By unanimous adoption of the Universal Declaration of Cultural Diversity, the UNESCO Member States accepted a new ethical approach to respect diversity as a guiding principle for democratic societies. While support for the Declaration remains strong, there is a general awareness that the democratic management of multicultural societies needs rethinking and further development. This publication examines the political governance of cultural diversity, specifically how public policy-making has dealt with the claims for cultural recognition that have increasingly been expressed by ethno-national movements, language groups, religious minorities, indigenous peoples and migrant communities. Its principle aim is to understand, explain and assess public policy responses to ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity. Adopting interdisciplinary perspectives of comparative social sciences, the contributors address the conditions, forms, and consequences of democratic and human-rights-based governance of multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-faith societies.--Publisher's description.

Published in association with UNESCO, Democracy and Human Rights in Multicultural Societies examines the political governance of cultural diversity, specifically how public policy-making has dealt with the claims for cultural recognition that have increasingly been expressed by ethno-national movements, language groups, religious minorities, indigenous peoples and migrant communities. Its principle aim is to understand, explain and assess public-policy responses to ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity. Adopting interdisciplinary perspectives of comparative social sciences, the contributors address the conditions, forms, and consequences of democratic and human-rights-based governance of multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-faith societies.

In the last decade the study of multiculturalism has become an established field in political and social theory. This in-depth and engaging volume focuses on public policy and the dilemmas faced by the governments of increasingly diverse societies. Offering a theoretically and empirically rich collection of essays from some of the leading specialists in the field, it fills the gap between the social and political theory of multiculturalism and institutionally based national case studies. The book is distinctive in combining a robust theoretical introduction to recent developments in multiculturalism with a critical evaluation of contemporary public policy in a variety of countries in Europe, South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Far East and South Africa. It incorporates a strong comparative dimension both within and across the case studies, with a regional focus enabling comparisons of regional, national and international experience.

Most foundational works in political philosophy have made fundamentally false and far-reaching assumptions concerning the culturally homogeneous character of the polity.Deliberative Democracy, Political Legitimacy, andSelf-Determination in Multicultural Societies provides a much needed corrective to conventional accounts of the normative foundations of the state by reconceptualizing some of the fundamental issues in political theory from a perspective that recognizes the culturally pluralistic character of contemporary democracies. Among the issues considered are democratic deliberation in multicultural societies, the justification and function of political communities, the nature of self-determination, the justification of cultural rights, and the moral rationale for regional self-governance and secession. This work is suitable for graduate and upper-division undergraduate courses in political philosophy and political science, as well as the lay reader interested in understanding the major sources of conflict and instability in democratic societies.

Banning minarets by referendum in Switzerland, publicly burning Korans in the United States, prohibiting kirpans in public spaces in Canada—these are all examples of the rising backlash against diversity that is spreading across multicultural societies. Trust has always been precarious, and never more so than as a result of increased immigration. The number of religions, races, ethnicities, and cultures living together in democratic communities and governed by shared political institutions is rising. The failure to construct public policy to cope with this diversity—to ensure that trust can withstand the pressure that diversity can pose—is a failure of democracy. The threat to trust originates in the perception that the values and norms that should underpin a public culture are no longer truly shared. Therefore, societies must focus on building trust through a revitalized public culture. In Trust, Democracy, and Multicultural Challenges, Patti Tamara Lenard plots a course for this revitalization. She argues that trust is at the center of effective democratic politics, that increasing ethnocultural diversity as a result of immigration may generate distrust, and therefore that democratic communities must work to generate the conditions under which trust between newcomers and “native” citizens can be built, so that the quality of democracy is sustained.