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This article explains how John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas offer away out of the conflicts that occur in the tension between the state and political pluralism, ethnicity, and culture. This solution involves, in the first place, overcoming the deficiencies of individual liberalism regarding the consolidation of civic ties, solidarity and equity among citizens, and secondly, finding a bond that enables social cohesion, democratic political processes, and the solution of governance by consensus. For John Rawls, the solution implies the idea of overlapping consensus and public reasoning, and for Jürgen Habermas the concept of constitutional patriotism. The key idea is that both solutions involve the construction of a moral bond based on political values and on the principles of modern constitutionalism, which are deep-rooted in the political culture of democratic regimes with a constitutional review. Such bond implies going beyond a modus vivendior the mere tolerance between the ethnic, religious, cultural and sexual plurality in a political community. ; En este artículo se expone la forma como John Rawls y Jürgen Habermas ofrecen una salida normativa y procedimental para abordar los conflictos que se producen de la tensión entre el Estado y la pluralidad política, étnica y cultural. Dicha salida implica, por una parte, superar los déficits del liberalismo en cuanto a la consolidación de vínculos cívicos, solidarios y participativos entre los ciudadanos; por otra, buscar un pegamento que viabilice la cohesión social, el proceso político democrático y la solución de los asuntos públicos de manera consensuada. En el caso de John Rawls, la salida versa sobre la idea del consenso traslapado y la razón pública, y en el caso de Jürgen Habermas sobre el concepto de patriotismo constitucional. La tesis que se defenderá es que ambas salidas implican la construcción de un vínculo moral que se fundamenta en valores políticos y principios del constitucionalismo moderno, los cuales se encuentran anclados en la cultura política de regímenes democráticos con revisión constitucional. Dicho vínculo supone ir más allá de un modus vivendi o de la simple tolerancia entre la pluralidad étnica, religiosa, cultural y sexualque existe en una comunidad política.

Cover -- Half Title -- Series Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- List of contributors -- Introduction: The Search for Justice in Plural Societies: The Opportunities and Pitfalls of Accommodative Law and Practices -- PART 1: Overcoming Structural (Legislative or Otherwise) Barriers to Accommodation -- 1. Public Administrations and the Accommodation of Linguistic Diversity in the Dutch Language Area of Belgium -- 2. Accommodating Access to Property: Land Restitution and Formalization in Colombia -- 3. Recognition of New Religious Communities under Public Law in Switzerland: An Adequate Accommodation Tool? -- 4. Overcoming Discriminating Taboos in Societies: What the German Experience Can Teach Us about Ideas of (Re)designing Justice Abroad -- 5. The Spanish Observatory of Religious Pluralism: The Challenge of Fostering Accommodation through Information, Dissemination, and Research Activities -- PART II: Islam and Political, Legal, and Economic Inclusion -- 6. Accommodation, Anxieties, and Ambivalence: Regulating Islam in Singapore -- 7. House Rules for Islam in Hamburg: The State Contract between the City of Hamburg and Three Islamic Communities -- PART III: Accommodation and Indigenous Rights -- 8. Plurinational Law in the Bolivian Altiplano: Beyond Accommodation? -- 9. Seeking Solutions in the Land of the Long White Cloud: The Whanganui River Settlement in Aotearoa New Zealand as Accommodative Measure -- PART IV: The Role of the Judiciary in Negotiating Plural Normativities -- 10. Anthropological Expertise in the Peruvian Intercultural Justice Project -- 11. (Re)designing Living Customary Law to Protect a First Wife in a Pluralistic Legal System: The South African Constitutional Court Has Spoken -- Index.

The Kurds are one of the largest stateless nations in the world, numbering more than 20 million people. Their homeland lies mostly within the present-day borders of Turkey, Iraq and Iran as well as parts of Syria, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Yet until recently the 'Kurdish question' - that is, the question of Kurdish self-determination - seemed, to many observers, dormant. It was only after the so-called Arab Spring, and with the rise of the Islamic State, that they emerged at the centre of Middle East politics. But what is the future of the Kurdish national movement? How do the Kurds themselves understand their community and quest for political representation? This book analyses the major problems, challenges and opportunities currently facing the Kurds. Of particular significance, this book shows, is the new Kurdish society that is evolving in the context of a transforming Middle East. This is made of diverse communities from across the region who represent very different historical, linguistic, political, social and cultural backgrounds that are yet to be understood. This book examines the recent shifts and changes within Kurdish societies and their host countries, and argues that the Kurdish national movement requires institutional and constitutional recognition of pluralism and diversity. Featuring contributions from world-leading experts on Kurdish politics, this timely book combines empirical case studies with cutting-edge theory to shed new light on the Kurds of the 21st century.

Citizen Participation in Multi-Level Democracies -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- List of Contributors -- Citizen Participation in Multi-Level Democracies: An Introduction -- PART 1: Conceptual Foundation -- 1: Federalism and Democracy: Compatible or at Odds with One Another?: Re-Examining a Tense Relationship -- 2: Participation, Federalism and Pluralism: Challenges to Decision Making and Responses by Constitutionalism -- 3: Federalism, People's Legislation and Associative Democracy -- 4: Forms of Democratic Participation in Multi-Level Systems -- PART 2: Concretisation and Instruments of Democracy -- 5: Direct and Representative Democracy: The Perspective of German Citizens -- 6: Perspectives on the Institutionalization of Citizen Participation at the Municipal Level: A First-Hand Report -- 7: E-Participation in Germany: New Forms of Citizen Involvement between Vision and Reality -- 8: Financing Popular Initiatives and Referendum Campaigns -- 9: Participation and Administrative Procedure -- 10: "Liquid Democracy": Solution or Problem? -- PART 3: Examples from Federal and Regional States -- 11: Participatory democracy in Multi-Level States -- 12: Direct Democracy and Citizen Participation in the Austrian Federal State -- 13: Italian Regionalism: Participation and Plebiscitary Models -- 14: Direct Democracy in the Swiss Federation -- 15: The Referendum in the United Kingdom: Instrument for Greater Constitutional Legitimacy, Tool of Political Convenience, or First Step to Revitalize Democracy? -- 16: Laboratories of Democratic Innovation? Direct, Participatory, and Deliberative Democracy in Canadian Provinces and Municipalities -- PART 4: Emergence of Participation in European Affairs -- 17: Towards the Europeanization of Participation? Reflecting on the Functions and Beneficiaries of Participation in eu Environmental Law

Prolegomena to the method and culture of comparative law / Maurice Adams and Dirk Heirbaut -- What is legal epistemology? / Geoffrey Samuel -- Comparative law as method and the method of comparative law / Jaap Hage -- Research designs of comparative law : methodology or heuristics? / Jaakko Husa -- Law as translation / François Ost -- Controlled comparison and language of description / Maurice Adams -- Three functions of function in comparative legal studies / Catherine Valcke and Mathew Grellette -- Comparative law and legal history : a few words about comparative legal history / Martin Löhnig -- Comparative contexts in legal history : are we all comparatists now? / Heikki Pihlajamaki -- The curious case of overfitting legal transplants / Mathias M Siems -- 'Ius commune', comparative law and public governance / Alain Wijffels -- Things being various : normativity, legality, state legality / Seán Patrick Donlan -- Against method? / H. Patrick Glenn -- Comparatively speaking : 'law in its regulatory environment' / Roger Brownsword -- The importance of institutions / John Bell -- Live and let die : an essay concerning legal-cultural understanding / Jørn Øyrehagen Sunde -- Policy and politics in contract law reform in Japan / Souichirou Kozuka and Luke Nottage -- The Eurocrises and what socio-legal studies could do about them, or: comparing European pluralisms from legal cultural approaches / Joxerramon Bengoetxea -- Comparing the legitimacy of constitutional court decision-making : deliberation as method / Toon Moonen -- Making the case for European comparative legal studies in public law / Susan Millns -- Comparative law and EU legislation : inspiration, evaluation or justification? / Rob van Gestel and Hans-W Micklitz.

"The "Third Wave" of global democratization, which began in 1974, now appears to be drawing to a close. While the number of "electoral democracies" has tripled since 1974, the rate of increase has slowed every year since 1991 (when the number jumped by almost 20 percent) and is now near zero. Moreover, if we examine the more demanding standard of "liberal democracy" – in which there is substantial individual and associational freedom, civic pluralism, civi lian supremacy over the military, a secure rule of law, and "horizontal accountability" of office-holders to one another – we observe today the same proportion of liberal democracies in the world as existed in 1991. If a "third reverse wave" of democratic erosion or breakdowns is to be avoided, the new democracies of the third wave will need to become consolidated. Elites and citizens of every major party, interest, and ethnicity must accept the legitimacy of democracy and of the specific constitutional rules and practices in place in their country. In many new democracies, this requires a sweeping agenda of institutional reform to widen citizen access to power, control corruption, and improve the depth and quality of democracy. Elsewhere – as in China and Indonesia – rapid economic development and the gradual emergence of stronger, more autonomous civil associations and legal and representative institutions may be laying the foundations for a "fourth wave" of democratization at some point in the early twenty-first century." [author's abstract]

Democracy's third wave / Samuel P. Huntington -- The new world disorder / Ken Jowitt -- The democratic moment / Marc F. Plattner -- What democracy is--and is not / Philippe C. Schmitter and Terry Lynn Karl -- Rethinking African democracy / Claude Ake -- Dangers and dilemmas of democracy / Philippe C. Schmitter -- Delegative democracy / Guillermo O'Donnell -- Three paradoxes of democracy / Larry Diamond -- The perils of presidentialism / Juan J. Linz -- Comparing democratic systems / Donald L. Horowitz -- The centrality of political culture / Seymour Martin Lipset -- The virtues of parliamentarism / Juan J. Linz -- Constitutional choices for new democracies / Arend Lijphart -- The problem with PR / Guy Lardeyret -- PR and democratic statecraft / Quentin L. Quade -- Double-checking the evidence / Arend Lijphart -- The primacy of the particular / Ken Gladdish -- New institutions in the Old East Bloc / Jan Zielonka -- Toward democratic consolidation / Larry Diamond -- Civil society then and now / Bronislaw Geremek -- Postcommunism and the problem of trust / Richard Rose -- Russia's fourth transition / M. Steven Fish -- Pluralism in the Arab world / Iliya Harik --Bowling alone : America's declining social capital / Robert D. Putnam -- The tide underneath the third wave / Henry S. Rowen -- The primacy of culture / Francis Fukuyama -- More liberal, preliberal, or postliberal? / Philippe C. Schmitter -- Do economists know best? / Guillermo O'Donnell -- The Asian spectrum / Muthiah Alagappa -- Between Africa's extremes / Michael Chege -- Where East meets West / Marcin Kr(c)đl -- The post-totalitarian blues / Jacques Rupnik

Abstract
The article uses Israel's volatile jurisdictional dynamics of the past two decades concerning access to religious community justice, as a telling case for examining the way legal pluralism is deployed along the public–private divide. The Israeli case exhibits a complex combination of an ostensibly liberal democratic regime, a commitment to a particularistic ethno-national political project, structural entanglements of state and religion against the backdrop of an unsettled constitutional order, and an historically diffuse mode of often-illiberal normative ordering within its diverse religious communities. All this provides a rich backdrop for various strategies by communal and institutional elites seeking to consolidate power, legitimacy, and authenticity in their often mutually-reliant jurisdictional projects. The article explores several salient episodes from Israel's religious jurisdiction dynamics, focusing for purposes of analytical clarity on the case of Jewish orthodox legality. The analysis uncovers the main strategies stakeholders resort to, and shows how agency flows in different ways, with the choices of each player affecting the possibilities of the others. The institution at the arguable top of the system—the Supreme Court—is shown to be often devoid of effective means of elucidating, let along imposing, a coherent vision for a fragmented jurisdictional field. Conceptually, the judicial forum is revealed as the locus of an ongoing, uneasy engagement among normative imaginaries in a sometimes-competitive, sometimes-collaborative negotiation over coherence, tolerance, authority, and legitimacy.

India has many religious groups, of which Hindus are a majority, and Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains are minorities. India's Constitution, adopted in 1950, departed from the existing norms of secularism in Europe and elsewhere, which suggested a strict separation of religion and state. Moreover, freedom of religion is a Fundamental Right guaranteed under the Indian Constitution. With its distinct model of secularism and special provisions for religious minorities, India's social cohesion arrangement needs special attention. On one hand, the distinct understanding of secularism in the Indian context has led to the advancement of religious pluralism. At the same time, it has invited criticism for selective intervention in the affairs of religious communities from governments in power. The selective intervention has challenged the exclusivity of Indian secularism. This article evaluates the constitutional and theoretical ideas underlying provisions on religious minorities and freedom of religion enshrined in the Indian Constitution. It appraises the idea of religious minorities enshrined in the constitution through a discussion of the process that shaped the idea. The article reflects on the Indian experience of managing the rights of religious minorities and freedom of religion. By analysing a landmark judgement related to freedom of religion and the rights of religious minorities, the article evaluates whether the Indian Constitution advances a model of social cohesion by balancing freedom of religion and the rights of religious minorities or remains ineffective in achieving the same.

Most observers of Bosnia and Herzegovina's political situation have focused only on the problems that the Dayton Peace Accord created for the normal functioning of this Southeastern European state, but a workable solution is yet to be proposed. The Accord achieved peace by blocking any ability for effective governing and by diminishing the Bosnian state capacity through an excessive dispersion of power with an uncommon constitutional focus on internationalism, and an erroneous type of pluralism that undermines the normal functioning of a democracy. The solution for these problems is to be found by adjusting the procedural selection of the United Nations High Representative, who is the primary actor directly responsible for the implementation of the Accord, both in terms of the letter and intent of the document, and this paper explains how that change can be made and what problems it will resolve. ; Na bosanskom jeziku je početkom oktobra, ove godine, objavljen moj prijevod knjige Muhammed poslanik mira usred sukoba imperija, američkog historičara Juana Colea, profesora historije na Univerzitetu Michigan, urednika i pokretača portala Informed Comment, autora znatnog broja studija koje tretiraju historiju i civilizaciju Bliskog Istoka. Kako stoji u uredničkom podnaslovu izdavača, sarajevske izdavačke kuće Kupola, koja je ovu knjigu objavila u sklopu svoje edicije "Stubovi vremena", radi se o "biografiji Poslanika, a.s., kao vjesnika tolerancije i mira u jeku vizantijsko- perzijskih ratova."

The theme of the localization of places of worship has acquired over time a growing relevance also from the legal point of view, accompanied by a complexity of its discipline, as demonstrated by the copious administrative and constitutional jurisprudence that has formed on the subject. Certainly the theme, and also from this its complexity, substantially affects the rights of equality, the protection of the different ideological, cultural and religious identities of individuals and groups, guaranteed by the Constitution that with art. 8 introduced in our legal system the idea of pluralism, intended to guarantee the different religious identities, while, at the same time, the art. 19 of the Constitution has sanctioned the right to profess one's faith freely and to exercise the cult in public or in private. The availability of buildings and places of worship to be used for the celebration of rites is, therefore, a necessary element to effectively ensure not only the individual, but also the communities of practitioners the free exercise of their creed. At the same time, the discipline for the construction of these buildings, in the exercise of the competences on the government of the territory, is a task to which the administration cannot escape with the criticalities that we will try to highlight by referring, for the cheapness of the research, only to the Lombard regional discipline.

Structuring of a political party is a constitutional national law politics insofar as it is consistent with the principle of protection of Human Rights and the principle of democracy. The legitimate principles of restriction of human rights consist of the principle of legality and the principle of interest to exercise restriction. The application of the two principles within the framework of restrictions on Human Rights is also overseen and offset by the principle of proportionality. Political law in the framework of structuring political parties is aimed at two targets, that is: (1) the regulation on the establishment of political parties and (2) the regulation of the holding of elections. The regulatory orientation of the establishment of political parties is intended to be an impediment to the will of a person to form a random political party. While the regulatory orientation on the holding of elections is to limit or reduce the number of political party presence in parliament. The factors influencing the structuring of political parties in Indonesia are socio-political factors, the ineffectiveness of party system adopted by the State of Indonesia, the juridical factor by tightening the terms of the establishment of political parties in the Election Law and the Political Party Law, the condition of pluralism a nation intended to minimize the flow politics, as well as historical conditions that show the historical facts of political parties in Indonesia are quite bleak.

Political competitions and access to power, in plural societies like Nigeria, takes different forms and dimensions. Ethnic pluralism in Nigeria has more often than not been characterized by contestations and struggles for access to power and the resources of the Nation-State. Nigeria has therefore become a "cake. to be shared among the various nationalities, while nobody cares about the baking of the cake. The ethnic factor which initially ignited the demands for States creation has continued to torment the country. Thus, ethno-regional interests are usually mobilized to campaign for States creation and development and these agitations have been persistent and seemingly endless. This aim of this paper is to argue that the logic of continued States creation in Nigeria, purportedly to bring government closer to the people and achieve national development is a failed strategy. Again,the history and nature of States creation in Nigeria has failed to assuage the very forces that instigate the demands for new States. The prospects for national development and integration as well as local autonomy depend on the emergence of a purposeful, courageous, visionary and national leadership. Besides the leadership question, Nigeria needs a repositioned and strengthened local government system, an orientation to enable Nigerians on the need for peaceful co-existence and constitutional amendments to ensuring a true Federal system where the other levels of government will control a substantial amount of their resources.

Long a puzzle to both its admirers and detractors across the world, the United States of America has, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, become more puzzling than ever. A variety of explanations has been proposed for America's paradoxical combination of apparent "statelessness" and its capability to produce positive policy outcomes. This essay will argue that, properly understood, the structural features of America's constitutional scheme of governance, largely credited to founder James Madison, provide a necessary but insufficient explanation of the "riddle of America". The success of America's "compound republic" (in Madison's words), was intended to depend not only on the capacities of its basic governing structures – separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism, and pluralism – but, in extremis, on the inherent fairness of "the people", both of which have been achieved in American history but neither of which can be guaranteed. The source of authority and, of equal importance, the legitimacy of American governing institutions and their outcomes is the faith placed in them by citizens, elected officials, and judges, requiring a sense of responsibility on the part of all to the principles that protect all. That the sense of responsibility on the part of some, as America's recent political crises demonstrates, can fail, jeopardizes not only domestic liberty and justice but threatens the well being of peoples far distant.

The Modern French Political History has been significantly transformed over the last twenty years. Apart from the pluralism of disciplinary approaches -law, political science, history- Pierre Rosanvallon's seminal work represents a landmark for the specialists of the political period inaugurated by the French Revolution. After presenting this historiography, we take a precise example in order to show the interest of these new approaches. Even though the history of the Conseil économique et social has been relatively neglected by scholars, it remains the third French constitutional assembly of the twentieth century. It held a specific position within the institutional framework in that it was not elected by universal suffrage but was considered by its members to be one of the rare "institutional representations of civil society". The successive attempts to create the Conseil économique et social during three different republics -in 1925, 1946 and 1958- offer an opportunity to connect the theoretical debates on the competing forms of democracy and the specific institutional experiences. By focusing on the composition, responsibilities and functioning of the different councils as well as on the debates which consistently accompanied their establishment, a series of questions emerge about elections, notions of representation, and sovereignty in modern political regimes. Inspired by Pierre Rosanvallon's political historical perspective, this study offers a new approach on the institutions, "corporate" tendencies, and interest groups of the French republican model.