers, keeping contact with a series of cooperation
partners, evaluating the empirical material and developing the
theoretical and political conclusions.

The task of the local research fellows is to carry out a considerable
share of the empirical work in the respective countries following the
same criteria and operational procedures in each case study. Necessary
qualifications include mastery of the majority and, if possible,
minority language as well as solid working knowledge of the English
language and the ability to carry out empirical tasks in the social
sciences. Moreover, the local researchers should not be bound by the
agenda of the respective conflict parties, at least not to a degree
that would endanger an independent approach to research. In May 1999 a
two-week seminar on project cooperation will take place in Hamburg,
dealing with the theoretical construction of the project as well as
the empirical work.

We will cooperate with a series of research partners in Germany and
abroad.

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