1st Edition
Human and Minority Rights Protection by Multiple Diversity Governance History, Law, Ideology and Politics in European Perspective
Human and Minority Rights Protection by Multiple Diversity Governance provides a comprehensive overview and critical analysis of minority protection through national constitutional law and international law in Europe. Using a critical theoretical and methodological approach, this textbook:
- provides a historical analysis of state formation and nation building in Europe with context of religious wars and political revolutions, including the (re-)conceptualisation of basic concepts and terms such as territoriality, sovereignty, state, nation and citizenship;
- deconstructs all primordial theories of ethnicity and provides a sociologically informed political theory for how to reconcile the functional prerequisites for political unity, legal equality and social cohesion with the preservation of cultural diversity;
- examines the liberal and nationalist ideological framing of minority protection in liberal-democratic regimes, including the case law of the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice;
- analyses the ongoing trend of re-nationalisation in all parts of Europe and the number of legal instruments and mechanisms from voting rights to proportional representation in state bodies, forms of cultural and territorial autonomy and federalism.
This textbook will be essential reading for students, scholars and practitioners interested in European politics, human and minority rights, constitutional and international law, governance and nationalism.
The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.
1. Introduction [Joseph Marko]
2. The Interdisciplinary Approach: Law, Sociology and Political Sciences [Joseph Marko]
3. The Historic-Sociological Foundations: State Formation and Nation Building in Europe and the Construction of the Identitarian Nation-Cum-State Paradigm [Joseph Marko, Edith Marko-Stöckl, Benedikt Harzl and Hedwig Unger]
4. Law and Ideology: The Ideological Conundrums of the Liberal-Democratic State [Joseph Marko]
5. Law and Sociology: The Constructivist and Interpretative Turn [Joseph Marko]
6. Against Annihilation: The Right to Existence [Joseph Marko, Hedwig Unger, Roberta Medda-Windischer, Alexandra Tomaselli and Filippo Ferraro]
7. Against Assimilation: The Right to Multiple Identities [Joseph Marko, Sergiu Constantin, Günther Rautz, Andrea Carlà and Verena Wisthaler]
8. Against Discrimination: The Right to Equality and the Dilemma of Difference [Joseph Marko]
9. Against Marginalisation: The Right to Effective Participation [Joseph Marko and Sergiu Constantin]
10. From Minority Protection to Multiple Diversity Governance [Joseph Marko]
Biography
Joseph Marko is Professor of Comparative Public Law and Political Science at the Institute for Public Law and Political Science of the Karl Franzens University of Graz, Austria, and a former international judge at the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Since 1998, he is also the Director of the Institute for Minority Rights at Eurac Research, Bolzano/Bozen, Italy.
Sergiu Constantin is Researcher at the Institute for Minority Rights of Eurac Research, Bolzano/Bozen, Italy. He holds a law degree from the University of Bucharest, Romania, and a Master's in European Studies from the University of Graz, Austria.
"Liberal values in Europe, as elsewhere, are coming under serious threat, driven by identity politics designed to exploit societal schisms. The historical link between liberalism and diversity in Europe, and the extent to which one can negotiate and accommodate, if not facilitate the other, holds the key to sustainable, coherent and peaceful societies. In this book a collection of scholars based around the Institute for Minority Rights at Eurac Research tackle this vital question through a multifaceted approach that provides insights into the nuances of how law, ideology and politics impact, and are impacted by this challenge. The book will provide rich material to those seeking to understand these paradigms and the existential questions they pose to the liberal state in Europe."
- Joshua Castellino, Executive Director Minority Rights Group International, UK.
"Joseph Marko and his colleagues are to be congratulated for having produced a book that deals with one of the most pressing topics of our time in a comprehensive and masterly manner. This volume informs and elucidates in equal measure. It will be of help to anyone with an interest in identifying and understanding the reasons for the ethnonationalist turn in European politics."
– Karl Cordell, Plymouth University, UK.
"This volume provides an extremely comprehensive insight into the theory and practice of how modern states have dealt with diversity. It offers an interdisciplinary and sophisticated case for taking diversity and its recognition seriously. Thus, while providing a wide overview over the existing literature in multiple disciplines, it also makes a serious contribution to on-going debates on how to tackle diversity, resulting in a timely study on minorities, nationalism and diversity."
– Florian Bieber, University of Graz, Austria.
"Issues regarding group accommodation and minority protection have been recurrent problems in Europe and beyond, often caused by unsubstantiated conventional wisdom and untenable identity markers. Drawing on long practice in the field, this book breaks out of the conceptual identity traps and provides a refreshingly new and thoroughly argued way to institutionalize multiple diversity governance."
- Asbjørn Eide, University of Oslo, Norway, Former Chair of UN working group on minorities and Former President of the Advisory Committee on the European Framework Convention on National Minorities.
