A major feature of the political development of western democracies is the growth of indigenous, ethnic and national groups striving for political self-determination. This book analyses the institutional responses individual governments have made to these demands. In 1999 alone, devolved self-governing bodies were elected in Nunavut, Scotland and Wales; worldwide indigenous people have acquired different forms of local self-government, co-management and inclusion in national institutions. Moreover, in regions such as Quebec and Northern Ireland, existing institutional arrangements are still being revised, and negotiated, so that sub-state nationalists can ward off secessionist demands, or the threat of instability or violence.
Sub-State Nationalism provides a much needed categorization and genuinely comparative analysis of the political voice gained by sub-state national groups in multinational democratic groups. The book covers international case studies drawn from Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the USA. It covers the empirical question of what voice these groups have, and how its institutions are structured; and the analytical question of how such knowledge contributes to our theoretical understanding of the politics of group rights and representation.
The authors present a broad variety of institutional structures designed to provide a voice for sub-state national groups; they also provide a systematic, comparative analysis of institutional designs - examining the form of representation and the access afforded to the policy process. The chapters consider the extent to which different structures embody the demands of the normative literature on group representation / self-determination, or the stated demands of sub-state nationalists. In turn, this analysis opens up new avenues of theoretical enquiry into the changing nature of state sovereignty; the distribution of legitimacy and power; the efficacy of institutional strategies of devolution, power-sharing, co-management and inclusion as a means of coping with the challenges faced by multinational democracies around the globe.