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Revisiting Linguistic Territoriality in Contemporary Europe
Edited by Till Burckhardt, John Coakley and László Marácz
[Language Problems and Language Planning 45:2] 2021
► pp. 164–186

The economic effects of the territoriality principle

Evidence from Transylvania, Romania

ORCID logo | Babeş-Bolyai University | Center for Social Sciences, Hungary
ORCID logo | University of Texas at Austin
ORCID logo | University of Texas at Austin
| University of Texas at Austin

The territoriality principle stipulates that minority communities in a given territory should be linguistically accommodated. What are the economic effects of this principle? In this paper, we argue that the recognition of multiple languages confers respect on the minority group; it allows people to engage and participate meaningfully in society – thereby facilitating economic well-being. There is, however, a caveat: when recognition happens in areas where the minority is the overwhelming majority, there is a risk that the near-exclusive use of the minority language cuts the community off from the larger national state, which in turn stunts development. To test this, we focus on Transylvania, Romania. We leverage a legal stipulation that recognizes minority languages in areas where the minority constitutes more than 20% of the population. Using data at the municipal level, we find that recognition increases economic well-being in general – but not in areas where the minority are numerically dominant. Our results are normatively welcoming, but they also caution governments not simply to recognize minority languages but also to protect them adequately.

Keywords: economic development, linguistic diversity, minority accommodation, Romania, territoriality principle, Transylvania
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The territoriality principle and minority language recognition
  • 3.The moderating effects of linguistic diversity
  • 4.Research design
    • Dependent variable: Four measures of economic well-being
    • Independent variable 1: Territoriality principle
    • Independent variable 2: Linguistic fractionalization
    • Control variables
  • 5.Empirical evidence
    • The Roma effect
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 24 November 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lplp.00076.csa
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