Multiethnic societies are purportedly prone to conflict and less hospitable to democracy than their ethnically homogenous counterparts. Ascriptive constitutionalism all variants of constitutional design endorsing such assumptions. Against prevailing anti-universalistic views that reject political universalism as a veiled domination of minorities, I explore the possibilities and potential pitfalls of a reconfigured form of universalism.
Multiethnic societies are purportedly prone to conflict and less hospitable to democracy than their ethnically homogenous counterparts. Ascriptive constitutionalism all variants of constitutional design endorsing such assumptions. Against prevailing anti-universalistic views that reject political universalism as a veiled domination of minorities, I explore the possibilities and potential pitfalls of a reconfigured form of universalism.
Multiethnic societies are purportedly prone to conflict and less hospitable to democracy than their ethnically homogenous counterparts. Ascriptive constitutionalism all variants of constitutional design endorsing such assumptions. Against prevailing anti-universalistic views that reject political universalism as a veiled domination of minorities, I explore the possibilities and potential pitfalls of a reconfigured form of universalism.
Multiethnic societies are purportedly prone to conflict and much less hospitable to democracy than their ethnically homogenous counterparts. By and large, the normative theories of constitutional design that have achieved authoritative currency as exemplars of conflict mitigating responses to the centrifugal tendencies of ethnic diversity are predicated on two related assumptions: (1) democratic political integration may take hold in such unpredictable contexts primarily through distributive and institutional mechanisms that recognize the various ethnic components of the state both as cohesive political agents and units of allocative entitlements; (2) well ordered constitutions are those that entrench and apportion rights based on ethnicity. I term ascriptive constitutionalism all variants of constitutional design endorsing such assumptions and set out to identity and normatively evaluate their principles, forms, and assess their respective merits or defects based on their consequences (implications) for long term political inclusion. Against prevailing anti-universalistic views that reject political universalism as a veiled domination of minorities I explore-in a sustained dialogue with Will Kymlicka and Jrgen Habermas- the possibilities and potential pitfalls of a reconfigured form of universalism that recognizes the fact of ethnic diversity without ascriptive entitlements. In particular, I argue -with specific reference to a set of multiethnic African societies- that political universalism is not intrinsically incompatible with a politics of recognition that validates cultural diversity.