Most experts on divided societies and institutional design broadly agree that it is more difficult to establish and maintain a stable, functioning democracy in a country with multiple languages and linguistically fragmented public spheres than in more homogeneous countries. Multilingual countries such as Canada and Belgium have been experiencing considerable difficulties in past decades (see the almost successful 1995 referendum on sovereignty in Quebec or the institutional deadlock and the rise of Flemish nationalism in Belgium since the 1970s). The prospects for the EU to become a viable democracy are even more haunted by multilingualism, considering that it has 24 official languages and no lingua franca. Switzerland, however, is also a multilingual country without a lingua franca, fragmented into 22 mono-lingual and three multilingual cantons, as well as into four distinct public spheres (German, French, Italian, Romansh). And yet it is widely seen as one of the most stable and successful democracies. Conventional wisdom in political science literature suggests that "consociational" political institutions account for the success of Swiss multilingual democracy. This book offers a different institutional explanation. The author argues that in mainstream literature important Swiss institutions - in particular direct democracy, Parliament and the federal executive - have largely been misinterpreted: they have been labelled as consociational, whereas they are rather a product of "centripetalism", an approach to institutional design in which political incentives are directed toward intergroup compromise because of the need to appeal to voters across group lines in order to form majorities. This approach to achieving long-term democratic stability stands in sharp contrast to consociationalism.

This book examines the institutions that make a multilingual democracy possible, with a particular focus on Switzerland.

Most experts on divided societies and institutional design broadly agree that it is more difficult to establish and maintain a stable, functioning democracy in a country with multiple languages and linguistically fragmented public spheres than in more homogeneous countries. Multilingual countries such as Canada and Belgium have been experiencing considerable difficulties in past decades (see the almost successful 1995 referendum on sovereignty in Quebec or the institutional deadlock and the rise of Flemish nationalism in Belgium since the 1970s). The prospects for the EU to become a viable democracy are even more haunted by multilingualism, considering that it has 24 official languages and no lingua franca. Switzerland, however, is also a multilingual country without a lingua franca, fragmented into 22 mono-lingual and three multilingual cantons, as well as into four distinct public spheres (German, French, Italian, Romansh). And yet it is widely seen as one of the most stable and successful democracies. Conventional wisdom in political science literature suggests that "consociational" political institutions account for the success of Swiss multilingual democracy. This book offers a different institutional explanation. The author argues that in mainstream literature important Swiss institutions - in particular direct democracy, Parliament and the federal executive - have largely been misinterpreted: they have been labelled as consociational, whereas they are rather a product of "centripetalism", an approach to institutional design in which political incentives are directed toward intergroup compromise because of the need to appeal to voters across group lines in order to form majorities. This approach to achieving long-term democratic stability stands in sharp contrast to consociationalism.

Frederic C. Schaffer challenges the assumption often made by American scholars that democracy has been achieved in foreign countries when criteria such as free elections are met. Elections, he argues, often have cultural underpinnings that are invisible to outsiders. To examine grassroots understandings of democratic institutions and political concepts, Schaffer conducted fieldwork in Senegal, a mostly Islamic and agrarian country with a long history of electoral politics. Schaffer discovered that ideas of "demokaraasi" held by Wolof-speakers often reflect concerns about collective security. Many Senegalese see voting as less a matter of choosing leaders than of reinforcing community ties that may be called upon in times of crisis.By looking carefully at language, Schaffer demonstrates that institutional arrangements do not necessarily carry the same meaning in different cultural contexts. Democracy in Translation asks how social scientists should investigate the functioning of democratic institutions in cultures dissimilar from their own, and raises larger issues about the nature of democracy, the universality of democratic ideals, and the practice of cross-cultural research.

This book offers a fresh perspective on the social life of multilingualism through the lens of the important notion of linguistic citizenship. All of the chapters are underpinned by a theoretical and methodological engagement with linguistic citizenship as a useful heuristic through which to understand sociolinguistic processes in late modernity, focusing in particular on linguistic agency and voices on the margins of our societies. The authors take stock of conservative, liberal, progressive and radical social transformations in democracies in the north and south, and consider the implications for multilingualism as a resource, as a way of life and as a feature of identity politics. Each chapter builds on earlier research on linguistic citizenship by illuminating how multilingualism (in both theory and practice) should be, or could be, thought of as inclusive when we recognize what multilingual speakers do with language for voice and agency.

The issue of human rights becomes very complex when applied to language. 'Individual' rights have little meaning in this domain. People do not ask for the right to speak to themselves, they ask for the right to use their language within their group. Where populations are heterogenous, such rights are difficult to ensure. Language can be a powerful means of inclusion and exclusion and this is particularly true in democratic societies where debate is central to the process. This book looks at these fundamental questions in the context of Catalonia.

Centripetal democracy is the idea that legitimate democratic institutions set in motion forms of citizen practice and representative behaviour that serve as powerful drivers of political identity formation. Partisan modes of political representation in the context of multifaceted electoral and direct democratic voting opportunities are emphasised on this model. There is, however, a strain of thought predominant in political theory that doubts the democratic capacities of political systems constituted by multiple public spheres. This view is referred to as the lingua franca thesis on sustainable democratic systems (LFT). Inadequate democratic institutions and acute demands to divide the political system (through devolution or secession), are predicted by this thesis. By combining an original normative democratic theory with a comparative analysis of how Belgium and Switzerland have variously managed to sustain themselves as multilingual democracies, this book identifies the main institutional features of a democratically legitimate European Union and the conditions required to bring it about. Part One presents a novel theory of democratic legitimacy and political identity formation on which subsequent analyses are based. Part Two defines the EU as a demoi-cracy and provides a thorough democratic assessment of this political system. Part Three explains why Belgium has largely succumbed to the centrifugal logic predicted by the LFT, while Switzerland apparently defies this logic. Part Four presents a model of centripetal democracy for the EU, one that would greatly reduce its democratic deficit and ensure that this political system does not succumb to the centrifugal forces expected by the LFT.