This book explores how different states negotiate the competing claims of ethnic groups.

This book deals with one of the most urgent problems of contemporary times: the political organisation of multi-ethnic states. Most major conflicts of our time are internal to the state and revolve around the claims of access to or the redesign of the state. Responses to ethnic conflicts have ranged from oppression and ethnic cleansing to accommodations of ethnic claims through affirmative policies, special forms of representation, power sharing, and the integration of minorities. One of the most sought after, and resisted, devices for conflict management is autonomy. Within an overarching framework that examines different understandings of ethnic consciousness and the variety of territorial autonomies, the authors examine the experiences of spatial distribution of power in Canada, India, China, South Africa, Ethiopia, PNG, Spain, the former Yugoslavia, Cyprus, Sri Lanka and Australia.

1. Autonomy to manage ethnic conflicts Yash Ghai
2. Federalism and diversity in Canada Ronald Watts
3. Federalism and diversity in India Vasuki Nesiah
4. Autonomy regimes in China: coping with ethnic and economic diversity Yash Ghai
5. How the centre holds: managing claims for regional and ethnic autonomy in a democratic South Africa Heinz Klug
6. Autonomous communities and the ethnic settlement in Spain Daniele Conversi
7. Ethnicity and federalism in socialist Yugoslavia and its successor states Sinisa Malesevic
8. Ethnicity and the new constitutional orders of Ethiopia and Eritrea James Paul
9. Accommodating self-rule: Sri Lankan dialectics Neelan Tiruchelvam
10. Cyprus: from consociationalism to federation Reed Coughlan
11. Bougainville and dialectics of ethnicity, autonomy and separation Yash Ghai and Anthony Regan
12. Autonomy for Aboriginal peoples Cheryl Saunders.