ABSTRACT
General conditions which were identified as fertilising minority nationalism concerned the state, the economy and society. There was a 'failure of the state' 11 along a number of axes, of which perhaps the main one was its increasingly bureaucratic and impersonal character. This was closely related to its centralisation and the Jacobin attitudes of central politicians and civil servants ('the centre knows best', 'only the centre is in a position to resolve basic economic and social problems', 'only the centre can serve the public interest'). Thus there was a lack of political participation, which particularly affected non-economic, nonsectional groups like national minorities; they were not represented as such in the political and governmental institutions. The major, statewide parties for their part operated principally on class or confessional lines, and even if tending electorally to present 'catch-all' images found it difficult to include minority nationalist themes: for a state-wide party this could be counter-productive as well as ideologically foreign. In fact, the major parties were incapable of integrating national minorities into the political systemP Minority nationalism was, therefore, a natural vehicle for the expression of dissatisfaction with the politically and bureaucratically centralised state wherever minority cultural and ethnic loyalties were territorially well defined.
