3 - Devolution and the Promotion (or Evasion) of Minority Rights

Summary

In many countries, the idea of minority autonomy is a taboo topic, rejected out of hand as a threat to the state. Yet the desire for some degree of self-government runs deep in many ethnic and religious communities. Some people have suggested that a generalized scheme of decentralization or devolution, understood as a country-wide process that shifts power from the central state to lower levels of government, can de facto enable minority autonomy without invoking any idea of group rights or ethnic autonomy. This chapter argues that this proposal is unlikely to work. Generalized decentralization can be implemented in ways that disempower and fragment minorities, and has often been adopted precisely with this intention. Decentralization is only likely to benefit minorities if and when it is designed with minority aspirations in mind. And this in turn requires that minority aspirations be moved out of the taboo category into the category of normal democratic politics: minority aspirations must be “normalized” and “desecuritized.” This is likely to require changes both in the broader geopolitics of the region and in the local self-understandings of nationhood and peoplehood.