Political Legitimacy Of The Minorities

Problems involving minorities still constitute a significant challenge for public policies in countries such as the ones on the territories of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Unassimilated, facing the cultural "non-transparency" of their lifeworlds, and usually without autonomy, their problems are quite different from those in Western Europe and North America. This book presents a study of public policies concerning the national, ethnic, and religious minorities in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. It explores the opportunities available for applying the model of deliberative democracy to the domain of designing and realizing minority policies. It examines the possibility that minority groups can influence – and ideally even pre-decide – minority policies by legitimizing claims concerning their needs and rights in a way that leaves democratic public opinion no choice but to support them. Adopting a novel approach to the public legitimization of minority claims, it proposes that the general public’s evaluation of the credibility of minority claims should focus on the procedural qualities of the intra-group (ethical-political) discourses through which these claims are articulated and substantiated. This text will be of key interest to students and scholars of public policy, minority politics, the politics of Eastern Europe, political theory and comparative politics.

The book questions the classic idea of self-determination – the right to self-determination is a right of peoples, not of minorities – by examining the content of the right to self-determination and the content of minority rights. Self-determination has four dimensions: the political, the economic, the social and the cultural dimensions. Minorities have minority rights that touch on most aspects of life as a member of a minority. If there is an overlap between minority rights and the different dimensions of self-determination, the concept that the right to self-determination is only applicable to peoples loses credibility. No global and general conclusion is envisaged; there are restrictions in place. The work is limited to the European framework and is further restricted to classic minorities. The argument is based on a legitimacy and justice approach. The analysis in this book shows that some minority rights overlap with the different dimensions of internal self-determination. In short, classic minorities in Europe have a right to internal self-determination.

The treatment of Arab minorities has been a controversial and contentious issue in Israel. Both during the pre-state era and in its aftermath, the Arabs in Israel were seen primarily as a 'problem' to be tackled and a 'security threat' to be contained. The Arab population in erstwhile Palestine overnight lost its majority status and involuntarily acquired the citizenship of the Jewish state. They suddenly became an ethnic, national, linguistic, religious and cultural minority in a pre-dominantly Jewish state. The emergence of Israel in truncated Palestine was accompanied by political, social and psychological hardships for the Arabs. Was there a systematic policy of discrimination vis-à-vis the Arabs? The first section of this paper discusses the electoral system within which the Arab population operates. Because of the non-constituency nature of the elections, it is possible for a scattered electorate committed to a single political, social or economic agenda to send a representative to the Knesset. The newly introduced direct election of the prime minister has further enhanced the importance of the Arab electorate. The second section discusses the politicization of the Arab sector and the relative importance and performance of the Arab electorate in Israeli elections. The third section focuses on the process of legitimization of the Arab electorates and Arab-oriented parties under the Rabin-led Labor government. Following the 1992 elections, the Arabs emerged as a legitimate force in Israeli politics. For the first time, the Israeli government was willing to acknowledge the inequality between Jewish and non-Jewish citizens, and committed to seeking a remedy. The last section analyzes the role of the Arab voters in the closely contested 1996 elections, especially for the post of Prime Minister and represents a tentative projection for the future.

Most foundational works in political philosophy have made fundamentally false and far-reaching assumptions concerning the culturally homogeneous character of the polity.Deliberative Democracy, Political Legitimacy, andSelf-Determination in Multicultural Societies provides a much needed corrective to conventional accounts of the normative foundations of the state by reconceptualizing some of the fundamental issues in political theory from a perspective that recognizes the culturally pluralistic character of contemporary democracies. Among the issues considered are democratic deliberation in multicultural societies, the justification and function of political communities, the nature of self-determination, the justification of cultural rights, and the moral rationale for regional self-governance and secession. This work is suitable for graduate and upper-division undergraduate courses in political philosophy and political science, as well as the lay reader interested in understanding the major sources of conflict and instability in democratic societies.

This book examines the management of ethical diversity in liberal democratic institutions by assessing whether legitimacy can be independent from justice. This book was published as a special issue of Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.

This Commentary provides the reader with a review of international standards and practice relating to the political participation of minorities. Political participation has been increasingly recognized as a foundational issue in the debate about minority rights. It is argued that minorities are more likely to feel co-ownership in the state if they have the opportunity to participate freely and effectively in all aspects of its governance, and that sustained and meaningful engagement will guard against the sense of alienation and exclusion among minorities that often emerges in ethnically divided societies. Taking as its starting point the two most important standard-setting documents in the field - the Lund Recommendations on the Effective Participation of National Minorities in Public Life, developed by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the Council of Europe's Thematic Commentary on the Issue of Political Participation of Minorities - the Commentary locates the international legal entitlement to political participation within the wider context of the right to democratic governance. It also considers effective participation in relation to the right to full and effective equality, as well as the legal entrenchment of these provisions and implementation mechanisms. Individual chapters then consider each of the principal mechanisms aimed at enhancing political participation, ranging from procedures covering minority representation in political institutions to consultative mechanisms and autonomy solutions. The Commentary draws on a team of experts, all of whom are recognized authorities in this specialized area of minority issues.