Territorial pluralism

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. ² They may promote consociation, which accommodates plural communities through power sharing, or centripetalism, which incentivizes majority politicians to take minority preferences into account. ³ They may promote group-based self-government, sometimes termed corporate or cultural autonomy. They may also seek accommodation through territorially based autonomy, which we have described as territorial pluralism (McGarry et al. 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. ⁴ Contemporary territorial pluralism originated as a conflict-regulating strategy in the mid-nineteenth century, with the creation of pluralist federations in Switzerland and Canada. ⁵ 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) – though in the last case the South eventually opted for secession rather than a form of power-sharing in which the North failed to honour its commitments. It is frequently mooted to resolve ongoing conflicts in Azerbaijan (Nagorno-Karabakh), Cyprus, Georgia (Abkhazia, South Ossetia), Moldova (Transnistria), Nepal (the Terai and other regions), Sri Lanka (Tamil Eelam), and Sudan (Darfur). Territorial pluralism allows nationalities, 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 NATO and the UN, 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.