Conference: The Status Law Syndrome
Announcement: Global Junior Challenge (GJC) 2004
Job: Head of Communications


The Status Law Syndrome

"A Post-communist Nation Building, Citizenship, and/or Minority
Protection"
14 - 16 October 2004, Budapest, Hungary
The Hungarian Status Law was politically and diplomatically
scandalous enough to provoke serious domestic, regional, and
Europe-wide criticisms against it. Academically, however, the law
inspired imaginations widely among various specialists in
jurisprudence, political sciences, international relations,
economics, and so on. Eventually, the controversies over the law
and other similar legislations on kin-minorities in the region
cover such topics as citizenship, the modern nation state,
minority protection, etc. These issues are, otherwise, identical
with the most fundamental political, social, and cultural
questions in the changing post-communist world. In the near
future, a volume, compiling significant academic papers and
primary research resources relating to the Hungarian law, will be
published as an international edition. The title will be "The
Hungarian Status Law: Nation Building and/or a Minority
Protection", composing one of The Series of Slavic Eurasian
Studies, having been issued at the Slavic Research Centre,
Hokkaido University, Sapporo.
The conference aims to discuss the following topics:
1) What is the focus of the status laws in Central and East
European contexts: a new citizenship, a new nation building, a
new version of minority protection, a historical heritage, or
something else? (Motivations and backgrounds of the legislations)
2) Is the Status Law Syndrome Central East European, post-
communist, or inclusive universally? (Uniqueness and Universality
of the status laws from both spatial and historical perspectives)
3) Is a status law a realist solution for the national minority
questions of the region in the age of wider-regional integration
under Globalization: Future of the status laws and the
kin-minorities. (Reality of the legislations) A sub-topic can be
around "Experiences after the EU Accession", regarding the
triadic relationship among a kin- minority, a kin-state and a
home state.
4) Can we formulate some models for kin-minority protection out
of the practical policies? (Typology of minority protection such
as the Austrian way, the German way, the Hungarian way, the
Russian way, etc)
The conference was initiated by Hungarian and Japanese scholars
on the basis of the academic collaboration for promoting
scientific studies on the national minorities in Central and East
European regions.

Deadline: July 30, 2004
More information at website: www.mtaki.hu