Theory Of Minority Rights Research Articles

Minority rights and public autonomy: A nonculturalist argument for accommodating ethno‐cultural diversity

AbstractEthno‐cultural minority rights have been regarded as a part of human rights since the last decade of the twentieth century. These rights are often formulated in predominantly culturalist terms. Citing the importance of culture in the lives of members, they are conceptualized as tools for protecting the distinct identity of minority cultures. This paper claims that this way of formulating minority rights is to portray minority communities as if they were not concerned with the pathologies of modern democracies, such as the increasing marginalization of citizens from democratic life, far‐right populism, and the subordination of democracy into the functional requirements of economy. Accordingly, it argues for a theory of minority rights that formulates these rights as tools for protecting democracy against such pathologies. In doing so, it takes its point of departure from Jürgen Habermas’s communicative action theory and his understanding of democracy and public autonomy.

(Im)Possible Tolerance. A Paradox from within Multicultural Societies

This paper deals with the principle of tolerance in our contemporary society in the attempt to highlight limits and paradoxes in the various aspects of minority issues. From this point of view, the first part of the paper discusses Kymlicka’s contribution to multiculturalism with regard to national minorities and immigrant communities, while the second part confronts his Theory of Minority Rights with Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony and circle of humanity. Therefore, this paper aims at shifting the discourse over tolerance-related minority issues from a top-down approach toward an analysis of how tolerance is allowed to be performed. Thus, Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis is employed to disentangle moral and cultural set of values and norms within which both principle of tolerance and performativity of toleration are established and, in parallel, to reflect on reasons why others are not allowed to be performed.

Extending Rights to Marginalized Minorities: Same-Sex Relationship Recognition in Mexico and the United States

AbstractWhat explains the extension of greater rights to traditionally marginalized minorities? This article compares the extension of legal equality to lebian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in Mexico and the United States with a focus on the legal recognition of same-sex relationships. A national-level comparison of gay rights in Mexico and the United States presents a theoretical puzzle: most theories predict that the United States would have more egalitarian policies than Mexico, but in fact, Mexico has provided greater legal equality for LGBT people for a longer time than the United States. A subnational analysis of equal relationship rights in the United States and Mexico provides evidence to support social movement and partisan theories of minority rights. We find that religion plays a different role in Mexico than in the United States. The different findings at the national and subnational levels suggest the importance of subnational comparative analysis in heterogeneous federal systems.

From Security to Justice? The Development of a More Justice-Oriented Approach to the Realisation of European Minority Rights Standards

The aim of this article is to reassess the development and consolidation of minority rights in Europe with reference to Kymlicka’s liberal theory of minority rights and to his own critique of the European minority rights framework. The article begins by revisiting the development of new minority rights norms within the security-focused agenda of the early 1990s. It then considers the role of the first OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities in promoting a more justice-oriented approach before considering the significance of the coming into force of the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the development of the work of its Advisory Committee. The article argues that there is evidence that a more justice-oriented approach to the realisation of European minority rights standards is emerging, particularly under the Framework Convention.

The Burqa Ban's Dark Side Uncovering Face Covering Bans

The presence of the so-called Islamic headscarf in the European public sphere epitomizes probably one of the most interesting contemporary conflicts in the human rights universe. In the European public space, we find different ways of accommodating the presence of the veil, which reflect different constitutional and political traditions. They raise fundamental questions about European identity, the concept of secularism, gender as well as touch upon the legacy of colonialism. The discussions about the European project and its identity and the emerging cultures and (their) values is often reduced to simplistic debates. In the following pages, I put forward arguments showing that the liberal theory of minority rights, tends to remove certain considerations from the debates we lead in Europe and about Europe. What are the questions that should be posed and what are the social costs and shortcomings at stake here, is the main focus of this paper.

'Even Children Lisp the Rights of Man': International Human Rights Law and National Minority Jurisdictions

This chapter was prompted by a political fallout between the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom (UKSC) and the Scottish Government shortly after the UKSC began first hearing cases in 2009. It involved an attack by the Scottish government on the London-based court for meddling in domestic Scottish affairs, notably Scottish criminal law, on the grounds that certain aspects of Scottish criminal procedure violated the provisions of the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) and were therefore beyond the competence of the Scottish government. Whereas there are many possible readings of the political motivation of the Scottish Government in this particular spat, the incident raises an interesting issue for international human rights law. Taking the Scottish governments’ protestations in good faith, this chapter explores whether the position of the Scottish Government can be normatively justified and defended in the practice of human rights law. Emphasising the fact that all human rights norms require some form of ‘domestication’ in their implementation in state legal systems, it provides a sketch of a normative argument for national minority autonomy in the ‘domestication’ international human rights norms in national minority institutional structures by drawing upon liberal theories of minority rights and theories of constitutional patriotism as well as briefly exploring the extant doctrinal, normative and structural resources of the practice of international human rights law which could potentially vindicate such autonomy.

Book Review: Taking Ethno-Cultural Diversity Seriously in Constitutional Design. A Theory of Minority Rights for Addressing Africa’s Multi-Ethnic Challenge, written by S. A. Dersso

Book Review: Taking Ethno-Cultural Diversity Seriously in Constitutional Design. A Theory of Minority Rights for Addressing Africa’s Multi-Ethnic Challenge, written by S. A. Dersso

From Security to Justice? The Development of a More Justice-Oriented Approach to the Realisation of European Minority Rights Standards

The aim of this article is to reassess the development and consolidation of minority rights in Europe with reference to Kymlicka's liberal theory of minority rights and to his own critique of the European minority rights framework. The article begins by revisiting the development of new minority rights norms within the security-focused agenda of the early 1990s. It then considers the role of the first OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities in promoting a more justice-oriented approach before considering the significance of the coming into force of the Council of Europe's Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the development of the work of its Advisory Committee. The article argues that there is evidence that a more justice-oriented approach to the realisation of European minority rights standards is emerging, particularly under the Framework Convention.

After the Storm? The Israeli Supreme Court and the Arab-Palestinian Minority in the Aftermath of October 2000Ilan Saban is an Assistant Professor of Law at Haifa University. The author would like to express thanks to Gordon Anthony, Robert Chapman, Moshe Cohen-Eilya, Tammy Harel-Ben-Shahar, Hassan Jabareen, Yousef T. Jabareen, Barak Medina, Liav Orgad and Revital Sella for valuable comments.

In late September 2000, the Oslo process collapsed and the second Intifada erupted. Soon after that (during the first two weeks of October) something momentous occurred in inter-communal relations ...

A Liberal Defence of the Intrinsic Value of Cultures

Over the past 15 years, a great deal of efforts have been done by political philosophers to make liberal political theory more sensitive to the importance culture has for individuals, and to think about how to translate this importance into laws and policies, in particular those affecting cultural and national minorities. However, one of the outstanding issues is whether and how an appropriate account of the worth of culture can be provided from a liberal point of view. The most important and currently discussed liberal defence of the worth of culture is probably expressed in Will Kymlicka's theory of minority rights. Such a defence argues for the instrumental role culture plays in people's ability to make meaningful choices and lead a self-directed existence. This paper seeks to show that Kymlicka's instrumental account of the worth of cultures is non-viable, and that a liberal conception of culture viewed as intrinsically valuable is indispensable. While each of them recognizes individual autonomy as an intrinsically valuable good, it is demonstrated that both differ not only as to the role culture has to play in a self-directed existence, but also as to why cultures deserve to be protected and as to their policies towards non-liberal minority cultures.

Globalisation, world trade and the cultural commons: Identity, citizenship and pluralism

There is no consensus on the role that culture plays in the processes of globalisation for the very simple reason that culture is a difficult and elusive term to define,1 and is subject to global p...

Social attachments as conditions for the condition of the good life? A critique of Will Kymlicka's moral monism

The moral justification of Will Kymlicka's theory of minority rights is unconvincing. According to Kymlicka, cultural embeddedness is a necessary condition for personal autonomy (which is, in turn, the precondition for the good life) and for that reason liberals should be concerned about culture. I will criticize this instrumentalism of social attachments and the moral monism behind it. On the basis of a modification of Axel Honneth's theory of recognition, I will reject the false opposition between the instrumental value and the intrinsic value of culture. Honneth makes a distinction between three types of recognition: (1) love; (2) respect; and (3) social esteem. Recognition of cultural difference is situated in the third sphere. But the logic of a recognition of cultural difference also demands a non-evaluative recognition, a respect for difference. Difference-respect cannot be reduced to the recognition of personal autonomy or to the recognition of a culture ‘as such’. Difference-respect is concerned with a formalrecognition of difference, namely the recognition of a culture's intrinsic value for the other.By recognizing the moral importance both of personal autonomy and of social attachments, we do not have to surrender to the reductive bent in modern moral philosophy.1

Nations, Boundaries and Justice

Will Kymlicka’s theory of minority rights has been most influential. Kymlicka distinguishes two types of ethnocultural minorities: national groups in a multinational state and ethnic groups in an immigrant society. This article focuses on the ‘multinational’ aspect of this paradigm. It investigates the extent to which Kymlicka’s justification of self-government rights for nations can offer a just guideline for the way in which we should accommodate cultural diversity generated by a plurality of national groups within one state. Should we regulate the cultural and linguistic market-place, and, if so, should we justify a right for all nations to a distinct societal culture with its own political and territorial boundaries? The answer the article develops is a moderate ‘yes, but’. We should recognize and protect cultural identities, since, as Kymlicka rightly argues, cultures provide us with constitutive contexts of choice. But there seems to be an inability in Kymlicka’s theory to deal with strongly multinational and multilingual situations. Kymlicka explicitly recognizes the fact that national cultures can be pluralistic (i.e., diverse with regard to beliefs), but he neglects diversity within the cultural structure itself. Nevertheless, our cultural world is full of such instances of vague boundaries, gray zones, minorities within minorities, bi-and multilingualism, etc. Consequently, the article attempts to supplement Kymlicka’s mosaic form of multiculturalism with a hybrid extension. It is highly commendable to recognize and protect cultures, provided we incorporate cultural hybridity into our multicultural theory.

The Challenge of Choice

The notion of freedom of choice has a dual function in liberal theories of minority rights; it has been invoked both to defend group-specific rights and to draw the limits of these rights. This is the cause of a tension. This article explores the implications of this tension for public education in multination states. It is argued that the tension takes a specific form in language rights claims made by national groups that are not illiberal. For even if a linguistic group that lays claims of recognition is liberal, illiberal features may be the by-product of the autonomy sought by the group, which seems prima facie puzzling. The article suggests a possible direction to solve the puzzle through a redistribution of costs and benefits regarding language policy within the state.

Book Review: Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights

Book Review: Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights

Culture vs citizenship? A review and critique of will Kymlicka's multicultural citizenship

The article presents a review and critique of Will Kymlicka's Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. I focus primarily on the normative elements and consequences of Kymlicka's theory and present an alternative to his liberal defence of group‐differentiated rights. In marked contrast to Kymlicka, I argue that to truly protect their cultures minority groups must forge closer ties with their respective states. Furthermore, I suggest that multicultural citizenship can only be achieved through a commitment by both majority and minority groups to toleration and respect for deep diversity. To be effective, multiculturalism should be considered to be an ordering principle of the regime.

Do We Need a Liberal Theory of Minority Rights? Reply to Carens, Young, Parekh and Forst

In their perceptive critiques of my recent book on Multicultural Citizenship, Iris Young, Joseph Carens, Bhikhu Parekh and Rainer Forst raise a number of interesting and important issues. In this short response to their critiques, I focus on two of them. First, whereas I tried to draw a sharp distinction between immigrants and national minorities, my critics argue that we should think of ethnocultural groups on a more fluid continuum. Second, whereas I tried to ground a theory of minority rights on specifically liberal principles, my critics argue that such an approach is unduly intolerant of non‐liberal ethnocultural groups. In response to these challenging questions, I try to both clarify and strengthen the positions I outlined in my book.

Dilemmas of a Multicultural Theory of Citizenship

In his multicultural citizenship Will Kymlicka offers a liberal theory of minority rights. I argue that although his theory is ingenious, it is seriously defective. Since liberalism itself is a specific culture, a liberal theory of multiculturalism is logically incoherent. Kymlicka makes the further mistake of thinking that all cultured communities conceptualise and relate to culture in an identical manner. His discussion of the rights of immigrants rests on a flawed understanding of the nature of immigration, and is highly questionable.

Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights.

Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights.

Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights

Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights