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13 JEMIE 11 (2014)
National Minorities between Protection and Empowerment: Towards a Theory of Empowerment

handle is hein.journals/jemie2014 and id is 123 raw text is: Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe JEM IE Vol 13, No 2, 2014, 11-29 Copyright 0 ECMI 2014 This article is located at: http://www.ecmi.de/fileadmin/downloads/publications/JEMIE/2014/Malloy.pdf National Minorities between Protection and Empowerment: Towards a Theory of Empowerment Tove H. Malloy* European Centre for Minority Issues It is widely assumed that national minorities can experience a transition from protection to empowerment. This is also the assumption of most normative instruments aimed at protecting national minorities. Theoretically, however, there is no coherent notion of empowerment of minorities let alone a description of the processes that lead to empowerment on the basis of minority protection schemes. Thus, there is a gap in our knowledge of both the concept and its implementation with regard to national minorities. This article seeks to begin unpacking the notion of empowerment and its relation to protection. It provides first a brief overview of the literature on national minority issues arguing that the overwhelming use of the institutional approach has prevented a subjectivist view of national minorities as actors. Next, it examines the existing definitions of empowerment to explore the actor-oriented nature of the concept. In the main section the article begins the journey towards a theory of empowerment, drawing on the work of Elisheva Sadan and a number of other scholars. It focuses on the empowerment of communities, as the aim is to examine minority group empowerment. The second half of the article seeks to connect the theory of empowerment with the notion of rights; the capability to claim rights is of vital importance here. This brings in Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum's capability theory. Finally, the article connects the theories with reality, seeking to operationalize empowerment through an analysis of the social structure of protection (European minority rights regime) and collective agency (human and social capital). In the concluding section, it is argued that the structure and agency approach provides a good tool for analysing the transition of minority actors from protection to empowerment. This article is based on a discussion paper circulated to the participants of the workshop on National Minorities between protection and empowerment: Contemporary minority politics in Europe held at the European Consortium for Political Research ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops in Mainz, Germany, 2013.' Keywords: empowerment; protection; action-oriented; capability theory The space between protection and empowerment of national minorities has not been defined adequately in the academic literature. This may be due to the fact that the Director, European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI), Flensburg, Germany. Email: malloy@ecmi.de. 11

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