ORGANIZED ETHNICITY IN EASTERN EUROPE: CHARACTERISTICS OF ETHNIC ORGANIZATIONS

Abstract

To date, there is a considerable amount of research on ethnopolitical processes in Eastern Europe, but most of them are devoted to research on individual cases or ethnic groups within the region. Of course, group patterns of ethnicity are important, but R. Brubaker, based on several Eastern European cases, proposed a model of "ethnicity without groups", where the main focus of the study is not the ethnic group itself, but specific actors - organizations representing it. Ethnic organization - an organized structure, membership in which is determined by the ethnic principle, and which claims to represent the interests of one of the ethnic groups and advocates the acquisition of preferences by this ethnic group. The purpose of this study is to collect information about all politically relevant organizations in the region. Therefore, the LexisNexis resource, a worldwide news aggregator, was used for the database. In the course of the work, all ethnic organizations mentioned in the news in the period from 2000 to 2019 were selected. In total, 203 organizations and 2052 observation units were included in the database in the “organization-year” format. Based on these variables, a subsequent analysis of organized ethnicity in the region was carried out. Based on these data, it can be noted that parties are the most common politically relevant form of mobilization of ethnic groups. According to the database, the majority of organizations in conflict (amounting to about 30% only) use the most peaceful strategies (petitions, public contestation, etc.). It was also revealed that the vast majority of ethnic organizations in Eastern Europe are national, centralized, legal. It should be noted that only 20% of them have a pronounced regional localization. It was also found that more than a quarter of ethnic organizations are represented in national and regional legislatures. Thus, in the course of creating the database, unique information on organized ethnicity in Eastern Europe was obtained and characterized.