ABSTRACT
Recent events in Canada have demonstrated, once again, the centrality which issues of language and culture may have in political life. They remind us of what John Stuart Mill said in 1861 about the obstacles to internal cohesion and effective government created when a country contains more than one ‘nationality’. Indeed, in a much-quoted observation, Mill pointed out that ‘it is in general a necessary condition of free institutions that the boundaries of governments should coincide in the main with those of nationalities’ (p. 362). Now, it might be argued, from the point of view of central authority, that multi-national or multicultural states - which form the majority, of course, of the world’s countries - are actually easier to govern if one group is dominant and the others are numerically weaker, or geographically dispersed, or for other reasons unlikely to seriously challenge the power of the major group. Localised or specialised accommodations may be sought or given, but a centralist orientation can remain. On the other hand, states where power is more equally divided among two, or three, or more ethnolinguistic collectivities are often states in which accommodations must necessarily be more far-reaching and (often) more formalised. It goes without saying that achieving satisfactory and enduring accommodation can be very difficult.
