Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe (Jul 2013)
Working without Sanctions: Factors Contributing to the (Relative) Effectiveness of the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities
Abstract
This article addresses the question of whether and to what degree an instrument of preventive diplomacy that does not have any coercive measures at its disposal, such as the High Commissioner on National Minorities (HCNM) of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), can become "effective". The paper explores key terms such as "national minority" and "preventive diplomacy" and examines the way in which these terms were conceptualized by the HCNM itself. Further on, it elaborates what constitutes effectiveness in an international institution such as the HCNM. The research design focuses first on the triangular primary conflict constellation among a national minority, a nationalizing State and a kin-state as the independent variable and its impact on the dependent variable, the level of escalation. In a second step, the focus is on the efforts of the HCNM as the intervening variable. Three types of HCNM effectiveness are conceptualized: operational, substantive and normative. Subsequently, the applicability of this research instrument is shown through the example of three groups of national minorities: three cases of Russian-speaking minorities (in Estonia, Latvia and Ukraine), one case of a Hungarian minority (in Romania), and another of an Albanian minority (in Macedona). the empirical data on these cases, which cover the period from 1993 to 2001, are taken from a research project on the effectiveness of the HCNM, which the author directed from 1999 to 2002. The purpose is not to carry out full-fledged country studies, but to demonstrate what kind of effectiveness the HCNM can achieve under which conditions, and where the limits of this effectiveness lie.
