  We investigate a dynamical mass generation mechanism for the off-diagonal
gluons and ghosts in SU(N) Yang-Mills theories, quantized in the maximal
Abelian gauge. Such a mass can be seen as evidence for the Abelian dominance in
that gauge. It originates from the condensation of a mixed gluon-ghost operator
of mass dimension two, which lowers the vacuum energy. We construct an
effective potential for this operator by a combined use of the local composite
operators technique with the algebraic renormalization and we discuss the gauge
parameter independence of the results. We also show that it is possible to
connect the vacuum energy, due to the mass dimension two condensate discussed
here, with the non-trivial vacuum energy originating from the condensate <A^2>,
which has attracted much attention in the Landau gauge.
