Abstract

Governments that seek to accommodate mobilised national, ethnic, linguistic or religious communities have a range of institutional strategies at their disposal if they do not wish to permit secession. ¹ They may promote consociation, which accommodates plural communities through power sharing, or centripetalism, which incentivises majority politicians to take minority preferences into account. They may promote group-based self-government, sometimes termed corporate or cultural autonomy. They may also seek accommodation through territorially based autonomy, that may be described as ‘territorial pluralism’ (McGarry et al. 2008; O’Leary and McGarry 2010). The latter entails four distinct institutional arrangements: pluralist federation, decentralisation 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. ²