ABSTRACT
The notion of ‘Governance in Multicultural Societies’ which is the subject of this symposium covers a wide range of geographical and historical situations. Moreover it often used interchangeably with the term ‘pluralism’. The object of this paper is to show that the notion of ‘pluralism’ or ‘the plural society’ had a quite specific usage in the study of colonial and post-colonial societies, and that, when we attempt to develop an all-inclusive theory of governance in what are loosely called multicultural societies, this all inclusive theory must take these societies into account. Equally it has to be recognized that migration from the colonial and other peripheries to the metropolitan centre creates new structural problems at that centre.
