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Attempts to give an overview of the range of cases where minority rights and multiculturalism interact with citizenship, and of the potential tensions between them. The current debates on minority rights and citizenship are outlined, and the need for an integrated theory of diverse citizenship, including the wider context of ethnic conflict management, is discussed. Notes are given on the different kinds of minority groups (national, immigrant, religious, and sui generis—African Americans, Roma (gypsies) and Russians in former Soviet states, etc.). The ways that groups within liberal democracies seek respect for their cultural/religious distinctiveness are classified. Lastly, the main fears about citizenship in the face of minority rights are outlined.

The essays in Part III of the book, on liberal constraints and traditionalist education, argue for a more regulatory conception of liberal education and emphasize the need for some controls over cultural and religious educational authority. Kevin McDonough’s essay, on multinational civic education, develops a conception of this that allows for both federal and minority national groups to reinforce conditional civic attachments. This ‘conditionalist’ view of civic education is necessary in multinational federal societies, he argues, because appeals to one set of national attachments may exacerbate rather than alleviate particular injustices in particular circumstances. For example, McDonough argues that when aboriginal women and children are the victims of injustice at the hands of tribal institutions and leaders, they must be able to appeal to their fellow non-aboriginal citizens and federal institutions for assistance, although this is not possible unless citizens – aboriginal and otherwise – have come to regard attachments to the minority nation as conditional rather than absolute. Similarly, citizens whose primary identification is to the federal society must be able to recognize that some of their fellow citizens legitimately have a minority nation as the object of their primary loyalty – otherwise, efforts to support federal intervention in minority national affairs will be vulnerable to forces of cultural insensitivity and arrogance, rather than of liberal justice.

This chapter traces the development of the contemporary debate about minority group rights in political theory, and shows its lack of attention to solidarity. It (a) charts the bifurcation of the multiculturalism literature into two branches: one concerned with the justice of temporary group rights as compensation for historic racial injustice and another focused on permanent group rights for cultural minorities as enduring terms of fair coexistence; (b) analyzes the consequences of this split; and (c) argues that the two branches need to be reintegrated. Drawing on examples from Latin America—where indigenous peoples suffer from racial discrimination and racialized groups make claims relating to language, culture, and territory—it shows that the artificial theoretical division between race and culture in theories of multiculturalism can be misleading, and suggests that as a result of this bifurcation neither strand has sufficiently considered the potential effects of minority group rights on political solidarity.

This is the last of the four essays in Part II of the book on liberalism and traditionalist education; all four are by authors who would like to find ways for the liberal state to honour the self-definitions of traditional cultures and to find ways of avoiding a confrontation with differences. One of the tasks of the book is to separate out different kinds of affiliation and the extent to which the arguments made about cultural recognition can be extended to other objects of affiliation. Mark Halstead’s chapter on schooling (education) and cultural maintenance for religious minorities in the liberal state provides a catalogue of the different types of groups that are to be found in liberal societies, and the different kinds of cultural and educational claims that are typically attached to each of them. His definition of minority group is useful in conceptualizing many of the papers in the volume. The chapter falls into three sections: Section 10.1, which looks at four types of disadvantaged minorities, attempts to distinguish non-Western fundamentalist religious minorities living in the West from other minorities that may experience disadvantage of various kinds in liberal societies; Section 10.2, on religious minorities in the liberal state, explores some of the educational and other difficulties encountered by such religious minorities in more detail, and typical liberal responses; Section 10.3, on rethinking the liberal response, contains some proposals that are designed to meet the educational needs of both the liberal state and the religious minorities at the same time.

This chapter argues that taking racialized solidarity into account in theories of multiculturalism requires that existing normative justifications of minority group rights be reframed in order to make whiteness visible. This entails focusing arguments for such rights on the need to reverse past and continuing disadvantages suffered by subordinated groups as a result of either cultural difference and/or racial hierarchy, thereby reintegrating the two branches of the multiculturalism literature. This would bring questions of collective injustice to the forefront of debates about minority group rights, which are one of the few instances where the content of the political community's public memory is challenged and the differences between the ethical-political perspectives of dominant and subordinated groups are confronted. Through such processes of contestation the ethical-political perspectives of dominant groups might be transformed, thereby leading to the development of greater political will to achieve racial justice.

What is the effect of the institutional design of minority group rights on political solidarity? Can debates about such rights begin to address racialized solidarity? This chapter examines these questions more concretely by analyzing the model of multiculturalism adopted in Nicaragua, where multiple indigenous and Afro-descendant groups requiring remedies for both racialized oppression and the accommodation of cultural difference are present (as in Latin America generally). The Nicaraguan case is analyzed in order to evaluate the kinds of minority group rights that might best enable the fair accommodation of ethnocultural diversity, remedy racialized oppression, and foster political solidarity. It suggests that debates about such rights can begin to address racialized solidarity by ushering in contestation about the content of public memory, but only if and when arguments for these rights reveal the existence of a state organized on the basis of cultural difference and racial hierarchy.

None of the current Anglo‐American theories of secession gives proper consideration to the most common grievance voiced by national minorities in multinational states—that the terms of federation are either unfair or have been violated by the majority. If this charge were a plausible and necessary justification for threatening with secession, then it would also follow that a national minority is morally bound to maintain the unity of the existing state as long as fair terms of federation are respected. That is the main idea addressed in this chapter. Arguments are advanced against a right to self‐determination and in favour of a right to self‐government that can be sufficiently realized within a federal framework. Three perspectives on federalism that could help establish the federal rights and duties of minorities are explored, and the matter of territorial self‐government within multinational federations is addressed.

The chapter is divided into three main parts. The first explores the federal process in Russia. The second examines the attempts, especially since the ending of the Chechen crisis, to develop a more coherent federal nationalities’ policy. The third, which focuses on the ethnorepublics, argues that a democratized federation offers the most effective antidote to both minority and majority primordialist nationalisms. The chapter concludes by briefly exploring the implications of Russia's particular experiment for our understanding of multicultural federalism more generally.

Explores several of the factors that significantly affected the transition of New Zealand's political system from a pluralitarian (extreme majoritarian) system famous for its tranquil efficacy to an MMP (mixed‐member proportional) system renowned for its vengeful reformism. These factors include: (1) dealignment; (2) minor party under‐representation; (3) the under‐representation of minority groups in an era of increasing multiculturalism; (4) radical, unpopular economic reform by successive Labour and National party governments; and (5) the parliamentary ‘other side’ of the calculus—the provision of both a Royal Commission, which highlighted representational failings of the Westminster system while legitimating MMP specifically as an alternative electoral system, and indicative and binding referendums, which gave New Zealand's voters the final say in determining the fate of the country's electoral system. The extent to which these issues were important in vote choices of electors in the 1993 referendum is also considered. A last section considers the overall explanations for New Zealand's turn to MMP, and the chapter includes a table that shows a timeline of electoral change in New Zealand since 1985 (the period immediately preceding the reform of 1993) and an appendix giving a sketch of the MMP system in New Zealand.

This chapter concludes the book and provides some closing thoughts. The chapter explains how the results in the book indicate that the link between descriptive and substantive representation may not be as close as some presume. Furthermore, the chapter argues that the goal of those wishing to increase the substantive representation of minority groups ought not to focus solely on reaching some “critical mass,” a proportion of minority group members above which the concerns of the minority will have voice. Critical mass is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for minority group representation, because proper mechanisms for encouraging coordination are also necessary. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how minority groups are at least partially responsible for the construction of their own glass ceiling, which will be dismantled only when they achieve both sufficient numbers and a working solution to their coordination problem.

This chapter is divided into four sections. The first section seeks to provide a brief overview of the history of legal reforms in China, and underscore the changing attitude of the government to human rights. The second section identifies the groups considered minorities or ‘minority nationalities’ in China. The third section seeks to extrapolate principles of minority rights in Chinese law, drawing on the Chinese Constitution, the Law of the People's Republic of China on Regional National Autonomy, and from authoritative commentaries on the same. This is followed by various sub-sections focusing on policy and legislation over specific issues pertaining to minorities in China, such as education, religion, political participation, and economic development. The final section analyzes the remedies available and the challenges in making these effective.

Canada is a classic country of immigration, with 21 percent of its working-age population being first generation and a further 9 percent second generation. It employs a ‘point system’ for selection of economic immigrants, and indeed the first generation proves to be highly educated (more so indeed than the charter population). While a number of visible minority groups in the first generation experience substantial disadvantages, in the second generation the one clearly disadvantaged group (in net terms) are the Caribbeans. Almost every other group in the second generation has achieved or surpassed parity with the charter group of the British. Whether this success of the second generation is due to Canadian policies of multiculturalism or to the lagged effects of the ‘point system’ for entry cannot be determined from these data. However, major disadvantages continue to be experienced by the Aboriginals both in employment and in occupational attainment.

This chapter argues that nationalist discourse on group rights in the Constituent Assembly of India is best understood as comprising a set of interlinked concepts — secularism, democracy, social justice, national unity, and development. In historical terms, it shows that the dominant interpretation of the nationalist vocabulary in this period was opposed to special provisions for minority groups. As these were seen as a threat to national unity, other concepts of the nationalist vocabulary such as secularism and justice were also construed as antithetical to group-differentiated rights. Indian nationalism spoke in a common, liberal voice against group-differentiated rights in this period, with modernist ideas likely gaining ground as these accorded with Hindu opinion on minority rights. Finally, focusing on secularism, the chapter argues that the nationalist vocabulary was substantially liberal democratic in character, even as it was inflected by indigenous historical and cultural idioms.

The central aims of the book—to show that racialized solidarity poses a significant obstacle to racial justice, and to consider how theories of multiculturalism might incorporate the promotion of political solidarity (both between disadvantaged groups, and between subordinated groups and dominant groups) into their conceptual apparatus—are discussed. The principal contributions of the book are noted, including (a) developing the concept of racialized solidarity, (b) bringing together African American political philosophy, theories of multiculturalism, and the literature on solidarity in political theory in order to develop a distinctive approach to the problem of racial justice, and (c) bringing Latin American experiences with multiculturalism to the forefront of debates about minority group rights in political theory.

The theoretical and empirical evidence of the economic effects of affirmative action or quota (positive discrimination) programmes for minority racial groups in the USA, and of reservations of government jobs for scheduled castes and tribes in India, are compared and discussed. The focus is on the effects on wages and employment in the labour market as well as on the acquisition of skills. Consideration is also given to how the dynamics of collective action may turn these programmes, which were designed to be temporary and limited in scope, into larger, more permanent ones.

This chapter summarizes the health needs assessment process, based on both quantitative information (such as the epidemiology of diseases) and qualitative information obtained from interviews and focus groups. Topics covered include challenges of understanding health needs assessments in minority ethnic groups; exemplars of health needs assessments in minority ethnic groups; and utilizing quantitative and qualitative data, and both relative and absolute risk approaches.

This chapter aims to identify a common ground between liberals and defenders of cultural minorities that can serve as the basis for a mutually acceptable, yet still liberal, policy toward the treatment of women and girls by the cultural minority groups to which they belong. It also aims to defend the very project of a liberal policy by responding to some of the criticisms that Okin and others have received for defending women's rights in apparent opposition to some minority cultural traditions.

This chapter examines minority rights in Singapore. It begins with an outline of the history of Singapore followed by details of the groups identified as minorities within the state. The third section studies three issues particularly germane to the discourse of minority rights in Singapore: education, religion, and political participation. The final section evaluates the remedies attempted by the government in seeking to accommodate minority rights.