ABSTRACT
Governments that seek to accommodate mobilized national, ethnic, linguistic or religious communities have a range of institutional strategies at their disposal if they do not wish to permit secession. 1 They may promote consociation or centripetalism, which accommodate plural communities through power-sharing within central or regional institutions. They may promote group-based self-government, sometimes termed corporate or cultural autonomy. They may also seek accommodation through territorially based autonomy, that may be described as ‘territorial pluralism’ (McGarry, O’Leary and Simeon 2008). The latter entails four distinctive institutional arrangements: pluralist federation, decentralization within a union or unitary state, federacy, and cross-border territorial arrangements, the last of which can be combined with any of the first three. Territorial pluralism assists geographically concentrated national, ethnic, linguistic, or religious communities. It is not relevant for small, dispersed communities, including immigrant communities, for whom self-government is infeasible or undesirable. Territorial pluralism should be distinguished not just from group-based (non-territorial) autonomy, but also from territorial self-government based on ‘administrative’, or ‘geographic’ criteria, including regional components of the state’s majority community. 2 Contemporary territorial pluralism originated as a conflict-regulating strategy in the mid-nineteenth century, with the creation of pluralist federations in Switzerland and Canada. It has become particularly fashionable, at least in liberal democracies, in recent decades (Gurr 1993a, 1993b; Hannum 1989, 1990, 1993, 1996; Lapidoth 1997; Weller and Wolff 2005). Within the past quarter-century, several democratic states, including Belgium, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Spain, formally either unitary or union states, have transformed themselves into states in which some nationalities enjoy some territorial autonomy. Even France, the home of the Jacobin model of centralized government, has established a regional assembly for the Corsicans, though the extent of its autonomy is minimal (Daftary 2001). Elsewhere, territorial pluralism has been implemented in response to nationalist disputes in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Indonesia (Aceh and Irian Jaya), Iraq (Kurdistan), and Sudan (the South). It is frequently mooted to resolve ongoing conflicts in Azerbaijan (Nagorno-Karabakh), Cyprus, Georgia (Abkhazia, South Ossetia), Moldova (Transnistria), and Nepal (the Terai and other regions). Territorial pluralism allows 241nationalities, big or small, some autonomy within existing states. It has significant support in the academy, and among political elites from minority communities. International organizations, including the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and the European Union (EU), have seen it as a possible solution to the tension between the desire of nationalities for autonomy and the desire of states to maintain their territorial integrity.
