ABSTRACT
Over the last quarter of a century, migratory pressures and the demands of territories claiming cultural and political autonomy have led to profound debates in liberal democracies as regards the relationships between citizen, nation and state, both at the theoretical level and with respect to public policies and institutional models for territorial distribution of power. This discourse has concerned both the decisive role of the concept of nation in the democracy of single-nation states, and the replacement of assimilational policies by the recognition and accommodation of minority nationalities within multinational states. It is on this latter aspect that I focus in this chapter.
