The Faith in narod without Power and Property (II.): The Power of Ethnicities and Disability of the People

• Main Author: Ivan Padjen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Croatia 2013-01-01
• Series: Anali Hrvatskog Politološkog Društva
• Subjects: Constitution of the Republic of Croatia; Constitutional Court of the Republic of Croatia; narodnjaštvo/ethnonationalism; rights of minority ethnicities; democracy; Croatian transition 1990-
• Online Access: http://hrcak.srce.hr/file/181822

The paper reports partial findings of a research project into Croatian ethnonationalism (Croatian: narodnjaštvo) as a religion (in the sense of a human invention of the sacred). The practical problems are as follows: ethnonationalism as a religion, which implies inter alia that an ethnic community (Croatian: narod) has the potential and/or capacity to develop into, and ought to become, a substratum of the (nation-)state; consequences of ethnonationalism, which include the unattainability of ethnic democracy, ethnic economy and ethnic maturity; conditions of Croatian ethnonationalism, primarily the Catholic Church as a condition in 1961-1971, and also before and after the period, especially since 1990. The theoretical problems, i.e. inadequacies in scholarly knowledge of the practical problems, include inter alia Croatian Constitutional law, esp. jurisprudence of the Croatian Constitutional Court, on powers of ethnicities and disabilities of the people. To attain the general goal of the research project, which is the use of reason in public affairs, the research is carried out within the theoretical and methodological Framework of an integral theory of law and state which includes a modified Lasswell and McDougal’s policy analysis expanded by historical institutionalism and critical theory. The paper attempts to demonstrate that there is strong evidence to support the following two chiefly descriptive hypotheses, which are ideal types and as such cannot be supported by conclusive evidence. The main hypothesis is that the faith in a narod as a substratum of the state is expressed and established by the provisions of the Croatian Constitution stating that the Republic of Croatia was created by the self-determination of a narod and/or is a nation-state of a narod, or of two or several narodi; a narod is sovereign; adherents of a narod have the right to Croatian nationality; adherents of a narod have special political rights, etc. The auxiliary hypothesis is that the people (Croatian: puk) or, juridically more precise, inhabitants of the Republic of Croatia with the right to vote have lost a part of their power to decide on the membership of the Republic of Croatia in transnational organisations, namely, NATO and EU, and have been reduced to a legally unrecognizable entity by virtue of the fact that in the Republic of Croatia it is not known what makes either its people or its constitution.