Negotiating Muti Ethnic Claims in Multi Hnic Societies
AUTONOMY AND ETHNICITY Negotiating Competing Claims in Multi-ethnic States This book deals with one of the most urgent problems of contemporary times: the political organisation of multi- ethnic states. Most major conflicts of our time are inter- nal to the state and revolve around the claims of access to or the redesign of the state. Responses to ethnic con- flicts have ranged from oppression and ethnic cleansing to accommodations of ethnic claims through affirmative policies, special forms of representation, power sharing, and the integration of minorities. One of the most sought after, and resisted, devices for conflict management is autonomy. Within an overarching framework that ex- plores different understandings of ethnic consciousness and the variety of territorial autonomies, the authors examine the experiences of spatial distribution of power in Canada, India, China, South Africa, Spain, the former Yugoslavia, Ethiopia and Eritrea, Sri Lanka, Cyprus, Papua New Guinea and Australia. YASH GHAI is the Sir Y. K. Pao Professor of Public Law at the University of Hong Kong, before which he was Professor of Law at the University of Warwick, Dean of Law at the University of East Africa, and visiting profes- sor at Yale University, Harvard University, University of Toronto, National University of Singapore and Univer- sity of Wisconsin. His previous books include Public Law and Political Change in Kenya (1970); Political Economy of Law (1987); Law, Administration and the Politics of Decen- tralisation in Papua New Guinea (1993); Law, Government and Politics in Pacific Island States (1988); Hong Kong's New Constitutional Order (1997, 2nd edn 1998); Hong Kong's Constitutional Debate (2000).
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