ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book analyses how public policy-making has dealt with the claims for cultural recognition that have increasingly been expressed by ethno-national movements, language groups, religious minorities, indigenous peoples and migrant communities in the past decades. It addresses the political governance of cultural diversity by focusing on this transformation of the nation-state and of political modernity in general. The book also analyses the impact of government policies, by starting from available theoretical explanations of support for secessionist movements. It argues that the combination of efficacious but flexible public order policies, together with very substantial doses of responsiveness, contributes to the mitigation of Basque nationalist terrorism and extremism in Spain. The book argues that evaluating the potential and actual impact of language policies is complicated by lack of straightforward causal connections between types of policy and language maintenance and shift.
