Emmanuel presented a chapter of his new monograph at the University of Stockholm

Comparative analyses of minority policies in central and eastern Europe during the interwar period abound. Few authors however have thought of including western European countries in the picture. In the second chapter of the monograph that he is currently writing, The Myth of Homogeneity: Minority Questions in Interwar Western Europe, Emmanuel includes Belgium, Italy and Spain (as well as, albeit less extensively, France and the United Kingdom). On 19 March 2024, he presented a draft of the chapter at the Comparative Politics Seminar of the Political Science Department of the University of Stockholm (pictured above).

The chapter first focuses on minority policies in Belgium, Italy and Spain. It examines them through a qualitative comparative analysis that takes the clauses of the interwar minority treaties as a framework for analysis. The chapter then broadens the comparison and proposes a Minority Treatment Index that scores political regimes in different countries along the dimensions of civic/political and economic discrimination, private and public schools in minority language (or with minority religious teaching), autonomy and violent repression. The results confirm the hypothesis that the east-west distinction still existing in the historiography is of little empirical use. Western European regimes (from France in 1919 to Mussolini’s Italy and Franco’s Spain) obtain negative scores that locate them in the lower rankings of the Index, while eastern European ones such as the Baltic Republics before the mid-1930s top the raking (see picture below), while others, Czechoslovakia throughout the interwar period and Albania in the 1920s, obtain positive scores in line with, if not higher than, western European liberal regimes such as democratic Belgium, liberal Italy or France after the Colmar trials.

The chapter received positive reactions and suggestions for further improvements. It is currently being reviewed by country experts to ensure that the evaluation of minority policies in the 17 countries included in the sample is as close as possible to the historical record.