The Political Science Department of Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, in cooperation with the European Center for Minority Issues, Flensburg, Germany and the Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, invites submissions from scholars of different disciplinary backgrounds and diverse methodological orientations, aiming to elaborate a compendium on the various autonomy arrangements which are operational in the world to date.
Though the various forms of territorial, functional and legal pluralism and sub-state governance are important institutional arrangements of accommodating national, ethnic, linguistic or religious communities across the world, the issue of autonomy remains highly controversial both in the scholarly literature, and in the political debate between dominant majorities and marginalized ethnocultural communities. In spite of salient contributions made in past years which shed light on the issue from the perspective of normative political philosophy, international law, constitutional and institutional analysis and a number of limited case-studies, no comprehensive collection of cases is available which could facilitate a more research-based typology, comparative analysis and informed assessment of the advantages and shortages of the existing autonomy set-ups. Another limitation of the existing literature is that most of the available in-depth case-studies focus on a limited number of well-known, “starred” autonomy arrangements, located mostly in the Western hemishpere.
The aim of this initiative is to invite scholars and researchers to engage in identifying, researching and describing in a standard format as many autonomy arrangements operational in the different regions of the world as possible, with special focus on the lesser-known cases. Please visit the website for the themes and other submission details.
The preliminary results of the endeavor will be discussed in a conference in Flensburg, Germany (most probably in September or October 2012), and the final version of the elaborated case-studies will be published in a representative compendium at a prestigious international publishing house in 2013.
The authors of the chosen abstracts will be announced latest by March 26, 2012, and will be invited to elaborate the compendium entry based on a specified format. The selected authors will also be invited to consider participation in the conference.
Deadline for the compendium entries: November 30, 2012.
Organizers :
Levente Salat (Babes-Bolyai University)
Tove Malloy (European Center for Minority Issues)
István Horváth (Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities)