Managing Diversity through Non-Territorial Autonomy

20/08/2015 at 16:20 · Filed under Blog and tagged: autonomy, diversity, ethno-cultural groups, statecraft

The first book in a new Oxford University Press series on non-territorial autonomy (NTA) is out:

Managing Diversity through Non-Territorial Autonomy. Assessing Advantages, Deficiencies, and Risks, edited by Tove H. Malloy, Alexander Osipov and Balazs Vizi (Oxford University Press)

Non-territorial autonomy (NTA) is one policy tool of a greater family of statecraft tools that aim to accommodate ethno-cultural diversity in situations where states must either cope with division due to irreconcilable differences or wish to develop society through promoting diversity as an added value. In either case, NTA aims to consolidate the state and promote social unity through accommodating ethno-cultural demands and requirements. As such, the viability of NTA as a state policy is vital not only to enhancing social unity but also to ensuring justice. Moreover, as a diversity management tool, NTA can contribute to social cohesion. However, the conceptual and functional features of NTA are poorly defined. Conceptually, NTA lives in the shadow of the much broader toolkit available for territorial autonomy (TA) regions. Both notions imply autonomy for ethno-cultural groups, but they are tools with distinct, separate aims. Moreover, the functions of NTA are rarely described comprehensively due to the concept’s conflation with the very broad regime of human and minority rights. True, NTA needs to be normatively underpinned, but its institutional functions must be in place in order to speak of and implement autonomy. This volume seeks to describe and analyse the various functions of NTA through a number of case studies of existing NTA arrangements in Europe and Canada. The aim is twofold. On the one hand, we wish to contribute to sharpening the conceptual contours of NTA. On the other, we hope to provide informed contextual knowledge on the basis of which decision-makers and policymakers may determine the viability of NTA as a diversity management tool for policymaking in multicultural and multi-ethnic states.

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