Autonomy à la carte: The creative claiming tactics of the Hungarian minority in Romania

ABSTRACT

Through a detailed case-study of the Hungarian minority in Romania, this article better understands the non-secessionist, non-violent claims to autonomy of ethnic minorities and the discursive framework in which claims operate. Analysis of policy documents and elite interviews demonstrates how ‘autonomy’ claiming is not only conducted explicitly. Rather, it also occurs creatively through a discursive word-play technique utilized by different minority actors which substitutes ‘decentralization’, ‘regionalization’ and ‘self-governance’ for ‘autonomy’. However, to elites across political persuasions, and unlike differentiations in the scholarly literature, these terms mean the same thing. Moreover, different minority actors have a preferred discourse for claiming: ‘historic autonomists’ favour strong, explicit and symbolic claims while ‘modern autonomists’ support a strategic and creative claiming tactic. These findings of the creativity of autonomy claiming discourse can be extended to other ethnic minorities seeking institutional recognition via non-violent means.

KEYWORDS:

• Autonomy
• ethnic minorities
• discourse
• Central Europe
• nationalism

Introduction

The appropriate institutional provision for managing ethnic diversity and promoting state stability has divided academic scholarship. Such institutional solutions – such as federalism, autonomy, and decentralization – are often studied within the context of civil wars, ethnic conflict, radical party ideologies, and secessionist concerns (Gurr 1993b; Saideman 2002; Brancati 2009; Walter 2009; Cederman et al. 2015; Massetti 2016). Different arrangements for territorial self-government are often implemented in post-conflict situations (Rothchild and Roeder 2005; Bieber and Keil 2009; Philipp 2013) or have been part of a political tradition and party politics, as in many Western democracies (Benedikter 2009; Sorens 2009; Massetti 2016; Basta 2017). By contrast, given the legacy of changing borders and the collapse of communist ethno-federations (Bochsler and Szöcsik 2013b), countries in the region of Central and Eastern Europe¹ generally lack significant territorial self-governance arrangements. Moreover, many countries in the CEE region remain centralized compared to their more decentralized Western European counterparts (Pasquier and Perron 2008; Hooghe, Schakel, and Marks 2010; Stefanova 2014).

Yet, claims to ‘autonomy’ in particular by ethnic minorities in the CEE region are still made and remain the preferred institutional arrangement and rallying cry. From the Russophone minorities in Estonia to the Hungarians in Romania, autonomy is claimed and Western European examples such as South Tyrol are cited. Violence and secession are not the means nor the claim, respectively, of ethnic minorities; rather the means is conventional politics and the claim that of autonomy. Moreover, in the CEE region, autonomy claims are not just for territorial autonomy but also cultural autonomy – an understudied institutional provision which is independent of residency and relates to culture, language, education and religion. Autonomy claims have been studied qualitatively by regional scholars (Jenne 2007; Bochsler and Szöcsik 2013a, 2013b; Smith 2014b; Székely, 2014) as well as quantitatively through datasets like Minorities at Risk and Ethnonationalism in Party Competition (Minorities at Risk Project 2007; Szöcsik and Zuber 2015). Following Csergő (2013)’s call for the distinct analysis of non-violent and non-secessionist minority claims, this article demonstrates how the discourse, framing and claiming strategies for autonomy by ethnic minority elites unfolds in practice in a context where there is hesitancy on behalf of ethnic majorities to support such arrangements. Such analysis is in contrast to the secessionist focus of territorial politics in Western Europe and the post-conflict literature’s attention to ethnic violence.

To better understand the non-secessionist, non-violent autonomy claims of ethnic minorities and the discursive framework in which claims operate, this article undertakes a detailed case-study of the Hungarian ethnic minority in Romania – a territorially concentrated and historic ethnic minority for whom attaining autonomy in both its cultural and territorial forms has (unsuccessfully) been a long-standing political objective. The article examines how autonomy is understood in its local context and how it is claimed by Hungarian minority elites across the political spectrum, with a focus on the post-2014 period in particular. Through analysis of policy documents and elite interviews, a key finding of this article is that ‘autonomy’ claiming is not only conducted explicitly. Rather, it also occurs creatively through a discursive word-play technique utilized by different minority actors which substitutes ‘decentralization’, ‘regionalization’ and ‘self-governance’ for ‘autonomy’. However, and importantly, unlike distinctions in the scholarly literature, to these elites across different political persuasions, these terms mean the same thing. Moreover, different minority actors have a preferred discourse for claiming divided into ‘historic autonomists’ who favour strong, explicit and symbolic claims and ‘modern autonomists’ who support a strategic and creative claiming tactic. The article illustrates how autonomy claiming is creative and separate from secessionist claims and violent means.

The next section situates the study of autonomy in the broader literature before then introducing the Hungarian case study and methodology. The heart of the article analyzes how autonomy claims unfold in Romania through both explicit claims and a discursive word-play tactic. It further argues that Hungarian minority elites’ strategies for claiming autonomy can be divided into those who are modern autonomists and historic autonomists. The article addresses the gap on the framing of autonomy claims and its findings have broader implications for the study of ethnic politics and ethnic minority accommodation.

Autonomy claims in context

There is an unresolved debate about the effects of territorial self-government arrangements and whether they lead to state stability or rather to civil war, ethnic violence and secession (Roeder 1991; Gurr 1993b; Bermeo 2002; Saideman 2002; Hale 2004). Concerns in Western democracies often revolve around secession – such as the Scottish, Catalonian, and Quebec cases demonstrate – and whether ethno-territorial accommodation helps or hinders such claims (Meadwell 1993; Sorens 2009; Massetti 2016; Basta 2017). In other contexts, such as post-conflict contexts, whether to give ethnic minorities some form of power-sharing arrangement and territorial accommodation is up for debate (Rothchild and Roeder 2005; Wolff 2011; Kettley 2014). To better arrive at answers, scholars have been further exploring the role of variables such as lost autonomy (Siroky and Cuffe 2015), previous conflict history (Cederman et al. 2015), and the inclusion of non-violent mass campaigns as a third alternative to the dichotomy between non-violent and violent strategies (Cunningham 2013). Moreover, adding demands for the minority’s symbolic recognition alongside demands for institutional accommodation can lead to reactive sequences and secessionist crises (Basta 2017).

Within this literature, further specification of the exact nature of the territorial arrangements is beneficial to tease out its effects. For example, decentralization is institutionally different to autonomy, federalism or secession. Moreover, the framing of demands to autonomy in particular, has been understudied. There has also been recent scholarship examining the different ways institutional arrangements of cultural autonomy are implemented in the CEE region (Malloy and Palermo 2015; Malloy, Osipov, and Vizi 2015). Table 1 defines these terms. Regarding autonomy in particular, the academic literature has often broken down autonomy along two main dimensions: territorial and non-territorial autonomy. The latter is sometimes used interchangeably with personal and cultural autonomy (Lapidoth 1997; Malloy 2015). Whilst we may be more familiar with territorial autonomy and other measures of territorial self-governance, cultural autonomy was pioneered by Karl Renner and Otto Bauer during the Habsburg Empire and based these arrangements for minority communities on the personality principle, as opposed to the territorial principle (Nimni 2013; Smith 2014a).

Table 1. Definitions of institutional arrangements.

Institutional arrangement	Definition
Decentralization	Involves a delegation – rather than transfer – of powers, which are mainly administrative (Lapidoth 1997).
Self-government	Either an umbrella term for different institutional arrangements of self-rule or a sub-type of autonomy (Lapidoth 1997; McGarry and Moore 2005; Wolff and Weller 2005; Nootens 2015).
Autonomy	Covers shared-rule and self-rule, with powers of adjudication, administration and legislation (Hannum 1990; Lapidoth 1997; Wolff and Weller 2005).
Cultural Autonomy (CA)	Institutional arrangements which are independent of residency and grant the ethnic minority control over the policy spheres of culture, language, religion and education (Lapidoth 1997; Nimni 2013; Smith 2014a).
Territorial Autonomy (TA)	When ethnically motivated, allows a particular ethnic group that is the majority of a region to express its identity and exercise powers over a range of policy areas linked to culture, economics and social affairs; involves a transfer of powers, often with an elected body (Lapidoth 1997; Smith 2014a).
Federalism	A constitutionally established and generally symmetric arrangement with a bicameral legislature; typically with a supremacy clause at the federal level (Lapidoth 1997; Suksi 2014).
Secession	Achieving full political independence from a state (Lapidoth 1997).
Self-Determination	An ambiguous concept, linked to the right of a people to determine its political status (Lapidoth 1997; Jackson Preece 1998).

Examining the claims of ethnic minorities has also been done through the framework of ethno-political mobilization and alongside the lens of ethnic parties and ethnic outbidding. In the case of the former, the social movements literature has focused on collective grievances, mass radicalization and discursive frames (McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001; Beissinger 2002; Bermeo 2003; Basta 2020) where discursive frames can be used by ethnic entrepreneurs in identity formation and re-imagination (Dembinska 2012). Moreover, the dynamics of contentious politics (Tilly and Tarrow 2015) provides helpful concepts such as on political opportunity structures and the subject-object-claim structure of contention. At the same time, this work is more focused on collective action, the usage of performances and repertoires which tie to mobilization, and activity that does not necessarily target the government.

A focus on ethno-political parties, or regionalist parties (for Western democracies) has also examined claims to autonomy and the radicalization of party ideology to support secession (de Winter and Tursan 1998; Brancati 2006; Alonso 2012; Massetti 2016). However, the study of ethnic parties in CEE has traditionally been analyzed through the same lens as that of ethnic parties in the post-colonial world (rather than through the ethno-regionalist party lens of Western Europe) (Székely, 2014, 43–45). In this context, there is a concern within the integrationist school (Horowitz 1985) which argues that when ethnicity is salient, moderate ethnic parties will be outflanked by more radical challengers who portray the moderate representatives as selling out the community. The consequences of such radicalization can lead to violence (Rabushka and Shepsle 1972; Reilly 2006). However, ethnic outbidding has not been found in general in the CEE region (Chandra 2005; Birnir 2007; Zuber 2013; Bernauer 2015). Moreover, analysis of the dynamics of intra-group competition has shown that the inclusion of the ethnic minority party in coalition government dampens the radical claims of the ethnic minority and increases the voice of ethnic minority pragmatists. The voice of radical challengers is stronger when the ethnic minority party is in opposition (Bochsler and Szöcsik 2013a). There is a further dimension of ethnic party competition which is the emergence of valence competition (Green 2007). As accounted for by Székely (2014, 73), valence issues ‘involve some condition that cannot be ordered on a continuum, as it is regarded as good or bad by the electorate in general’. What becomes important is how credible a party is on an issue (such as autonomy), rather than where they position themselves on a spectrum. The policy space is narrow since there is convergence between the electorate and political parties (Székely, 2014).

In contrast to much of the literature above, the Hungarian elites in Romania are making non-violent and non-secessionist claims, and these claims are mainly elite-led than rooted in mass mobilization.² Moreover, not enough attention has been paid to claims to cultural autonomy nor to tracing out the discourse and claiming strategies of elites. Therefore, to better understand the framing of the claims to autonomy of Hungarians elites in Romania, this article extends the literature in three ways. First, it incorporates the viewpoints of a range of political elite actors involved – including civil society actors as well as smaller political parties – in the examination of the trajectory of autonomy claim-making. Such a range of actors can better incorporate intra-group competition and how these actors react to each other. It also extends the study of autonomy claims from 2014 into 2019 since there have been significant developments, to be detailed below. Finally, to generate case-specific insights of how actors understand and claim autonomy, this article uses material in the original Hungarian language to best trace out how discourse on autonomy is used and adapted. It captures the flexible way in which claims are made and attends to the difference in discursive strategies of the political actors involved. It is through the Hungarian-language interviews that the technique of word-play is uncovered as part of the creative claiming strategy of Hungarian elites and later corroborated by policy documents.³ These findings can be extrapolated to other cases in the examination of the discursive framing of autonomy claims across a range of elite actors and highlights the breadth of claim-making which still falls short of secessionist demands.

The case and methodology

The Hungarian ethnic minority in Romania has experienced lost autonomy, yet does not pursue separatism, which sets it apart from findings which suggest that lost autonomy increases the likelihood for calls for separatism (Siroky and Cuffe 2015). As such, it is an interesting case to explore how autonomy claims unfold. Questions surrounding the integration of the Hungarian minorities originate from the border revisions following World War I in the 1920 Treaty of Trianon. The Treaty reduced the territory of Hungary – or the Kingdom of Hungary as it was known then – by two-thirds and resulted in 3.5 million ethnic Hungarians finding themselves in new states, mainly Czechoslovakia and Romania (Pytlas 2013). One century later, Hungarians in Romania number approximately 1.23 million, or approximately 6.1% of the population (Government of Romania 2016). Almost half – 609,000 – of the Hungarian minority population inhabit the sub-region of Transylvania called the Seklerland, located in the centre of Romania. The Seklerland is comprised of the three counties of Harghita, Covasna and Mureș where Seklers account for 85.2%, 73.7% and 38.1% of the county’s population, respectively (Institutual National de Statistica 2011, 5). The other half of the Hungarian population mostly live in central Transylvania or Partium to the north-west. Many either live in inter-ethnic environments, form a sizeable majority in a large city such as Cluj-Napoca (50,000), or are a large majority in smaller administrative units like communes (such as Rimetea in Alba county numbering 94.1%) (Institutual National de Statistica 2011; Csata and Marácz 2018, 395–399; Kiss 2018, 24–27).

The autonomy claims of the Hungarians in Transylvania are grounded in a particular historical context. Throughout the Middle Ages until the Great Compromise in 1867, Transylvania kept a separate identity and administrative status either as a voivodship, principality or grand principality. It then lost its autonomous status when it was incorporated into the Kingdom of Hungary in 1867 (Pearson 1983, 58; Botoran, Dutu, and Retegan 1993, 1–6). Within the history of Transylvania, the Seklerland had special status and importance, with its different administrative divisions and Sekler ‘seats’ alongside the special status given to Transylvania. Moreover, during communism, the Hungarians in Romania had a short stint of territorial autonomy in the form of the Hungarian Autonomous Region (HAR) from 1952 to 1968 which included the Sekler inhabited counties (Bottoni 2003) and granted autonomy in the fields of education, culture, finances and public security (Prunel 2011, 284–285). However, the HAR never had the support of the Romanian titular population and was seen as a foreign imposition. It was linked to Soviet pressures and Bolshevik ideas of territorial autonomy; it was not organic and an outcome of domestic political processes (Bottoni 2003; Gyula 2018).

Regarding methodology, a qualitative research approach allows the researcher to be immersed in each country’s context, in the language and framing of the claims, and takes advantage of the richness and depth of data to assemble an analytically rich and coherent account. Two types of primary data were used to uncover in detail how autonomy claims unfold: policy documents and elite interviews.

Policy documents of a range of politically active Hungarian minority actors were examined. These included election manifestos, autonomy plans, and party statements. These documents were found either on political party or research websites, through email exchanges with staff or representatives of political organizations, in books or hard copies collected in the archives or visits to political organizations’ offices. Elite interviews also pinpointed the relevant documents and enabled access to some election manifestos and reports not available online. I included material from the main Hungarian political party RMDSZ (Romániai Magyar Demokrata Szövetség, Democratic Alliance of Hungarians), its competitors MPP (Magyar Polgári Párt, Hungarian Civic Party) formed in 2008 and EMNP (Erdélyi Magyar Néppárt, Hungarian’s People Party of Transylvania) formed in 2012. I also analyzed material from two major autonomy spin-off organizations, the EMNT (Erdélyi Magyar Nemzeti Tanács, Hungarian National Council of Transylvania) and SZNT (Székely Nemzeti Tanács, Sekler National Council) formed in 2003, as well as written expert autonomy plans. The SZNT and EMNT have continued to promote the cause of autonomy, with the SZNT focusing specifically on territorial autonomy of the Seklerland and the EMNT focusing on Transylvania as a whole and the needs of Hungarians for cultural autonomy. The documents collected cover the post-communist period until 2019 and provide evidence for the discourse surrounding autonomy claims and corroborates information gleaned from elite interviews.

Primary data also included over 20 semi-structured elite interviews conducted in 2017–2018.⁴ Elites were from a range of political parties, seniority positions, local and national levels, civil society activists and experts. Interviewees were deliberately chosen to not just focus on the level of national political party leaders, but also to include a broader range of politically mobilized actors to account for internal party disagreements, different viewpoints and any interaction between actors from civil society and the local and national levels. As such, this sample reached saturation and provides a fair representation of the different viewpoints in terms of the voices involved in the debate. Qualitative Content Analysis using NVivo was used for data analysis of these transcripts, chosen for its strengths of providing a systematic and reliable way for analyzing data (Schreier 2012, 5–9). I combined an inductive-deductive approach to the coding frame to best capture the empirical richness of the data and uncover the nuances behind the claiming of autonomy. These different sources allow for the tracing of the discourse around autonomy claims.

Autonomy à la carte: Hungarian minority autonomy claims in Romania

A menu of autonomy plans

The demand for autonomy has been an electoral rallying cry and shares support across Hungarian society, and is described as the ‘Holy Grail of Hungarian Transylvanian politics’ (Kiss, Toró, and Székely 2018, 138). Claims for autonomy have ebbed and flowed, with 1991–1996 and 2003–2005 being the most active years. As the main representative of the Hungarian minority, RMDSZ championed autonomy through different declarations – the 1992 Kolozsvár Declaration, 1993 Brassó Party Congress Statement, and 1995 Fourth Party Congress Statement which elaborated a three-level autonomy model. After a lull of claiming from 1996, territorial autonomy was later revived in 2003 by the splinter organization SZNT pushing forward territorial autonomy through its own plan, The Autonomy Statute for the Seklerland (2003), based on a previous 1995 plan for territorial autonomy written by József Csapó. It was tabled unsuccessfully in Parliament in 2004 and 2005 (Salat 2014, 137–138). In addition to the issue of territorial autonomy, actors such as EMNT and RMDSZ vouched for cultural autonomy through the Autonomy Package (2004) and Draft Law on National Minorities (2005), respectively. The Draft Law’s fifth chapter on Cultural Autonomy covers usage of the mother tongue, mass media, religion and culture. These plans formed part of the explicit claiming strategy of different Hungarian actors; however, without any tangible result.⁵

Autonomy claiming picks up again after 2014 and territorial autonomy gains traction when RMDSZ releases its own first extensive plan for the Seklerland, The Autonomy Statute for the Seklerland (RMDSZ 2014). The RMDSZ Plan is much critiqued and different experts agree that it was not technically well-done and was mainly put together to out-compete the smaller pro-autonomist organizations. However, by having the Statute, RMDSZ no longer has a concrete territorial autonomy plan missing from its repertoire. Until 2019, the Plan had not yet been tabled in Parliament for, as RMDSZ MP Árpád Márton and main author of the plan argued, the opportune moment was lacking (Interview, 2018). By contrast, the SZNT’s own Autonomy Statute was tabled again (unsuccessfully) in 2017 and 2019. The 2017 instance was tabled by MPP representative József Kulcsár-Terza, to the consternation of RMDSZ MPs. The plan was rejected in May 2018 by the Senate (Maszol.ro 2018). Kulcsár again tabled the plan in December 2019, alongside MPP President and MP Zsolt Biró, this time with the support of RMDSZ at the vote (Kovács 2019).

Territorial autonomy is not the only form of autonomy on the agenda in the post-2014 period. RMDSZ’s 2005 Draft Minority Rights Law was accepted as part of the governmental programme in 2005 but was not passed into law by Parliament, and until 2017 was stalled in different committees. In June 2017, RMDSZ slightly modifies it, particularly the Chapter 5 provision of ‘autonomy councils’ – Hungarian-representative bodies – with veto rights over questions of education, culture, media and religion are renamed to remove the instinctive negative reaction to the ‘autonomy’ word. In June 2017, when the votes of RMDSZ were needed in a crunch vote of no confidence (ironically so the present coalition government could vote itself out of government) the coalition government agreed to pass RMDSZ’s cultural autonomy chapter in Parliament the next day. However, when the news leaked out to the media that evening, the reaction by the Romanian press was too strong to pass it (Balogh 2017; Maszol.ro 2017; Transindex.ro 2017). Therefore, after 2014, claims to territorial autonomy are supported by the main Hungarian political players, alongside claims to cultural autonomy, with differences in preferences in when and how to table these plans in Parliament. The outcomes of the claims were unsuccessful given Romanian reticence and negative reactions to ‘autonomy’.⁶

Expanding the autonomy menu of claims through word-play

As found across elite interviews and policy documents, through a phenomenon of word-play, Hungarian politicians have responded to the constraints of Romanian reticence for supporting autonomy by using different terms when claiming ‘autonomy’ in order to make it more palatable to their ethnic Romanian counterparts. The subsequent word-play that unfolds incorporates the usage of a fuller range of concepts, which also has further complications linked to translation and the historical connotations of the alternative terms. Terms such as self-determination (önrendelkezés), decentralization (decentralizáció), regionalism (regionalizmus), and self-government (önkormányzatiság) make their way into the different vocabulary used for claiming autonomy. Whereas regionalism is a favoured term across actors, other terms and their preferences are actor-specific, to be detailed below. Importantly, to elites, and unlike differentiations in the scholarly literature, these terms are interchangeable. Table 2 provides an overview of the preferred terminology used by minority actors.

Table 2. Preferred word-play discourse by Hungarian minority actors 2014 onwards.

Actor	Preferred terminology	Dominant national claiming strategy
RMDSZ	Autonomy, regionalism, decentralization	Modern autonomist
MPP	Autonomy, regionalism	MP dependent
EMNP/EMNT	Autonomy, regionalism, inner self-determination, federalism	Historic autonomist
SZNT	Autonomy, regionalism, inner self-determination	Historic autonomist

The term önrendelkezés (self-determination), or belső-önrendelkezés (inner self-determination) is used often by actors – mainly SZNT and EMNT/EMNP – when demanding autonomy (and is autodeterminarea in Romanian). The term ön means self, and rendel refers to the verb rendelkezni and denotes possession, authority and provision. Inner self-determination as a term is linked to the early years of RMDSZ when it claimed inner self-determination in its 1993 Draft Law on National Minorities and Autonomous Communities and 1993 Brassó Congress statement (RMDSZ 2000; RMDSZ kongresszus 2000). SZNT, EMNT and EMNP make sure to qualify the term to ‘inner’ self-determination, as found in EMNP’s statement on historical regions (EMNP 2013) and EMNT’s Szatmár Statement (2013). The SZNT’s Autonomy Statute for the Seklerland (2003) also mentions inner self-determination in its Preamble. On the other hand, for RMDSZ, using ‘self-determination’ as a term is less favourable and may not quell Romanian doubts for the desire of for independence given its association to American President Woodrow Wilson and Romania’s unification after World War I (Interview Kelemen, 2018).

There are efforts to focus on decentralization as well as on regions and regionalization. These terms impact all of Romania and do not only affect the Sekerland. Regarding decentralization (decentralizáció or descentralizare in Hungarian and Romanian, respectively), the idea is to give more powers – such as fiscal – to the local level and thus provide Hungarians more control over their own affairs. RMDSZ President Hunor Kelemen prefers using this term and argues more effort should be put into pushing for decentralization (Interview, 2018). RMDSZ has consistently pushed for decentralization reforms and reforms to local administration and education. Such reforms took place through the 2001 Law on Public Administration, which set the threshold for minority language provision in public administration at 20% and the 2006 Decentralization Act which gave more power to the local level over finances, education and public health (Profiroiu, Profiroui, and Szabo 2017). Decentralization and administrative reform also have been policies on the agenda of Romanian parties to varying extents (Benedek and Bajtalan 2015). At the same time, RMDSZ, is also wary of re-drawing administrative-territorial units so as not to disadvantage the Hungarian community. The current the status quo of 41 administrative counties includes counties where Hungarians form a majority in Harghita and Covasna and a sizeable majority in others like Szatmár (34.7%) (Csata and Marácz 2018).

In terms of regionalism (regionalizmus or regionalismul, in Hungarian and Romanian, respectively), all Hungarian political actors use the idea of regions in their party platforms, albeit slightly differently (SZNT 2003; Magyar Polgári Párt 2008; EMNP 2013; RMDSZ 2016). SZNT especially focuses on the particular needs of asymmetrical regionalism for the Hungarian community, making references to the past and the historical identity of the Seklers and their historical desire for autonomy. On the other hand, RMDSZ has its own plan for regions for all of Romania and does not only focus on the Hungarian population. RMDSZ prefers not to make references to the past and rather to push forward policy reforms for Romania as a whole. RMDSZ MP Erika Benkő from the Seklerland illustrates how speaking in terms of ‘modern regionalism’ is a better way to approach the topic of autonomy,

… if you say the autonomy of the Seklerland, no one knows what it is … You can say ‘modern regionalism’ means this. And then you say what it means, and you leave out all the nationalistic discourse from it.

Moreover, the hopes to tie regional reforms to the establishment of the eight EU Development Regions have been unmet. Unlike many Western European countries, the regions do not take into account ethnic minority territorial concentrations and Eastern European countries remain highly centralized (Moore 2008). These regions are mainly used for statistical purposes and do not have actual administrative competencies, nor do they have financial and legislative competencies (Benedek and Bajtalan 2015, 26).

Another term used occasionally in the discourse is önkormányzatiság, or self-government. Kormány means government and the term itself in Hungarian refers to governing oneself, or self-government. According to a previous MPP leader, self-government allows the community to decide its own affairs, which is essentially what autonomy means. The issue with this term is the translation into Romanian. Local self-government (helyi önkormányzatiság) refers to the powers of the local body in charge of administering to the local settlement or area. Following from the French administrative system, the terminology in Romanian is ‘local council’ (consiliul local) or Mayor’s office. However, when a Hungarian uses ‘önkormányzatiság’, the Romanian translation becomes ‘autoguvernare’ or self-government, which has a significantly different connotation evoking ideas of secession. The term is therefore problematic and is generally not used. This is in direct contrast – for example – to the Hungarian discourse in Slovakia which demonstrates an almost perfect substitution of autonomy claims with self-government claims (Tokár 2014; Divald 2021).

The substitution for the above-mentioned words for claiming autonomy is significant because according to elites, the different terminology essentially mean the same thing, unlike conceptual differentiations (Table 1). This is a view taken across the different political actors, from EMNP to MPP to RMDSZ at the regional, national and European levels. Previous MPP President explains that in response to the negative reactions to the term autonomy, the appropriate strategy is:

… maybe we shouldn’t even speak about autonomy so let’s talk about self-government, let’s talk about decentralization and let’s talk about self-determination.

Ex-EMNP official Vilmos Portik also argues that the best future direction for tangible change ‘would be if we would forget the term autonomy and find another legal phrase which isn’t as negatively seen by Romanian society’.

What emerges, therefore, is the discourse surrounding autonomy does not just limit itself to explicit claims but also to a creative word-play tactic. This word-play uses alternative arrangements such as decentralization, self-governance and self-determination which are understood to be interchangeable from the perspective of elites making the claims. Moreover, different actors have their own preference of some terms over others: inner self-determination is preferred by SZNT whereas decentralization is embraced more by RMDSZ. The link of any of these terms to the desire to secede is also absent, unlike much of the research discussed above which often joins the concepts together.

Historic and modern autonomists

In the post-2014 period, there is no embarrassment or holding back of claiming ‘autonomy’ in party platforms and every political actor wants to show that it is an autonomist. Indeed, rather than outbidding to more extreme demands, the question of autonomy has turned into one of valence competition, where political elites compete within the same policy space over who is the ‘true’ autonomist (Kiss, Toró, and Székely 2018). However, the word-play technique and the choice of if and when to make use of different autonomy plans showcases a distinction in strategy between ‘modern autonomists’ and ‘historic autonomists’. The former is mainly comprised of RMDSZ actors and the latter of elites from SZNT, EMNP and some MPP members.

The historic autonomists espouse a ‘big steps’ claiming approach through explicitly claiming autonomy even if there is no chance of success and appealing to the historical Seklerland and its lost autonomy. Regarding the latter, those following the strong claim logic share the view that autonomy is not ‘granted’ to the Sekler community but is rather a natural right due to its long history and presence in the area. This is seen, for example, in the SZNT publication by Jenő Szász (2011) with the title ‘God made the Seklerland for autonomy’. Actors such as MPP politicians (MP József Kulcsár), pro-autonomist politicians in 2004 and 2005, as well as the SZNT see strong claims to autonomy as the way to go forward. Therefore, tabling the SZNT proposal in the Romanian parliament is a way to remind the Romanians of the issue and force them to look at the autonomy plan and give opinions on it (Interview Izsák, 2018). Claiming autonomy explicitly in Parliament has more symbolic meaning than practical strategic thinking. For example, for the 2017 and 2019 tabling of the SZNT Autonomy Statute for the Seklerland, MPP representative Kulcsár says:

We know that Seklerland autonomy will not happen in the near future, but we consider it important to remind the Romanians and Europe of what we would like to have. (Kovács 2019)

Historic autonomists seek symbolic recognition through their claims to autonomy (linking to Basta (2017)) but they also use symbols to cultivate the identity of the Sekler people. The SZNT channels historical references through modern symbols such as the Sekler national anthem – only coming to the fore in 2009 – and the Sekler flag which the SZNT adopted in 2003. It evokes these symbols in a successful effort of regional branding, but which has not tied to consistent mass mobilization, confirmed across interviewees of different political persuasions.

Such strong explicit claims with historical and symbolic references stand in contrast to the bargaining strategy of modern autonomists. Mostly found within RMDSZ, the strategy is one of the ‘politics of small steps’, tactical manoeuvring and a practical logic of action. With low numbers in Parliament, their claims become politically salient only when their votes are needed to pass a tight vote. Moreover, RMDSZ cannot rely on other national minorities because they are not as well organized politically, do not comprise a significant portion of the population and therefore do not have the same needs. This practical dimension is well illustrated through the amendment to the Cultural Autonomy Bill to not include ‘autonomy councils’ so as not to antagonize the Romanian politicians. It is also demonstrated in the 2017 June introduction of the same Bill into Parliament, which was done in return for supporting the vote of no confidence against the government (as previously detailed). Moreover, the 2014 RMDSZ Seklerland Statute departs from the current administrative system in Romania in contrast to the SZNT plan which departs from the historic Sekler seats and would be more difficult to implement (RMDSZ 2014).

Modern autonomists want to use current tools, pursue incremental reforms through a politics of small steps, and engage in decentralization reforms to push forward autonomy. As one RMDSZ MP argued, making the conversation linked to technical terms and creating strong regions resonates more with the tools of the twenty-first century. The search for such windows of opportunity is a general approach of the party. As best summarized by previous RMDSZ managing director Péter Kovács:

If we want to make a communication balloon that RMDSZ is fighting for autonomy, then we can table a plan at any point, and it will be rejected … If we want even a slight chance, then we need to wait and see when it is strategically best to do so, as well as when constitutional amendments are on the table … to try to amend it so that it leaves space for our plan.

Therefore, symbolic strong claims are seen as bad strategy to RMDSZ and rather, explicit autonomy claiming is not the solution but rather a tactical pursuit.

A discursive menu of options

Autonomy is seen as an institutional solution to ethnic diversity, championed by ethnic minorities as well as by some conflict studies scholars as a solution in post-conflict countries (Gurr 1993a; Bermeo 2002; Saideman 2002). This article started with the quest to understand how non-secessionist and non-violent claims to autonomy unfold in the case of the Hungarians of Romania. Policy documents and elite interviews were the primary sources of data, including a range of political actors, and more emphasis was placed on the under-researched 2014–2019 time period.

With a strong history of autonomy for Transylvania – and the Seklerland – the desirability of it by the Hungarian population is unsurprising. From 2014 onwards, all Hungarian minority actors are claiming territorial autonomy in Romania, albeit out of symbolic or tactical reasons. Faced with constraints of a sceptical and centralized host-state towards granting autonomy, minority actors do not just make explicit claims to autonomy, but also engage in a creative discursive strategy of word-play. Claims to decentralization, regionalization, and inner self-determination also a part of the discourse for demanding autonomy.

This article has therefore challenged the ethnic outbidding narrative by showing how a range of political actors are operating under valence competition, where the electorate agrees on the desirability of autonomy and parties compete to be the most credible actor – rather than outbid themselves to even more extreme demands such as secession (Székely, 2014; Kiss, Toró, and Székely 2018). Moreover, the article has incorporated the claims to cultural autonomy which has not been adequately covered, and has provided a counter-balance to the focus on secessionist claims in much of the literature. The means of autonomy claiming are non-violent, and despite previously having been autonomous during the communist and Habsburg periods, lost autonomy does not lead to demands for secession (Siroky and Cuffe 2015).

The study of the creative usage of discourse by elites to further their claims to autonomy can be extended to other ethnic minorities – whether in the CEE region or elsewhere. Moreover, given the findings on the word-play technique, it could be worthwhile to examine how secessionist claims in Western democracies may operate within a creative discursive framework by different secessionist actors to make their aims more palatable. A more nuanced understanding of the discourse surrounding claims provides a strong foundation for engaging in the analysis of ethnic politics and the accommodation of ethnic minorities.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Which countries fall into this region is much debated. For my purposes, I am including the non-Soviet post-communist countries which have either joined the EU or are part of the former-Yugoslavia. They are: Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo (although not fully recognized), Bosnia-Herzegovina, and North Macedonia. The lack of territorial arrangements is with the exception of countries emerging from post-conflict Yugoslavia, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia (Dembinska, Máracz, and Tonk 2014).

2 The biggest mass rally for autonomy was in March 2013, organized by SZNT (Sekler National Council, Székely Nemzeti Tanács). However, even the leader of the SZNT commented that it was elite led, that they had to take people to the streets. Since then, mass mobilization has not reached similar levels, and elite claims are the main avenue of autonomy claiming.

3 Note that the interviews allowed for the word-play to be uncovered, but that claims and the usage of the different terms occur in both Hungarian and Romanian.

4 See online appendix.

5 Others have written extensively on these autonomy claims and plans (Bakk 2004; Eplényi 2006; Bochsler and Szöcsik 2013b; Székely, 2014).

6 In addition to the political reactions detailed, from 2016 survey evidence, 14% of ethnic Romanians accepted granting territorial autonomy to Hungarians, only slightly higher than the 12% who answered affirmatively in 2014 (Kiss, Toró, and Székely 2018, 89).