Sovereignty, networks, and norms

Abstract

Despite considerable scholarly work on ethnic mobilization, less attention has been paid to explicitly examining how differing notions of the state undergird our analysis and normative approaches. As the title of Ted Gurr's Peoples versus States reminds us, the state is central to these processes. Similarly, there seems to be widespread, yet little discussed, disagreement on the proper role of politics in ethno-politics. In other words, at what point do we shrug our shoulders and say, “minority X lost this political fight and that's the way democratic politics functions”? The three books here focus on vastly different topics (international minority rights norms, Native American struggles, and the Holy Roman Empire's decline), but in reading them together it is striking how their notions of the state and politics lead us to varying conclusions about the possibilities for minorities.