Sticky shifts: Radical right impact on policies regarding ethnic minority rights in Eastern Europe

Although radical right parties have been around in most European countries for several decades, not only in parliament but also in manifold cases of coalition governments, findings about the radical right’s policy impact in Europe remain controversial (see contributions by R. Heinisch, M. Schain, T. Akkerman, M. Zobel and many others). Regarding Eastern Europe, only a few case studies explore the matter even though signs of such effects, if they occurred, were more visible here than in Western Europe as mainstream parties of the right and also the left were more willing to cooperate with radical right parties and embrace their agenda. The most obvious policy area impacted in the region has been the rights and treatment of ethnic and national minorities. The present paper takes a close look at six country cases in Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Slovakia; Hungary, Poland; the Czech Republic and Estonia) to explore the impact of radical right parties on ethnic and national minorities’ rights, materializing as policy shifts on the national level. Building on the approach of an earlier study by the authors on the radical right’s impact on mainstream parties’ positions on ethnic and national minorities in the region (Minkenberg et al. in International Political Science Review 42(5), 2021), the paper applies an interaction model between radical right and mainstream parties and develops it further to study policy-level developments. In particular, by reviewing archival material, the authors intend to assess legislative changes and executive action between 2000 and 2016 with regard to their putative results in restricting minority rights. The authors argue that right-ward shifts in the area of minority rights are more likely to occur if mainstream parties pursue a strategy of positive engagement toward the radical right (e.g. collaboration or cooptation), and do not uphold a cordon sanitaire. Once such shifts occur, restrictive measures are likely to prevail (the policy is ‘sticky’). The paper concludes with an assessment of how such changes impact the countries’ democratic quality.