The Conditions of Diversity in Multinational Democracies

The Conditions of Diversity in Multinational Democracies
Author: Institute for Research on Public Policy
Publisher: IRPP
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2003
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780886452025

The Conditions of Diversity in Multinational Democracies studies the many dimensions of diversity in multinational settings. The contributions, from leading experts from Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Canada, consider the theoretical, institutional, and legal conditions for the development of nations that exist within the boundaries of larger political institutions. They examine how various political regimes manage multiple demands for recognition and how their respective approaches toward diversity affect the stability of the state. Contributors include Alain-G. Gagnon, Montserrat Guibernau, Michael Keating, Peter A. Kraus, André Lecours, John Loughlin, Roderick A. Macdonald, Jocelyn Maclure, David McCrone, Kenneth McRoberts, Luis Moreno, François Rocher, Michel Seymour, Stephen Tierney, and Nadia Verrelli.

Sovereignty in Post-Sovereign Society

Sovereignty in Post-Sovereign Society
Author: Jiří Přibáň
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2016-03-09
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1317052099

Sovereignty marks the boundary between politics and law. Highlighting the legal context of politics and the political context of law, it thus contributes to the internal dynamics of both political and legal systems. This book comprehends the persistence of sovereignty as a political and juridical concept in the post-sovereign social condition. The tension and paradoxical relationship between the semantics and structures of sovereignty and post-sovereignty are addressed by using the conceptual framework of the autopoietic social systems theory. Using a number of contemporary European examples, developments and paradoxes, the author examines topics of immense interest and importance relating to the concept of sovereignty in a globalising world. The study argues that the modern question of sovereignty permanently oscillating between de iure authority and de facto power cannot be discarded by theories of supranational and transnational globalized law and politics. Criticising quasi-theological conceptualizations of political sovereignty and its juridical form, the study reformulates the concept of sovereignty and its persistence as part of the self-referential communication of the systems of positive law and politics. The book will be of considerable interest to academics and researchers in political, legal and social theory and philosophy.

Territorial Integrity in a Globalizing World

Territorial Integrity in a Globalizing World
Author: Abdelhamid El Ouali
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 407
Release: 2012-03-26
Genre: Law
ISBN: 3642228690

This book offers a comprehensive, highly informative and interdisciplinary study on territorial integrity and the challenges globalization, self-determination and external interventions present. This study aims at not only to fill an epistemological gap in this regard, but also answer the question of whether International Law is adequately equipped to help states address these challenges. The author argues that the biggest threat that many states are confronted with today is their disintegration rather than their obsolescence, and that International Law has not often been able to prevent that eventuality. In fact, states, when they were not destroyed by war, managed to survive, thanks to the flexibility of territoriality, i.e. their ability to adjust to difficult situations as they arose. It is this understanding of adaptation that urges an increasing number of states today to revive territorial autonomy and restore an original understanding of self-determination in which democracy is a pivotal factor in establishing congruence between the states and their nations. While this move is endorsed by International Law, it is not the case for globalization; for their own sake, proponents of globalization should recognize that the states are irreplaceable as long as they remain the sole providers of protection for their peoples.

Federalism, Citizenship and Quebec

Federalism, Citizenship and Quebec
Author: Alain G. Gagnon
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2006-12-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1442691476

Canadians often imagine their country as a multicultural democracy, while a few go further to claim that the country's diversity can be characterized as multinational in its social and institutional make-up. In Federalism, Citizenship, and Quebec, Alain-G. Gagnon and Raffaele Iacovino reveal how this notion has been falsely presented to the populace. Through comprehensive historical, contemporary, and critical accounts, they argue that the country has been the object of an aggressive nationalizing project that contravenes the principles of a 'multinational federation.' Gagnon and Iacovino defend a conception of diverse citizenship for Canada that is truly suitable to a durable and just constitutional association and provide an alternative path for the country based on normative, socio-political, and practical considerations associated with multinational democracy. Including a detailed account of the main challenges associated with Quebec's place in the federation, Federalism, Citizenship, and Quebec stands apart from other English-language studies on multinational democracy, citizenship, and federalism, and, most notably, multinational democracy in Canada. Gagnon and Iacovino ground their work in both history and theory, offering a truly interdisciplinary approach that will appeal to scholars from fields as diverse as Canadian and Quebec politics, comparative politics, and political and legal theory. The book will contribute to awareness of the need for appreciating diversity in contemporary societies while being a useful addition to English Canadian students in these fields, who often lack exposure to many of the rich debates proceeding in Quebec.

Plurinational Democracy

Plurinational Democracy
Author: Michael Keating
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2001-11-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0191528951

Transnational integration and other challenges to the nation-state have deprived it of its mystique and broken the automatic link between state and nation. This has encouraged the revival of stateless nationalisms, but also provided new means for their accommodation. The author argues that these changes call for a radical rethinking of the nature of sovereignty and of the state itself to meet the twin challenges of recognition of nationality and of democracy. Drawing on the experience of four plurinational states - United Kingdom, Spain, Belgium, and Canada - and of the European Union, he analyses the challenges of plurinationalism and its recognition. Keating argues that we are not moving to a world without states, but to a complex political order with multiple sites of sovereign authority, and asymmetrical constitutional r s6ngements. This political order is new but at the same time old, as traditions of diffused authority and shared sovereignty, from before the rise of the nation-state, are rediscovered and rehabilitated. Democracy can no longer be confined to the framework of the nation-state but must extend to the new political spaces which are emerging above and below the state. Political movements and public opinion in the stateless nations are increasingly embracing these ideas and are the harbingers of a post-sovereign political order.

Visions of Sovereignty

Visions of Sovereignty
Author: Jaime Lluch
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2014-10-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 0812246004

In the contemporary world, there are many democratic states whose minority nations have pushed for constitutional reform, greater autonomy, and asymmetric federalism. Substate national movements within countries such as Spain, Canada, Belgium, and the United Kingdom are heterogeneous: some nationalists advocate independence, others seek an autonomous special status within the state, and yet others often seek greater self-government as a constituent unit of a federation or federal system. What motivates substate nationalists to prioritize one constitutional vision over another is one of the great puzzles of ethnonational constitutional politics. In Visions of Sovereignty, Jaime Lluch examines why some nationalists adopt a secessionist stance while others within the same national movement choose a nonsecessionist constitutional orientation. Based on extensive fieldwork in Canada and Spain, Visions of Sovereignty provides an in-depth examination of the Québécois and Catalan national movements between 1976 and 2010. It also elaborates a novel theoretical perspective: the "moral polity" thesis. Lluch argues persuasively that disengagement between the central state and substate nationalists can lead to the adoption of more prosovereignty constitutional orientations. Because many substate nationalists perceive that the central state is not capable of accommodating or sustaining a plural constitutional vision, their radicalization is animated by a moral sense of nonreciprocity. Mapping the complex range of political orientations within substate national movements, Visions of Sovereignty illuminates the political and constitutional dynamics of accommodating national diversity in multinational democracies. This elegantly written and meticulously researched study is essential for those interested in the future of multinational and multiethnic states.

Boosting Competitiveness Through Decentralization

Boosting Competitiveness Through Decentralization
Author: Aylin Topal
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2016-04-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317173228

Decentralization is accepted as one of the defining features of the third wave of democratic transitions in Latin America and commonly understood as an index and an agent of democratization. This rather optimistic perspective is inherent in the literature which is dominated by two theories. The liberal-individualist approach, especially as advocated by the World Bank, promotes decentralization policies on the premise of their efficiency, equity, and responsiveness to local demands. Similarly, the statist approach claims that decentralization can be the route to greater accountability, transparency and participation in governance; they add that this path should be guided by political elites and institutions. These dominant views nevertheless understate the extent to which certain decentralization policies have been implemented in lockstep with neoliberalization. This book examines the relationship between global economic processes and decentralization. It argues that through decentralization policies, the imperatives of neoliberal rules of competitiveness have been diffused into local governments and economies, generating different local development models. Whether decentralization produces democratic opening at the local level is contingent on how the local economy is integrated into global economic processes, and which social and economic groups are empowered, and disempowered, in that transition.

Forms of Pluralism and Democratic Constitutionalism

Forms of Pluralism and Democratic Constitutionalism
Author: Andrew Arato
Publisher:
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2018
Genre: Cultural pluralism
ISBN: 9780231187022

In this interdisciplinary volume, a group of prominent international scholars considers alternative political formations to the nation-state, discussing their ability to preserve and expand the achievements of democratic constitutionalism in the twenty-first century and their capacity to deal with deep societal differences.

The Inclusionary Turn in Latin American Democracies

The Inclusionary Turn in Latin American Democracies
Author: Diana Kapiszewski
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 587
Release: 2021-02-04
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 110890159X

Latin American states took dramatic steps toward greater inclusion during the late twentieth and early twenty-first Centuries. Bringing together an accomplished group of scholars, this volume examines this shift by introducing three dimensions of inclusion: official recognition of historically excluded groups, access to policymaking, and resource redistribution. Tracing the movement along these dimensions since the 1990s, the editors argue that the endurance of democratic politics, combined with longstanding social inequalities, create the impetus for inclusionary reforms. Diverse chapters explore how factors such as the role of partisanship and electoral clientelism, constitutional design, state capacity, social protest, populism, commodity rents, international diffusion, and historical legacies encouraged or inhibited inclusionary reform during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Featuring original empirical evidence and a strong theoretical framework, the book considers cross-national variation, delves into the surprising paradoxes of inclusion, and identifies the obstacles hindering further fundamental change.