| Recent scholarly attention on the progress and measurement of democratic consolidation in Central and Eastern Europe has largely failed to assess the inclusion of ethnic minorities. For centuries, Central and Eastern European ethnic minorities have languished at the bottom of social, economic, and political hierarchies, a situation which poses a threat to the consolidation of democratic regimes.;Almost two decades after the series of democratic transitions and the gloomy forecast of their consolidation, most if not all, East and Central European democracies can be regarded as consolidated if we judge their process by the standard of procedural democracy, but scholars continue to discuss their chances and conditions for successful consolidation into the future. For some scholars, the greatest threat to democracy is not the overthrow of governments via military coup, or some other hostile measures; rather, the greatest threat is in the gradual erosion or slow death of democracy through the whittling away of civil liberties and political rights. Nowhere is this erosion more manifest than in the attempts to whittle away the rights of the large ethnic minority communities within the borders of CEE countries. For example, in Bulgaria, the Roma minority is a main concern in debates over ethnic rights; the Hungarian minority in Romania has fought constitutional battles over their language and cultural rights and in all of CEE and perhaps all European countries, the dilemmas of the Roma have taken main stage in ethnic and human rights discussions.;This dissertation poses the question whether inclusion (protection of their rights) of marginalized national and ethnic minorities in transitional economies of the former Soviet blocks helps, harms, or has no impact on democratic consolidation and economic growth. Using data from the Minority at Risk Database (MAR) to create ethnic minority inclusion variables allows me to compare the progress towards democratic consolidation and economic growth in the subject countries. Although the results of the quantitative study are mixed, the case studies in this dissertation suggest that inclusion of ethnic minorities contributes to social cohesion which paves the way for political and economic development that are crucial for democratic consolidation. |
