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.

What role does linguistic diversity play in European democratic and legal processes? Is it an obstacle to deliberative democracy and a hindrance to legal certainty, or a cultural and economic asset and a prerequisite for the free movement of citizens? This book examines the tensions and contradictions of European language laws and policy from a multi-disciplinary perspective. With contributions from leading researchers in EU law and legal theory, political science, sociology, sociolinguistic and cognitive linguistics, it combines mutually exclusive and competing perspectives of linguistic diversity. The work will be a valuable resource for academics and researchers in the areas of European law, legal theory and linguistics.

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.

In this ground-breaking collection of essays, the editors and authors develop the idea of Linguistic Citizenship. This notion highlights the importance of practices whereby vulnerable speakers themselves exercise control over their languages, and draws attention to the ways in which alternative voices can be inserted into processes and structures that otherwise alienate those they were designed to support. The chapters discuss issues of decoloniality and multilingualism in the global South, and together retheorize how to accommodate diversity in complexly multilingual/ multicultural societies. Offering a framework anchored in transformative notions of democratic and reflexive citizenship, it prompts readers to critically rethink how existing contemporary frameworks such as Linguistic Human Rights rest on disempowering forms of multilingualism that channel discourses of diversity into specific predetermined cultural and linguistic identities.

"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 challenge of multilingualism has been on the rise in the United States, too, considering an ever-increasing number of Spanish speakers who are not fluent in English and the emergence of Spanish-only media in some parts of the country. 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 26 largely mono-lingual cantons and four linguistically distinct public spheres (German, French, Italian, Romansh). And yet it is widely seen as one of the most stable and successful democracies in the contemporary world. This book offers a different institutional explanation that accounts for the success of Swiss multilingual democracy. The author argues that in mainstream literature important Swiss institutions - in particular direct democracy, Parliament and the federal executive - have not been properly understood"--

This book proposes a multidisciplinary assessment of the impact of complex diversity on language politics and policies, analysing how the legacies of the old interact with the challenges of the new. Its main focus is on the interplay of multilingualism on the one hand, and the dynamics of transnationalism, globalisation, and Europeanisation on the other. This interplay confronts contemporary societies with unprecedented questions, as they face the need to come to grips with increasingly varied and pervasive manifestations of linguistic and cultural diversity. This volume develops an integrative approach that identifies the key social and political dimensions at hand, offering an innovative contribution to the ongoing conversation on the manifestations and management of multilingualism.

How do governments in Africa make decisions about language? What does language have to do with state-building, and what impact might it have on democracy? This manuscript provides a longue durée explanation for policies toward language in Africa, taking the reader through colonial, independence, and contemporary periods. It explains the growing trend toward the use of multiple languages in education as a result of new opportunities and incentives. The opportunities incorporate ideational relationships with former colonizers as well as the work of language NGOs on the ground. The incentives relate to the current requirements of democratic institutions, and the strategies leaders devise to win elections within these constraints. By contrasting the environment faced by African leaders with that faced by European state-builders, it explains the weakness of education and limited spread of standard languages on the continent. The work combines constructivist understanding about changing preferences with realist insights about the strategies leaders employ to maintain power.