Suchergebnisse

Includes bibliographical references (p. 219-232) and index. ; Introduction -- Groundwork : political equality and political institutions -- Political equality in electoral systems : equality implies proportionality -- Political equality in decision rules : equality implies majority rule -- Minority protection, rights, and supermajoritarianism -- Deliberation, rationality, and representation -- The logical bases of deliberative democracy : the limits of consensus -- Political equality in practice : stability and economic outcomes in the consensual democracies -- Conclusions: Political equality and the beauty of cycling. ; Mode of access: Internet.

This paper focusses on the Belgian constitutional and legal regulations which are clearly and relatively directly linked to minority protection as welt as their relevance for South Africa by way of analogy, taking into account South Africa's specific circumstances.Generally, what seems to be highly relevant for South Africa is the different kind of solutions in Belgium for its three categories of minorities as related to a different degree of territorial concentration. Going from an emphasis on territorial federalism, providing autonomy, for the highly territorial concentrated linguistic groups, over the use of the relative concentrations of the ideological and philosophical groups in certain federated entities, to a combination of individual human rights and group rights without a territorial connection whatsoever for the religious groups which are highly dispersed throughout the country.An analogous differentiation ofseveral types ofminority protection could bedivised in South Africa as the genera! lack of territoria! concentration of thecountry's several population groups bas a different degree for the ethnic/linguistic groups as compared to the religious ones.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union has transformed the 25 million ethnic Russians living outside the Russian Federation into a new Russian diaspora. This situation represents a potential threat to political stability among and within the Soviet successor states. Right-wing political groups in Russia pose as defenders of the national rights of the diaspora. If they were able to induce the Russian Army to intervene in the non-Russian states on behalf of the diaspora, a situation dangerously similar to the Yugoslav conflict could arise. The problem of the diaspora can be neutralized through migration, border regulations and/or the establishment of regimes for minority rights. The stabilizing/destabilizing potential of each of these options is evaluated here with reference to the recent post-Soviet debate on the issue. It is argued that large-scale migration aimed at creating optimally `pure' ethnic nation-states may easily unleash uncontrollable chain reactions. Most non-Russian successor states are categorically opposed to border regulations; many Russian politicians have qualms as well. They are, inter alia, afraid that if the principle of the popular will is used to determine territorial issues, it might lead to a dismantling of the multi-ethnic Russian Federation. The least destabilizing option seems to be minority protection. The West could contribute to a viable human rights regime in the CIS by applying a differentiated trade and aid policy and giving the respective governments material incentives to respect the rights of the minorities. In any case, the leadership in the non-Russian successor states should, in their own interest, avoid providing the irredentist parties in Russian politics with arguments and sympathizers.

The issue of minority protection is an extreme case for analyzing the problem of linkage between European Union (EU) membership conditionality and compliance by candidate countries. While EU law is virtually non-existent, EU practice is divergent, and international standards are ambiguous, the issue has been given high rhetorical prominence by the EU during enlargement. The analysis in this article follows a process tracking approach to study the relationship of EU conditionality to changes in minority rights protection in the Central and Eastern European candidate countries (CEECs). The authors examine how the EU's monitoring process has operated, what its benchmarks have been, how the EU process has interacted with those of other international organizations, such as the Council of Europe and OSCE, and evaluate what its impact has been on the candidate countries. In conclusion, the authors find that EU conditionality is not closely temporally correlated with the emergence of new strategies and laws on minority protection in the CEECs. Instead, the EU's main instrument for accession and convergence, the Regular Reports, have been characterized by ad hocism, inconsistency, and a stress on formal measures rather than substantive evaluation of implementation. (ECMI)