Based on evidence drawn from six case studies, this article examines the manner in which the political elites of the new ethnically heterogeneous states which appeared in Europe after the First World War responded to the challenge of dealing with minorities whose attitudes towards the new regimes ranged from the suspicious to the uncompromisingly hostile. Despite the variety of policies pursued and the varying international contexts of the six cases, the analysis demonstrates that the maintenance of a political balance between a majority and small ethnic minorities in a new state is extremely precarious, and that the temptation of the state to defer to the ethnic symbols and political values of the majority is extremely strong.
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John Coakley (1990) studied this question.