National Minorities between Protection and Empowerment: Towards a Theory of Empowerment

It is widely assumed that national minorities can experience a transition from protection to empowerment. This is also the assumption of most normative instruments aimed at protecting national minorities. Theoretically, however, there is no coherent notion of empowerment of minorities let alone a description of the processes that lead to empowerment on the basis of minority protection schemes. Thus, there is a gap in our knowledge of both the concept and its implementation with regard to national minorities. This article seeks to begin unpacking the notion of empowerment and its relation to protection. It provides first a brief overview of the literature on national minority issues arguing that the overwhelming use of the institutional approach has prevented a subjectivist view of national minorities as actors. Next, it examines the existing definitions of empowerment to explore the actor-oriented nature of the concept. In the main section the article begins the journey towards a theory of empowerment, drawing on the work of Elisheva Sadan and a number of other scholars. It focuses on the empowerment of communities, as the aim is to examine minority group empowerment. The second half of the article seeks to connect the theory of empowerment with the notion of rights; the capability to claim rights is of vital importance here. This brings in Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum's capability theory. Finally, the article connects the theories with reality, seeking to operationalize empowerment through an analysis of the social structure of protection (European minority rights regime) and collective agency (human and social capital). In the concluding section, it is argued that the structure and agency approach provides a good tool for analysing the transition of minority actors from protection to empowerment. This article is based on a discussion paper circulated to the participants of the workshop on "National Minorities between protection and empowerment: Contemporary minority politics in Europe" held at the European Consortium for Political Research ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops in Mainz, Germany, 2013.1Keywords: empowerment; protection; action-oriented; capability theoryThe space between protection and empowerment of national minorities has not been defined adequately in the academic literature. This may be due to the fact that the protection paradigm holds a hegemonic position in policy-making. Legal instruments and social programmes are written in the mode of protection. Thus, agents of the protection of minorities are governments acting on behalf of the majority, and because governments have the agency to hold control of state power, protection becomes a top-down process. If empowerment is mentioned, it is often perceived as one side of the same coin, and at times the two concepts are used interchangeably. This would indicate that agents of empowerment are also governments acting top-down on behalf of the majority and holding the power to empower someone. How may we then perceive nuances in the relationship between the two concepts, if any? Since both concepts indicate top-down action initiated at the macro level, does this mean that the process does not involve micro-level action? Assuming that minorities are the beneficiaries of empowerment, and that empowerment and protection are provided by the same agents, how may we conceptualize a transition from protection to empowerment? Could one assume that protection is the means, while empowerment is the end? This would confirm the general assumption that a transition process from protection to empowerment takes place.However, if governments are the agents of both protection and empowerment, how are we to know that minorities actually become empowered, that the end of empowerment is achieved? How do we know whether the end of empowerment differs from the end of protection? The end of protection is usually measured quantitatively and qualitatively in the degrees of improvement of enjoyment of rights, i. …