The Use of Mother Tongue in Public Administration : A Case Study of Serbia

Abstract

Citizens are primarily in contact with the state through public administration, and due to the changing and expanding role of the state, this contact is becoming more and more frequent and complex. An important element of the regulation of the citizen–state relationship is the definition of the language of their communication, respecting, on the one hand, the freedom of language use and the prohibition of discrimination, and on the other hand, the identity of the state-forming nation and the principle of efficiency. Thanks to its decades-long tradition of multilingual public administration, Serbia ensures relatively broad rights to use mother tongue before public administration bodies. However, practice does not catch up with the law. The paper’s goal is to present the discrepancies between the de iure and de facto situation in the field of official language use in Serbia’s multilevel public administration, and to suggest a paradigm shift for further improvement.

Keywords

• language rights
• public administration
• national minority
• serbia