Abstract
Many democracies attempt to integrate diverse ethnic populations by encouraging minority residents to adopt traits associated with the majority group and, at the same time, recognizing minorities as part of the political community and guaranteeing protection against discrimination. Constitutional references to a diverse or multicultural citizenry often coexist in practice with policies that encourage homogenization. Yet the nation-building literature prescribes strategies of accommodation for diverse democracies. This dissertation defines “acculturation” as a strategy of nation-building that pursues limited homogenization of minorities and distinguishes it from assimilation and from accommodation. The main research question considered in the dissertation is: why do some approaches to acculturation build attachment to the state among minority communities better than others? To answer this question, this project examines three implementation approaches to acculturation in Lithuania (with exceptional accommodations), Estonia (sanctions and inducements), and Latvia (sanctions). Common historical and structural conditions but different approaches to acculturation support a controlled comparison of approaches to acculturation.
The main argument advanced in the dissertation is that using sanctions (punishment-based policies) to encourage acculturation undermines attachment formation among minority residents and increases the likelihood of ethnic conflict. Using inducements (reward-based policies) to encourage acculturation and incorporating exceptional accommodations, however, increases the likelihood that minority residents acquiesce to the state’s overall strategy of acculturation and develop a sense of belonging. The asymmetric effects of negative and positive emotions, demonstrated in the field of psychology, suggests that building attachment will depend more on avoiding sanctions than on using inducements and exceptional accommodations. This logic applies not only to acculturation strategies in the Baltic states but around the world.
The empirical chapters review the nation-building strategies and policy approaches of each Baltic state from 1989-2019 and differentiate their approaches. They then leverage patterns in attitudes in different subsets of the minority community to support the main argument. Minority political activists are unlikely to report positive feelings toward the state, regardless of the state’s implementation approach. Career-related incentives lead them to criticize state policy and evaluate the state’s approach toward minorities as unjust. Other subsets of the minority community are less critical of the state. Lithuania has coopted cultural activists by funding minority cultural organizations, and Estonia has made allies of some Russian speakers by enlisting them in teaching Estonian to their co-ethnics. The least critical and least knowledgeable group in all three countries was made up of those interview subjects with no special interest in minority integration policy. In Lithuania, this group knew little about minority-related policies and felt there were no problems for minorities in the country. In Latvia and Estonia, some regular respondents criticized sanctions, but most accepted the status quo indicating acquiescence to the state’s acculturation strategy. While acquiescence is not patriotic attachment, it is still preferable to a protracted inter-ethnic conflict, whether violent or non-violent. These patterns show that by avoiding sanctions and adopting inducements and exceptional accommodations, the state can coopt some minority residents and secure the acquiescence of others even when a subset of the minority community remains dissatisfied with a strategy of acculturation.
Tying theories from the study of nation-building, social identities, ethnic mobilization, and psychology together, this dissertation offers fresh insights for democratic states seeking to build social cohesion and minority attachment. It takes the diversity of attitudes within the minority community seriously and argues that the presence of a vocal dissatisfied subset of the minority community does not necessarily indicate that institutional accommodation is the only or best way forward. Finally, even if structural conditions determine the state’s nation-building strategy, law makers have flexibility in designing policies that attract rather than coerce.