scholarly journals The problem of asymmetric representation: The marginalisation, racialisation, and deservedness of Roma in Slovenia

Politics ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 026339572199655
Author(s):  
Andreja Zevnik ◽  
Andrew Russell
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
Minority Protection ◽  
Limited Access ◽  
Marginalised Groups ◽  
Special Rights ◽  
Special Protection

Special rights (such as a right to representation) are often used to address under-representation of minority and marginalised groups in political institutions. The case of Roma community in Slovenia is no different. Using a framework of social and political marginalisation, our article outlines asymmetry and exceptionality in the existing minority protection provisions for Slovenian Roma. We argue that the existing provisions are a consequence of majority’s perception of Roma as racialised, marginalised, and undeserving group. We show that the limited access to special rights for Roma is not an oversight in the Slovenian democratic institutional design but a result of deep-rooted stereotypes and racialisation that this marginalised group is subjected to. More broadly, the case of Slovenian Roma demonstrates how principles of racialisation and marginalisation can help us understand absences of different marginalised minority groups from frameworks of special protection.

New minorities, old instruments? Diversity governance from the perspective of minority rights

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 178-192
Author(s):  
Roberta Medda-Windischer
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
Minority Protection ◽  
Common Definition ◽  
National Minorities ◽  
Scope Of Application

In international law, minority rights instruments have been traditionally conceived for, and applied to, old minority groups with the exclusion of new minority groups originating from migration. Yet, minority groups, irrespective of their being old or new minorities, can be subsumed under a common definition and have some basic common claims. This allows devising a common but differentiated set of rights and obligations for old and new minority groups alike. This paper argues that the extension of the scope of application of legal instruments of minority protection, such as the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM), is conceptually meaningful and beneficial to the integration of new minorities stemming from migration. 

Group-Differentiated Rights and the Liberal Democratic State: Rethinking the Headscarf Controversy in Turkey

2001 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 31-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yeşim Arat
Keyword(s):  
Minority Groups ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Clifford Geertz ◽  
Ethnocultural Groups ◽  
Special Rights ◽  
The Relationship

The development of liberalism with both the courage and the capacity to engage itself with a different world, one in which its principles are neither well understood nor widely held, in which indeed it is, in most places, a minority creed, alien and suspect, is not only possible, it is necessary.-Clifford Geertz. 2000.Available Light.Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, p. 258.Over the past two decades, the debate over multiculturalism challenged the justice of neutral, “difference blind” rules in liberal democracies. Allegedly neutral institutions were shown to be implicitly biased toward the priorities, experiences, or interests of the dominant groups in the society. Criticism of difference-blind rules and claims for justice to minority groups defined the relationship between government and opposition in many contexts. Arguments for special rights to protect minorities, women, or ethnocultural groups gained legitimacy (Young 1990, Jones 1990, Phillips 1991, Taylor 1994, Kymlicka 1995, Kymlicka and Norman 2000).

scholarly journals Democratic ideals and the Nigerian state: what hope for the future

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 13-21
Author(s):  
Tamunosiki V. Ogan
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Historical Data ◽  
Internal Colonialism ◽  
The Core ◽  
Textual Data ◽  
Political Tension ◽  
The Future ◽  
Practice Standard ◽  
Democratic Ideals

An analysis of the principles of democracy was carried out. The objective was to delineate the extent to which the Nigerian state is democratic and how its current democratic ideals could impact on its future existence as a state. The method adopted for the study was that of content analysis, which involved conceptual and historical analyses of textual data. It was discovered from historical data that the Nigerian state runs a system of government, which promotes internal colonialism of the minority groups by the major ones. This political imbalance was shown to create social and political tension, where the peripheral groups were hostile to the core regions. It was recommended in the study that if the Nigerian state is to subsist in the future, then it has to restructure its political institutions to promote true federalism as well as imbibe and practice standard democratic ideals.Keywords: Democratic ideal, Nigeria, Hope, Future

scholarly journals The plight of civic parties in divided societies

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cera Murtagh
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
Power Sharing ◽  
Empirical Reality ◽  
Divided Societies ◽  
Mediating Role ◽  
Ethnic Parties ◽  
Marginalised Groups ◽  
Governance Models ◽  
The Relationship

Civic political parties in divided societies occupy an ambiguous place in the power-sharing literature. Scholarship tends to focus on ethnic parties and assumes civic actors to be marginal. The empirical reality tells a different story: civic parties have contributed to peace, stability and democracy in some of the world’s most deeply divided places by playing a mediating role, acting as a moderating force and representing otherwise marginalised groups. Drawing from interviews with representatives from civic parties, ethnic parties and civil society in Northern Ireland and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and broader institutional analysis, I argue that civic parties’ survival can be explained by the fact that they meet therein not only with barriers but also critical openings. They adapt to this opportunity structure, with different party types developing under different forms of power-sharing. In illustrating the relationship between governance models and civic parties, this article underlines the importance of post-settlement institutional design.

Evolving Protection of Minority Groups: Global Challenges and the Role of International Jurisprudence

2009 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gaetano Pentassuglia
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Standard Setting ◽  
Minority Protection ◽  
Global Challenges ◽  
Judicial Discourse

AbstractThis article explores the role of judicial discourse in articulating and accommodating minority claims under international law. It identifies four major movements in the field of minority protection and argues that, while the era of specialised standard-setting on minority groups seems to be largely over, international jurisprudence holds the promise of a wider and deeper (re-)assessment of minority issues within the human rights canon.

The Inter-relationship between International and National Minority-Rights Law in Selected Western Balkan States

2009 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 307-335
Author(s):  
Benedikt Harzl ◽  
Alice Engl
Keyword(s):  
Constitutional Law ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
National Minority ◽  
Minority Protection ◽  
Legal Provisions ◽  
Balkan States ◽  
International Instruments ◽  
Violent Conflicts ◽  
Shed Light

AbstractThe violent conflicts that erupted after the breakup of communist regimes (especially in the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) have gradually changed the standing of minority rights and minority protection: first, the differential treatment of minority groups has become a legitimate—if not necessary—instrument to guarantee equality and stability, and, second, minority-rights legislation and minority protection are increasingly regarded as a responsibility shared among national and international actors. This inter-relationship between international instruments and national legal provisions can be usefully observed particularly in the states that emerged from the breakup of Yugoslavia. Due to the necessity of ensuring peace and stability, the constitutions of these emerging states have been increasingly influenced by international norms and standards for minority protection—a process that can be characterized as the 'internationalization of constitutional law'. This article assesses these developments, at both the national and international levels, in order to shed light on the particular inter-relationship among these different layers, by looking at the example of selected Western Balkan states.

Neo-Liberalism and the Decline of Democratic Governance in Australia: A Problem of Institutional Design?

2005 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Marsh
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
Democratic Governance ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Subsequent Evolution ◽  
Preliminary Attempt ◽  
Changing Patterns

This paper is a preliminary attempt to evaluate changing patterns of democratic governance, at least in Westminster-style parliamentary settings, and possibly more generally. It has two specific purposes: first, to propose a paradigm for evaluating the empirical evolution of democratic governance; and second, to illustrate the explanatory potential of this paradigm through a mini-case study of changing patterns of governance in one particular polity. The conceptual framework is drawn from March and Olsen's eponymous study (1995) from which polar (‘thick’ and ‘thin’) forms of democratic governance are derived. Four conjectures about its evolution are then explored. First, in its mass party phase, the pattern of democratic governance approximated the ‘thick’ pole. Second, the subsequent evolution of democratic politics has been in the direction of the ‘thin’ (minimalist or populist) pole. Third, the cause of this shift was a failure to adapt political institutions to changing citizen identities, which was masked by the ascendancy amongst political elites of the neo-liberal account of governance. Fourth, the paper considers the means by which democratic governance might be renewed. The approach is applied to explain changes in Australian politics over recent decades.

scholarly journals Transformation of autocracy in the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century: Sergei Witte’s viewpoint

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 926-965
Author(s):  
Konstantin I. Shneider ◽  
Irina N. Verevkina
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
Personal Characteristics ◽  
Historical Archive ◽  
Russian State ◽  
Political Myth ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
Revolutionary Period

The article examines the opinions of Sergei Witte, one of the first Russian public politicians and one of the most influential officials of the turn of the 19th–20th centuries, on the transformation of the Russian autocracy. The Memoirs of Sergei Witte as well as documents from his personal fonds stored in the Russian State Historical Archive (RGIA) constitute the source basis of the research. The interdisciplinary research paradigm of the performative turn was adopted as the methodological basis of the research. S. Witte’s views on the process of transformation of autocracy are considered through the prism of the following scientific categories: the image of power, scenario of power, authoritative discourse, political myth, performative shift, the principle of outsideness. The analysis of the historiography presented in the article allows us to justify the relevance of the performative approach to the study of Russia’s historical realities in the late 19th – early 20th centuries. Special attention is paid to the personal characteristics of the last two Russian emperors, which were given by Sergei Witte in the pages of his Memoirs and became an important part of Witte’s representation of the process of evolution of the institution of autocracy in Russia in the pre-revolutionary period. Of considerable academic interest are his substantial “portraits” of Russian political parties at the time of their institutional design and programmatic self-identification. Interesting nuances of Sergei Witte’s resignation presented by him in the extremely subjective optics of perception remain of high relevance for the analysis of various materials on the subject. The final part of the article draws conclusions about the content and elements of the concept of transformation of autocracy and describes the influence of new political institutions on that transformation in socio-political situation which had been changing.

scholarly journals Developments in Gender and Politics: A Call for Intersectionality

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morgan Matthews
Keyword(s):  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Women And Politics ◽  
Gender And Politics ◽  
History Of ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Theoretical Developments

Since “women and politics” scholarship emerged in the 1970s, social, institutional, and theoretical developments have shaped the trajectory of U.S. scholarship in this field. First, the presence of women in formal politics has increased, albeit unevenly across parties and minority groups over time. Simultaneously, the capacity to study ‘political women’ has become supported through institutional mechanisms such as academic journals and communities of practice. Moreover, gender as a critical focus of analysis has been developed and refined. In the literature on women and politics, the shift from studying sex differences to interrogating gendered political institutions is especially salient. This institutional focus, along with recent intersectional studies of gender and politics, increases opportunities for cross-pollination of sociological and political science perspectives. In this review, I provide a brief history of the U.S. scholarship on gender and politics and map these relevant social, institutional, and theoretical advances. I highlight the value of recent intersectional contributions in this field and make the case for bringing partisanship – an increasingly salient political identity and structure – into intersectional approaches to gender and politics.

scholarly journals Conceptions of National Identity and Opposition to Bicultural Policies in New Zealand: A Comparison of Majority and Minority Perspectives

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thierry Devos ◽  
Kumar Yogeeswaran ◽  
Chris G Sibley
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Structural Equation Models ◽  
Minority Group ◽  
European Ancestry ◽  
Majority Group ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Nationally Representative

Using a nationally representative sample, the present research tested whether conceptions of national identity differentially predicted attitudes toward bicultural policies among New Zealanders of European, Māori, Asian, and Pacific descent. A series of multi-group structural equation models revealed that among members of the majority group and all minority groups, endorsement of a civic conception of national identity (i.e., respecting political institutions and laws) was related to opposition to resource policies, but such a relationship was especially strong among the majority group. By contrast, endorsement of an ethnic conception of national identity (i.e., having Māori or European ancestry) was related to support for resource and symbolic policies among minority group members, but to opposition to the same policies among the majority group. The present work documents that belonging to a majority vs. minority group moderates the relations between conceptions of national identity (civic vs. ethnic) and support or opposition to specific bicultural policies. In addition, some elements of civic conceptions of national identity may legitimize inequalities rather than reduce them.

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