Ethnic Mobilization and the Politics of Recognition: Determinants of State Minority Policies in New Democracies

My book project asks a central question in democratic politics. If democracies formally rest on equality, pluralism, and representation, why do some recognize minority rights while others deny them? Some democracies provide protection through constitutional recognition, minority-language education, and minority-language public broadcasting. Others offer only minimal or symbolic recognition, or actively suppress minority identities.

I created an original dataset covering 58 ethnic minorities in 20 European countries from 1974 to 2024, tracking constitutional recognition, language and education rights, cultural recognition, and religious freedom. I pair the dataset with in-depth comparative case studies of Turkey, Greece, and Bulgaria, combining large-N statistical analysis with fieldwork conducted in Bulgaria (2024) and Turkey (2022). I examine how different forms of ethnic mobilization, violent and nonviolent, affect state policy decisions, and whether the sequence of mobilization matters.