Interculturality and ethnodiversity in post-comunist Romania

Abstract

The forms of inclusion required by the goal of accommodating ethno-diversity, although varied, often reproduce situations of democratic deficit generated by the assimilating character of implemented policies. Despite the dissolution of the communist regime and the building of a new Romania under the rule of law, the political and legal initiatives that followed failed the nationalist ideology of decision-makers. In the context of interethnic relations, the Hungarians in Romania have constituted themselves in the most vocal and active actor, while equally fuelling attitudinal and behavioural expressions from the dominant culture, most fierce expressions, both negative and positive (the latter encountered most often among Romanian intellectuals). The political and societal reconstruction project undertaken by the Romanian state has finally succeeded to introduce legislative instruments and to implement an institutional mechanism capable of regulating the situation of minorities in Romania; but their effectiveness has proven to be far from what it was envisaged).