Triadic Nexus
The Triadic Nexus refers to a three-element model, that the American sociologist, Rogers Brubaker developed primarily for the study of the national question related to the autochthonous kin-minorities in Eastern and Southern Europe. It mainly consists of the interrelationship between national minorities, nationalizing states, and external national homelands. Brubaker argues that each of the elements in this relational nexus should itself be understood in dynamic and relational terms, not as a fixed, given, or analytically irreducible entity, but as a political fields of differentiated positions, and an arena of struggles among competing stances. According to Brubaker’s definitions: (1) a national minority as a dynamic political stance is characterized by the public claim to membership of an ethnocultural nation different from the numerically or politically dominant ethnocultural nation. It is also characterized by the demand for state recognition of this distinct ethnocultural nationality; and the assertion, on the basis of this ethnocultural nationality, of certain collective cultural and political rights. (2) Nationalizing state is also a dynamic political stance rather than a static condition. Characteristic of this stance is the tendency to see the state as an unrealized nation-state, as a state destined to be, but not yet in fact a nation-state, the state of and for a particular nation; and the concomitant disposition to remedy this perceived defect, to make the state what it is properly and legitimately destined to be, by promoting the language, culture, demographic position, economic flourishing, and political hegemony of the nominally state bearing nation. (3) A state becomes an external national homeland for its ethnic diaspora when political or cultural elites assert that co-ethnics abroad belong to the nation and that their interests must be monitored and promoted by the state and when the state actually does take action in the name of monitoring, promoting, or protecting the interests of its co-ethnics abroad. Homeland politics or kin-state policies take a variety of forms. In the Hungarian case, an example of the triadic nexus could be the interrelationship between the Hungarian community in Romania (as a national minority), Romania (as a nationalizing state) and Hungary (as an external national homeland).