Authority,Nationality, and Minorities |
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| Authors: | Alex Schwartz |
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| Affiliation: | Queen's University Belfast, School of Law, Belfast, UKI am especially grateful to David Miller for his guidance and support while I was working on this material as a guest of the Centre for the Study of Social Justice at the University of Oxford (Michaelmas Term, 2012). I would also like to thank the participants in the Nuffield College Political Theory Workshop (Michaelmas Term, 2012), Les Green, Andrew Lister, David Miller, Margaret Moore, and Zoran Oklopcic for insightful and constructive comments on drafts of this work at various stages in its development. |
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| Abstract: | Prominent normative theories for accommodating minority national groups appeal to the value of national cultures and/or the psychology of group recognition. This article aims to show that an argument from political authority provides a better justification. Building on Joseph Raz's theory of authority, the article argues that members of minority national groups are disadvantaged in relation to their majority counterparts under standard democratic institutions; such institutions do not provide minority national groups with comparable access to the conditions for legitimate political authority. Constitutional arrangements for accommodating minority national groups—such as territorial self‐government or power‐sharing—are justified insofar as they might offset this disadvantage. |
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