Contents

Editorial

FEDERALISM AND DEVOLUTION

Stéphane Pierré-Caps

Personal federalism

The multicultural Danubian space has resulted in a counterpart to the nation-state, namely the multicultural state, where it is the principle of personal autonomy that prevails, and following from it, ethnic allegiance is a matter of personal choice. In the Dualist Monarchy a nation was a legal entity, a buffer zone between state and individual, dissociating territory from the population inhabiting it and escaping the logic of majority.

Anton A. Bebler

The Second Collapse of Yougoslavia and Federalism8

Federalism, in spite of many failed federations, proves to be the golden mean between secession and centralism — both inexhaustible generators of tensions and instability. Based on centralist, almost colonialist principles, where Serbs were privileged over all other ethnics, Yougoslavia’s second collapse should come as no surprise considering the inherent pluralist potential of any democratization process and its incompatibility with social engineering.

Gusztáv Molnár

The Transylvanian Issue2

A debate on and at the same time a challenge to Huntington’s grand geopolitics, the study resorts to the concept of internal geopolitics in demonstrating that Transylvania’s multicultural heritage is a potential for European integration which Romania has so far made little, if any, use of; on the other hand, by refusing its most dynamic and politically civilized province any power to decide for itself, Romania is implicitly refusing to enter Europe, and at the same it is dragging  the province into isolation and  loss of whatever resources it has been left after decades of overcentralized government.

Gabriel Andreescu

From the “Transylvanian Issue” to the “European Issue”

Considering both the international and the internal present political configuration, devolution does not seem to be an effective settlement of the relation between the Hungarian minority and the Romanian majority in Transylvania. This could be achieved through further granting Hungarian minority's claims, its political leaders seeming bent on favouring legal solutions to their demands.

Antonela Capelle-Pogăcean

The Transylvanian Issue: Territoriality and Ethnicity

Transylvania being a multicultural region, devolutionary strategies are worthwhile only in so far regional identity will prevail over ethnic identity; otherwise a high degree of autonomy will only pass on ethnic tensions — however artificial — from the central level down to the regional one. The federalization of Europe, now under way, could provide the background necessary to this shift of  Transylvanians’ self-identification.

Victor Neumann

Decentralisation or Recentralisation in Danubian Europe.

The Case of Romania

Unlike other former provinces of the Dualist Monarchy — Bohemia or Moravia for inastance — which succeeded in becoming catalysts for the country they are parts of, Transylvania has been completely subordinated to and marginalised by a centre lagging behind. Nevertheless, the province still retains its multicultural specificity and it could turn into a gateway to Europe, if the political elites in Bucharest allowed for Transylvania's alterity to show and work.

ESSAY

Liviu Andreescu

The National Tradition

Setting out by deploring the lack of profesionalism in the debate on national issue in the Romanian media and academic circles, the study proposes a many-angled view on tradition: a definition of the concept, its relation to conservative political philosophy, to history, and to present day, all these through a postmodern perspective intent on deconstruction not for itself, but for a constant reconstruction of tradition under the sign of pluralism, of a reasonable, not a rational logic. Admitting its status of cultural construct, and not of a given thing, tradition is not lost, but, on the contrary, its evolution is assumed by those who mould it.

TRANSYLVANIAN CONVERGENCIES

Mihály Spielmann-Sebestyén

A Man from Tîrgu-Mureş making history: Antalffy Endre

The study offers a new insight on the civic contribution of an outstanding turn-of-the-century Transylvanian personality: Endre Antalffy. A remarkable orientalist, and a historian himself, he has so far been ignored by both Romanian and Hungarian historiography. He set an example of how an intelectual can take a political stand and how he can influence the course of history: in the midst of the 1918 events, when the province was integrated to Romania, and when the potential of ethnic conflict was at its highest, Antalffy managed to prevent such a conflict, being thus one of the few to whom the formula “the scholars’ treason” does not apply.

FACES OF EUROPE

Pau Puig i Scotoni

The Catalan Model of National Survival, Language Policy

and Internal Cohesion

Devolution brings about the power and freedom of action a region needs in order to contribute loyally and effectively to the progress of the state to which it is a part.

But to obtain devolution, a region must first “civilize its adversary”, it must  give evidence it has rennounced ideas of secession while affirming firmly its own identity as well as the usefulness of this very identity for  the adversay.

ECUMENICA

Tamás Földesi

The Main Problems of Religious Freedom in Eastern Europe

Churches and religions having been suppressed for four decades, the building of the legal framework in Eastern Europe is now facing two possible models: to envisage either the restoration of the “natural” state of affairs, and deny any state interference with church affairs, or  compensatory provisions to make up for the time when religious freedom was severely prejudiced. If the former provides for political correctness in placing religion among other ideologies, the latter which provides state support for religions, seems equally justified when considering the historical context.

REVIEWS

Die Deportation von Siebenbürger Sachsen in die Sowietunion, 1945-1949, Georg Weber, Renate Weber-Schlenther, Armin Nassehi,Oliver Sill, Georg Kneer

Tagebuch. Aufzeichnungen von 1933 bis 1949, Viktor Glondys