Kevin Deegan Krause
University of Notre Dame

814 Thomas Rd.
Columbus, OH 43212-3715
(614) 424-6295
Krause.4@nd.edu
http://www.nd.edu/~kkrause
 

Prepared for presentation at
the convention of the American Political Science Association
Boston, Massachusetts
September 5, 1998

It is not uncommon in Slovakia to hear that "Slovaks are their own worst enemies." Although rarely intended as more than folk wisdom, the catchphrase offers an important insight into the dynamics of political party competition in the multi-ethnic setting of Slovakia, and perhaps in other multi-ethnic settings as well. In countries where ethnicity becomes an element of political struggle, it is tempting to focus on the most visible differences and to emphasize the struggle between ethnic groups, between majorities and minorities. The experience of Slovakia suggests that this approach can be too narrow. Just as significant as the conflict among ethnic groups may be the conflict within a particular ethnic group over what group identity means and how it should be expressed in politics. Recent work by Brubaker both reinforces these notions and provides a perspective from which to expand beyond them. Brubaker theorizes that national issues must be defined in relational terms and focuses on the phenomenon of a "triadic nexus linking the minority communities ..., the states in which they live, and their external national 'homelands'(Brubaker 1996, 56). Although more complex than the simple bi-polar framework of majority-minority relations, Brubaker's framework adds its complexity from the outside only by incorporating the role of the national homelands. It does not attempt to explore the complexity that may appear within the majority-minority relationship.

Yet it does open a space for such explorations. Brubaker acknowledges that the interactions within the nationalizing state and the national minority may be complex, and he suggests thinking about them "not in terms of a fixed policy orientation or a univocal set of policies or practices but rather in terms of a dynamically changing field of differentiated and competitive positions or stances operating by different organizations, parties, movements or individual figures within and around the state, competing to inflect state policy in a particular direction"(Brubaker 1996, 66). For the inhabitants of the nationalizing state these fields are, in less precise but more succinct terms, the stuff of everyday politics.

Given the focus of his work, Brubaker devotes more attention to the "relation between these relational fields" than he does to the fields themselves. The example of Slovakia, suggests that a closer look within those fields may not only fill out Brubaker's framework but may also point to instances in which the framework is less relevant than might be suspected. This paper steps inside two of the three fields discussed by Brubaker to look at how political parties of the 'nationalizing state' and of the 'national minority' behave with regard to national issues. It looks at the salience of particular national issues and their underlying connections and attempts to track the positions of political parties on those issues over the period from 1992 to 1998 using both the statements of the parties and the opinions of party voters. The results show that Slovakia's politics became increasingly characterized by three distinct positions on national issues and that the national issue conflicts among parties of the majority played as important a role as conflicts between majority and minority.

Identifying national issues

One of the most commonly used methods for determining the shape of political competition in democratic societies involves the analysis of political party programs (Budge and Farlie 1983). Programs are far from a perfect instrument. They tend to over-represent the perspectives of party elites regarding the importance of particular issues and to may omit whole issue areas which are not considered appropriate for a formal campaign document or which arise during the course of a campaign. Nevertheless, parties do have strong incentive to discuss those issues on which they might be able to gain political advantage. In an environment dominated by party competition--as the Slovak party system is--a complete set of party programs offers a good look at the full set of issues with some political significance.

Beginning with the set of programs issued by those parties which gained sufficient votes to win entry into parliament in 1992 and 1994 and those parties likely to gain entry in 1998,⁽¹⁾ I adopted the framework of Budge and Farlie (Budge and Farlie 1983) for content analysis based upon the sentence as the basic unit of analysis for counting the number of references to particular issues. In order to assemble the broadest possible list of issues for later analysis, I cast a broad net and included any reference to groups that could be referred to in ethnic or national terms, any broader reference to ethnicity or nationality, any reference to the statehood of Slovakia in regard to any other political unit, and any reference to relationships between inhabitants of Slovakia and non-inhabitants.⁽²⁾ During the process of counting, I subdivided references according to a pre-established list of specific issues that was based on a previous analysis of the 1994 programs (Krause 1996). When statements did not fit in one of these categories, I made a brief summary of the statement and included it in a separate list. At the end of the counting process, I created new issue areas for any issue on the residual list which had received more than five references during any given year. At the same time, I also eliminated those pre-established categories that had not proven particularly relevant and shifted the few references to the residual list. In this way, I arrived at a list of thirty-nine specific topic areas. These are listed in Table 1 in order of their overall frequency.

Since thirty-nine issues is far to many for convenient reference, it is necessary to look for a more limited number of underlying themes. From the full list, it is possible to identify at least nine distinct categories: diplomatic relationships with other countries, foreign investment, Slovakia's legal status and reputation, Slovak-Czech relationships, Slovak-Hungarian relationships, general minority issues, minorities other than Hungarians, issues of the Slovak minority in southern Slovakia, issues of Slovak national identity, and questions of national identity and nationalism in general. Although hardly a scientific breakdown--the data does not lend itself by nature to techniques such as factor analysis--these categories offer some additional clarity. Furthermore, these categories lend themselves to further regrouping on the basis of certain underlying themes. One of two major themes underlies nearly all of these categories:

? The place of Slovakia in the world. Many of the topic areas prominent in 1992 concern the degree to which the Slovak Republic should be independent of the Czechs within the Czech and Slovak Federated Republic (SFR) and a concern for Slovakia's "international subjectivity" and its image in the rest of the world. Although the 1992 elections ultimately brought a radical change in the country's state, almost identical concerns appear again in 1994 phrased in terms of the reaffirming Slovakia's independence and improving its image in the rest of the world. Concerns for independence and image continued in 1998 though more often in the context of relationships between Slovakia and the European Union or other international structures or particular countries. In each case, there existed a tension between the desire for integration and the desire for a recognition of Slovakia's newly independent status. A similar tension shaped many party statements on the question of foreign investment. While parties disagreed significantly on this issue, statements on foreign investment commonly invited such investment while placing limits on particular types of investment which might be thought to undermine the country's sovereignty if transferred to foreign hands.

? The place of Hungarians in Slovakia. The 1992 programs of the parties of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia expressed considerable concern about the rights of Hungarians within the Slovak Republic of the SFR in the areas of language, education, territorial administration and culture. In 1992 these same themes appeared only in a few of the programs of Slovak parties and only in extremely brief form and general terms. By 1994 and 1998, however, many of the Slovak programs had included their own discussion of the same themes but in a different form. On one hand, they discussed minority issues in theoretical terms; on the other hand they raised parallel concerns about the linguistic, educational, administrative and cultural status of Slovaks within "ethnically mixed" regions of Slovakia. Although these statements rarely mentioned Hungarians, the nature of the concerns leaves little doubt about the ethnic group toward whom the statements are geared. Of Slovakia's ethnic minorities, only the Hungarians exist in sufficient numbers and with sufficient concentration to raise concerns among Slovaks about language use in mixed areas, and it is almost exclusively representatives of the Hungarian minority who introduced the demands for rights in education and territorial administration that are rejected in general terms in Slovak programs.⁽³⁾

These themes incorporate all but three of the nine categories. The three others must be considered separately:

? The feelings of Slovaks toward Slovakia. This third theme appears far less frequently in programs than the two themes discussed above, but it receives strikingly regular mention in the other materials of particular parties. Although it is intertwined with the aforementioned themes, it cannot be reduced to either of them. This theme appears most prominently in the form of references to the "national pride" of Slovaks in their own country. The theme of Slovak national feelings resembles the other two themes in that it can evoke a sense of threat to national identity or national statehood, but this theme ultimately differs from the two above in that it identifies a source of concern that is located within rather than outside of the Slovak ethnic group.

? The place of non-Hungarian minorities in Slovakia. Explicit references to Romanies and to other non-Hungarian minorities require a separate categorization because the concerns related to these groups prove rather different than those related to the Hungarians. In the few references to these other groups, concerns involve social conditions and particular forms of behavior more than regulations concerning language, education, and territorial administration.

? Nationalism and national identity in general. Many of these express sentiments which relate the first three of the abovementioned themes but in ways which do not allow the themes to be readily distinguished. Others concern entirely separate themes. In general, however, these statements echo in tone and frequency the more specific statements classified in the categories listed above.

Table 2 shows the resulting classificatory scheme and the number of responses falling into each category and subcategory for 1992, 1994 and 1998. In 1992 and 1998 questions of Slovakia's place in the world receive the most emphasis while Slovak-Hungarian issues receive somewhat less attention. In 1994, both sets of issues received a similar degree of emphasis. In all three years the question of Slovak identity lagged considerably and did not even average 1% in 1998. A look at subcategories shows the disappearance of the SFR between 1992 and 1994 and a general rise in emphasis on foreign diplomatic relations. Separating the programs into Slovak and Hungarian parties shows a significant difference in the relative weight placed on particular categories. As might be expected, Hungarian parties placed consistently high emphasis on Hungarian-related and general minority issues while largely ignoring questions of the Slovak ethnic community, Slovak national identity, and even Slovakia's independence and image. By contrast, Slovak parties all but ignored Hungarian issues and focus on questions of diplomacy, independence and image. Between 1992 to 1994 the Slovak parties also show a small but potentially significant rise in general concerns involving Slovaks and minority groups, though this returns to lower levels in 1998. In general terms, the programs show the parties of the two national groups to reflect largely different concerns within the same overall categories.

Although it does not identify where parties stand on particular issues, content analysis offers initial indications that the differences on national issues within Slovakia go beyond differences between Slovaks and Hungarians. Table 3 shows party scores by categories and broader themes for 1992 through 1998. Although relatively similar in emphasis on broader themes in 1992, Slovak parties by 1994 and 1998 differed significantly in their emphasis on basic themes.⁽⁴⁾ Beyond these general statements, however, it is difficult to draw more detailed conclusions since emphasis in particular categories can show dramatic shifts from election to election even within the programs of a single party.⁽⁵⁾ Further insights can be gained only by using the results of content analysis together with other techniques. On the basis of the themes, categories and issues identified by content analysis, it is necessary to look at what parties actually say and what their supporters actually believe.

The place of Slovakia in the world

Debate about Slovakia's role in the world community of states began with questions about the possibility of Slovak independence and did not end when independence had been achieved. From relatively similar starting points, parties quickly diverged from one another in their understanding of the role of integration and investment in the development of newly-independent Slovakia. To understand these changes, it is important to look at both the party programs and the preferences of party supporters within the main issue categories of this theme.

In 1992 questions about Slovakia's place in the world depended almost exclusively on the prior resolution of the place of Slovakia within Czecho-Slovakia. Party positions on this issue ranged from a preference for the status quo--a common state consisting of two federated republics--held by the parties of the Hungarian Coalition (MK) (1992b; 1992e) and the Civic Democratic Union (ODÚ) to a preference for an "independent national state" held by the Slovak National Party (SNS) (1992c). Between these two poles existed several different intermediate positions. The Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) called for continued discussion between the two republics toward a formal agreement ensuring equality of the two republics within a common state. At the same time, KDH's program and statements by the party's chairman also suggested the possibility of a referendum on state organization and perhaps even independence at an unspecified future time (Slovenský denník 1992). The Party of the Democratic Left (SD) edged somewhat further in the direction of independence, acknowledging that "the expressed will of the majority of citizens of the Slovak Republic is to live in a common state," but also supporting the "sovereignty" of Slovakia within that state. SD called for Slovakia to pass its own constitution, demanded an increase in the powers of Slovakia within the common state, and supported the proposal of a referendum to decide on the ultimate arrangement of the state (1992a, 9-11). The Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) occupied a similar space on this issue, calling for "a qualitative change in the arrangement of the state" which included all provisions specified by SD as well as a formal "declaration of sovereignty," and "measures to gain international legal subjectivity for Slovakia"(1992d, 17-18).

When independence became a reality in 1993 the issue disappeared from party programs and other party literature. But even though no party openly questioned the achievement of independence or proposed reversing the step, party responses remained largely consistent with previous election. Two of the three Hungarian parties expressed certain doubts about the preparedness of Slovakia to assume the burdens of independence (1994b, 3; 1994d,41-42), while the Christian Democratic Movement made minimal reference to the subject. Other parties that had endorsed more separatist positions at least acknowledged the new status, as did the Spoloná Voba (SV) coalition headed by the Party of the Democratic Left (SD), or used their platforms and other electoral appeals to celebrate the creation of the new state, as did the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) (1994c, 1) and the Slovak National Party (SNS) (1995b, 1). In 1998 both SD and the Slovak Democratic Coalition (SDK)--a coalition led by KDH and the Democratic Union (DU)--acknowledged the independence of the new state and promised to work for its strengthening but offered no more detail. A similar lack of detail characterized the program of HZDS, but the introductory words by the party's leader emphasized that "our beloved Slovakia will be ours" with the "opportunity to continue to guide its own fate" (Meiar 1998). The program of SNS offered an even stronger statement. From its first sentence it makes frequent use of terms referring to independence (samostatný and nezávislý) and sovereignty (suverenity) to describe Slovakia and discuss its future.

The range of opinion which appears in party documents also appears in surveys of public opinion regarding the issue of independence. Such surveys offer an extremely useful mechanism for testing the degree to which party programs and public statements reflect more than simply the preferences of party elites. They may also provide a more continuous picture of the development of party positions over time than the intermittently appearing programs. It is however important to use survey data with care since in Slovakia as elsewhere in the post-communist world there is no opportunity for representative telephone surveys and since the resulting small sample sizes and the vagaries of in-person interviews may introduce sources of error. Whenever possible, therefore, it is useful to work with issues dealt with on more than one survey and by more than one survey firm and to standardize the responses onto a common percentage scale. In most cases the results of similar questions asked by different firms prove extremely consistent. When inconsistencies do arise, the multiplicity of surveys helps to identify outliers.

Between 1992 and 1996, three firms conducted a series of surveys in which they asked citizens of Slovakia how they would have voted if a referendum had been held in 1992 on the question of Slovakia's independence. As Figure 1 shows, the results of these varied surveys fall within a relatively narrow range--30%-45% support for an independent state--that is quite stable over time. Figure 2 separates respondents according to the party they would support in the upcoming elections and subtracts the mean score of the population from the mean score of supporters of each party. The results revealed by this process indicate that the responses of party supporters conform extremely closely to the contents of their respective party programs. Supporters of the Hungarian Coalition (MK) parties prove consistently to be the least favorably disposed toward an independent Slovakia. Above these but still marginally less disposed than the mean is a cluster of four parties: the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH), the Party of the Democratic Left (SD), the Democratic Union (DU) and the Association of Workers of Slovakia (ZRS). More disposed than average are the supporters of the Slovak National Party (SNS) and the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS). SNS supporters show a consistently high support for an independent Slovakia from the earliest surveys while HZDS supporters tend to show somewhat less support, especially in the earliest surveys on which their support stands only slightly above the survey mean. With only one minor exception, the degree of support for an independent Slovakia follows the same pattern in every survey:

SNS > HZDS > (DU, KDH, SD, ZRS) > MK

This same pattern also appears on responses to questions on whether respondents would prefer--in the present tense--independent Slovak statehood to other alternatives. Responses here differ from the retrospective question only in that they show ZRS supporters to express an above-average desire for independent statehood after mid-1995.

A related set of topic areas identified in the party programs involved Slovakia's relationship with the world beyond the borders of Czechoslovakia. In 1992 this included a general support for international and European integration which received broad support from nearly all parties. Those parties which sought "international subjectivity" for Slovakia united that goal with "the position of Slovakia in Europe"(1992c, 1) and advocated closer integration with the European Union and other international organizations (1992d). Those parties which rejected Slovakia's international subjectivity likewise "unambiguously support" for EU membership--albeit as Czecho-Slovakia rather than as Slovakia (1992b). Nearly every party also included in its program a call for friendly relationships with neighboring states and Hungary in particular.⁽⁶⁾ By 1994, the general agreement had disappeared and parties expressed a considerably broader range of opinion. SNS in its 1995 program does not discuss membership in the European Union or NATO and instead emphasizes the need for strictly bilateral relationships. Other parties continued to make general endorsements of European integration and good relations with neighboring countries. The Hungarian parties provided explicit support for membership in the European Union and NATO and did not hesitate to point out that their support for integration related to the need for greater protection of minority rights (1994d, 38-39). In 1998 the programs of the Hungarian Coalition (SMK), the Slovak Democratic Coalition (SDK), the Party of the Democratic Left (SD), the Party of Civic Understanding (SOP), and the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) all included specific statements calling for entry into the EU at the soonest possible opportunity. SMK, SDK, and SOP also called for Slovakia's entry to NATO while SD repeated its 1994 preference for a referendum on NATO membership, a position echoed by HZDS.

A previous unsuccessful attempt at a referendum on NATO entry sheds further light on these party positions. During the campaign which preceded that referendum, SD joined the parties of the Hungarian minority and those comprising SDK in favoring Slovakia's accession to NATO. SNS and the Association of Workers of Slovakia (ZRS) opposed accession while HZDS withheld an official recommendation. Within HZDS itself there appeared to be significant difference of opinion with some party leaders strongly endorsing NATO accession and others arguing that NATO was not necessary for Slovakia and alluding to negative experiences of Soviet troops in Slovakia (Hagara 1997). For SNS and at least a portion of leaders within ZRS and HZDS, European integration had come by 1998 to represent as much a threat to Slovakia's sovereignty as a tool for its preservation. Neither programs nor party statements of other parties in Slovakia showed evidence of such beliefs in 1998.

As with the question of Slovakia's independence, the array of party positions on western integration is reflected in the beliefs of party supporters. Following the method used in the previous graphs, Figure 3 shows the mean positions of party supporters relative to the population mean on questions about the EU that were asked in separate surveys by separate firms. The first question asks about respondents' 'Trust in the EU' while the second asks whether their impressions of the EU are "positive," "negative," or "neutral." Despite their different formulations, the two questions produce nearly identical results in the case of most parties and show distinct trends. For the Slovak National Party (SNS), early positions near the population mean gave way in 1994 to a sharp increase in distrust and negative feeling toward the EU. For the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) both surveys show the same trend of increasing opposition to the EU but the surveys differ significantly in the magnitude of the change over time. Supporters of the Association of Workers of Slovakia (ZRS) in both polls show an initial antipathy toward the EU which rises gradually over time.

Among other parties there is a different set of patterns. Supporters of the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) show an initial support for the EU which drops somewhat in 1993 and 1994 and returns to much higher levels in 1995 and 1996. Hungarian party supporters show a consistently high level of support for the EU with the exception of a single survey conducted in 1995.⁽⁷⁾ Likewise, supporters of the Democratic Union show a consistently high--and growing--support. In the Party of the Democratic Left (SD), by contrast a high initial opposition to the EU dropped steadily over time until the party approached the population mean.

Almost identical patterns can be seen in Figure 4 which compares means of party supporters on questions concerning NATO, with the exception of SD, whose supporters did not grow in support of NATO in the same way that they came to support the EU. Despite the use of two different questions--the first on trust in NATO, the second on preferences regarding NATO membership--the two surveys quite consistent results. Both sets of surveys show the gradual development of two broad clusters of parties: HZDS, ZRS and SNS in increasing opposition to integration efforts and KDH, DU and the Hungarian parties in support of integration.⁽⁸⁾ On integration questions, the positions of party voters thus correspond closely to the position of their respective party programs, with the partial exception of SD and HZDS whose programs show higher regard the EU and NATO more strongly than their party supporters do.

The question of foreign investment requires a brief discussion here as well in light of its frequent mention with party programs. Like the questions of European integration, questions of foreign investment in 1992 programs evoked a relatively consistent response across party lines. In that year, all party programs except the Hungarian Christian Democratic Movement (MKDM) mentioned foreign investment as important to Slovakia's economy. Of these, all except the Hungarian Civic Party (MPP) mentioned the need to place limit on foreign investment. The Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) called for limits on the participation of foreign capital "in strategic areas"(1992d), and the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) stated its intention to "protect the interests of Slovak entrepreneurial subjects"(Slovenský denník 1992). The Party of the Democratic Left (SD) welcomed that "foreign investment which contributes to the development of enterprises" and called for "protection of domestic capital" against foreign efforts at liquidating competition (1992a). The Slovak National Party (SNS) was, by comparison, more welcoming, and noted the absolute necessity of foreign involvement and called for few limits outside the agricultural sphere.

By 1994, the relative position of SNS had changed and the introduction to its 1995 program called for "concentration of capital, the means of production, and property into the hands of national actors as a guarantee of the economic strength of Slovakia" and rejected "the sale of any wealth into the hands of anonymous transnational and cosmopolitan actors, who use their economic power for political influence"(1995b). The positions of the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) and the Party of the Democratic Left (SD), meanwhile, changed little from 1992. The program of the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) in 1994, shifted in the opposite direction from SNS and made only one unqualified statement about the importance of foreign capital. The program of the Hungarian Christian Democratic Movement (MKDM) went even further, taking direct issue with the arguments of other parties by noting that it did "not view the participation of foreign capital in the process of privatization as the selling off of the state."(1994b). This array of party positions remained largely unchanged by 1998. The Hungarian parties and the Slovak Democratic Coalition (SDK) formed by KDH and the Democratic Union (DU) continued to support foreign investment with few qualifications while SD supported foreign investment with limits and SNS declaring its orientation against Slovakia's the "economic blackmailing and maiming" of Slovakia by "international capital"(1998b). As with the integration question, HZDS by 1998 had become a difficult case to analyze since its program maintains the party's previous stance of welcoming foreign investment in specific, limited fields while statements by some party leaders suggested a rather more hostile approach. In early 1998, for example, the party's weekly newspaper, Slovensko do toho!, compared Slovakia favorably to the Czech Republic and Hungary in the field of foreign investment. Slovakia, it noted, had "learned to live without foreign 'privatization' billions" while the economies of the Czech Republic and Hungary which "found themselves 'on the tipcart'" as the result of giving imprudent degrees access to foreign investors (vach 1998). In the newspaper's next issue, HZDS parliamentary deputy Du?an Slobodník noted that his party had refused to sell "the strategic branches of our industry into the hands of foreign interests to the extent which would make possible for them to dictate to us"(Slobodník 1998). Such statements appeared in virtually every issue of Slovensko do toho! during 1997 and 1998 and suggest that the party incorporated a far more complicated set of attitudes toward foreign investment than its electoral program would suggest.

As Figure 5 shows, the attitudes of party supporters largely confirm these developments in political programs. The two sets of surveys asking whether foreign firms should have an open field of operation in our country show several important developments:

A gradual but almost unbroken shift in SD voters from relatively strong disapproval toward foreign investment toward the population mean A shift in KDH voters from marginal disapproval toward foreign investment to strong support relative to the population mean. A shift in both SNS and HZDS voters from positions near or above the population mean of support for foreign investment to positions well below the mean, with much of the change coming abruptly during and after 1994. A shift in the Hungarian parties from strong support for foreign investment toward more marginal levels of support. This trend is apparent only in the surveys by FOCUS, however, since the other surveys do not include a sufficiently large number of Hungarian party supporters to make an accurate assessment.

With the exception of the location of SNS, a survey by the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic confirms the relative positions of these parties. These relative positions bear close resemblance to those that emerged after 1994 on integration questions and those that emerged after 1992 for an independent Slovakia. The emergence of the same clusters of parties in all three categories is compounded by trends which show almost all parties moving away from the mean, causing the clusters to become increasingly coherent and increasingly far apart from one another. On questions of Slovakia's place in the world, the country's parties thus appear to have become increasingly polarized, divided between those who supported an independent Slovakia and seek to defend it from foreign interference, and those who place less emphasis on protecting Slovakia's independence from Czechs, from Europe, from foreign investors or from other outside threats.

The place of Hungarians in Slovakia

The second theme permeating national questions in Slovakia's politics concerns the relationships between the two largest ethnic groups in the country. According to the 1991 census of Slovakia, Slovaks accounted for 85.65% of the population while Hungarians accounted for 10.72%. Romany, Czechs, Rusyns, Germans, Poles, Russians and others split the remaining 3.63%. A look at the specific policies advocated by parties and their supporters reinforces the conclusions suggested by content analysis that Slovak and Hungarian parties indeed took very different positions on Hungarian related issues. Furthermore, Slovak parties differed significantly from one another on these same issues. These specific differences actually reflect three fundamentally different understandings of the relative positions of the Hungarians and Slovaks in Slovakia. Given the complex intertwining of categories under this theme, it is helpful to look first at the program statements of all parties and only then at the preferences of party supporters.

Although the Hungarian parties in Slovakia differed in emphasis and on particular provision, their programs show a high degree of internal consistency over time on most questions. From election to election, these parties consistently emphasize the closely intertwined themes of education, language and local self-administration. On the question of language, the parties called for the formal protection of existing rights to use Hungarian in all private settings and some official settings and the expansion of the right to use the language to administrative offices in areas with Hungarian populations greater than five percent or ten percent and to settings such as broadcasting and health care (1994d). In self-administration, the parties called for the creation of a regional level of self-government arranged along national lines either through direct decree (1994d, 36-37) or by allowing municipalities to choose their own regional affiliation (1994a, 4). As part of this change, the parties also sought significant decentralization of powers and resources to regions and municipalities. The educational policies endorsed by the Hungarian parties combined aspects of both the linguistic and self-administration components, proposing guarantees of Hungarian-language education at the primary and secondary levels and its expansion to the university level as well as for expansion of local control over the educational process and educational resources.

Although they occasionally argued in favor of these proposals on the basis of rights accruing to individuals, the Hungarian parties acknowledged in most cases accept that their policies fell into the more controversial category of collective rights. The 1992 program of the Hungarian Christian Democratic Movement argued that "To minorities belong in addition to basic human rights also the right to national identity and also to collective minority rights, because protection of basic human rights for national minorities does not mean sufficient protection either for an individual member of the minority or of the minority group"(1992e).

The particular collective rights claimed by the Hungarian parties--self-administration and language--involved important practical ramifications. In the administrative sphere, the acknowledgment of collective rights would have involved a pattern of rough proportionality between Slovak and Hungarian groups at the regional political level. Members of the respective ethnic groups would control the state resources in those regions and localities where their group comprised a majority. In some areas, Hungarians would find still themselves in the minority while in other areas Slovaks would become the minority group. A detailed proposal for territorial arrangement made by Coexistence (ESWS) in 1994 would have not only separated the country into majority Slovak regions and a majority Hungarian region but also would have maintained parity in the percentage of each population that would be forced to live as a minority within regions dominated by the other ethnic group. Calculations from the population statistics included in the ESWS plan show that seven percent of the Slovak ethnic population would live within Hungarian dominated regions while ten percent of the Hungarian ethnic population would live within Slovak dominated regions (Krause 1996). In the sphere of language, members of each group could have expected to receive education from state schools and conduct business with the state administration in their native tongue. Although this would not have eliminated linguistic imbalance in a country where most Hungarians speak Slovak and most Slovaks do not speak Hungarian, it would have at least imposed balance in official settings.

In short, the Hungarian parties' demands in their strongest form sought a level of collective benefits as equal as possible to the level enjoyed by Slovaks merely by virtue of their status as the majority population within the Slovak Republic. Hungarian political representatives did not hide this goal. In response to statements by Slovak political leaders proclaiming Slovaks as the ?tátotvorný národ--the "state-forming" people ⁽⁹⁾--the 1994 program of the Hungarian Christian Democratic Movement (MKDM) argues in favor of a more inclusive definition: "The Hungarian population living in Slovakia has matured to the level where the Slovak Republic must consider its members and the whole ethnic group as a state-forming ?tátotvorný element"(1994b, 22). A 1997 statement by ESWS chairman Miklos Duray offered a similar account, one which emphasized the role played by traditions of Hungarian statehood in shaping how Hungarians see themselves within Slovakia. "The Hungarian community is aware that they live in their ancient homeland," Duray noted. Hungarians in Slovakia "are socially and politically well organized and do not portray themselves as a national minority"(Duray 1997).

While Hungarian parties considered their ethnic group to be a ?tátotvorný element in equality with the Slovak group rather than a minority, they did not appear to believe that any other ethnic groups belonged in the same category. The collective rights claimed by Hungarian parties do not appear designed to apply to other minority groups. The territorial administration plan proposed by Coexistence (ESWS) makes provisions for a Hungarian "language island" but does not discuss the possibility for Romany, Czech or Rusyn language islands. The party's education plan notes that members of Hungarian national society "have the right to gain general and specialized education under the same conditions as members of the Slovak nationality" including "the right to education in one's native language at every level of schooling from primary school to university"(1994d, 33), but does not address the practical issues involved in extending that right to all other minority groups. Although they show signs of sympathizing with other minority groups in Slovakia, the Hungarian parties seek equality of collective benefits primarily for their own group

Where Hungarians would have drawn the line of ?tátotvorný nations at two, representative of certain Slovak parties dear the line firmly at one. Especially beginning in 1994, the Slovak National Party (SNS) and the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) demonstrated an understanding of the relationship between Slovaks and Hungarians that reflected strict adherence the ?tátotvorný idea. The programs of both SNS and HZDS provide evidence of a significant change in outlook toward Slovakia's Hungarian minority between 1992 and 1994. The 1992 programs of both parties offered extremely limited treatment of nationality issues within Slovakia. The program of HZDS made brief references to the need for Slovak as the state language, and addressed the concerns of Slovak enclaves in "areas of other-national minorities"(1992d, 17) and Slovaks living in states with significant minority populations. At the same time, the document promised respect and support for national minority groups and promises to uphold Slovakia's international agreements regarding them. The program of SNS made even fewer references to minority issues, referring on only three occasions to the need for an appropriate language law and improved territorial organization and likewise promising support for minority culture.

Those promises of support continued in 1994 and 1998, but they were accompanied by a series of other considerations which show a sharp change in the tone used toward Hungarian population. On the question of education, both parties suggested changes to make schools more responsive to the needs of the new Slovak state. For HZDS these changes included preparing all secondary school students to take their school-leaving exams in the Slovak language and ensuring that the teaching of history respected "allegiance to the Slovak Republic" by subjecting all textbooks on both Slovak and minority history to veto by the Ministry of Education. Likewise, SNS promised "to strengthen the position of schools as public, nation-serving institutions"(1995b) through changes which including an expansion of teaching hours in Slovak for minority students. On related issues of language, both SNS and HZDS emphasized both the right "and responsibility" of Slovakia's citizens to master "the state language." The program of SNS went considerably further on language issues, promising the exclusive use of Slovak in variety of official circumstances including official personal names, school report cards and public signs in areas with a minority population smaller than fifty percent. The program of SNS also addressed the subject of territorial administration, sharply rejecting proposals "which would lead to the discrimination of the ?tátotvorný nation and the integrity of the state" and instead endorsed a plan to "preserve a majority share for Slovak culture and language" in ethnically mixed areas. The programs of both parties also suggested the creation of links between the treatment of ethnic minorities in Slovakia and the treatment of Slovak living in those minorities' homelands.

The 1998 programs of these two parties discussed the same questions in considerably less detail. The SNS program repeated its 1995 themes and went on to "openly reject the concept of collective rights of national minorities as a disintegrative tendency which at present has no support in international law. In this respect we openly reject all forms of autonomy or self-administration functioning according to ethnic principles"(1998b). The 1998 HZDS sharply limited references to minority questions, but the few references related to Hungarians included sharp, if veiled, criticism. Several of these references offer insight into the overall change in the positions of HZDS and SNS after 1992 and the emergence of a new understanding of Hungarian-Slovak issues which responds directly to the demand of the Hungarian parties for equal status as a ?tátotvorný nation.

It is first important to note the signs of distrust toward Hungarians which appeared for the first time in 1994 and continue in 1998. The "disintegrative" tendency of autonomy and collective rights noted by SNS in 1998 follows an even stronger statement in the 1995 SNS program which lists the "irredentism of a certain political elite of the Hungarian national minority in Slovakia" first among dangers to the security of Slovakia (1995b). In mentioning "tendencies toward assimilation," the 1998 HZDS program stated outright its previous oblique references to the threat of Hungarian encroachment on the Slovak ethnic group. Such references as these appear designed to undercut the Hungarian position by drawing attention to the ill intentions of certain members of the ethnic group and thereby increasing the risks involved in granting even particular Hungarian demands much less the broader notion of equal collective benefits for both ethnic groups. The reference to assimilation, evocative of nineteenth century Hungarian attempts at Magyarization, raises the possibility that any concession to the notion of two ?tátotvorný nations in Slovakia might eventually result in only one such nation: a Hungarian one.

Even while they called attention to dangers posed by the Hungarian ethnic group, the programs of SNS and HZDS also attempted to undercut Hungarian claims by attempting to minimize the position of Hungarians within Slovakia. Especially significant in this regard is the 1998 HZDS program's reference to "all eleven" minority cultures in Slovakia," a phrase which places the 568,000 member Hungarian minority in the same category as the 1,600 member Russian minority and apparently several smaller minority groups as well.⁽¹⁰⁾ This grouping of Hungarians with other far smaller minorities appears repeatedly within HZDS publications and other public statements as well as within the "Nationalities News" published by Slovakia's Interior Ministry.⁽¹¹⁾ This 'one plus eleven' framework of Slovak-minority relations provides strong justification for rejection of Hungarian demands. On one hand, it would be unfair to provide special treatment to one of the eleven groups while, on the other hand it would not be feasible to extend demands for territorial administration and special language rights to all eleven minority groups.

Related to the mimization of the Hungarian ethnic group is the rejection of the concept of collective rights that appeared in the 1994 and 1998 SNS programs and in statements by leaders of both parties (Národná obroda 1996; Tothova 1996). As an alternative to collective rights, these two parties proposed resolution of nationality disputes according to the principle of individual rights of citizens. This "civic" principle, according to leaders of both HZDS and SNS, focuses on the rights of individual citizens and determines political outcomes on the basis of aggregated individual preferences. Although they argue for the acceptance of the civic principle on the grounds that it conforms most closely to the principles of western democracy, they do not deny that the principle in operation would favor the Slovaks.

In fact, since 85% of the citizens of Slovakia are of Slovak ethnicity and since ethnicity remains an important personal identifier, decisions on ethnic issues made according to this civic principle would in most cases reflect only the preferences of ethnic Slovaks. Rather than eliminating collective rights, therefore, implementation of this civic principle in the Slovak context would in effect simply reserve the collective right of decision to the majority ethnic group.

The notion that SNS and HZDS offer the civic principle as a mechanism for securing collective rights for the majority population is reinforced by other positions taken by these parties. Given the high concentration of Hungarian population in certain parts of southern Slovakia, universal application of the civic principle at regional level would in theory allow Hungarians in regions where they represented the majority to receive the same collective advantages enjoyed elsewhere by Slovaks. In practice, however, the coalition's territorial administration plans both prevented Hungarian majorities at the regional level and restricted the powers of regional and sub-regional bodies. Although potentially accidental, this preservation of Slovak majority shares in regional administration conforms directly to the 1995 program of SNS (1995b, 12) and to statements made in 1996 by HZDS leaders.

SNS and HZDS also showed a willingness to abandon the even the pretense of civic principle and use outwardly collective concepts in cases where it serves the advantage of Slovaks. In addition to their frequent use of "?tátotvorný" and similar concepts to describe the role of Slovaks in Slovakia, both parties also proclaimed the idea of international reciprocity in minority affairs. Reciprocity, however, ignores civic principles by making Slovakia's minority policies dependent on the decisions of governments in countries where the Slovakia's minorities can neither vote nor exercise other civic rights. Furthermore reciprocity bases this transfer of responsibility only on the shared collective identity of the minority group and the foreign government (Krause 1996).

In effect, the HZDS and SNS differed with the Hungarian parties not about the propriety of collective rights but merely about how many groups should receive the benefits of such rights. The political leaders of the Hungarian parties could argue that their ethnic group was too large (12% of the population) and concentrated and had too lengthy a governing tradition to be considered as just one of eleven national minorities. But Slovaks could argue that the Hungarian ethnic group was too small and had too poor a track record of past behavior as a majority to be treated as a fellow ?tátotvorný nation. By calling attention both to the danger posed by the Hungarians and to their relative insignificance, SNS and HZDS presented their strongest possible case for Slovaks as the sole majority.

Other major parties on the Slovak political scene did not participate actively in this conflict and in fact seemed to do everything in their power to avoid it. They adopted moderate positions between the two extremes and committed themselves to few definite positions regarding Slovak-Hungarian issues.

The most striking example of this strategy can be found in the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH). The 1992 KDH program contained only a limited number of references to minorities all of which call in general terms for tolerance and respect for minority rights. In this KDH's program resembled may others from the same year, but in 1994 when the number of references in other programs expanded dramatically, those made by KDH actually dropped. In its 1994 program, the party did not make a single reference to minority groups, language, or any other minority-related issue. In 1998, the Slovak Democratic Coalition (SDK)--in which KDH played a leading role--made reference to its support for minority culture in a single sentence. Outside of its programs, KDH often refused to participate in Hungarian-related issues, and in voting on the State Language Act, the major legislative action concerning Hungarians during 1995, KDH deputies abstained from voting altogether. Although in 1997 and 1998 leaders of KDH and SDK attempted to form closer relationships with the parties of the Hungarian minority and even signed a formal agreement on certain political issues, the bonds remained extremely loose. KDH leaders have accused HZDS leaders of "playing the so-called 'Hungarian card' to distract attention away from the solution of social and economic problems"(Mesenikov 1995, 15), and it appears to have been the strategy of KDH and subsequently SDK to focus on other political cards as a means of drawing attention away from Hungarian issues.

The approaches of other parties were similar if not as extreme. The Democratic Union (DU) which originated in 1994 as a splinter of the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) rejected the ideas of collective rights and autonomy and acknowledged the needs of Slovaks in mixed areas in its 1994 program. Unlike SNS and HZDS, however, DU did not go on to propose changes in the existing system or emphasize the threat posed by the Hungarian minority. In 1995 DU's parliamentary delegation voted in favor the State Language Act, but nevertheless criticized it for its technical flaws as well as its potentially negative effects on minority groups and its potential to "increase tension in southern Slovakia"(Sujová, Kovai, and Sámel 1995, 2). By the time DU entered the Slovak Democratic Coalition (SDK), the uncomfortable balance of majority and minority demands appears to have given way to a strategy resembling that of KDH. Not only did DU accepting the SDK program, with its minimal reference to minority issues, but DU's own 1998 program also showed a similar lack of emphasis. Unlike the party's 1994 and 1995 programs, it made no mention of autonomy or Slovaks in mixed areas and instead offered an all-inclusive (and awkwardly worded) commitment to the "formation of civic, national, and nationality consciousness and positive relationship to one's own (vlastné) state, the principle of civic politics, and to the diversity (rozmanitos) of its ethnic composition"(1998a).

Like DU and KDH, the Party of the Democratic Left (SD) exhibited a strong tendency to remain at a midpoint between the Hungarian parties and parties such as HZDS and SNS. SD, however, undertook a more explicit effort to maintain balance between the conflicting principles. The 1992 SD program recognized a connection between Slovakia's demands for a stronger position within Czecho-Slovakia and the demands of ethnic minorities within Slovakia and calls for the respect of both within a common state. The 1994 Common Choice coalition's program made only general comments about the rights of minority groups, but a 1995 party document mentioned the importance of weighing "the rights of individuals" and "the rights of minorities" against "the right of a nation to self-determination"(1995a, 15). The party's 1998 program showed a conscious effort to translate this balance into actual policy. Like the 1994 programs of HZDS and SNS, the 1998 SD program offered support for broader mastery of the state language and knowledge of the majority culture, opposed a distinct Ministry of Education for minority groups or funding of schools on a national basis and grouped Hungarians together with Slovakia's other ethnic groups (though in this case only seven). Yet the program also made specific concessions to minority groups, some of which appeared designed exclusively for the Hungarian minority. These provisions include support for continued teaching in minority languages, bilingual report cards, minority access to media, cross-border contact, expanded teaching of minority culture, and permission to use minority languages in the names of persons, streets, municipalities, and on public documents of a non-official nature.

Aside from all its attempts at striking a balance, however, SD resembled DU and KDH in viewing Slovakia's nationality-related issues as distractions--sometimes intentional--from other issues: "We reject the initiation of conflicts between citizens of various nationalities, the steps of nationalist oriented political organizations which lead to an aggravation of relations and divert attention of citizens away from serious economic and social problems of the state"(1998d). For all three of these parties, a more moderate stance on nationality issues appeared to offer more chances for misstep than for political gain, and each attempted in its own way to avoid the issue or point attention elsewhere.

Although they used different strategies, discussed different policy questions and devoted different amounts of attention to those questions, the policy positions of the three groups of parties discussed above fit very neatly on a single axis of competition. At one pole of this axis stands a commitment to equality of collective benefits enjoyed by the Hungarian and Slovak ethnic groups. At the other pole stands a commitment to collective benefits of Slovaks as the sole ?tátotvorný group along with certain minority rights applied equally to all other ethnic groups.

An effort to determine whether this division is reflected in the views of party supporters is complicated by the lack of survey questions which correspond precisely to the concepts used here. It is nevertheless possible to use those questions that are available to make a general assessment. These efforts are aided by the striking degree of consistency of results across a series of related questions and a number of different survey firms.

Figures 6 and 7 show the mean responses of political party supporters compared to the population mean for questions on the desirability of allowing the use of the Hungarian language for street signs and in personal names. Both show evidence of a pattern that conforms closely to the tri-fold division noted above. Supporters of Hungarian parties support both measures by an overwhelming margin and form a stable extreme. Supporters of the Slovak National Party (SNS) and the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) stand at the opposite extreme. In between these two stand the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH), the Democratic Union (DU), and the Party of the Democratic Left (SD). Furthermore, both figures show an increase in distance between the two groups of Slovak parties on from the October 1993 FOCUS survey to the May 1994 FOCUS survey. In both cases, similar questions asked in the October 1994 CEU survey show a very similar array of parties, though within a narrower range.⁽¹²⁾

Questions concerning the loyalty of Hungarians and the danger they pose to Slovaks show the three clusters even more clearly. Figures 8 shows mean responses of party supporters to the statement that: "Hungarian fellow citizens are as concerned about the welfare of Slovakia as Slovaks themselves"; Figure 9 does the same for the statement that "In southern Slovakia, Slovaks are threatened by Magyarization." Responses in both cases show the same array of parties in the same three groupings. Both also show a small widening of the differences over time.

Figures 10 and 11 address the broader issues of the relative positions of majorities and minorities in Slovakia. Figure 10 shows responses to questions asked by the firm FOCUS regarding the need for patient negotiation with the Hungarian minority. Beginning with a relative close clustering of SD, HZDS and DU near the mean, the figure shows a sharp divergence by early 1994 which is even sharper in results from late 1995 using a slightly different version of the question.⁽¹³⁾ An even more general set of questions produces an almost identical set of results. Figure 11 shows mean responses of party supporters to a pair of opposed statements: "In a democracy the majority has the right to decide even at the expense of the minority" and "In a democracy it is necessary consistently to respect even the rights of the minority." Although this question does not specifically mention ethnicity, it produces a result almost identical to the more specific questions about Hungarians shown in Figure 10. Results for similar questions asked in a 1993 survey by the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and a 1994 survey by CEU help to confirm at least the relative positions of parties found by the FOCUS survey. Like the programs of the parties they support, respondents to survey questions on the Hungarian issue form three clusters which have moved apart from one another over time.

Slovaks and Slovak Identity

The programs and other party statements of Slovak parties often express discuss the degree of self-awareness and attachment of Slovaks toward their own ethnic group. Although less frequent than references in the categories discussed above, the intra-group focus of this topic area differs enough from the inter-group issues in the preceding sections to merit its own discussion. The results, however, reveal similar patterns of party clusters and change over time.

The vast majority of references to Slovak feelings toward their own ethnic group appear in the party statements of Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) and Slovak National Party (SNS). In 1992, both of these parties made reference to the role of culture and education in shaping "national identity" and building patriotism, and neither expressed concern about the extent or strength of such feelings. Election programs that appeared after 1992 indicate that the achievement of independence forced these parties to reassess the need for feelings such as national pride and patriotism. In the introduction the 1994 HZDS program, party chairman Vladimir Meiar issued a command to Slovakia--"trust yourself"(1994c, 1)--and HZDS campaign documents called for development of the "spiritual and patriotic self-confidence of Slovak citizens"(1994c, 71) and modifications to school curriculums for the purposes of enhancing "loyalty to the state"(1994c, 73). The 1995 SNS program likewise promised to "attend to the strengthening of the feeling of pride by citizens of Slovakia in their own statehood," and to bring about a "spiritual elevation of Slovakia"(1995b, 2).

A close examination of Slovenský národ (Slovak Nation), the monthly newsletter of SNS and Slovensko do toho! (Slovakia go to it!), the weekly newsletter of HZDS show a continuation of these themes in the post-election period. The SNS newsletter, which focused primarily on issues involving the Hungarian minority nevertheless did occasionally discuss the questions of Slovaks' own national feeling. The HZDS newspaper devoted considerably more attention to the issue, frequently discussing the nature of national consciousness and providing positive examples thereof. During a one year period from May 1997 until May 1998, eighteen of forty-eight issues, or 38 percent, contained stories which discussed national consciousness (národné povedomie), national pride (národná hrdos) or patriotism (vlastenectvo).⁽¹⁴⁾ One of the most telling articles, entitled "Who are you, Slovak from small Slovakia? We are by no means 'poor relations,'" explains that "Lacking from us is belief in ourselves, self-confidence, self-assurance, self-consciousness"(1996, 1-2). In keeping with the title of this article, Slovensko do toho! devoted considerable effort to positive messages regarding Slovakia's viability, its international esteem, and the richness of its history and culture.⁽¹⁵⁾

Along with laments about a general lack of national feeling--and messages of encouragement--the 1994 election campaign and the period that followed also yielded stronger and more pointed criticisms of Slovaks who appeared to show a lack of national feeling. HZDS chairman Meiar, in the introduction to the 1994 HZDS program, explained that the election "will decide also about whether the citizen will leave the state in the hands of those who did not want it or ultimately with those who founded it and continue to build it" (1994c, 1). Over time such references appeared with increasing frequency in HZDS publications, and twenty three of the forty eight issues of Slovensko do toho! that appeared between May 1997 and May 1998, describe a Slovak citizen or a group of Slovak citizens as "anti-national" (protinárodné), "anti-Slovak" (protislovenske) or "against Slovakia"(proti Slovensku). Most of these references cited specific political leaders but others referred to broader groups such as the "portion of the young people succumbing to the pressure of 'Americanization'" who are "inclined to be anti-Slovak"(Kudrnáová 1998). All but two of these references, moreover, referred specifically to members of the Slovak ethnic group.

On the basis of this evidence, it appears that in addition to calling attention to threats from abroad and from Slovakia's ethnic minorities, SNS and HZDS also saw threats to Slovakia from the Slovak ethnic group itself. Party leaders acknowledge many of these threats as the result of unwitting, albeit lamentable, lack of concern for Slovakia by certain Slovaks. Other threats, they argued, involved the intentional efforts of certain Slovaks to sabotage their own ethnic group and the independence of its newly gained state.

The discussion of Slovaks and their national identity among other parties during this period reflected very different concerns. Rather than discussing the presence or absence of national pride, these parties focused on what they believe to be inappropriate methods of expressing that pride. Criticism of Slovaks for "nationalism" can be appeared in the programs of Slovakia's Hungarian parties in 1992. In 1994 and especially in 1998, such criticisms began to appear also in the programs of Slovak parties. The 1998 program of the Party of the Democratic Left (SD) commented disapprovingly that "the application of the concept of national revival has on more than one occasion been interwoven with expressions of nationalism"(1998d). The 1998 program of the Slovak Democratic Coalition (SDK) blamed worsening of Slovakia's diplomatic relations in part on the use of "nationalist cliche"(1998e). Critiques of national expression came even from the Party of Civic Understanding (SOP), which in its 1998 program identified its adherents as "patriots" (vlastenec) and stated that it "proudly recognizes Slovak statehood"(1998c). In his speech introducing that program, SOP chairman Rudolf Schuster explained that his party was created "with the intention of ending the cold war which has for years polarized Slovakia with a national (národné) politics"(Schuster 1998). With the potential exception of SOP, these parties regarded questions of national feelings in much the same way as they regarded Hungarian questions. Rather than compete on the same issues, they sought to call attention to ways in which those issues were being misused.

As with Slovak-Hungarian issues there is a scarcity of public opinion survey questions which speak directly to the topic of national feeling. The questions which are available, however, do provide a rough approximation and confirm the results found in the programs. Particularly relevant are two questions on patriotism asked in surveys conducted by Central European University (CEU) between 1992 and 1996. Figure 12 shows the mean responses of party supporters measured against the population mean to the statement: "The government should strengthen patriotism (vlastenectvo)." The results show the degree to which even relatively neutral concepts such as patriotism have taken on over time in the Slovak political system. From a relatively narrow distribution among Slovak parties in 1992, the extent of the gap between Slovak parties more than doubles over the four year period and exhibits the same clustering found in other questions on national issues. As Figure 13 shows, virtually identical and even more pronounced patterns emerge on a more nuanced question asking respondents to state whether they prefer "a strong patriot (vlastenec) to an expert" when choosing among politicians.

Other surveys indicate that in addition to differences concerning the importance of national feeling, parties also differ in terms of the actual degree of national feeling expressed by their supporters. A study made under the auspices of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAV) found a significant difference in the mean responses of supporters of various parties to questions about identification with state, national, and ethnic groupings. As Figure 13 shows, the supporters of HZDS and SNS far more closely resembled their own party's proclaimed vision of national identity than did supporters of other parties. SNS and especially HZDS supporters proved significantly more likely to feel "close to the Slovak Republic," and to prefer it to other countries. They also proved closer to their own ethnic group than did supporters of other parties--with the pronounced exception of the parties of the Hungarian coalition--and they were more likely to think highly of Slovaks. To a certain extent these results confirm statements made by SNS and HZDS that their supporters showed more national pride than did supporters of other parties. At the same time, it is hard to justify HZDS and SNS accusations that supporters of other parties held "anti-Slovak" ideas. As Figure 13 shows, the range of party means is relatively narrow compared to the range of possible answers. Supporters of even the least "patriotic" Slovak party--and even supporters of the Hungarian parties--were far more likely than not to agree that they were close to the Slovak Republic and that they preferred its citizenship to that of any other country.

Thematic alignment and party polarization

On all three of the themes discussed above--and in most all categories within those themes--the positions of parties show almost identical positions and trends whether measured according to party program or the beliefs of party supporters. The trends show a HZDS-SNS cluster moving away from the mean in one direction and a KDH-DU cluster, sometimes accompanied by SD, moving away from the mean in the opposition direction. The Hungarian parties stood well toward the limit position in that same direction and moved little during the whole period.

The positions of the three clusters that had emerged by 1998 provides the observer with a gratifying degree of internal consistency. That same parties that sought to free Slovaks from Czechoslovakia and keep the new country independent of other foreign domination also sought to prevent domestic domination by Hungarians and attempted to develop patriotic feelings among Slovaks toward their new state. The parties that sought to protect and even enhance the position of Hungarians in Slovakia also sought to integrate Slovakia into larger political structures that could provide a restraint on the Slovak majority. And the parties with more appreciation for common Czecho-Slovak state also appreciated the opportunities for European integration and investment while seeking to avoid issues which would allow them to be identified as opponents of Slovakia's statehood.

Yet to note that these clusters hold together from a conceptual standpoint is not to say that these other arrangements could not have emerged. Indeed other clusters did emerge, especially between 1992 and early 1994. During this period, the Slovak National Party (SNS) combined a strong preference for Slovakia's independence, with a neutral or even favorable attitude toward the European Union, NATO and foreign investment. HZDS echoed SNS in these positions, though at a more moderate level. SD in the same period held positions opposite to these. Only during 1994 did SNS and HZDS begin to combine their preference for Slovakia's independence with an opposition to various forms of integration and a sharper criticism of both Slovakia's Hungarians and those Slovaks who were perceived as unpatriotic. And only during this period did the other Slovak parties begin to converge in their more favorable attitudes toward the outside world and, to some degree, toward Slovakia's Hungarians. After 1994 the process of alignment gained momentum and had by 1998 produced two relatively homogenous clusters of national issue positions within the Slovak party sphere to stand alongside the already well defined cluster formed by the Hungarian parties.

It is important to note that the alignments emerging on national issues precisely matched the relationships among political parties in the broader scope of Slovakia's politics. Between 1992 and 1998, Slovakia's governments consisted of pairings of the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) and the Slovak National Party (SNS)--along with the Association of Workers of Slovakia (ZRS), which as surveys show joined the same national cluster over time--or the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH), Democratic Union (DU), and the Party of the Democratic Left (SD). Furthermore, this shift happened not only at the level of party elites but at the level of voter preferences. In another paper, I use survey data that records the opinions of respondents toward all major parties to show that by 1994 the party system was interpreted by voters as a largely one-dimensional scale ranging arrayed in almost precisely the same pattern as the results of nearly every survey question on national issues after 1994:

It is likely that political alliance and alignment on national issues exerted a reciprocal influence on one another, and that there exists no unidirectional causal arrow. Nevertheless, the available evidence suggests that national issues played an important role in the political alignments. After 1993, the array of parties along the main dimension of competition corresponds quite closely to party positions on national issues but not to party positions on economic, social or religious issues (Krause 1998). If political coalitions provided the driving force behind alignment on national issues, it is not easy to explain why they did not do so for other issues. It may be possible, of course, to find an underlying variable shaping both political coalitions and alignments of national issues, but even in this case it is apparent that by 1994 political developments in Slovakia had become more closely bound to national issues than to any others.

Triads within Triads

In addition to its important role in the overall development of Slovakia's politics, the division of Slovakia's parties into three clusters can also help to fill out Brubaker's "triadic nexus" concept. For the most part, the results obtained here conform extremely well to Brubaker's model. The positions taken by Slovakia's Hungarian parties easily fit his description of "substantial, self-conscious and (to varying degrees) organized and politically alienated national minorities ... whose leaders demand cultural or territorial autonomy and resist actual or perceived policies or processes of assimilation or discrimination"(Brubaker 1996, 57).⁽¹⁶⁾ Likewise, the positions taken by SNS and HZDS reflect the tendency of "nationalizing states" to "see the state as an 'unrealized' nation state, as a state destined to be a nation-state, the state of and for a particular nation, but not yet in fact a nation state (at least not to a sufficient degree); and the concomitant disposition to remedy this perceived defect, to make the state what it is properly and legitimately destined to be, by promoting the language, culture, demographic position, economic flourishing, or political hegemony of the nominally state-bearing nation"(63).

What Brubaker's model does not account for is the Slovakia's central cluster of parties that all but ignores national-related issues and seeks instead to turn attention to other questions. His notion of "a dynamically changing field of differentiated and competitive positions"(Brubaker 1996, 67) in a sense leaves room for such a possibility but goes no further. In fact a closer model for the central cluster appears in Brubaker's account of national minorities for whom, "the 'stakes' of the competition concern not only what stance to adopt as a national minority but whether the 'group' (or potential group) in question should understand and represent itself as a national minority"(Brubaker 1996, 62). In Slovakia it is not the Hungarian minority that is troubled by such choices--the vast majority of Hungarians in Slovakia vote for parties based on national appeals--but rather the Slovak majority. The Christian Democratic Movement (KDH), the Democratic Union (DU) and the Party of the Democratic Left (SD) stand in a difficult position and face the choice of whether to represent themselves in national terms or to seek some other basis for their identity.

In choosing not to represent themselves in national terms, KDH and DU and SD create in a sense another, conceptually distinct triadic nexus. Alongside parties of the minority and 'nationalizing' parties of the majority stand 'non-nationalizing' parties of the majority. Each position in this triad contains commonalities with each of the other two. The non-nationalizing majority shares with the minority parties an aversion to the nationalizing strategy but shares with the 'nationalizing' majority a common ethnic heritage. The nationalizing majority parties may not hold much in common with minority parties, but they do share a common understanding of the nation as a primary unit of political organization.

From these commonalities, each position also acquires certain political advantages and disadvantages. The nationalizing majority parties, effectively unable to make common cause with minority parties because of differences in ethnicity, can attempt to win supporters from the non-nationalizing majority parties by increasing the salience of national issues and the sense of national threat. The minority parties, unable to make common cause with the nationalizing majority parties, can seek support for their aims among the non-nationalizing majority parties but with the realization that these parties can offer at best a limitation of nationalizing efforts. Minority parties which seek further concessions may increase their support among minority voters but may also risk raising the salience of national issues and giving advantages to the nationalizing forces within the majority population. The non-nationalizing minority forces also face difficult choices. They may seek the support of the minority parties, but too close association with the minority may cause supporters to switch to nationalizing parties. Alternately, they may attempt to increase their own nationalizing emphasis but at the risk of both internal disunity and the difficulty of gaining support on the home ground of the nationalizing parties.

In Brubaker's triad, the national minority plays a pivotal role as a hinge between nationalizing state and national homeland. In Slovakia's internal political triad, the minority parties play a less direct role, while the while the "nationalizing" against "non-nationalizing" dynamic recurred with striking frequency even in issues which appeared to have nothing to do with nationality and each group of parties attempted to reframe political issues in ways that avoided their weaknesses and played to their strengths. The nationalizing majority parties attempted to convert even purely distributional questions into issues of patriots against traitors, while the non-nationalizing parties sought to shift attention away even from important minority questions lest they might raise the public salience of national issues. The tensions arising from Brubaker's triad certainly raised sensitivity to national issues, but they did not do so alone. Fears about the fragility of newly independent state and the newly emancipated Slovak nation provided the main impetus. Those fears became institutionalized into a political party system in which two groups of Slovak parties became each others' main foes.

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1. Absent from the set are the 1992 program of Coexistence (ESWS), the 1994 program of the Slovak National Party (SNS) , and the 1998 program of the Party of the Hungarian Coalition (SMK). In each case, I have taken certain steps to compensate for the absence. In lieu of the 1992 ESWS program I have included the program of the Hungarian Civic Party (MPP), a party that in 1992 did not gain enough votes to enter parliament but that in 1994 campaigned together with ESWS and the Hungarian Christian Democratic Movement (MKDM). While it is in by no means identical to ESWS, MPP at least broadens the sample of programs from Hungarian parties. In lieu of the 1994 SNS program I have used the party's 1995 program. The party did not undergo any significant leadership changes in the 1994-1995 period or convene party congress--the body officially charged with approval of changes in party "program documents"(1995c, 19)--and the 1995 program can therefore be assumed to be similar, if not identical to the 1994 version. In lieu of the 1998 SMK program, I have used a Hungarian-language version of the 1998 program of ESWS. Because my Hungarian language skills are severely limited, results for this program reflect a certain amount of extrapolation and a great deal of guesswork.

2. It is important to say a few words about terminology here since this paper deals with the problem of translation among several languages regarding terms which themselves are given multiple meanings. In my own usage in this paper, I make a distinction between "ethnic" and "national" which has roots in the work of Weber. By "ethnic," I will refer to the broad "notions of common descent and of an essential, though frequently indefinite, homogeneity" which frequently include characteristics of culture and language. By "national" I refer to those characteristics related tendency of an ethnic community "to produce a state of its own"(Weber 1964, 171-177). I will therefore describe Slovakia's population in terms of Slovak, Hungarian, Romany and other ethnic groups and describe the political activities of such groups in terms of national issues. Translations from Slovak create further problems since the Slovak word "narod" is used to cover both of these meanings as well as others. Furthermore, "narod" must be distinguished from "narodnost" which in some cases overlaps "narod" as the description of an ethnic group but which often includes connotations of minority status as compared to a majority "narod". To simplify these issues, I will include the original Slovak word in translations wherever it is relevant.

3. The question of Slovakia's relations with Hungary belong, in effect, in both categories. Attempts to gain international recognition of Slovakia's new sovereign status apply just as much to Hungary as to any other country. In fact, the attempts apply even more to Hungary since the presence of a significant Hungarian minority on Slovakia's soil blurs boundaries between strictly international and strictly domestic issues. These blurred boundaries appear in the programs in references to as a "materska krajina" or motherland for Hungarians living in Slovakia and in rejection of foreign involvement in Slovakia's domestic affairs.

4. The extremely high emphasis recorded for the Slovak National Party for 1998 likely reflects a difference in the source material used. As of this writing, the only available source material was the undated document labeled "Program" on the party's worldwide web site. Although first posted in 1998, this document is likely not the party's final electoral program. Furthermore, the short length of the program and the repetition of particular phrases from the party's 1995 program suggests that the posted document may be nothing more than a summary. As a summary, it may therefore over-emphasize the importance of issues with particular importance for SNS. Thus while the levels of emphasis may be discounted, the higher than average degree of emphasis is consistent with the 1992 and especially the 1994 SNS programs.

5.  In part this may reflect questions of style and strategy apart from the salience of particular national issues. Over time the variation in the length and style of electoral programs has increased dramatically. In 1992 the electoral programs under study ranged from 105 to 376 sentences; in 1994 they ranged from 82 to 610 sentences; in 1998, they ranged from 38 to 1,965 sentences.

6. MPP called for an especially close relationship with Hungary as the ethno-cultural homeland of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia. SNS called for an especially close relationship with those countries where there lived a Slovak minority population.

7. A survey conducted by the Sociological Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic taken at approximately the same time shows no significant drop in the preference of Hungarian party supporters for EU membership. Since for every other party the Czech Academy survey produces results almost identical to those found by the Eurobarometer survey in question, the exception noted here may be the result of methodological problems.

8. With their split judgements toward EU and NATO, SDL supporters do not fit easily in either group.

9. The exact translation of this term often depends on context, but it would be appropriate to use Brubaker's "nominally state-bearing people"(Brubaker 1996, 57). More succinct and perhaps even more accurate is the phrase "titular people" suggested by Zsuzsa Csergo. This formulation accurately captures the underlying notion that the state belongs to the ethnic group identified in the name of the country.

10. Slovak census results list only seven ethnicity categories other than "Slovak."

11. A second method of minimizing the significance of the Hungarian ethnic group may be found in the program's commitment to enhancing Romany identity. This commitment can be interpreted as an attempt to reduce the census count of Hungarians by eliminating those Romany who are commonly believed to claim to be Hungarian as a way of avoiding social stigmas associated with their own ethnicity. This interpretation receives further credence from a 31 July 1998 statement by HZDS chairman Vladimir Meciar that "the survival of the Hungarian minority is guaranteed by the high birth rate of Gypsies, who consider themselves Hungarian"(RFE/RL Newsline 1998).

12. Trends on other survey questions discussed below suggest that this narrower range may be more connected with differences in the phrasing of the question and the survey method than a narrowing of the gap between opinions.

13. Some care must be taken regarding a comparison between the 1995 results and those of 1993 and 1994 since FOCUS changed the wording of the question from "The Slovak government should use patient negotiation in dealing with the problems of the Hungarian minority" to a choice between the following two alternatives: "The Slovak government should, together with representatives of the Hungarian minority, patiently seek a mutually acceptable agreement about the position of the Hungarian minority" and "The Slovak government should more sharply advance the interests of the Slovak nation in discussions with representatives of the Hungarian minority."

14. Although it is difficult to compare this with other parties which do not produce equally regular or substantial publications, experience suggests that these ideas appear far more frequently in the documents of HZDS than among those of any other party.

15. Slovakia Today, the English language monthly of the government funded Slovak Information Agency reflects similar concerns, perhaps unwittingly. The headlines of the January and March 1996 issues proclaim, respectively, "We'll Make it" and "Not Anybody's Shadow Any Longer"

16. Although not this paper tends to consider the Hungarian parties as a single unit--as the parties themselves have done for electoral incentives--it does not claim that this unit is internally undifferentiated. As the content analysis indicates, these parties do differ considerably in terms of emphasis. A closer analysis of the proposals made within the programs shows variations in the specific terms of party proposals (Krause 1996). Although minor within the broader framework of Slovakia's politics, these internal difference lend credence to Brubaker's notion of "different organizations, parties, movements, or individual political entrepreneurs, each seeking to 'represent' the minority to its own putative members, to the host state, or to the outside world, each seeking to monopolize the legitimate representation of the group"(Brubaker 1996, 61).

Table 1. Topic areas identified through content analysis of election programs of political parties in Slovakia by number of mentions, as a percent of all sentences, 1992 to 1998.
 

Relations between Slovakia and the EU and questions of European integration	1.67%
Foreign investment	1.24%
Interests of Independent Slovakia	0.97%
Relations with other countries and other regional groupings	0.90%
Minority rights and discrimination	0.82%
The image of Slovakia in world	0.68%
Internal organization of the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic (CSFR)	0.67%
Relations between Slovakia and NATO and other international security arrangements	0.66%
Territorial administration questions concerning the Hungarian ethnic group	0.65%
General references to national or ethnic principles	0.63%
Relations between Slovakia and international organizations	0.58%
Slovak ethnic self-awareness and culture	0.53%
Interests of Slovakia within the CSFR	0.48%
Slovakia's diplomacy and diplomatic corps	0.37%
International associations of political parties	0.37%
Education question concerning the Hungarian ethnic group	0.37%
Use of the Slovak language	0.32%
Use of the Hungarian language	0.32%
Ties between members of the Hungarian ethnic group in Slovakia and Hungary	0.30%
Relations between Slovakia and Hungary	0.29%
Economic and social questions concerning the Hungarian ethnic group	0.27%
International agreements not regarding minority rights	0.26%
Hungarian ethnic self-awareness and culture	0.23%
International agreements on minority rights	0.23%
Relations between Slovakia and the Czech Republic	0.19%
Concerns about Slovaks in ethnically mixed areas	0.17%
Relations with members of the Slovak ethnic group living abroad	0.17%
Issues concerning the Romany ethnic group	0.17%
Relations between Slovakia and the CIS	0.15%
Support for minority culture	0.15%
Education questions concerning the Slovak ethnic group	0.14%
Rights of the Hungarian ethnic group	0.12%
Issues concerning other ethnic or national groups	0.12%
General references to nationalism or national extremism	0.09%
Relations between Slovakia and Hungary concerning the Glabcikovo Dam	0.08%
Tolerance for minority groups	0.08%
Territorial administration questions concerning the Slovak ethnic group	0.07%
Methods for deciding internal organization of the CSFR	0.06%
Economic questions concerning the Slovak ethnic group	0.03%

Sources: 1. (FOCUS 1993; FOCUS 1994; FOCUS 1995); 2. (Central European University 1992; Central European University 1993a; Central European University 1994a; Central European University 1996); 3. (Institute of Sociology 1992; Institute of Sociology 1993a; Institute of Sociology 1993b)

Sources: 1. (FOCUS 1993; FOCUS 1994; FOCUS 1995); 2. (Central European University 1992; Central European University 1993a; Central European University 1994a; Central European University 1996); 3. (Institute of Sociology 1992; Institute of Sociology 1993a; Institute of Sociology 1993b)

Sources: 1. (FOCUS 1993; FOCUS 1994; FOCUS 1995); 2. (Reif and Cunningham 1994a; Reif and Cunningham 1994b; Reif and Cunningham 1996; Reif and Cunningham 1998); 3. (Institute of Sociology 1995b)

Sources: 1. (FOCUS 1993; FOCUS 1994; FOCUS 1995); 2. (Reif and Cunningham 1996; Reif and Cunningham 1998)

Sources: 1. (FOCUS 1993; FOCUS 1994; FOCUS 1995); 2. (Institute of Sociology 1990a; Institute of Sociology 1990b; Institute of Sociology 1991a; Institute of Sociology 1991b; Institute of Sociology 1992; Institute of Sociology 1993a); 3. (Institute of Sociology 1995b)

Source: 1. (FOCUS 1993; FOCUS 1994); 2. (Central European University 1994a)

Sources: 1. (FOCUS 1993; FOCUS 1994); 2. (Central European University 1994a)

Sources: 1. (FOCUS 1993; FOCUS 1994; FOCUS 1996); 2. (Central European University 1994a)

Sources: 1. (FOCUS 1994; FOCUS 1996)

Sources: 1. (FOCUS 1993; FOCUS 1994; FOCUS 1995); 2. (Central European University 1994a)

Sources: 1. (FOCUS 1993; FOCUS 1994; FOCUS 1995); 2. (Institute of Sociology 1993b); 3. (Institute of Sociology 1995b)

Sources: 1. (Central European University 1992; Central European University 1993a; Central European University 1993b; Central European University 1994a; Central European University 1994b; Central European University 1995; Central European University 1996)

Sources: 1. (Central European University 1992; Central European University 1993a; Central European University 1994a; Central European University 1996)

Source: 1. (Institute of Sociology 1995a)