Political Democracy And Ethnic Diversity In Modern European History

This is the first volume in which the fate of democracy is directly related to ethnic diversity. It highlights the crucial episodes in modern European political history, and shows in what sense ethnic diversity was of vital importance.

A broad-ranging study that explores the complex relationship between ethnicity and democratization, focusing on specific case studies including France, Spain, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Russia, Albania and Hungary. Marrying the empirical and theoretical, the book begins by conceptualizing the nature of ethnicity and relating these ideas to different theories of democracy and democratization. The contributors locate ethnic experiences within a series of common frameworks to shed light on key issues such as: * the effect of democratization and authoritarian rule on ethnic tensions * the extent to which ethnicity is constructed as an ideological tool * whether democracy can only function if all citizens are fully assimilated.

Inder Singh examines why international organizations including the UN, OSCE, and Council of Europe advocated democratic governance, based on the rule of law and respect for human and minority rights, as the method by which states should try to accommodate their ethnically mixed populations. She discusses how realistic this advice has been, given the tension between the principle of the sovereignty of states and their international obligations, and the extent to which democratization had made for ethnic and political stability in post-communist Europe. Inder Singh demonstrates that this advocacy of democracy to handle ethnic diversity questions the perception of nationalism as a cause of war and disorder. This pathbreaking study will be of appeal to academics and policy makers interested in how the management of ethnic diversity through democracy can enhance domestic and international security.

Ethnic diversity is on increase in Europe; at the same time, there is evidence of growing anti-immigrant feeling in some countries, such as Spain (especially in the Southern provinces). In order to build a politically united and democratic Europe, the accommodation of ethnic diversity and the integration of ethnic minorities are both key challenges. This book tries to explain ethnic problems in Europe.

This volume provides an overall assessment of ethnic diversity in Central Europe in historical context and presents a critical assessment of the conflict in former Yugoslavia. It advances a hypothesis on the origins of ethnic conflict, proposes an approach to the prevention and reduction of ethnic conflict in general and in Central Europe in particular, and forwards concrete policy recommendations for the region of East and Central Europe and beyond.

This book explores a largely forgotten legacy of multicultural political thought and practice from within Eastern Europe and examines its relevance to post-Cold War debates on state and nationhood. Featuring a Preface by former UK Home Secretary Charles Clarke, it weaves theory and practice to challenge established understandings of the nation state. Eastern Europe is still too often viewed through the prism of ethnic conflict, which overlooks the region’s positive contribution to modern debates on the political management of ethno-cultural diversity, and towards the construction of a united Europe ‘beyond the nation-state’. Based on extensive archival research in Estonia, Latvia, Germany, Russia, as well as the League of Nations Archive in Geneva, this book explores this neglected multicultural legacy and assesses its significance in the post-Cold War era, which has seen the reappearance of national cultural autonomy laws in several states of Eastern Europe. Ethnic Diversity and the Nation State is invaluable reading for students and scholars of political science, history, sociology and European studies, and also for policy makers and others interested in minority rights and ethnic conflict regulation.

The book analyses the study of the growing field of ethnicity and politics from a number of different angles. These include the nature of the subject itself, different theoretical approaches, ways of addressing political issues the relationship gives rise to, the impact of major global challenges and a survey of output in the field. Comprehensive text book makes great course reading. Questions of identity, particularly ethnicity, play an increasingly important role in people’s lives. They are also of growing significance in both domestic and international politics. The increased attention to these issues has been matched by the mushrooming of scholarship in the field of ethnicity and politics. The chapters in this survey of recent analytical developments examine the contribution that this literature has made within the broad area of comparative politics within the discipline of political science. They are written by experts active in the international network of scholars that has been devoted to the study of this subject. The question of what we mean when we use ethnic terminology is rigorously interrogated. And the major theoretical approaches to the study of ethnicity and politics are critically examined. Ways of addressing ethnic diversity are debated under the wide headings of accommodation and integration. The issue of ethnicity in world politics is considered through an analysis of how watersheds of the last 25 years, including the end of the Cold War, 9/11 and the global economic downturn have impacted on the study of the subject. Also analysed is the output of publications in scholarly journals that has addressed this subject area. From the Contents: Ethnicity – What are we talking about? (Jean Touron) Ethnic and national mobilization (Eric Kaufmann/Daniele Conversi) The Politics of accomodation and integration in democratic States (Brendan O’Leary/John McGarry) Global Watersheds and the Study of ethno-politics (Adrian Guelke) Who is doing what, where and how in the study of ethnicity and politics (Britt Cartrite/Dan Miodownik)

According to most social scientists, the advent of a global media village and the rise of liberal democratic government would diminish ethnic and national identity as a source of political action. Yet the contemporary world is in the midst of an explosion of identity politics and often violent ethnonationalism. This volume examines cases ranging from the well-publicized ethnonationalism of Bosnia and post-Apartheid South Africa to ethnic conflicts in Belgium and Sri Lanka. Distinguished international scholars including John Comaroff, Stanley J. Tambiah, and Ernesto Laclau argue that continued acceptance of imposed ethnic terms as the most appropriate vehicle for collective self-identification and social action legitimizes the conditions of inequality that give rise to them in the first place. This ambitious attempt to explain the inadequacies of current approaches to power and ethnicity forges more realistic alternatives to the volatile realities of social difference.