Abstracts

Julia von Blumenthal

Accommodating cultural diversity in a unitary federal state: Islamic migration in Germany

“Islam also belongs to Germany”. The famous quote from former German President Christian Wulff mirrors social reality in Germany but it also conveys a normative claim. With more than 3.5 M believers Islam constitutes a relevant religious minority which becomes more and more visible through remarkable buildings – e.g. the Mosques in Duisburg and Cologne – and also through the public presence of representatives of different Muslim organizations. But Islam has not achieved full equality within the institutionalized system of church-state-relations which grants acknowledged religious communities a whole set of rights and privileges. Progress has been made, but a number of obstacles are still to overcome on both sides. A short overview of the most controversial issues shows that the Länder (the subnational level) are more important in accommodating Islam with its different denominations than the national level. The paper will try to explain why some Länder are more open to Muslim claims than others taking into account institutional factors as well as actors’ strategies.

César Colino

If asymmetry is the solution, what is the problem? Asymmetry and accommodation of national diversity in federations

The proposed paper will deal with federal asymmetry as an institutional devise for the integration of socially and culturally plural states. However, as the literature has now acknowledged, there are many different kinds of asymmetries that in practice show different degrees of feasibility and effectiveness in political terms. At the same time, there are several normative criteria by which we can judge whether it is justified to treat different units differently. These normative criteria may not be shared. Some think that the main normative goal is the survival, the integrative effectiveness or cohesion of a system. Others may believe that the recognition of substate cultures and identities is the supreme value. Then the dysfunctionalities of the system as a whole lose importance.

The paper will seek to propose some conceptual clarifications and definitions of asymmetry and a typology that may be useful to understand not just the existing asymmetries, but also the prospects and feasibility of further asymmetries in the system. It also will consider the two main normative criteria by which we can assess which of the existing modalities and uses of asymmetry are more fair, useful or, on the contrary, more dysfunctional, which of them should be promoted, if any, and which should be avoided in the eventual case of constitutional reform initiatives taking place. The paper will mainly focus on the Spanish system and the fairness, political feasibility and prospects of expanding or reducing the existing asymmetry in it.

Regis Dandoy

Territorial Reforms, Decentralisation and Party Positions in Belgium

The objective of this paper is to explain party positions on the issue of decentralisation in Belgium. Based on a quantitative analysis of the content of the party manifestos of all Belgian parties since 1977, this paper intends to test three hypotheses concerning the amount of attention parties allocate to this issue in their electoral platforms. Our findings demonstrate that territorial reforms as well as patterns of party competition do have an effect on party positions on decentralisation. In this process the specific role of the regionalist parties is outlined, since these parties can be viewed the owners of the decentralisation issue and have a significant impact on the position of the other parties in the party system.

Klaus Detterbeck, Eve Hepburn

Party Politics in Multi-Layered Systems: An analytical framework of multi-level party politics for Western and Eastern Europe

Political parties are generally considered to be the main instruments of national integration across states. However, the challenges of spatial rescaling and ‘territorialisation’ have forced statewide parties to adapt both programmatically and organisationally to the new political realities of multi-level governance and have challenged their integrative role and capacity. This ‘territorial dimension’ acquires salience in cases where a strong nationalist or regionalist party exists, whose goals for self-determination have won substantial support. The paper explores the conditions under which a ‘territorial rescaling’ of party politics occurs. While existing research has pointed to explanatory factors such as institutional structures, societal context and party strategies for explanation, scholarship still lacks both a broader theoretical understanding and comparative knowledge of party politics in multi-level settings. There is a clear need to better understand how these factors work, which requires a clarification and possible expansion of existing theoretical concepts, methodological understandings and empirical indicators. The paper will provide an analytical framework of multi-level party politics which can be valid for Western and Eastern Europe (and beyond). Several empirical cases will be used to elaborate the argument.

Jan Erk

Non-Territorial Millets and Territorial Jurisdiction in the Ottoman Empire

The idea of non-territorial cultural autonomy for minorities is often traced to the writings of Austro-Marxists Karl Renner and Otto Bauer. The origins of the idea are found within the Ottoman ‘millet’ system which allowed non-territorial religious/cultural communities internal autonomy over such affairs (while being subject to imperial jurisdiction in other areas).

Yet, the territorial organisation of political authority in the imperial system was defined by a degree of heterogeneity and diversity that goes against current norms on the sovereign nation-state and territorial compactness. There were directly governed crown lands, indirectly governed vassal states, semi-autonomous cities, allied territories, colonies, leased harbours, fluid tributary arrangements with nomads etc. The way the non-territorial ‘millet’ system worked is inseparable from the particular type of territorial authority that it co-existed with.

The proposed paper aims to show how the interaction between the millet system and territorial political authority. This is likely to help paint a more nuanced and informed picture of non-territorial autonomy in the Ottoman Empire, with potential lessons for contemporary minority issues.

Yonatan Tesfaye Fessha

The territorial management of ethnic diversity in Ethiopia

Territorial autonomy for geographically concentrated ethnic groups is an important component of the Ethiopian federalism. In fact, ethnic-based territorial autonomy constitutes one of the major features of the 1995 Constitution and the basis for the internal organisation of the federal state. This explains why the Ethiopian federalism is often referred to as ethnic or, as its detractors would usually like to put it, tribal federalism. This paper focuses on a particular aspect of the Ethiopian federalism, namely the territorial design of the federation. It focuses on the decision to use ethnicity as a basis for the territorial organisation of the federation and asks whether this decision represents, in the context of Ethiopia, an appropriate response to the challenges of ethnic diversity. It argues that the decision to use ethnicity as a basis for the organisation of the state represents a recognition of the political relevance of ethnicity in Ethiopia. The system, the paper further argues, has provided ethnic groups with a territorial space, which is essential for the preservation and promotion of their languages, cultures and identities as well as the self-management of their own communities. However, the decision that each major ethnic group should be dominant in one and only subnational unit has elevated ethnic identity to a primary political identity. As ethnically defined regional states become the major custodians of constitutionally entrenched powers and a means to access power, influence and representation, the territorial structure of the federation has encouraged political mobilisation along ethnic lines. This particular approach has also overlooked the consideration of another historically and politically relevant identity, namely regionalism, in designing the territorial structure of the state. By doing so, this paper concludes, it has denied itself an opportunity to respond to ethnic concerns without freezing ethnicity as an exclusive political identity. 

Francis Garon

Deliberating Immigration and Integration in Western Societies

Deliberative democracy is seen as one of the most promising ways to address the increasing ethnocultural diversity of Western democracies. Yet, as some have already noted, public deliberation on immigration and integration can be problematic, most importantly because of the possible expression of discourses harmful to specific groups. In this paper, I first develop on the main challenges that immigration and integration pose to public deliberation and deliberative democracy theory. Second, I look at these problems through Dryzek and Niemeyer’s (2008) discursive representation. In short, they argue that the quality of deliberation will be best served by the representation of all discourses than by the representation of all individuals. This proposition is particularly helpful where under-represented, vulnerable groups are directly concerned in large and open public debates. Building on these insights, I develop four possible discourses regarding immigration and integration:

1. the weak egalitarian discourse;
2. the liberal/realist discourse;
3. the republican discourse; and
4. the xenophobic discourse.

I then use these discourses and their associated statements to conduct a detailed content analysis of media coverage of three commissions on immigration and integration issues in France, the UK and Belgium. The general objective is to shed light on the representativeness of the expressed discourses.

Thomas O. Hueglin

Federalism in the Asia-Pacific Region: Is There a Template for Accommodation?

Conventional studies of comparative federalism are typically based on classical models of territorial diversity in the European and Anglo-American tradition. This may pose serious or even prohibitive limitations of applicability for newly developing and democratizing societies in the non-Anglo-European tradition.
In this paper, we seek to analyse the four existing federal systems of the Asia-Pacific region without a priori comparison to the Anglo-European precedent (therefore leaving aside Australia): India, Pakistan, Malaysia and Micronesia. We are aware, of course, that in each of these cases, history points back to colonially imposed British/American influence. Our analysis will therefore focus primarily on those institutional structures and procedural practices that appear to have evolved by departing from those influences.

One of the main characteristics connecting all four cases is the adoption of some measures of non-territorial representation. Without prejudging what may be their limited practical relevance, outright tokenism or, as in the case of Malaysia, majoritarian abuse, these measures will be examined for their potential as possible design templates in the evolution of federalism from its territorial bias to a more advanced form of diversity accommodation.

Non-territorial federalism is not without historical or theoretical precedent. Our exploratory analysis will be conceptually framed by old and new debates about multiculturalism and the nationality state.

Erin Jenne, Natalia Peral

Creating an Ethnically Integrated Kosovo State? EU-Induced Devolution and the Kosovo Status Negotiations

There is a significant body of work that focuses on whether institutions of territorial and cultural autonomy might serve to reduce sectarian conflict in divided societies.  Some scholars have argued that this is an effective method of conflict management because it pacifies restive minorities; others counter that such institutions are only likely to increase conflict by encouraging minority rebellion, providing a "stepping stone" to secession.  In this paper, we assess the validity of both claims in the case of post-2004 Kosovo, exploring the ways in which the European Union has attempted to reduce conflict in the multi-ethnic state by encouraging the Pristina government to devolve significant state powers to its regions, thereby granting Serb enclaves significant de facto powers at the local level.  We demonstrate that both predictions exaggerate the importance of the institutions in conflict outcomes and that a fuller account of the impact of induced devolution on the Kosovo conflict can only be achieved by taking into account the actions of significant intervening third parties, namely the "meddling" Serbian state.

Sabine Kropp, Karina Mikirova

Autocratic Federalism and Accommodation Policies in Russia

Russia features a multi-ethnic federal system which is based on administrative-territorial and ethnic-territorial principles. Today, about 80% of the overall population is Eastern Slavs, composing a comparatively homogeneous Staatsvolk. However, ethnic conflicts have been seen as a latent danger to the integrity and stability of the Russian national state.

Up to now, there is no basic federal law regulating ethnic policy, but there are multi-faceted measures taken by regional administrations to cope with problems resulting from mass migration and ethnic conflicts overlapping with religious and socio-economic tensions. In order to avoid ethnic conflicts, the federal government depends on the support of regional administrations which, for their part, often fall back on authoritarian rule to contain tensions. In the 2000s, however, most regional governments established ‘platforms’ comprising state actors and non-state ethnic NGOs in order to mediate existing and to avoid potential conflicts.

Based on four case studies conducted in the Stavropol and the Krasnodar region, our paper explores different modes of (non-)accommodation characterizing state-non-state interactions in ethnic policy at regional level. Moreover, it delineates how the ‘power vertical’ which is seen as a formative feature of the (semi-)authoritarian Russian federalism is applied by the federal government to enforce its (economic, political) aims in ethnic policy in the Russian regions. We show that the federal government under certain conditions even asserts patterns of horizontal network governance against the rule of authoritarian regional incumbents. Finally, the paper critically discusses whether patterns comprising horizontal relationships between state and non-state actors may indicate democratization or not.

André Lecours

The Politics of Adopting Political and Institutional Responses to Diversity in a Developing Country in Transition: the Case of Nepal

States with significant ethno-cultural cleavages typically have to face political claims articulated in the name of a territorial minority. In countries with long liberal traditions, responses to these claims have tended to develop gradually over decades, even centuries, in the form of rights, territorial autonomy, and representative and inclusive government. In Belgium, for example, consociational practices developed in the 19th century to provide a voice to the various ideological families were brought into the governance of the language communities during the 20th century. Moreover, when discrete choices were made in these countries (for example, the decision to establish a Parliament for Scotland in the late 1990s), these usually came in the context of established civil peace and represented the fairly clear will of one specific community (the foundation of Canada as a federation to satisfy French-Canadian elites fits this characterization).

For developing countries with an authoritarian tradition that have to respond to political claims from minority groups in a democratic context, sometimes for the first time, adopting accommodation approaches and institutions involves a fairly discrete, time-specific choice. We do not know much about what conditions these choices and, eventually, the nature of the accommodation landscape that might come out of a particular situation. Of course, the considerations of power and identity that permeate any discussion of accommodation approaches in advanced industrialized liberal-democracies are bound to also be relevant for developing countries in the context of democratic transitions but some others conditions specific to these last scenarios (for example the fragility of civil peace and/or democracy) likely shape debates, negotiations and, ultimately, decision-making, over accommodation approaches. 

This paper uses the case of Nepal to explore the politics of adopting political and institutional responses to minority group claims in developing countries transitioning from authoritarianism to democracy. It is divided into three sections. In the first section, I look at the accommodation approaches available to states looking to manage minorities and problematize their adoption in the context of developing and transitioning countries. In the second section, I analyze the politics of adopting accommodation approaches and institutions in Nepal, a country of tremendous diversity that began in 2006 a democratic transition on the heels of a 10-year Maoist insurgency. In the conclusion, I discuss the implications of the Nepali case study for the study of diversity management.

Emanuele Massetti, Arjan H. Schakel

Decentralization and Regionalist Parties’ Electoral Strength: What Causes What?

Traditionally studies on the causes and origins of regionalist party electoral strength have focused on sociological and historical specificities of the regions. Following part of the most recent scholarship, this paper aims to place the lens on the institutional environment in which these parties compete and, in particular, on the level of decentralization (i.e. level of regional authority). The paper considers regionalist parties’ electoral strength in both national and regional elections, also investigating the relationship between the two levels. Our analysis, based on a novel dataset of 136 regionalist parties across 320 regions and 18 countries, reaches interesting conclusions concerning spill-over effects and the differentiate effect of secondary independent variables (e.g. voting systems) across the two level of elections. As far as the impact of regional authority is concerned, we advance a preliminary and very tentative interpretation of the findings which leads us to conclude that the causal relationship works predominantly in the other way around: it is regionalist parties’ strength that affects the level of regional authority, rather than vice versa.

Nicola McEwen

Embedded Independence: Between autonomy and interdependence

In September 2014, Scots will be asked to decide whether Scotland should be an independent country. This 'hard' referendum question belies a soft vision of what it means to be an independent country in an inter-dependent world.

This paper develops the concept of 'embedded independence' in an effort to understand contemporary nationalism within advanced democratic states. This goes beyond notions of 'independence in Europe' identified in earlier literatures on minority nationalism. The principal protagonists of independence in Scotland and elsewhere envisage exercising, pooling and sharing national sovereignty within a broad array of transnational networks and institutions, including institutionalising new bilateral and multilateral arrangements with other nations, states and supranational organisations.

Roberta Medda-Windischer

Conceptualising a common approach for the protection of old and new minorities

Minority rights instruments have been traditionally applied to old, autochthonous minority groups. The lecture will examine to what extent these instruments are conceptually meaningful to the integration of new minorities stemming from migration. The conviction that minority groups, irrespective of being old or new minorities, have some basic common claims that can be subsumed under a common definition does not mean that all minority groups have all the same rights and legitimate claims: all have fundamental and basic rights, while only some have or should be granted more substantial rights; some can legitimately put forward certain claims—not enforceable rights—that have to be negotiated with the majority, while others not. In order to devise a common but differentiated set of rights and obligations for old and new minority groups, it is essential to analyse the differences and similarities of both categories of minorities, their claims, needs and priorities; in this way it will be possible to delineate a catalogue of rights that can be demanded by, and granted to, different minority groups. Studying the interaction between traditional minorities and migrants or old and new minority groups is a rather new task, because so far these topics have been studied in isolation from each other. It is also an important task for future research in Europe, since many states have established systems for the rights of old minorities, but have not as yet developed sound policies for the integration of new minority groups stemming from migration.

Tim Nieguth

After Federalism: Renner, Althusius, and National Autonomy in Canada

Two decades ago, Alan Cairns – one of Canada’s foremost scholars on constitutional politics – argued that “federalism is not enough” to accommodate ethnic diversity. Federalism is insufficient for this task, Cairns suggested, because there will always be minorities within minorities. Taking this observation as a point of departure, this paper will contend that Canadian federalism cannot adequately accommodate ethnic diversity partly because it is, in many ways, an imperial project. For example, Canadian federalism historically reflects the concerns and considerations of a hierarchy of imperial centres; it limits self-government to some of the country’s ethnic and national minorities; and it prevents the consideration of alternative institutional arrangements that might extend the reach of self-government to a wider range of minority groups. This paper will therefore argue that Canadian federalism needs to be supplemented by other institutional arrangements in order to facilitate ethnic and national self-government. It is in this context that the contributions of political thinkers such as Johannes Althusius and Karl Renner become particularly attractive. Operating in very different historical and societal circumstances, both of these thinkers outlined models of political organization that challenge the principle of territorial sovereignty, favouring instead a composite polity marked by the dispersal of political authority. Such models cannot replace federalism as a vehicle for ethnic and national self-government, but they can help to overcome some of its limitations.

Ephraim Nimni

The Conceptual Challenge of Non-Territorial Autonomy

The aim of this paper is to consider both in theory and empirically, an ongoing paradigm shift that is resulting in a more multidimensional understanding of the relationship between cultural minorities, sovereignty, self-determination and democratic governance.

A common element among various versions of this new paradigm is the dispersal of governance across multiple and overlapping jurisdictions. Governmental processes are no longer seen as discrete, vertical and centralized and homogenous (as in the old nation-state model) but as asymmetrical, multilayered and devolved into multiple jurisdictions. Very often these new models take the form of consociational segmental sovereignty as in the case of Northern Ireland, and in several cases of self-determination among indigenous peoples as well as in Québec, Catalonia and the Basque country among others. This is not only useful for minority territorial nations, but also for scattered cultural communities unable to comply of modalities of territorial representation because of their territorial minority status.

Of particular interest is the recent revival of models of non-territorial autonomy, by indigenous peoples and others. These allow for the possibility of self-determination for national or ethnic communities that reside in overlapping territories without dismembering existing states. The paper will critically examine how models of non-territorial autonomy could manage or help integrate scattered minorities into the public domain of the state. This opens the possibility for models for self-determination that empower cultural minority communities while not dismembering existing states.

Marc Sanjaume-Calvet

Liberal Democracy and Secession: the difficult marriage of political divorce

In this paper I argue that addressing secession from liberal-democratic theories require its revision in some important aspects. I claim that political divorce points out important gaps (in fact paradoxes) of these theories concerning their conception of legitimacy. Particularly I consider that understanding liberal democracies as national projects (Requejo, 2010) without a legitimizing formula of its political unit (Näsström, 2007) would help to address secession. Moreover, just cause theory of secession (Buchanan, 1991) does not help to overcome these paradoxes because its “statist” bias. In this paper is argued that

1. a liberal II approach (Walzer, 1992) instead of the individualist traditional conception,
2. the adoption of a set of criteria to be accomplished by a legitimate political unit and
3. the assumption of a “consent” based legitimacy of political authority the question of secession could be addressed from liberal-democratic values.

Finally I suggest that every theory of secession solves specific questions of this phenomenon but is the right of the peoples to decide their own future constrained by the appropriated limits that any liberal democracy should have what legitimize political divorce.

Wilfried Swenden

Managing Diversity in India: from Integration to Accommodation?

This paper situates the management of diversity in India against the backdrop of comparative theories of integration and accommodation. It argues that India chose a rather integrationist path at Independence which was built on the notions of secularism, centralized economic planning, a union- rather than a federal state and a majoritarian first past the post system. Fifty years later, the practice of Indian federalism has become much more decentralized, not only Dalits but also OBC and (at the level of some states or panchyats Muslims and women) benefit from legislative reservations, and the centre itself has become much more fragmented due to the emergence of coalition government in spite of first past the post. In order to explain this transformation, the paper points at the drawn out implications of democratization in 1950 and the Green Revolution more than a decade later which fueled the first and second 'democratic upsurge' in Indian democracy. These deep structural changes affected patterns of political mobilization and with it the assertiveness of lower castes and Dalits to seek special recognition. However, the rise of accommodationist demands is also linked with the demise of the Congress System and its inability to accommodate societal diversity within. As a result of this interplay between structure and agency the accommodationist tendences of the Indian state have become more apparent but also more severely contested. Hindu nationalism in particular forms a potent threat to the precarious consensus on how to manage diversity in this socially complex and divided state.

István Gergő Székely

Intra-ethnic Competition and Cooperation among the parties of the Hungarian Minorities in Romania, Serbia and Slovakia

Notwithstanding the recent developments of theories about intra-ethnic competition, a rather neglected aspect of intra-ethnic party interactions remains the occurrence of electoral cooperation (as opposed to competition) between the parties standing for the same national minority group. In this paper I propose to address this aspect, building on insights from three countries that host large Hungarian minorities: Romania, Serbia and Slovakia.

I approach intra-ethnic cooperation from the perspective of the literature on pre-electoral coalitions, adapting its insights to the situation of small parties whose main goal is to pass the electoral thresholds and which derive their support from well-delimited electorates. The situation of minority parties is special (as compared to the mainstream parties) not only because of the limited pool of voters and arguably stronger pressures for cooperation, but also because a potential electoral coalition resembles grand coalitions, as the most important rivals within the community have to find a way to cooperate.

I argue that the propensity of minority parties to coalesce depends not only on the electoral system, previous electoral performance, and path dependent factors like uneasy relationships after splits, but also on the strength of their ethnopolitical demands, their propensity to cooperate with the mainstream parties, and the relationship they maintain with the government of the kin-state. I test the argument with a crisp set QCA analysis of 51 party dyads, covering successful and failed instances of electoral cooperation between the parties of the Hungarian minorities of Romania, Serbia and Slovakia.

Simon Toubeau

The Dynamics of Territorial Restructuring in Western Europe: Critical Junctures and Reactive Sequences in the Development of Regional Government

This paper employs the tools of comparative historical analysis (CHA) to examine the dynamics of territorial restructuring in Western Europe (Great Britain, Spain, Belgium and Italy). The first section presents a theoretical framework that puts forth a conceptualisation of territorial restructuring and institutional change and develops a set of expectations regarding how the interaction between actors (partisan and territorial) and institutions (vertical and horizontal) influence the dynamics of territorial restructuring (sequencing and velocity of territorial reforms). The second sections studies the ‘critical junctures’ surrounding the creation of regional government in each country. It demonstrates how the rules and the ideas that are put into place during this moment reflect historical precedents for managing territorial diversity and lay down the ‘reproduction mechanisms’ that influences the subsequent dynamic of restructuring. The next four sections proceed with an analysis of positive and negative ‘reactive sequences’ in individual country cases. It examines how the relative power of parties (mainstream vs regionalist) and levels of governments (central vs regional) influence the sequencing of territorial reform and how institutions regulating vertical intergovernmental relations (bilateral vs multilateral) and horizontal decision-making processes (majoritarian vs consensual) shape the velocity of territorial reforms. The conclusion conducts a comparative analysis of the development of regional government by analysing how critical junctures create different combinations of actors and institutions that serve as ‘reproduction mechanisms’ and which are at the source of the entrenchment and reversal of territorial reforms.

Doris Unger

Cultural regulations and the justification of coercion

In normative political theory there is a continuous debate about the justifiability of policies and regulations for accommodating or promoting cultural, religious or linguistic differences. It is common to distinguish between two kinds of group-based regulations: territorially differentiated regulations and categorically differentiated regulations. In the former case rules apply to individuals on a specific territory equally and in the second case they apply just to the members of a specific group (De Schutter 2008; Patten 2003; Van Parijs 2011). Difficult theoretical and practical questions (How should the membership of a group or territorial borders be determined?) are related to these categories. The paper will argue that in addition to this distinction it can be helpful to discriminate between coercive and accommodating regulations when judging different policies from a liberal perspective. Van Parijs uses this differentiation in his work on linguistic justice. A linguistic regime is coercive, he argues, if it “imposes an official language”. In contrast, accommodating linguistic regimes “give no a priori privilege to any language and simply provide services of all types” (Van Parijs 2011: 134). Thus, a territorially differentiated coercive regime can be illustrated by the decentralization of the Swiss Confederation along linguistic borders and a categorically differentiated coercive regulation by the obligation placed upon Quebecois parents – but only upon parents who were not educated in English themselves – to send their children to French-language schools. Van Parijs emphasizes, however, that regimes can be more or less coercive depending on a number of factors. He himself justifies a territorially differentiated coercive linguistic regime privileging one or several specific language(s). The paper will take up Van Parijs’s considerations on coercion for analysing other cultural regulations.

Nicole Wichmann

Integration policy in federal Switzerland

The following contribution deals with immigrant integration policy in Switzerland. The topic of integration has been very present in recent debates on immigration in Switzerland (e.g. Liebig et al. 2012), and its importance is due to increase even further with the inclusion of a whole chapter on integration in the Foreign National Act (see Bundesamt für Migration 2011).

Against the background of the current debate on integration in Switzerland the present contribution seeks to understand whether an opposition between a Germanic and a Latin conception of integration exists. The paper will argue that whether one finds an opposition between the linguistic regions depends on the dimensions of integration policy one chooses to study (cf. Penninx 2005). In other words one finds differences when it comes to measures addressing the legal/political and the cultural/religious dimensions of integration, while commonalities dominate on the socio-economic dimension. The argument developed in this paper rejoins the findings of an earlier study carried out by Cattacin and Kaya (2005), while at the same time rejecting the conclusions reached by Manatschal (2011) in a recent study.

To develop the argument the contribution focuses on the implementation of integration policies at the cantonal level. I have chosen to focus on the cantons, because they enjoy an important margin of appreciation in the formulation and implementation of integration policy in the Swiss political system. The study primarily draws on data collected in the framework of an applied research project on integration policy in federal Switzerland, which was commissioned by the Federal Commission on Migration. In the framework of aforementioned project data on the implementation of integration policy was collected from the responsible authorities in 26 cantons.

References

Bundesamt für Migration (2011). Erläuternder Bericht zur Vernehmlassung zur Änderung des Ausländergesetzes (Integration) vom 23. November 2011. Bern: Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft.

Cattacin, Sandro und Bülent Kaya (2005). "Le Développement des mesures d’intégration de la population sur le plan local en Suisse", in Mahnig, Hans (Hrsg.), Histoire de la politique de migration, d’asile et d’intégration en Suisse depuis 1948. Zürich: Seismo, p. 288–320.

Liebig, Thomas, Sebastian Kohls und Karolin Krause (2012). "L’intégration des immigrés et de leurs enfants sur le marché du travail en Suisse. Documents de travail de l’OCDE sur les affaires sociales, l’emploi et les migrations", No. 128. Paris: Editions de l’OECD.

Manatschal, Anita (2011). Path-dependent or dynamic? Cantonal integration policies between regional citizenship traditions and right populist party politics.” Ethnic and Racial Studies: 1–17.

Penninx, Rinus (2005). "Integration of Immigrants in Europe: Policies of Diversity and Diversity of Policies", in D’Amato, Gianni und Brigitta Gerber (Hrsg.), Herausforderung Integration – Städtische Migrationspolitik in der Schweiz und in Europa. Zürich: Seismo, p. 45–55.

Wichmann, Nicole et al. (2011). Gestaltungsspielräume im Föderalismus : Die Migrationspolitik in den Kantonen. Bern: Eidgenössische Kommission für Migrationsfragen.

Verena Wisthaler

Immigration and Regional Identity Politics - the case of South Tyrol (I)

Independently of immigration, questions such as “Who are we?” and “Who belongs to us?” (Bauböck 1996, 7) have been at the focus of territories traditionally inhabited by ethno-national minorities — or nations without a state. Immigration alters the population of those regions and raises questions regarding its impact on regional or minority identities. Thus, this is the field where “the politics of immigrant multiculturalism meet the politics of minority nationalism” (Banting and Soroka 2012, 158).

The paper firstly elaborates on the impact of immigration on the collective identity of ethno-national minorities from a theoretical point of view. It is assessed when immigrants become a factor preserving and strengthening the territory, as argued for Scotland (Mitchell, Bennie, and Johns 2012) and the Basque Country (Jeram 2012) and when Kymlicka’s argument (2001) of immigration as a threat to the distinctiveness of the minority culture is still valid.
Secondly the paper examines those questions with an in-depth case study of South Tyrol (I), an Italian region characterized by the presence of a large German-speaking population and a very small Ladin minority. The governing party, the SVP (South Tyrolean People’s Party), representing those groups, is currently shifting from a rather exclusionary approach towards immigration to an inclusion of immigrants into their own nation-building project.

With a longitudinal qualitative analysis of SVP party manifestos and government programs the paper traces the developments from 1990 to 2012 and evaluates whether the consociational power-sharing mechanism strengthening the autochthonous linguistic groups determines the current approach to integration.

Bibliography

Banting, Keith, and Stuart Soroka. 2012. Minority nationalism and immigrant integration in Canada. Nations and Nationalism 18 (1):156-176.

Bauböck, Rainer, ed. 1996. The Challenge of Diversity. Integration and Pluralism in Societies of Immigration. Vienna: Avebury.

Jeram, Sanjay. 2012. Immigrants and the Basque nation: diversity as a new marker of identity. Ethnic and Racial Studies:1-19.

Kymlicka, Will. 2001. Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Citizenship. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mitchell, James, Lynn Bennie, and Rob Johns. 2012. The Scottish National Party. Transition to Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Franziska Zahn

Stability in multi-lingual federal states: The politicization of language conflicts in party manifestos

The fact that federalism can either induce or prevent secession is a puzzle that challenges political scientists. I argue that the key to explain stability or secessionist tendencies in multi-lingual federal states lies in the role of parties as intermediary institutions between society and state. Cleavages are reflected in the structure of the party systems and in party positions. I assume the degree to which parties politicize an apparent or hidden language conflict is one independent variable to explain stability in multi-lingual federal states. In my presentation I shed light on the question in which contexts and to what degree parties politicize the language conflict. By using qualitative methods of content analysis I analyze the national party manifestos of all significant parties according to the Manifesto Project, which have either coalition or blackmail potential (Volkens u.a. 2012). My units of analysis are given by a keyword search of the term “language” and other related terms. In the next steps the content of the units of analysis is assigned to policy fields and the degree of politicization is measured. Therefore I have developed indicators to measure the intensity of politicization.

I work with a small-N design comprising Canada, Belgium and Switzerland. All of these states are federal but they are based on different models of federalism. Further linguistic diversity challenges these three countries to varying degrees.

Bibliography

Volkens, Andrea; Lacewell, Onawa; Lehmann, Pola; Regel, Sven; Schultze, Henrike; Werner, Annika (2012): The Manifesto Document Collection. Manifesto Project (MRG/CMP/MARPOR). Berlin: Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB).

Christina Isabel Zuber, Edina Szöcsik

Ethnic Outbidding and Nested Competition: Explaining the Nationalism of Ethnonational Minority Parties in Europe

This paper seeks to explain the varying nationalism of parties seeking to represent territorially concentrated minority groups in Europe.
The outbidding model argues that parties that appeal to their voters on the basis of their ethnonational identity can maximise their votes by choosing more radical positions than their competitors on an ethnonational dimension of competition. By contrast, the model of nested competition argues that ethnic parties choose more flexibly between radical and moderate positions in light of the logic of not only intra-, but also inter-ethnic party competition. Extreme platforms become less rewarding if ethnonational parties compete also with non-ethnic parties on alternative dimensions of competition, such as the economic dimension.

Due to a lack of data on the positions of ethnonational parties, large-N empirical studies that could test these predictions have so far focused on explaining the behaviour of entire ethnic groups rather than the strategic choices of the parties representing them. This paper draws on EPAC, a novel dataset that measures party positions on an ethnonational dimension of competition. The dataset was compiled by the authors on the basis of an expert survey conducted between June and November 2011. The data allow us to test hypotheses linking the structure of party competition to the nationalism of 76 minority parties in 21 European democracies. Multivariate regression analysis shows that competition with non-ethnic parties on an ethnically cross-cutting economic dimension of competition is indeed associated with more moderate positioning of minority parties.

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