Multinational Federalism And Value Pluralism

This book addresses the democratic accommodation of national pluralism through federal rules. The key question is: can federalism be a fair and workable way of articulating multinational societies according to revised liberal-democratic patterns? In recent years, scholarly discussion on this issue has undergone a change. Nowadays, the answer to this question is much more complex than the one that traditional political liberalism and federalism used to give us. In the past, these two political approaches usually addressed the question of political pluralism without seriously including national pluralism in the discussion, a theoretical attitude that has often misrepresented and impoverished the moral discussions and the institutional practices of multinational democratic federations. Multinational Federalism and Value Pluralism has been awarded the prize for the best book in 2005 by the Spanish Political Science Association (AECPA).

This book addresses the issue of whether or not federalism be a fair and workable way of articulating multinational societies according to revised liberal-democratic patterns.

This book explores the debates centred on diversity through a normative and empirical analytical assessment of the political sociology of multinational democracies and the institutional possibilities associated with federalism.

In 1995 none of the political parties representing the peoples of Bosnia preferred a federal option. Yet, Bosnia became a federal state, highly decentralised and with a complex institutional architecture. This solution was imposed on them by international actors as a result of peace negotiations following the Yugoslav wars. Political parties in post-war Bosnia were not willing to identify with or accept the federation. The international community intervened taking over key decisions and so Bosnia and Herzegovina became the first state to experience a new model of federalism, namely ’imposed federalism’ and a new model of a federal state, that of the ’internationally administered federation’. By combining comparative politics, conflict analysis and international relations theory Soeren Keil offers a unique analysis of federalism in post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina. By exploring this model of ’imposed federalism’ not only does this study greatly contribute to the literature on developments in Bosnia and Herzegovina it also re-evaluates comparative federalism in theory and practice. This study also offers important conclusions for similar cases, both in the Western Balkans region and the wider world, where international involvement and federalism as a method of conflict resolution in diverse societies becomes ever more prevalent and important.

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.

A collection of state of the art reflections by fourteen leading experts in the field of multinational federalism. Seymour and Gagnon have gathered contributions from philosophers, political scientists and jurists dealing with the accommodation of peoples in countries like Belgium, Canada, Europe, Great Britain, India and Spain.

"Abstract Global legal pluralism has become one of the leading analytical frameworks for understanding and conceptualizing law in the twenty-first century"--

In this book, political scientists provide a collaborative study of multinational democracies and the difficulties in governing them.