Liberalism and cultural claims in Central and Eastern Europe: toward a pluralist balance n ZSUZSA CSERGO + n AND KEVIN DEEGAN-KRAUSE nn n Queen’s University Kingston, Canada nn Wayne State University, USA ABSTRACT. This article relies on cases from new EU member states in postcom- munist Europe to integrate two overlapping debates about majority–minority rela- tions. Since the Second World War, political theorists and international institutions have tended to discourage group-rights approaches in favour of individual rights; meanwhile, policy-makers who achieved interethnic peace in postcommunist Europe have often opted for group-rights approaches. On the basis of political theory, international norms and the conduct of political elites in this region, we argue that both the individual-rights and group-rights approaches can be differentiated internally along the dimension of pluralism – that is, their willingness to accommodate multiple processes of cultural reproduction. Moreover, both group-rights and individual-rights approaches can offer justifications for restricting minority cultural opportunities; furthermore, restrictive group-rights approaches sometimes cloak their efforts behind ‘Western-sounding’ individual-rights rhetoric. Likewise, both group-rights and indi- vidual-rights approaches can permit group accommodation that can lead to political integration. We find that de facto pluralist approaches to minority accommodation – often spearheaded by moderate parties of the majority in coalition with minority- group parties – encourage ethnic peace, regardless of their foundation in individual or group rights. KEYWORDS: Central Europe; ethnicity; group rights; individual rights; political parties Introduction Hope is not a quality often associated with inter-ethnic relations in Central and Eastern Europe, yet some new democracies in the region offer grounds for optimism about the possibility of resolving the contending cultural-rights claims of majority and minority groups. 1 Nations and Nationalism 17 (1), 2011, 85–107. r The authors 2010. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2010 n The authors thank Lee Sigelman, Margaret Moore, Lowell Barrington, Mark Beissinger, Valerie Bunce, Stephen Deets, Henry Hale, Will Kymlicka and Sharon Wolchik for helpful suggestions on earlier versions. EN AS JOURNAL OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY OF ETHNICITY AND NATIONALISM NATIONS AND NATIONALISM