Are members of the Hungarian minority in Romania part of the Romanian political community?

Abstract

The history of the Romanian-Hungarian relations is burned by a series of failures, as far as attempts aiming to provide patterns of integration of the Hungarian minority are concerned. These failures, together with the tradition of institutionalized mistrust of the Romanian authorities represented a difficult legacy for the post-1989 political projects and ethno-political strategies on both sides. Since 1989, the situation of the Hungarian minority in Romania has improved significantly in many concerns. In spite of the undeniable achievements, the conflicting interests of the two communities could not be reconciled, and the options of the Romanians and Hungarians, as far as the issue of the integration is concerned, continue to differ in essential terms. The dominant patterns of public opinion yield conflicting identity structures and competing ethno-political strategies, which raise the intriguing question: on what grounds can Hungarians in Romania be considered as part of the Romanian political community? The paper tries to offer an answer to this question by comparing the dominant trends in conceptualizing the term political community with recent research results which bare, according to the author, the evidence of those identity structures and ethno-political strategies which divide the Romanian political community along ethnic fault-lines. The paper reaches the conclusion that if we bare in mind, following Elizabeth Frazer, the "thin" interpretation of the concept, the Romanian political community qualifies without doubts. However, if we consider the "thick" version of the term's prevailing significance, the entirety of the Romanian citizens, which includes the members of the Hungarian minority, falls short of the criteria of the ideal political community for several reasons.