Diversitas – serie

This book provides an in-depth analysis of how constitutionalism and diversity can be friends and foes alike in contemporary multinational democracies. By focusing mainly on the dynamics between Quebec and Canada and comparing these with ongoing issues in Catalonia and Spain, Flanders and Belgium, and South Tyrol and Italy, the authors offer new insights into the public management of national diversity. In doing so, they sought to unpack the numerous challenges divided societies are facing.The pieces that together form the title of this book are not merely of symbolic significance. Constitutionalism v Diversity: Essays on Federal Democracy echoes the four underlying principles of the Canadian Constitution that the Supreme Court of Canada identified in its famous 1998　Reference re Secession of Quebec. These are (1) federalism, (2) democracy, (3) constitutionalism and the rule of law, and (4) protection of minorities. While these four concepts are at the very core of both authors’ argument and approach, the Supreme Court of Canada’s Secession Reference is guiding them through the book by providing a robust and meaningful theoretical and analytical framework. These principles appear as universal normative parameters societies should see as ideals to pursue and translate – while adapting their content to the specific context – into concrete institutions and practices. Even more today this book shows the great analytical value of these four principles to critically appraise of the way multinational liberal democracies in general and federal systems in particular are evolving.

This work focuses on constitutional amendments in divided societies. It analyzes and compares the ways in which constitutional amendment procedures are organized in states with significant linguistic, national or cultural cleavages.To explore this issue, we mobilize the theoretical framework of consociational federalism. The latter is a particular form of federalism that takes shape in accordance with the teachings and values of consociationalism (or consociational democracy). Consociational federalism is particularly relevant to study constitutional amendment procedures in divided societies, since it recommends a set of institutional arrangements and normative proposals designed to facilitate the achievement and maintenance of political stability in states marked by significant cleavages. Using a comparative approach, we study the constitutional amendment procedures in place in Belgium, Canada and Switzerland, while drawing on a number of other systems