Equal Recognition, Minority Rights and Liberal Democracy

Equal Recognition, Minority Rights and Liberal Democracy PDF Author: Sergi Morales-Gálvez
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351624385
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
Multiculturalism is not à la mode nowadays. It is attacked by both right-wing populists and mainstream politicians and leaders of liberal democracies. Indeed, conflicts surrounding cultural diversity and recognition are among the most salient issues in contemporary societies. Should liberal democracies recognise specific cultural rights of minorities? If so, should they grant rights only to indigenous national minorities or also to immigrants? Is such a recognition compatible with the basic liberal principle of state neutrality? Practical questions of this kind are in quest of sound theoretical foundations. Alan Patten’s approach to multiculturalism, developed in Equal Recognition (2014), is the most recent and prominent example of such an effort. Considered “the most important contribution to the philosophy of cultural diversity since Will Kymlicka’s Multicultural Citizenship”, Patten’s work elaborates new and original conceptions of culture and liberal neutrality. It reasserts the case in favour of liberal multiculturalism and applies its theoretical framework to concrete contemporary issues, such as language rights, federalism, secession, and immigrant integration. This collection presents a critical review of Patten’s approach to cultural plurality. The critics question the overall normative strategy of Equal Recognition, its account of neutrality, especially with regards to language rights, its assumptions about democracy and, finally, its relevance to public policy debates. It will be of interest to political scientists, philosophers, and legal theorists, and will inspire students and politicians alike. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.

Equal Recognition, Minority Rights and Liberal Democracy

Equal Recognition, Minority Rights and Liberal Democracy PDF Author: Sergi Morales-Gálvez
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351624385
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233

Get Book Here

Book Description
Multiculturalism is not à la mode nowadays. It is attacked by both right-wing populists and mainstream politicians and leaders of liberal democracies. Indeed, conflicts surrounding cultural diversity and recognition are among the most salient issues in contemporary societies. Should liberal democracies recognise specific cultural rights of minorities? If so, should they grant rights only to indigenous national minorities or also to immigrants? Is such a recognition compatible with the basic liberal principle of state neutrality? Practical questions of this kind are in quest of sound theoretical foundations. Alan Patten’s approach to multiculturalism, developed in Equal Recognition (2014), is the most recent and prominent example of such an effort. Considered “the most important contribution to the philosophy of cultural diversity since Will Kymlicka’s Multicultural Citizenship”, Patten’s work elaborates new and original conceptions of culture and liberal neutrality. It reasserts the case in favour of liberal multiculturalism and applies its theoretical framework to concrete contemporary issues, such as language rights, federalism, secession, and immigrant integration. This collection presents a critical review of Patten’s approach to cultural plurality. The critics question the overall normative strategy of Equal Recognition, its account of neutrality, especially with regards to language rights, its assumptions about democracy and, finally, its relevance to public policy debates. It will be of interest to political scientists, philosophers, and legal theorists, and will inspire students and politicians alike. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.

Equal Recognition

Equal Recognition PDF Author: Alan Patten
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691173559
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
Conflicting claims about culture are a familiar refrain of political life in the contemporary world. On one side, majorities seek to fashion the state in their own image, while on the other, cultural minorities press for greater recognition and accommodation. Theories of liberal democracy are at odds about the merits of these competing claims. Multicultural liberals hold that particular minority rights are a requirement of justice conceived of in a broadly liberal fashion. Critics, in turn, have questioned the motivations, coherence, and normative validity of such defenses of multiculturalism. In Equal Recognition, Alan Patten reasserts the case in favor of liberal multiculturalism by developing a new ethical defense of minority rights. Patten seeks to restate the case for liberal multiculturalism in a form that is responsive to the major concerns of critics. He describes a new, nonessentialist account of culture, and he rehabilitates and reconceptualizes the idea of liberal neutrality and uses this idea to develop a distinctive normative argument for minority rights. The book elaborates and applies its core theoretical framework by exploring several important contexts in which minority rights have been considered, including debates about language rights, secession, and immigrant integration. Demonstrating that traditional, nonmulticultural versions of liberalism are unsatisfactory, Equal Recognition will engage readers interested in connections among liberal democracy, nationalism, and current multicultural issues.

Minority Rights and Liberal Democratic Insecurities

Minority Rights and Liberal Democratic Insecurities PDF Author: Anna-Mária Bíró
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000781526
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
This book addresses the impact of a range of destabilising issues on minority rights in Europe and North America. This collection stems from the fact that liberal democracy did not bring about the “end of history” but rather that the transatlantic region of Europe and North America has encountered a new era of instability, particularly since the global financial crisis. The transatlantic region may have appeared to be entering a period of stability, but terrorist attacks on the soil of Euro-Atlantic states, the financial crisis itself and other changes, including mass migration, the rise of populism, changes in fundamental political conceptions, technological change, and most recently the Covid pandemic, have brought increasing uncertainties and instabilities in existing orders. In these contexts, the book investigates the resulting difficulties and opportunities for minority rights. Bringing together scholars from a range of disciplines who are engaged in work on various unstable orders, the book provides a unique and largely neglected perspective on present developments as well as addressing the pressing issue of the future of the minority rights regime at global, regional and national levels. This book will appeal to those with interests in minority rights, human rights, nationalism, law and politics.

Multicultural Citizenship

Multicultural Citizenship PDF Author: Will Kymlicka
Publisher: Clarendon Press
ISBN: 0191622451
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
The increasingly multicultural fabric of modern societies has given rise to many new issues and conflicts, as ethnic and national minorities demand recognition and support for their cultural identity. This book presents a new conception of the rights and status of minority cultures. It argues that certain sorts of `collective rights' for minority cultures are consistent with liberal democratic principles, and that standard liberal objections to recognizing such rights on grounds of individual freedom, social justice, and national unity, can be answered. However, Professor Kymlicka emphasises that no single formula can be applied to all groups and that the needs and aspirations of immigrants are very different from those of indigenous peoples and national minorities. The book discusses issues such as language rights, group representation, religious education, federalism, and secession - issues which are central to understanding multicultural politics, but which have been surprisingly neglected in contemporary liberal theory.

Group Rights as Human Rights

Group Rights as Human Rights PDF Author: Neus Torbisco Casals
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402042094
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Liberal theories have long insisted that cultural diversity in democratic societies can be accommodated through classical liberal tools, in particular through individual rights, and they have often rejected the claims of cultural minorities for group rights as illiberal. Group Rights as Human Rights argues that such a rejection is misguided. Based on a thorough analysis of the concept of group rights, it proposes to overcome the dominant dichotomy between "individual" human rights and "collective" group rights by recognizing that group rights also serve individual interests. It also challenges the claim that group rights, so understood, conflict with the liberal principle of neutrality; on the contrary, these rights help realize the neutrality ideal as they counter cultural biases that exist in Western states. Group rights deserve to be classified as human rights because they respond to fundamental, and morally important, human interests. Reading the theories of Will Kymlicka and Charles Taylor as complementary rather than opposed, Group Rights as Human Rights sees group rights as anchored both in the value of cultural belonging for the development of individual autonomy and in each person’s need for a recognition of her identity. This double foundation has important consequences for the scope of group rights: it highlights their potential not only in dealing with national minorities but also with immigrant groups; and it allows to determine how far such rights should also benefit illiberal groups. Participation, not intervention, should here be the guiding principle if group rights are to realize the liberal promise.

Intercultural Deliberation and the Politics of Minority Rights

Intercultural Deliberation and the Politics of Minority Rights PDF Author: R.E. Lowe-Walker
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774832878
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
Achieving socio-political cohesion in a community with significant ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity is a difficult challenge in contemporary liberal democracies. In the quest for neutrality, public policies and institutions shaped by the needs of the majority can inadvertently marginalize minority interests. Minority groups must therefore translate their desire for cultural recognition into terms that, ironically, often minimize cultural difference. Intercultural Deliberation and the Politics of Minority Rights examines the relationship between this minority rights paradox and cultural difference, building a compelling case for an inclusive approach to navigating minority rights claims. R.E. Lowe-Walker’s intercultural deliberation is designed to mitigate the injustices imposed by majority norms. Instead of asking what the liberal state can tolerate, she asks how our understanding of difference affects our interpretation of minority claims, shifting the focus from how to limit difference toward inclusive deliberations. This important work thus serves as a measure of social justice and a vehicle for social change.

Do We Need Minority Rights?

Do We Need Minority Rights? PDF Author: Juha Raikka
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004479260
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
The title of this volume is the critical and provocative question - do we need minority rights? - in order to announce that it does make sense to ask whether there are special obligations to minority protection. The following essays, none of which is published elsewhere, explore several of the many important philosophical questions about minority protection, as well as the practical and judicial problems related to certain answers. The first four essays concern minority rights within the theory of liberalism, while the last four focus on more detailed problems of minority protection.

Citizenship in Diverse Societies

Citizenship in Diverse Societies PDF Author: Will Kymlicka
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 019152266X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 457

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Book Description
Is it possible, in a modern, pluralistic society, to promote common bonds of citizenship while at the same time accommodating and showing respect for ethnocultural diversity? 'Citizenship' and 'diversity' have been two of the major topics of debate in both democratic politics and political theory over the past decade. Much has been written about the importance of citizenship, civic identities, and civic virtues for the functioning of liberal democracies, and the need to accommodate the ethnocultural, linguistic, and religious pluralism that is a fact of life in most modern states. By and large, however, these two topics have been largely discussed in mutual isolation. Much of the writing on the issues of both citizenship and diversity remains rather abstract and general and disconnected from the specific issues of public policy and institutional design. Citizenship in Diverse Societies examines the specific points of conflict and convergence between concerns for citizenship and diversity in democratic societies and reassesses and refines existing theories of 'diverse citizenship' by examining these theories in the light of actual practices and policies of pluralistic democracies.

Democracy and National Pluralism

Democracy and National Pluralism PDF Author: Ferran Requejo
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134521251
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 171

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Book Description
How can democracies deal with plurality? This book looks at the political accommodation of national plurality in liberal democracies and in the European Union at the turn of the century. Its panel of international authorities examines this issue from a variety of perspectives, considering questions of citizenship, multiculturalism, immigration and equality. The contributors, many of whom have set the terms of this debate in international political science, include Will Kymlicka, Carlos Closa, Michael Keating, Enric Fossas, Wayne Norman and Ricard Zapata Barrero.

Democracy and the Limits of Minority Rights

Democracy and the Limits of Minority Rights PDF Author: Nalini Rajan
Publisher: SAGE Publications Pvt. Limited
ISBN: 9780761996750
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
At the start of the 21st century, we are still debating various fundamental issues pertaining to core human values, popularly known as 'human rights'. Constituting an important contribution to the debate, the central purpose of this book is to demonstrate the essential link between human rights and democracy. Nalini Rajan maintains that human rights can flourish only in a state which promotes the democratic value of equal consideration of individual autonomy - i.e., each person's capacity to act independently. Taking up various important issues and concepts like multiculturalism, citizenship, economic rights, and the right to a certain quality of life, Nalini Rajan argues that minority rights are not the only way to counter majoritarianism. She also advocates structural and constitutional changes to render the Indian polity more federal, particularly through devolution and local self-governance.