This contribution aims to shed light on innovative phenomena of diversity accommodation and assess their practical and theoretical implications. It illustrates that, based on the mentioned innovative developments, emerging legal scholarship is offering fresh perspectives on federalism and diversity governance. These show that the time is ripe to complement the established categories and approaches in these areas to apprehend the complexity of this legal phenomenon.
Ethiopia adopted multinational federalism in 1995 to accommodate its diverse ethnic groups, granting them self-determination rights, including secession. While this system has enhanced linguistic and cultural recognition, and improved ethnic representation and self-rule, it has also inadvertently deepened ethnic divisions, contributing to recurrent conflicts and instability. The federal framework, intended as a solution to historical marginalization, appears to have reinforced inter-ethnic competition. This article examines Ethiopia’s federalism, its achievements, shortcomings, and ongoing challenges, arguing that meaningful reforms, such as electoral reform, institutional strengthening, and genuine conflict resolution mechanisms, are crucial to achieving a more stable and inclusive political order.
This contribution describes how a Catalan bid for more autonomy and for national recognition miscarried in 2010 after long negotiations. In this process, the major part of Catalan nationalism turned towards independence. We follow the different steps that led to the show-down in October 2017, with the failed declaration of independence and the temporary suspension of Catalan autonomy. New elections in Catalonia and in Spain have been of no use to get out of the quandary. While federal solutions if combined with a constitutional recognition of Spain’s plurinational character might be highly advisable to accommodate minority nations like Catalonia and to combine democracy and constitutionalism, fragmented party systems and minority governments on both sides make the necessary constitutional amendments even more improbable than ever.
This article provides a short overview of language policy in India and situates this within a broader comparative perspective. It argues that India successfully managed to defuse linguistic conflict at the time of independence by combining elements of linguistic territoriality with the protection of linguistic minorities (personality) and the retention of English as an associate official link language. However, the article also shows how this ‘Indian’ middle way in language policy is currently being challenged by the rise of Hindi ‘majoritarian’ nationalism and the rise of regional (state) linguistic nationalism in response.
This short contribution challenges traditional perspectives in federalism studies by addressing the concept of constitutional asymmetry as an alternative approach and by examining the potentials of constitutional asymmetry. In relation to multinationalism in systems with federal arrangements, the contribution demonstrates that the use of constitutional asymmetries in contemporary federal theory provides a more flexible approach to autonomy claims.
The relationship between federalism and secession might be regarded as antithetical but is an unavoidable fact in multinational political communities. Integration and disintegration are both possible trends in a federation. Recent political events in Catalonia show the salience of independence claims, a political phenomenon already experienced by other countries such as Scotland or Quebec. Liberal democracies evolve and debates on self-government and self-determination cannot be discussed as they were decades ago. Constitutional right to secede is extremely rare, however we can find good reasons both in constitutional and normative analysis supporting democratic self-determination. Minority nations, as permanent minorities, claim for liberal guarantees to protect them from majorities, but also democratic rights to express their views on their constitutional future. Pacts are the basis of any political agreement and any federal arrangement requires individual and collective compromises to be respected.
Ethnic diversity is a quintessentially urban attribute. Because of this, city governments are called to make decisions about the daily management of diversity, often in ways that contradict or even openly challenge state-level agendas. Thus, cities are not to be treated as simply a lower level of government: they are central actors in the multi-level governance of diversity and in the negotiation of inter-ethnic relations. This contribution reviews examples of city-level diversity policies and discusses some of the contradictions of urban multiculturalism. In doing so, it makes an argument for the need to pay more attention to cities in the study of ethnically diverse societies.
Multinational (quasi)federations are polities that hold together at least two constituent national partners. Unlike sovereign or majoritarian nations, minority nations that evolve in such federations usually cannot fully empower their societal cultures exclusively with their own autonomous will and institutions. We argue that such inability can lead to a more or less prominent multinational federalism deficit. Indeed, the less a multinational (quasi)federation enables its minority nation(s) to develop and consolidate their respective societal culture, the more likely it is to display such deficit, and vice-versa. But how can we measure such a deficit? We identify six legally oriented pillars that are central for a minority nation to sustain its societal culture. Those pillars, which we operationalise through twelve indicators, form the building blocks of the Societal Culture Index. The Index allows measuring and comparing minority nations by combining normative studies and empirical research.
Two competing perspectives on the role of federalism in divided societies prevail: accommodation and integration. An accommodationist reading of federalism suggests drawing subunit boundaries to provide minority groups with self-rule whereas integrationist forms of federalism argue that units should be designed to cut across group lines. While these two perspectives offer important insights on securing democracy in divided societies, they both overlook the effect of federal design on “others,” that is, groups that face exclusion in the design of political institutions and in post-conflict governance processes. This contribution considers the scholarship on federalism and “others” in divided societies, focusing on gender and sexuality.