Rethinking Territorial Autonomy

Abstract

Strategies for accommodating national diversity range along a spectrum from assimilation to separation, but in recent years there has been a growing, albeit not universal, consensus on the desirability and legitimacy of limited self-government within the state and broader supranational and transnational orders. If nationality claims are couched in absolute terms, seen as irreducible rights, then such strategies are futile, and have been criticized as merely stoking the demand. There is, however, an important strand of thinking that sees them rather as demands, to be treated as normal forms of politics amenable to compromise and brokerage.