1 Introduction
Federalism and non-territorial autonomy (hereinafter nta) have both been proposed, especially in the post-Cold War era, as possible solutions for the successful management of ethno-cultural conflict, regarding both their prevention and solution. They are very different, however, in terms of their history in theory and practice, as well as their core idea. Federalism typically refers to a territorial arrangement, while nta is, as the name suggests, a non-territorial one. Yet, things are not as unambiguous and clear-cut as they might seem at first glance.
Indeed, some theorists of federalism understood the concept in such a broad way that it would encompass also non-territorial arrangements as one of its many institutional manifestations. Daniel Elazar claimed, for instance, that federalism included “consociational unions on a nonterritorial basis”.1 Carl Friedrich elaborated even more on federalism’s relationship with nta. He defined federalism as geared towards the “value of the freedom and security of federally recognized communities” and acknowledged that “[h]istorically these have been territorially defined communities”, but also made very clear that “this aspect is not necessarily implied in the concept”. Interestingly, Friedrich also referred more explicitly to the “now forgotten yet highly imaginative idea of the Austrian socialists” like Karl Renner and others “for a solution of the nationality problems of the Austrian empire by organizing it in terms of corporative national bodies without defined boundaries” and considered these ideas reflective of “the broad possibilities of federalism”.2 He could not know in 1962, of course, that these ideas would experience a veritable
nta,6 on the other hand, is of course by nature non-territorial. This specific way in which it organizes the exercise of power contrasts with territorial forms of autonomy and is the least common denominator of the various arrangements subsumed under this umbrella term.7 For Renner, nta actually emerged from a critique of the logic of territorial autonomy, which aims to create homogeneous entities, a goal that cannot be achieved and instead always leaves new minority groups. In his thinking, an nta arrangement offers the advantage that “the rule applies only to people who have accepted that they are members of the group in question”.8 The fact that autonomous competences are transferred not in relation to a specific territory but in relation to a certain community lowers the stakes concerning the issue of “possessing” territory as
While all this shows that a broader understanding of federalism may well include nta and that the latter is not as non-territorial as it would seem at first glance, this chapter adopts a more classical view of federalism in the sense of territorial arrangements. The aim is to explore how federalism, understood in such a way, is related to nta and compares to it. To this end, section 2 demonstrates how both have experienced a revival in the 1990s in political practice and in research. Section 3 then explores points of conceptual convergence or divergence and thereby analyses what federalism and nta have in common (or not) with regard to four key issues: How do they come into being as institutional arrangements? How are they related to the idea of self-rule? How are they linked to the idea of shared rule? What role does democracy play as a presumably important context factor for both kinds of arrangements? Section 4 concludes.
2
2.1 Political Practice in the 1990s: A Tale of Two Revivals
There is a broad consensus that federalism experienced a renaissance in the 1990s. The context for this in international relations was the collapse of the Cold War constellation and ensuing claims to self-determination within (or sometimes outside of) many still relatively young and ethno-culturally diverse states around the globe. While in several parts of the world the initially strong belief in federalism as an almost magical solution subsided somewhat at the start of the new millennium,12 it has been more recently at the centre of the political debate and (often) practice in a number of countries which have faced self-determination claims from ethno-cultural groups (e.g. Iraq and Nepal).
In these situations, federalism typically comes in the form of what is known, with some variation, as multinational, plurinational or ethnic federalism,13 which suggests that the federal territorial structure should be based on ethno-cultural divisions. This implies that internal boundaries are drawn or redrawn so as to transform nationwide minorities, at least large ones with concentrated settlement areas, into regional majorities within “nationality-based units”.14 This logic is diametrically opposed to that of mononational federalism, which prevails in the United States, where territory is perceived as neutral, in fact as “a blank slate to be filled in by whoever lives on the territory”.15
Whether multinational federalism has fulfilled its promise to successfully manage ethno-cultural conflicts has been a much-debated issue. Whereas its early critics pointed to the disintegration of the communist ethno-federations (the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia) to speak – without recognizing their specific communist legacy – of “a terrible track record”,16 the
Indeed, the latter issue is related to the inconsistency of multinational federalism’s inherent ethnic-territorial link because it presumes that territories of subnational entities are homogenous, even though they are in reality almost always ethno-culturally diverse. The fact that dominant group(s) are thus seen as owning the autonomous territory and territorially based power instead of sharing it with other groups makes multinational federalism a double-edged sword. This has even been recognized by scholars like Yash Ghai who had tended to emphasize the merits of the concepts by defining autonomy “as device to allow minorities claiming a distinct identity to exercise control over affairs of special concern to them”.19 In a more recent publication, Ghai seems to acknowledge the potential negative consequences for internal minorities: “Autonomy is a response to marginalisation, or oppression, but can itself all too easily become an instrument for the marginalisation of others. … Starting as a response to discrimination, it sets up its own orthodoxy. Justified in the name of diversity, it tends to entrench boundaries between cultures. Instead of defining identity as a composite of different values and multiple affiliations, identity is perceived as made up of a singular and exclusive affiliation.”20
The fact that the practice of multinational federalism revealed two main problems, namely those regarding secession and internal minorities, is related to the revival of nta because the latter purports to be unaffected by both these difficulties. Indeed, one of the main reasons for this revival was “autonomy-phobia”,21 that is, the widespread fear of governments that territorial autonomy
This trend must be called a re-discovery because nta did not emerge out of nowhere. Instead, the European continent can look back to a long tradition of such arrangements ranging from the Jewish community within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth until 1764 to the millets within the Ottoman empire.24 A particularly well-known and often-mentioned example is Karl Renner’s model of the Nationalitätenbundesstaat for the late Austro-Hungarian Empire which combined territorial and non-territorial elements.25 While precisely this combination appears to be the main legacy of this model,26 it has in common with other historical examples that non-territoriality was aimed at addressing, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, the issue of the intermingling of nationalities. Such cases risk the above-mentioned problem of internal minorities when addressed via territorial arrangements. This goal and geographical focus did not change when nta was established in the 1990s in a number of countries such as Estonia (1993), Hungary (1993) and the Russian Federation (1996).27 These laws have sometimes tied in with earlier experiences in these countries in terms of political theory (futile attempts in Russia to assert Karl Renner’s above-mentioned ideas against the Bolshevik
Irrespective of whether nta was introduced in the 1990s or re-introduced, a still unsolved question concerns the actual significance of this trend. It is indeed puzzling that minority groups have made ample use of the opportunities offered by nta arrangements, most notably in Hungary and the Russian Federation, even if these opportunities have been rather limited due to few competences, scarce funding, administrative obstacles, etc. This might have to do, for example, with communist (and pre-communist) institutional legacies30 or with the fact that the groups concerned either do not want more or are not strong enough in the political arena to realistically demand more.31
One thing, however, can be definitively said about the revival of nta in political practice: it demonstrated that there is another, second, dimension to autonomy. While many classical definitions had equated autonomy in general with its territorial variety,32 a process of incremental dissociation of these two notions would now occur. Autonomy would thus become an umbrella term that comprises both territorial and non-territorial arrangements.
2.2 Research on Federalism and nta
The preceding section explained the revivals of federalism and nta in the 1990s and the ways in which they are linked, but there remains the question of links in research concerning these two topics. Ideally, with both gaining increasing prominence and being interconnected, their analysis by the scientific community should also grow.
What we can say for sure is that there is still a significant imbalance when it comes to the extent of studies on these issues. Comparative research on federalism already experienced an enormous boost from the 1970s33 onwards through the work and international networks created by pioneering scholars
In light of federalism’s much longer research tradition it is understandable that its scientific community seems to have looked more often into the topic of nta than vice versa. Still, federalism scholars have not gone beyond occasional mentions of nta and, at any rate, have failed to explore the issue more in depth. A case in point is Elazar’s reference to “cultural home-rule, designed to preserve a minority language or religion”.39 Conversely, nta scholars also sometimes mention federalism, but do not engage with it in a comprehensive and systematic manner. Yet, in spite of that, the two research communities have not remained entirely unconnected. An attempt to bring together the communities dealing with federalism and nta was made at a workshop organized in 2011 in Bolzano/Bozen that eventually led to an edited book.40 Another initiative has been the online resource “Autonomy Arrangements in the World”, which is similarly inspired by the aim to bridge studies on territorial and non-territorial arrangements but also seeks to reach a non-academic audience with its case studies.41 Finally, there have been links to the topic of nta
3 Convergence and Divergence of Federalism and nta
3.1 Formation
As for the formative processes that eventually led to arrangements of federalism or nta, a point of departure may be the traditional view of federalism being based on an initial compact. According to this view, historically and legally sovereign entities form a federal government so that this very moment of a “federal big bang” turns their original sovereignty into autonomy as a result of the primacy of the national constitution.43 This view purports further that this compact is one among equal partners and that this equality (albeit a fiction in view of typically unequal political power at the founding moment) is reflected in the idea of all subnational entities having the same competences and equal representation in a second chamber of the national parliament. Classical theorists of federalism argued that such a compact, with its Latin equivalent foedus being the etymological origin of federalism,44 remains the core and basis of the “federal principle” and does not necessarily imply a compact between territorial entities. Interestingly, S. Rufus Davis asserts, for example, that if a foedus is there, this can be “connoting simply any cooperative association of groups, whether territorial or not”.45
If we apply this to arrangements of nta, it immediately becomes clear that their formative processes do not usually involve something that can be
The key question is then whether nta fundamentally differs from federalism in terms of the way in which it comes into being. This does not seem to be the case because federal arrangements are similar to those of nta in that they often do not involve an initial compact among equals. Indeed, the above-mentioned traditional view about a “federal big bang” has been clearly refuted
3.2 Self-Rule
It is widely recognized that the self-rule element, which is inherent to federalism (next to the shared rule element),53 is much more far-reaching than merely the authority for subnational entities to enact their own laws and implement legislation, that is, legislative and administrative autonomy. In fact, self-rule also has a constitutional dimension (the power to adopt a subnational constitution), a financial dimension (the power to autonomously raise revenue and spend money) and sometimes even a judicial dimension (in case of subnational court systems).54
Yet, it is exactly legislative and administrative self-rule where nta seems to be particularly and inherently limited in comparison to federalism. This is because there are certain powers that are by nature territorial and therefore cannot be transferred to authorities under nta arrangements. Examples of such responsibilities which can only be exercised in the context of a territorial arrangement are policing (e.g. Catalonia’s Mossos d’Esquadra and the Basque Country’s Ertzaintza) and in some extraordinary cases even the military. In
All such territorial powers are naturally out of reach for groups under any arrangement of nta,56 while many subnational entities in federal systems like Quebec or Catalonia have found precisely these competences important to underpin their nation-building projects. It hardly comes as a surprise, therefore, that large, territorially concentrated and politically powerful ethno-cultural groups usually prefer the typically much more far-reaching territorial solutions over mere cultural self-expression, as offered by non-territorial arrangements.57 A question is then how big the gap actually is between what federalism and nta have to offer. What can be said for sure is that the extent of territory-bound powers has massively increased over the 20th century with the expansion of governmental action more generally, and that this has entailed that nta’s inherent practical limitation is more deeply felt today than during Renner’s times. This probably has to be borne in mind when observers state with a certain frustration that “[n]owhere in Eastern Europe do minorities possess the wide-ranging control over cultural matters that was envisaged by Renner”.58 Another thing to be aware of is that, as this quote says, Renner only “envisaged” a broader scope of powers, as his theoretical model remained just that and was never put into practice.59
This implies the question of whether the well-established fact that nta arrangements do not confer much autonomy is because “little more than control over education, cultural affairs and relatively unimportant matters can
3.3 Shared Rule
If federalism is understood, according to a widely accepted formula, as “self-rule plus shared rule”,64 it becomes clear that these two elements are complementary. In fact, while much emphasis is often placed on the self-rule element, instruments of shared rule are actually at least as important, especially in light of a general trend (for a number of reasons) from dual to cooperative federalism.65 These instruments are key for the latter not to degenerate into coercive
If we turn to the relationship between nta and shared rule, Renner may again serve as a good starting point. For him it was clear that self-rule provided through the non-territorial exercise of certain autonomous competences is not sufficient and needs to be complemented by participation within institutions of the national government. Renner is therefore sometimes even seen as a precursor of the theory of consociationalism (or power-sharing),72 which has been associated since the 1970s above all with the name of Arend Lijphart and has only recently seen an extension to power-sharing at the regional level.73 Renner’s writings are still relevant today because his concern for shared rule (or similar concepts such as participation or integration) was echoed in the 1990s both in international documents and in research. This concern is clearly visible in the osce Lund Recommendations74 and in the work of academics who stress the importance of representation, understood as “having a say” in
3.4 Democracy
Another issue that deserves closer analysis is how federalism and nta are related to democracy. As for federalism’s relation to democracy,81 Carl Friedrich
Yet, it needs to be pointed out that from an empirical perspective federalism has often operated in the past and still does operate nowadays in contexts with more or less severe democratic deficits. One must not only focus in this regard on a number of “fragile federations” on the African continent in which “the conditions for federalism, notably democracy and the rule of law, are either absent or brittle.”86 Even the United States, the home of modern federalism, has long been characterized by democratic deficits due to the limitation of voting rights to white male property owners. Actually, the Dorr rebellion (1841–1842) to extend suffrage in the state of Rhode Island to all white men was a first step against this state of affairs and led to a seminal US Supreme Court ruling at the intersection of federalism and democracy. The court failed to accept the rebels’ view that the Rhode Island government was illegitimate because it violated Article 4, clause 4 of the US Constitution guaranteeing “a republican form of government” and left the assessment of such legitimacy to Congress.87 It took until long into the 20th century for suffrage to be extended to all men and
A question for nta is then whether such deficits are similarly part of the environment in which it functions or are to some extent inherent in such arrangements. The latter arguably holds true for the millets which existed for centuries in the Ottoman Empire, among others, for the benefit of adherents of various Christian and Jewish confessions.90 While religious leaders had remarkable non-territorial autonomy regarding the own affairs of their millets, they had to be loyal to the Sultan, ensure tributes in the form of taxes or soldiers and it was not uncommon that they joined forces with the political authorities to extract as much as possible from their communities. It is therefore hardly surprising that democratic credentials were identified as a key difference between the millets and the nta proposals of Austro-Marxists like Renner. The latter envisaged a system that is based on internal democracy within the autonomous communities and individual consent.91 As with federalism above, we have to take into account of course the different historical contexts when considering democracy. In fact, the millets had been shaped for several centuries by the specific political circumstances of an empire, while Renner developed his model as a theory and during what would later be identified as the first wave of democratization.92 There are, however, certain critical voices claiming that nta arrangements suffer from inherent democracy-related deficiencies, either in specific countries or more generally. Alexander
4 Conclusions
It has been suggested that the added value of nta in the context of ethno-culturally diverse societies depends, in essence, on three things, i.e. whether it lowers the stakes of conflicts regarding contested territory, whether it both empowers minority groups and strengthens their participation as equals (in other words, the safeguarding of both self-rule and shared rule) and whether it contributes in the long run to building a more inclusive democratic polity.95 Much the same can be said about federalism in contexts of ethno-cultural diversity. While the effects of nta and federalism in these three areas would deserve comprehensive empirical research, this chapter pursued the more modest aim of exploring how federalism, perceived in line with a classical view as referring to territorial arrangements, is related to nta and compares to it with regard to four key issues.
As for the formation of arrangements of federalism and nta, it is important to bear in mind that the “federal big bang” of an initial compact among equal partners is today a myth and certainly does not correspond (anymore) to empirical reality. In fact, it is a well-established fact that federal systems nowadays most often come into being through a gradual devolutionary process of a unitary state recognizing the claims of future autonomous entities. An original compact among equals is therefore practically as absent in the case of federalism as in that of nta. What seems different, however, is that only in the case of some federal systems it is possible to speak of some kind of ex-post compact because the devolutionary process of transferring responsibilities occurred in a power constellation in which the national government could not and did not simply dictate the terms of negotiations (e.g. Belgium or Spain). As far as nta
This is linked to the second issue explored in this chapter, namely how federalism and nta are related to self-rule. The main reason why nta does not cost much and is therefore “attractive (or at least acceptable)” from the national government’s perspective is “the fact that there are real, practical limits to the amount of power that may be devolved in a community that does not have a territory of its own”.96 Even if this statement is from almost three decades ago, it still holds true today. There can be little doubt that federalism is more attractive for large, territorially concentrated and politically powerful ethno-cultural groups because it offers them a wider range of powers that are naturally inaccessible under an nta arrangement. Besides this empirical fact, it is important to note that the expansion of governmental action over the 20th century has increased the scope of these territory-bound powers so that the gap between the potential maximum offers of federalism and nta is today arguably wider than during the times of Karl Renner. Yet, there are clear indications that national governments are even reluctant to fully exploit this inherently limited potential of nta regarding legislative and administrative self-rule. This reluctance is not least reflected in the rather traditional and narrow focus on issues of education, language and religion for which the osce Lund Recommendations have been criticized.
This chapter emphasized that shared rule is at least as important as self-rule, especially in light of an overall trend towards cooperative federalism. It also demonstrated that nta theorists from Renner to the post-Cold War era have insisted that self-rule provided through the non-territorial exercise of certain autonomous powers needs to be complemented by shared rule within institutions of the national government. Importantly, however, the beneficiary of “having a say” in these institutions and target group of the integration into the state which presupposes such participation is a (minority) group in the case of nta and a territory in that of federalism, even if the doctrine of multinational federalism all too often blurs this distinction. Another significant difference is that shared rule is seen (together with self-rule) as inherent to federalism, while it is, as said above, considered a complement in addition to non-territorial self-rule as the essence of nta.
Daniel J. Elazar, Exploring Federalism (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1987), 44.
Carl J. Friedrich, “Federal Constitutional Theory and Emergent Proposals,” in Federalism: Mature and Emergent, ed. Arthur W. MacMahon (New York: Russell&Russell, 1962), 517.
Bill Bowring, “Burial and Resurrection: Karl Renner’s Controversial Influence on the ‘National Question’ in Russia,” in National-Cultural Autonomy and its Contemporary Critics, ed. Ephraim Nimni (London-New York: Routledge, 2005), 191–206. See on this “resurrection” also Section 2.1. below.
Frédéric Lépine, “Federalism: Essence, Values and Ideologies,” in Understanding Federalism and Federation, eds. Alain-G. Gagnon, Soeren Keil and Sean Mueller (Farnham-Burlington: Ashgate, 2015), 37.
Patricia Popelier, Dynamic Federalism: A New Theory for Cohesion and Regional Autonomy (London-New York: Routledge, 2021), 37.
See section 2 of Alessi’s chapter and section 2.2 of Malloy’s chapter in this volume.
Suksi distinguishes three forms of nta: institutional forms of civil law turning into functional autonomy, functional autonomy within line administration and national cultural autonomy. See Markku Suksi, “Non-Territorial Autonomy: The Meaning of (Non-)Territoriality,” in Minority Accommodation through Territorial and Non-territorial Autonomy, eds. Tove H. Malloy and Francesco Palermo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 87–93.
John McGarry and Margaret Moore, “Karl Renner, Power Sharing and Non-Territorial Autonomy,” in National Cultural Autonomy and its Contemporary Critics, ed. Ephraim Nimni (London-New York: Routledge, 2005), 81.
Karl Kössler, “Conclusions: Beyond the Illusion of Ethno-culturally Homogenous Territory,” in Minority Accommodation through Territorial and Non-territorial Autonomy, eds. Tove H. Malloy and Francesco Palermo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 246–248.
Both these two elements are crucial for Capotorti’s famous definition (see Francesco Capotorti, Study on the Rights of Persons Belonging to Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, UN Doc e/cn.4/Sub.2/384/Add. 1–7).
Will Kymlicka, “National Cultural Autonomy and International Minority Rights Norms,” Ethnopolitics 6, no. 3 (2007): 390.
Francesco Palermo, “Concluding Remarks: New Regionalism in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe: Traditional Models and Beyond,” in Regional Dynamics in Central and Eastern Europe, eds. Francesco Palermo and Sara Parolari (Leiden-Boston: Martinus Nijhoff, 2013), 241–243.
For an introduction, see John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary, “Federation and Managing Nations,” in Multinational Federations, eds. Michael Burgess and John Pinder (London-New York: Routledge, 2007), 180–211.
Will Kymlicka, “Is Federalism a Viable Alternative to Secession?,” in Theories of Secession, ed. Percy B. Lehning, (London-New York: Routledge, 1998), 125; Kymlicka contrasts them with ‘regional-based unities’.
John Kincaid, “Territorial Neutrality and Coercive Federalism in the United States,” in Federalism, Regionalism and Territory, ed. Stelio Mangiameli (Milan: Giuffrè, 2013), 133–134.
Jack L. Snyder, From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict (New York: Norton, 2000), 327.
Jan Erk and Lawrence M. Anderson, The Paradox of Federalism: Does Self-Rule Accommodate or Exacerbate Ethnic Divisions? (London-New York: Routledge, 2012).
Francesco Palermo and Karl Kössler, Comparative Federalism: Constitutional Arrangements and Case Law (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2017), 101–105.
Yash Ghai, “Autonomy as a Participatory Right in the Modern Democratic State: Public Participation, Autonomy and Minorities,” in Beyond a One-Dimensional State: An Emerging Right to Autonomy?, ed. Zelim A. Skubarty (Leiden-Boston: Martinus Nijhoff, 2005), 38.
Sophia Woodman and Yash Ghai, “Comparative Perspectives on Institutional Frameworks for Autonomy,” in Practising Self-Government: A Comparative Study of Autonomous Regions, eds. Yash Ghai and Sophia Woodman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 485.
Francesco Palermo, “Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe and Territorial Autonomy: Are They Really Incompatible?,” in Political Autonomy and Divided Societies: Comparative Territorial Politics, eds. Alain-G. Gagnon and Michael Keating (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 82.
Tove H. Malloy, “The Lund Recommendations and Non-Territorial Arrangements: Progressive De-territorialization of Minority Politics,” International Journal on Minority and Group Rights 16, no. 4 (2009): 677.
John McGarry, Michael Keating and Margaret Moore, “Introduction: European Integration and the Nationalities Question,” in European Integration and the Nationalities Question, eds. John McGarry and Michael Keating (London-New York: Routledge, 2006), 17.
For an overview, see John Coakley, “Approaches to the Resolution of Ethnic Conflict: The Strategy of Non-Territorial Autonomy,” International Political Science Review 15, no. 3 (1994): 297–314.
Robert A. Kann, The Multinational Empire: Nationalism and National Reform in the Habsburg Monarchy. 1848–1918. Vol. 2 (New York: Octagon Books, 1983), 159.
Kössler, “Conclusions,” 267.
David J. Smith, “nta as Political Strategy in Central and Eastern Europe,” in Minority Accommodation through Territorial and Non-territorial Autonomy, eds. Tove H. Malloy and Francesco Palermo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 161–178.
Bowring, “Burial and Resurrection,” 191–206.
Kari Alenius, “The Birth of Cultural Autonomy in Estonia: How, Why and for Whom?,” Journal of Baltic Studies 38, no. 4 (2007): 445–462.
Smith, “nta as Political Strategy,” 177–178.
Kössler, “Conclusions,” 256.
See for an overview of these definitions, Geneviève Nootens, “Can Non-Territorial Autonomy Bring an Added Value to Theoretic and Policy-Oriented Analysis of Ethnic Politics?,” in Minority Accommodation through Territorial and Non-territorial Autonomy, eds. Tove H. Malloy and Francesco Palermo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 34–37.
See section 3.1 in Malloy’s chapter in this volume.
On Elazar’s legacy, see “Tributes to Daniel J. Elazar from Colleagues and Friends,” on the Center for the Study of Federalism website, accessed on 8 June 2023,
Nico Steytler and Balveer Arora, “Introduction,” in The Value of Comparative Federalism: The Legacy of Ronald L. Watts, eds. Nico Steytler, Balveer Arora and Rekha Saxena (London-New York: Routledge, 2020), 2–12.
E.g. Tove H. Malloy, Alexander Osipov and Balázs Vizi, eds., Managing Diversity through Non-Territorial Autonomy: Assessing Advantages, Deficiencies, and Risks (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
John Coakley, “Introduction: Dispersed Minorities and Non-Territorial Autonomy,” Ethnopolitics 15, no. 1 (January 2016): 1.
E.g. Marina Andeva et al., Non-Territorial Autonomy: An Introduction (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023).
Daniel J. Elazar, Federal Systems of the World: A Handbook of Federal, Confederal and Autonomy Arrangements (2nd ed., Harlow: Longman Group Limited, 1994), xvii.
Tove H. Malloy and Francesco Palermo, eds., Minority Accommodation through Territorial and Non-territorial Autonomy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
“Autonomy Arrangements in the World,” accessed 8 June 2023,
E.g. Frédéric Lépine, “Non-territorial Federalism as an Answer to the Limits of the Territorial Approach,” paper presented at the iacfs conference “Federalism, Regionalism and Territory” (Rome, 19–21 September 2012).
Palermo and Kössler, Comparative Federalism, 38–42. On the origins of the “federal big bang” notion in European integration studies, see Neil Walker, “The Shifting Foundations of the European Union Constitution,” University of Edinburgh School of Law, Research Paper Series, no. 1 (2012), 1–27.
Palermo and Kössler, Comparative Federalism, 18–19.
Rufus S. Davis, The Federal Principle: A Journey Through Time in Quest of a Meaning (Berkeley-Los Angeles-London: University of California Press, 1978), 214.
Will Kymlicka, “The Evolving Basis of European Norms of Minority Rights: Rights to Culture, Participation and Autonomy,” in European Integration and the Nationalities Question, eds. John McGarry and Michael Keating (London-New York: Routledge, 2006), 44.
See András L. Pap, “Minority Rights and Diaspora-Claims: Collision, Interdependence and Loss of Orientation,” in Beyond Sovereignty: From Status Law to Transnational Citizenship, eds. Osamu Ieda and Balázs Majtényi (Sapporo: Hokkaido University, 2006), 243.
See David J. Smith and John Hiden, Ethnic Diversity and the Nation State: National Cultural Autonomy Revisited (London-New York: Routledge, 2012), 111.
D. Christopher Decker, “The Use of Cultural Autonomy to Prevent Conflict and Meet the Copenhagen Criteria: The case of Romania,” in Cultural Autonomy in Contemporary Europe, eds. David J. Smith and Karl Cordell (London-New York: Routledge, 2008), 111–112.
Carl J. Friedrich, “New Tendencies in Federal Theory and Practice,” Jahrbuch des Öffentlichen Rechts 14, no. 1 (1965): 1–14.
Koen Lenaerts, “Constitutionalism and the Many Faces of Federalism,” American Journal of Comparative Law 38, no. 2 (1990): 205–264.
For a discussion of both varieties of federalism, see Karl Kössler, “Aggregative and Devolutionary Federalism Revisited: The Impact of the Founding on the Federal System,” in The Making and Ending of Federalism, eds. Peter Bußjäger and Mathias Eller (Leiden-Boston: Brill-Martinus Nijhoff, forthcoming).
See section 3.3. below.
Palermo and Kössler, Comparative Federalism, 125–163 and 210–239.
Only the founding of a Ministry of Defence of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2004 and the creation of the unified Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovin in 2005 ended the separate existence of the Bosniak-Croat Army of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (VFBiH) and the Bosnian Serbs’ Army of Republika Srpska (vrs).
See already John Coakley, “National Territories and Cultural Frontiers: Conflicts of Principle in the Formation of States in Europe,” West European Politics 5, no. 4 (1982): 36; McGarry and Moore, “Karl Renner”, 82–83.
Michael Keating, “Europe, the State and the Nation,” in European Integration and the Nationalities Question, eds. John McGarry and Michael Keating (London-New York: Routledge, 2006), 28.
McGarry and Moore, “Karl Renner,” 84; similarly, on the limited extent of powers under nta arrangements, see Suksi, “Non-Territorial Autonomy,” 103.
Only some elements were adopted in the Moravian Compromise of 1905, as well as the arrangements for Bukovina 1910 and Galicia 1914.
John Coakley, “National Territories,” 36.
Stefan Wolff and Marc Weller, “Self-Determination and Autonomy: A Conceptual Introduction,” in Autonomy, Self-Governance, and Conflict Resolution: Innovative Approaches to Institutional Design in Divided Societies, eds. Marc Weller and Stefan Wolff (London-New York: Routledge, 2005), 15.
Ruth Lapidoth, Autonomy: Flexible Solutions to Ethnic Conflicts (Washington D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1996), 40.
Tove H. Malloy, “The Lund Recommendations,” 675.
Elazar, Exploring, 12.
Palermo and Kössler, Comparative Federalism, 148–149 and 246–249.
John Kincaid, “From Cooperative Federalism to Coercive Federalism,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 509 (1990): 139.
Renaud Dehousse, “Il paradosso di Madison: riflessioni sul ruolo delle camere alte nei sistemi federali,” Le Regioni 17, no. 5 (1989): 1365–1400.
Alexander Hamilton et al., Federalist Papers (London: Penguin Books, 1987), 122.
On this, see Yonatan T. Fessha, Karl Kössler and Francesco Palermo, eds. Intergovernmental Relations in Divided Societies (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022).
Palermo and Kössler, Comparative Federalism, 253–256.
Francesco Palermo, “Beyond Second Chambers: Alternative Representation of Territorial Interests and Their Reasons,” Perspectives on Federalism 10, no. 2 (2018): 61–64.
McGarry and Moore, “Karl Renner,” 88.
Karl Kössler, “Beyond Majoritarian Autonomy? Legislative and Executive Power-sharing in European Regions,” in Law, Territory and Conflict Resolution, eds. Matteo Nicolini, Francesco Palermo and Enrico Milano (Leiden-Boston: Brill-Martinus Nijhoff, 2016), 39–66.
Lund Recommendations on the Effective Participation of National Minorities in Public Life of 1999.
Kristin Henrard, “’Participation’, ‘Representation’ and ‘Autonomy’ in the Lund Recommendations and their Reflections in the Supervision of the fcnm and Several Human Rights Convention,” International Journal on Minority and Group Rights 12, no. 2–3 (2005): 141.
Zelim A. Skubarty, “Introduction,” in Beyond a One-Dimensional State: An Emerging Right to Autonomy?, ed. Zelim A. Skubarty (Leiden-Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2005), xxxi-lviii, at xxxiv.
Kössler, “Beyond Majoritarian Autonomy?,” 44.
Francesco Palermo, “Owned or Shared? Territorial Autonomy in the Minority Discourse,” in Minority Accommodation through Territorial and Non-territorial Autonomy, eds. Tove H. Malloy and Francesco Palermo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 13–32; Karl Kössler, “Conclusions,” 245–272; Karl Kössler, “Constitution-Making in Diverse Societies: The Rise of Multinational Federalism and its Pitfalls,” Ethiopian Journal of Federal Studies 4, no. 1 (2018): 63–89.
See section 3.2. above.
Rainer Bauböck, “Territorial or Cultural Autonomy for National Minorities?,” iwe Working Paper Series 22, (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Forschungsstelle für institutionellen Wandel und Europäische Integration, 2001): 19.
See sections 2 and 3 in Sonnicksen’s chapter.
Friedrich, “Federal Constitutional Theory,” 513.
Ibid. 518.
Ivo Duchacek, “Perforated Sovereignties: Towards a Typology of New Actors in International Relations,” in Federalism and International Relations: The Role of Subnational Units, eds. Hans J. Michelmann and Panayotis Soldatos (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 3.
Dimitris N. Chryssochoou, “Federalism and Democracy Reconsidered,” Regional & Federal Studies 8, no. 2 (1998): 18.
Nico Steytler and Jaap de Visser, “‘Fragile Federations’ and the Dynamics of Devolution,” in Federalism as Decision-Making: Changes in Structures, Procedures and Policies, eds. Francesco Palermo and Elisabeth Alber (Leiden-Boston: Brill-Martinus Nijhoff, 2015), 81.
Luther v Borden, 48 US 1 (1849).
Edward L. Gibson, “Boundary Control: Subnational Authoritarianism in Democratic Countries”, World Politics 58 (2005): 107–08; Robert Mickey, Paths out of Dixie: The Democratization of Authoritarian Enclaves in America’s Deep South, 1944–1972 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015).
Thomas Fleiner-Gerster, “Federalism in Australia and in Other Nations,” in Australian Federalism: Towards the Second Century, ed. Greg Craven (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1992), 14.
Jan Erk, “Non-Territorial Millets in Ottoman History,” in Minority Accommodation through Territorial and Non-territorial Autonomy, eds. Tove H. Malloy and Francesco Palermo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 119–131.
Ephraim Nimni, “Nationalist Multiculturalism in Late Imperial Austria as a Critique of Contemporary Liberalism: The Case of Bauer and Renner,” Journal of Political Ideologies 4, no. 3 (1999): 296.
Samuel P. Huntington, “Democracy’s Third Wave,” Journal of Democracy 2, no. 2 (1991): 12.
Alexander Osipov, “National Cultural Autonomy in Russia: A Case of Symbolic Law,” Review of Central and East European Law 35, no. 1 (2010): 54.
Bauböck, “Territorial or Cultural Autonomy.”
Nootens, “Can Non-Territorial Autonomy,” 47.
John Coakley, “Approaches,” 311.
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