Evaluating the Minority Rights Regime in the Context of European Enlargement.

Safia Swimelar University of the South EU Enlargement and Minority Rights: Hegemony and Norm Socialization One aspect of the European Union enlargement process has been the EU’s promotion of minority rights within EU candidate countries in Central and East Europe (CEE). This paper examines the dual role of power and ideology (as norms and ideas) in the diffusion and socialization process of minority rights norms, primarily in Europe, but also as a general phenomenon. Using the discourse of international norms and human rights, the West has been persuading the East to adopt minority rights standards, some that even the West has yet to adopt. Making minority rights a condition for future EU membership illustrates the power that West European states have over their Eastern neighbors that will most likely continue once CEE states become members themselves starting in 2004. But the recent events that pitted some CEE states against West European states (and on the side of the United States) may affect the future of Western influence upon the East. As international relations scholars interested in the role of norms and ideas in the international system and in the promotion of values such as human rights, we tend to assume that EU conditionality and socialization are positive processes. We also often assume that minority rights standards in the East are relatively weak, while in the West they are relatively strong, implying that the West is the primary norm pusher and the East the norm taker. However, it can be argued that the EU’s support for minority rights is weak, contradictory, and primarily instrumental. The EU may be using the ideology of human and minority rights to solidify its hegemony over Central and East Europe. Seeing the norm diffusion process as unidirectional from West to East may not reflect reality where East European scholars and policymakers often have more practical solutions to inter-ethnic conflicts than their West European and/or American counterparts. Additionally, most scholars, including myself, have examined the diffusion of international norms through a constructivist/reflectivist framework. The way that the EU accession process has played out illustrates the usefulness of this approach, but also makes clear that rationalism still carries a great deal of weight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]