Introduction: The Multiple Dimensions of the Politics of Accommodation in Multinational Democracies

Abstract

The chapters in this volume are motivated by the observation that the “nation-state” is often a misnomer, given that “stateless nations are the overwhelming majority of nations and only a small number of states represented in the UN are technically nation-states” (Linz et al., 2011; Nimni, 2011: 55). One estimate is that “fewer than twenty UN member states are ethnically homogeneous in the sense that cultural minorities account for less than 5 percent of the population” (Nimni, 2011: 55). At present, new possibilities may be opening up for institutional accommodation given that in contemporary plurinational democracies a transformation may be taking place in the relation between territorial spaces, national identities, and political institutions (Keating, 2001: 2; Nimni, 2011: 56).