The Working Group (WG) on Democratic Governance of Multiethnic Communities is a forum for research and policy discussions about promoting inclusive policies responsive to the needs of ethnically diverse communities, and about the design, implementation, and administration of public services that help to advance the status of minority communities and promote the well-being of the majority and minority groups together, and about effective education and training for public officials to respond to multi-ethnic communities.

Officials as well as citizens are often frustrated in their attempts to get a clear picture of the performance of government's achievement in promoting inclusive policies responsive to the needs of ethnically diverse communities. Comprehensive information and analysis is rarely available on the issue equity in public service delivery. And public officials are often untrained or unprepared to deal with the new and complex demands of managing public services in the face of ethnic diversity and majority-minority conflict.

The Working Group consequently was established to seek policy studies that provide suggestions by which local and national governments and their agencies or institutions might regularly assess their performance or demonstrate progress. And the group has sought evaluations of the ways in which public officials are educated and trained to respond to the challenges of public service delivery in multi-ethnic democracies and practical examples and recommendations of how such training and education might be improved.

The focus of the WG from April 2000 till 2002:
Topic: "Equity for minorities: measuring access of minorities to public services”

The working group started its proceedings in April 2000 at the 8^thNISPAcee Annual Conference when contributors of Working session on Minorities in Public Administration decided to create a working group to explore further issues related to public management of multiethnic communities in CEE.  

In December 2000 the working group submitted a research proposal to LGI. The research proposal included a case study research on Access of Minorities to Locally Provided Public Services Since December 2000, four pilot case studies weredeveloped according to the preliminary research protocol elaborated by members of the working group during the fall of 2000. These case studies from Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Latvia and Estonia were presented at the first meeting of the working group in Riga, Latviaat the annual meeting of NISPAcee, May 2001.

At the first meeting members of the working group discussed in depth the case studies, developed further both the conceptual basis and the methodology of the research. At the meeting, members of the working group analyzed major factors that shape ability and willingness of local communities to integrate minorities and to address their specific need. Participants agreed that one of the major factors was that local government do not have the capacity to monitor their own capacity to provide access to public services for minorities. Therefore, the working group addressed methodological issues in depth and extended the scope of the research to elaborate a methodology for local governments to monitor their own services from the point of view of access of minorities to public services.

In June 2001, the working group established its own e-mail list at: nispawg4@yahoogroups.com to facilitate exchange between researchers during the period of field research and also to share background materials and draft versions of research papers.
Therefore the working group agreed to extend the original deadlines and to request for a third group meeting in April 2002 at the Annual NISPAcee Conference in Krakow, Poland.

The sessions of the WG were devoted to an in-depth analysis of new models and methods of public service delivery from the point of view of ethnic diversity. The aim of the WG was to assess and analyze the public policies that determine the access of minorities to public services.

The Working group discussed fourteen case studies from Bosnia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Estonia, Israel, Hungary, Latvia, Romania, Slovakia and the Ukraine.
Participants agreed that transition involved transformation of most social, economic and political structures and processes.

The outcome of this phase was the electronic collection of the selected papers.

The working group focused on the topics during the following years:

Topic 2003:„Enhancing the capacity of local governments to provide equitable access to minorities”

Coordinators:
Petra Kovacs, LGI, Budapest
Jana Krimpe, Tallinn University of Education Sciences, Estonia
Michael Brintnall, American Political Science Association, USA

WG met at the NISPAcee annual meeting 2003 in Bucharest, sessions of the Working Group contributed to the main conference theme by analyzing the impact of reforms on public services, especially the introduction of policies emerging from the new public management on the equitable access of minorities to locally provided public services, and to design of inclusive service strategies.

The working group began with a theoretical discussion of the issues involved in analyzing and measuring inclusiveness and equity in public services, especially in the context of multi-ethnic conflict. The coordinators of the WG introduced a series of talking points focused on factors emerging at the level of individual behaviour and attitudes, such as racism and persecution; from the perspective of social structure, such as tolerance for pluralism, concepts of underclass, and policy design; from the perspective of legal rights, such as antidiscrimination policies, international human rights policy, and affirmative action; and from customer service and public management perspectives, such as improved models of public service delivery and civil journalism. It was stressed that professional associations, such as NISPAcee itself, can play an important role in preparing the public service to respond to issues of multi-ethnic diversity, from these many perspectives. In combination with the specific evidence reported in subsequent papers in the working group, the working group explored these concepts and the idea of developing an agenda for NISPAcee and the community that educations and trains public services, to serve as building blocks for a future action plan for the group.

 

The coordinators recommended the best paper for the publication into the NISPAcee Proceedings from the NISPAcee Conference 2003, Bucharest, Romania.

Topic 2004:"Diversity and Public Services: Introducing new standards of diversity management in changing Europe”
Coordinators:
Petra Kovacs, LGI, Budapest
Michael Brintnall, American Political Science Association, USA
Jana Krimpe, Tallinn University of Education Sciences, Estonia

Meeting of the WG was held at the 12^th NISPAcee Annual Conference 2004, Vilnius, Lithuania.
Multi-ethnic democracies raise many challenges for public service and for administrative systems operating in nations within and without the EU, and across its borders. In the working group, these issues were explored in terms of three broad themes: identity - at individual and national levels; programs -- - particularly design, data gathering, evaluation, and inclusiveness in delivering services to ethnic and cultural minorities; and public administration education - preparing public officials to operate positively in multi-ethnic environments and building an inclusive public service.

Papers looked at ways political leaders sometimes seek to symbolically manipulate identification for national advantage, at how data gathering about ethnic minorities can enhance or thwart efforts at self-identification and can work best if based on engagement and informed choice within minority communities themselves, at how attitudes of public servants toward minority communities can influence effectiveness in providing services to them, and how training both for public servants and for leaders of ethnic minority communities can enable more effective service provision and eventual inclusion.

 

The editors of the NISPAcee Proceedings from the NISPAcee Conference 2004, Vilnius, Lithuania accepted the recommended papers for the publication.

Topic 2005:"Delivering Public Services in Multi-Ethnic Settings”
Coordinators:
Michael Brintnall, American Political Science Association, USA
Jana Krimpe, Tallinn University of Education Sciences, Estonia

Participation in the meeting of the Working Group at the 13^th Annual NISPAcee, Moscow, Russia, served three audiences. Discussions included a number of scholars who have participated regularly over several years in the Working Group discussion, showing progressively more advanced bodies of work and understanding of the issues. There were also included this year newer scholars who were presenting at the NISPAcee for the first time, both adding new insights to discussions and developing experience in professional exchanges. And the group was joined by representatives of important related organizations working on similar issues in the region and elsewhere, including NASPAA and the European Centre for Minority Issues.

The working group focused on the political participation of minority groups, on new tools such as ombudsmen, and on the role of public administration schools in building successful multiethnic democracy. Progress was noted in the inclusion of Roma women in political life, when training curricula is in line with Roma lifestyle. Ways that national integration strategies could supplant conflicts with new modes of dialogue were discussed. A study of curricula in public administration programs showed little progress in developing new teaching approaches to prepare for these challenges,  and the working group coordinators have decided to make the new focus of future study. The coordinators of the WG recommended two presentations for the Conference Proceedings 2005.

Topic 2006-2007: ‘The Role of PA institutions in promoting diversity management in diverse societies’

 1st phase: The coordinators of the WG - Ms. Zsuzsa Katona,  Ms. Petra Kovacs and Dr. Michael Brintnall introduced a new topic for the two year project.
2nd phase: Ms. Petra Kovacs, Dr. Michael Brintnall
Ms. Meghan Simpson, Research Associate, Managing Multiethnic Communities Program of LGI/Opens Society Institute

The Working Group IV at the meeting during the 14th NISPAcee conference in Ljubljana 2006 focused its attention on the role of and the manner by which public administration schools and institutes promote constructive multi-ethnic diversity and its management. This was done by examining the nature of the challenges faced in terms of multi-ethnic diversity management by the region’s governments and the preparation which public administration students receive in order to face these challenges.

The working group received two quite different types of papers. The first group of papers focused on various national and institutional perspectives in terms of the training of future and current civil servants. Particular attention was addressed in them as to how issues of multi-ethnic diversity and diversity management are dealt with in the various schools and institutes of public administration. Studies from Armenia, Georgia and Ukraine were presented. A second group of papers focused on the various policy challenges involved in the integration of diverse groups into society in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea in Ukraine, and in Hungary and Kyrgyzstan.

Report of Working Group from the meeting at the 15th NISPAcee Annual Conference(click on title to see more about the conference) Kyiv, Ukraine, May  2007

For the 2007 Annual Conference, Working Group IV contributed to innovative public administration reform in the NISPA region by exploring how schools of public administration and training centers can play a leading role in preparing current and new public officials to work in a culturally competent way in diverse environments and can engage in advocacy-oriented research focused on the issues faced by multiethnic communities. Including a diverse body of case studies from Georgia, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Ukraine, USA, and Uzbekistan, a regional research program by the European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI), and a high-level forum of deans and heads of schools of PA, and drawing a total of 34 different conference participants from 14 different countries in session discussions, Working Group IV sessions presented an opportunity for the synthesis of views and experiences emerging from a wide range of social, political, and economic contexts.

Several different themes emerged in Working Groups discussions. Participants looked at several models of PA education and training that have emerged in disparate contexts. such as specialized schools devoted to ethnic inclusion (Georgia), in-service training programs for public servants (Georgia, Serbia, Hungary) or cross-cultural and bi-national exchange programs. Presentation addressed different modes of incorporating minority groups into public administrations. These included historically-rooted, community-based institutions (Uzbekistan and Ukraine, minority governments (Hungary) and interethnic councils (Serbia), and adopting a social focus to urban planning. Studies also explored the need for inclusive language policies in public administration, including building languages skills of public administrators, or by developing innovative teaching methodologies to make crucial links between multilingual public administration and responsive and transparent governance (Ukraine). A special panel by ECMI addressed the need for research and data on minority inclusion in the civil service, as there is virtually no information on the actual present level of inclusion of minorities in the bureaucracies in Eastern Europe. The strategies will help to analyze and evaluate different institutional arrangements made by governments in Eastern and South Eastern European states. Finally, the Forum of Deans revealed the need for more systematic work to integrate diversity issues into public administration education and to engage NISPA member institutions to take a lead role in doing so.

Several key points emerged out of presentations and discussions, which deserve further attention in public administration education and research and could serve as the basis for future NISPA and WG IV initiatives. Studies showed a gap between need and supply for public administration education for minorities, indicated by the low level of attention paid to multi-ethnicity in public administration, as well as the low participation of minority students in PA. As well, there is a gap between need and resources necessary for PA education to address multi-ethnicity effectively. Discussions also showed the necessity to link schools and institutes of public administration to communities, such that education is designed in ways that recognize – and responds to – barriers that hinder minority access to public administration and public life. Discussion highlighted the fact that, in a very basic way, educational and wider social, economic, political, inequalities can limit access of minorities to public administration. State language was stressed as key political issue that schools must address openly when preparing public servants. In response, schools and institutes must actively reach out to diverse communities. Schools of PA can be role models through their policies, such as through curriculum design, language teaching, or recruitment strategies. Schools can also steer research: as the ECMI panel revealed.

In order to continue to advance principles of democratic governance in multiethnic communities, the Working Group looks forward to more in-depth studies from contexts across the NISPA region and beyond for the upcoming 2008 conference. Such studies will add to a comprehensive body of challenges and good practices that can support the integration of diversity issues into public administration education. The Working Group hopes to continue to engage actively heads of schools and institutes of public administration by organizing thematic events or curriculum development workshops.

 

Finally, the the new coordinators for 2007-2008 were appointed:
Tamar Abdaladze, director of Z. Zhvania School of PA, Georgia, and Natalya Kolisnichenko, Associate professor of the National Academy of Public Administration, Ukraine

Short Report of the coordinators of the Working Group from its  meeting at the NISPAcee conference 2008, Bratislava, Slovakia.

The Working Group studies how public administration education and public policy can improve multi-ethnic democracy. Papers this year examined public institutions: the ombudsman in Bulgaria, the minority self-government in Hungary, limitations of civil society in Uzbekistan and how EU rules may advantage stronger minorities over weaker ones, as faced by Tatars in Ukraine. We found language issues central, though variable, depending on the group's sense of discrimination and ability to mobilise resources. The group heard about PA education in Estonia and Georgia and met with the Forum of Deans and Rectors of Schools. We find there continue to be too few resources to bridge social, economic, political and linguistic inequalities that limit the access of minorities to PA education.