A politikai közösség kérdése a többség-kisebbség viszonyának a nézőpontjából I.
The Political Community from the Perspective of the Majority-Minority I.

Summary/Abstract: The successive attempts of the Hungarian minority’s elite to seek integration into the Romanian state, first between the two World Wars and then after 1945, under the communist rule, have led subsequently to two equally unfavorable conclusions: first, the way in which the leaders of the community think about the terms of the integration is in conflict with the interests of the Romanian majority, and, second, the perseverance of the Hungarian minority to seek integration on its own terms bred the mistrust of the Romanian authorities. Though the deeprooted tradition of the institutionalized mistrust proved to be a difficult legacy, since 1989 the situation of the Hungarian minority in Romania has improved 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 integration is concerned, continue to differ in essential terms. The dominant patterns of public opinionreflect conflicting identity structures and competing ethnopolitical strategies, raising the intriguing question whether Hungarians in Romania can be considered at all part of the Romanian political community. Seeking an answer to this question, the first part of the paper explores the way in which the term political community is conceptualized in the recent literature, paying special atention to the means by which the stability and coherence of a political community can be safeguarded in cases when it is internally divided along ethnic or linguistic fault-lines.

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