Flows from beyond the Pyrenees. The Rhône River and Catalonia's search for water independence

The mobilization of water has been key for the reconfiguration and modernization of the Spanish state. During the Francoist dictatorship (1939–1975), the hydro-social reengineering of Spain was central to Franco’s political mission but failed to provide for subnational, regionalist aspirations which subsequently pursued their own agendas for water development. In this paper we examine the (failed) project of transferring water from the Rhône River in France to Barcelona promoted by the regional government of Catalonia as an example of using large infrastructures in order to strengthen and consolidate the role of Catalonia as a nation. While we basically concur with Swyngedouw's arguments on the relevance of water for building modern nation states we also attempt to expand the debate in at least three points. First, the implications of the Rhône project in the rescaling of water politics away from the Spanish State and closer to the European Union through the production of a new scale of water supply based not on national but on sub-national cooperation. Second, the view of nationalism that may not be as monolithic as Swyngedouw depicts for Spain but more heterogeneous and fragmented as in Catalonia, with important implications for the acceptance of the Rhône project. And finally, the idea that nation building through water development does not necessitate large scale hydraulic works but that may be achieved through smaller scale socioenvironmental projects. These arguments show that particular society- nature relationships (i.e. different approaches to the mobilization of water resources) are fundamental in the process of building political entities.     

Race,state and nation in early twentieth century Ecuador*

ABSTRACT. This article aims to explore the ways in which the tensions involved in nation‐building and state consolidation during the half‐century following the Liberal Revolution of 1895 in Ecuador were refracted through the locus of race and the manipulation of racial ideologies. It centres the state as the primary motor of nation‐building and racialisation, arguing that nation‐building and state formation in Ecuador operated in close conjunction, and that race was central to each. Through case studies of citizenship, education and the integration of territory and resources, it explores how state discourse and policy shaped the racial boundaries of national inclusion, and how these were negotiated and contested by subalterns at the level of the state.     

Assemblages of State Power: Topological Shifts in the Organization of Government and Politics

Abstract: Multi‐scalar or multi‐site power relations offer two contrasting ways of understanding the shifting geography of state power. In this paper, we argue for a different starting point, one that favours a topological understanding of state spatiality over more conventional topographical accounts. In contrast to a vertical or horizontal imagery of the geography of state power, what states possess, we suggest, is reach, not height. In doing so, we draw from Sassen (2006 , Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages, Princeton University Press) a vocabulary capable of portraying the renegotiation of powers that has taken place between central government in the UK and one of its key city regions, the South East of England; one that highlights an assemblage of political actors, some public, some private, where negotiations take place between elements of central and local actors “lodged” within the region, not acting “above”, “below” or “alongside” it. The articulation of political demands in such a context has less to do with “jumping scale” or formalizing extensive network connections and more to do with the ability to reach directly into a “centralized” politics where proximity and reach play across one another in particular ways.     

Performance Traditions of Kurdistan: Towards a More Comprehensive Theatre History

This study addresses the gap in the contemporary scholarship on Kurdish oral and performative culture by, for the first time, presenting a review of some of the performance traditions in Kurdistan. By describing these traditions, the article demonstrates that performance has for centuries comprised a vital and meaningful element of Kurdish cultural life. Further, it shows that a more inclusive approach to writing theatre histories enhances understanding of Middle Eastern and, in particular, Iranian performance culture—for the Kurds, as an Iranian people and the fourth largest ethnic group in the Middle East, play an intrinsic part in the culture of the region. All combined, this comprehension fosters a deeper appreciation and fuller picture of Middle Eastern theatre, in general, and Iranian theatre, in particular.     

Fred Halliday,Marxism and the Cold War

Though possibly best known today as a specialist on the Middle East and Islam, it is often forgotten how central the Cold War was in defining Fred Halliday's understanding of world politics before 1989 and indeed even after. Building on the earlier work of Isaac Deutscher and E. H. Carr, Halliday developed a distinct theory of the Cold War which afforded him great insights but ultimately failed in explaining the complexities of the East–West relationship, and why it came to an abrupt conclusion in the late 1980s.     

Narratives of nationalism in Eritrea: research and revisionism*

Abstract. Eritrean politics is increasingly captured in competing narratives of nationalism. ‘Official’ narratives emphasize Eritrea's purported stability, orderliness, and uniqueness. This discourse defends and supports the current government's policies. In contrast, recent research challenges those policies, and contributes to a nationalist counter‐narrative. This article seeks to investigate the discursive power of conventional narratives and the implications of new research for accounts of state and nation‐building in Eritrea. The Eritrean case – one of the newest states in the world – intersects with and informs a number of broader debates on nationalism and nation‐building: the impact of globalization, secessionism, and war as well as the relationship between ethnicity and nationalism. The penetration of state and nation‐building projects into every sector of Eritrean life means that all social research is deeply politicised. Journalists and researchers have long been key players in the contested process of conceptualising Eritrean nation‐hood, and this continues in the post‐liberation period. Research thus both buttresses and challenges official discourses, even where it is not explicitly framed in terms of nationalism.     

Minorities or citizens in the Middle East? Locating the ‘minority question’ in the intersecting histories of collective national belonging and state-building

This article contributes to the growing scholarship on minority politics in the Middle East by arguing that if minorities are socially or politically constructed then the meaning and implications of minority terminology requires greater historical contextualisation. Focusing on the experience of minority-ness rather than the deployment of the terminology, which only became prevalent after World War I, this article offers additional insights into the historical roots of contemporary minority politics, as well as the (un)making of national minorities. It explores how debates and reforms pertaining to inclusion/exclusion in the period preceding and during the shift from empire to nation-state directly contributed to the reception and understanding of who is a minority in the modern Middle East. This is particularly examined through the cases of Chaldean Christians in Iraq and Coptic Christians in Egypt. Many of the leaders of these communities publicly reject minority identification and instead favour locating their communities in the nation-state through the notion of inclusive citizenship (al-Mowāṭana). According to this narrative, belonging as citizens erases the meaning of minority. The article suggests that the framing of citizen and minority as mutually exclusive notions is one contemporary expression of an enduring tension around constructing belonging in political communities.     

Heritage designation and scale: a World Heritage case study of the Ningaloo Coast

As heritage research has engaged with a greater plurality of heritage practices, scale has emerged as an important concept in Heritage Studies, albeit relatively narrowly defined as hierarchical levels (household, local, national, etcetera). This paper argues for a definition of scale in heritage research that incorporates size (geographical scale), level (vertical scale) and relation (an understanding that scale is constituted through dynamic relationships in specific contexts). The paper utilises this definition of scale to analyse heritage designation first through consideration of changing World Heritage processes, and then through a case study of the world heritage designation of the Ningaloo Coast region in Western Australia. Three key findings are: both scale and heritage gain appeal because they are abstractions, and gain definition through the spatial politics of interrelationships within specific situations; the spatial politics of heritage designation comes into focus through attention to those configurations of size, level and relation that are invoked and enabled in heritage processes; and researchers choice to analyse or ignore particular scales and scalar politics are political decisions. Utilising scale as size, level and relation enables analyses that move beyond heritage to the spatial politics through which all heritage is constituted.     

国外人文地理学尺度政治理论研究进展

尺度政治理论产生于生产方式的变革与全球化的深入发展、新自由主义的兴起与治理方式的转型以及西方人文地理学的尺度转向等实践和理论背景中。其研究经历了由重点关注尺度的政治建构到重点关注行动者的话语和实践的转变。以此为基础,从结构-行为-行动者视角可以总结出尺度政治研究的三个方向:作为政治过程的尺度结构转变、跨尺度的政治行为与策略以及跨尺度的政治行动者联系网络。随后,本文回顾了当前研究中的三个案例以进一步阐明尺度政治理论的实践应用以及上述三个方向之间的区别与联系。最后,基于国内语境,本文从理论和实证两方面出发初步探讨了国内下一步研究应重点关注的问题。     

Foreign and comparative politics in the Australian Journal of Political Science: A review

This article reviews analyses of foreign and comparative politics published in the Australian Journal of Political Science over the past 50 years. The article uses a thematic approach, reviewing five broad regional areas: the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe; New Zealand and the Pacific; Canada, the USA and Western Europe; China and the rest of Asia; and Africa and the Middle East. The article assesses changes in the attention given to particular regions and countries over time, and highlights countries that have received relatively little attention. The article uses a Presidential address in 1985 by David Goldsworthy as a key reference text for assessing the study of foreign and comparative politics in Australia since 1966. The main shifts in overall attention since the early 1990s have been a decline in the historical study of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and increased attention to New Zealand.     

Unsettling sovereignty: Violence,myths and the politics of history in the Ethiopian Somali metropolis

An increasingly consolidated anthropological scholarship has moved from a legal notion of sovereignty towards an analysis of its violent enactment. Yet, it has paid insufficient attention to the ways in which the idea of sovereignty forms and operates in localized political struggles. Taking seriously Bonilla’s (2017) call for the “unsettling” of sovereignty, this article scrutinizes how ideas of legitimate rule have formed around myths of violence in the capital of the Ethiopian Somali region. It uses ethnographic material to examine the politics of history around material constructions through which myths of violence are entangled with the city's landscape of memory. It reveals sovereignty in the process of formation, becoming culturally and materially grounded in the myths of violence of an emerging Somali nation within the ethnic federal Ethiopian state. This article argues that past claims to sovereignty continue to affect the politics of history, with profound consequences for ongoing nation-state building projects and the corresponding territorial imaginations. It thus highlights the inherently fragile nature of ideas of state sovereignty in the frontier metropolis. On this basis, it contributes to a geographically differentiated anthropology of sovereignty and to an understanding of its co-constitution through violence in the frontier and myths in the metropolis.     

Book reviews

International Relations theory Book reviewed in this articles: The realist tradition and the limits of International Relations. By Michael C. Williams. Ordering international politics: identity, crisis, and representational force. By Janice Bially Mattern. The nature of political theory. By Andrew Vincent. International ethics For all peoples and all nations: Christian churches and human rights. By John Nurser. International law and organization Lawless world: America and the making and breaking of global rules. By Philippe Sands. War law: international law and armed conflict. By Michael Byers. International crimes and the ad hoc tribunals. By Guénaël Mettraux. Foreign relations Russia and the European Union: prospects for a new relationship. By Oksana Antonenko and Kathryn Pinnick. Conflict, security and armed forces The future of war: the re‐enchantment of war in the twenty‐first century. By Christopher Coker. The turbulent decade: confronting the refugee crises of the 1990s. By Sadako Ogata. The UN's role in nation‐building: from the Congo to Iraq. Edited by James Dobbins, Keith Crane, Seth G. Jones, Andrew Rathmell, Brett Steele and Richard Teltschik. The politics of peacekeeping in the post‐Cold War era. Edited by David S. Sorenson and Pia Christina Wood. Energy and environment A world environment organization: solution or threat for effective international environmental governance? Edited by Frank Biermann and Steffen Bauer. History The United States and Germany in the era of the Cold War, 1945‐1968: a handbook, volume I. Edited by Detlef Junker. The United States and Germany in the era of the Cold War, 1968‐1990: a handbook, volume II. Edited by Detlef Junker. The Eden‐Eisenhower correspondence, 1955‐1957. Edited by Peter G. Boyle. Europe Why Europe will run the 21st century. By Mark Leonard. The EU and Turkey: a glittering prize or a millstone? Edited by Michael Lake. The European Union in the wake of eastern enlargement: institutional and policymaking challenges. Edited by Amy C. Verdun and Osvaldo Croci. Republik ohne Kompass: Anmerkungen zur deutschen Aussenpolitik. By Hans‐Peter Schwarz. Germany and the use of force: the evolution of German security policy 1990‐2003. By Kerry Longhurst. Russia and Eurasia Tribal nation: the making of Soviet Turkmenistan. By Adrienne Lynn Edgar. Middle East and North Africa Israel and the Palestinians: Israeli policy options. Edited by Mark A. Heller and Rosemary Hollis. Water, power and politics in the Middle East: the other Israeli‐Palestinian conflict. By Jan Selby. Inheriting Syria: Bashar's trial by fire. By Flynt Leverett. Sub‐Saharan Africa The African state and the AIDS crisis. Edited by Amy S. Patterson. Asia and Pacific Confronting environmental change in East and Southeast Asia: eco‐politics, foreign policy, and sustainable development. Edited by Paul G. Harris. North America What's the matter with Kansas? How conservatives won the heart of America. By Thomas Frank. Latin America and Caribbean And the money kept rolling in (and out): Wall Street, the IMF and the bankrupting of Argentina. By Paul Blustein. Decolonising the Caribbean: Dutch policies in a comparative perspective. By Gert Oostindie and Inge Klinkers.     

Heritage and scale: settings,boundaries and relations

While recent years have seen increasing interest in the geographies of heritage, very few scholars have interrogated the difference that scale makes. Indeed, in a world in which the nation state appears to be on the wane, the process of articulating heritage on whatever scale – whether of individuals and communities, towns and cities, regions, nations, continents or globally – becomes ever more important. Partly reflecting this crisis of the national container, researchers have sought opportunities both through processes of ‘downscaling’, towards community, family and even personal forms of heritage, as well as ‘upscaling’, towards a universal understanding of heritage. While such work has had critical impact within prescribed scalar boundaries, we need to build a theoretical understanding of what an emergent relationship between heritage and scale does within the context of dynamic power relations. This paper examines how heritage is produced and practised, consumed and experienced, managed and deployed at a variety of scales, exploring how notions of scale, territory and boundedness have a profound effect on the heritage process. Drawing on the work of Doreen Massey and others, the paper considers how the heritage–scale relationship can be articulated as a process of openness, pluralism and relationality.     

Book reviews

Book reviewed in this articles: International Relations theory Constructing global civil society: morality and power in international relations. By David Chandler. International ethics The ethics and politics of asylum: liberal democracy and the response to refugees. By Matthew J. Gibney. Bait and switch? Human rights and American foreign policy. By Julie A. Mertus. International law and organization The United States and the rule of law in international affairs. By John F. Murphy. Conflict, security and armed forces Arguing about war. By Michael Walzer. Border and territorial disputes of the world. 4th edn. Edited by Peter Calvert. Politics, democracy and social affairs British foreign secretaries since 1974. Edited by Kevin Theakston. The new mandarins: how British foreign policy works. By John Dickie. Silvio Berlusconi: television, power and patrimony. By Paul Ginsborg. Thaksin: the business of politics in Thailand. By Pasuk Phongpaichit and Chris Baker. Ethnicity and cultural politics Globalised Islam: the search for a new ummah. By Olivier Roy. International and national political economy, economics and development The economics of innocent fraud: truth for our time. By J. K. Galbraith. Why globalization works: the case for the global market. By Martin Wolf. Global production networking and technological change in East Asia. Edited by Shahid Yusuf, M. Anjum Altaf and Kaoru Nabeshima. Locating global advantage: industry dynamics in the international economy. Edited by Martin Kenney with Richard Florida. Energy and environment The green state: rethinking democracy and sovereignty. By Robyn Eckersley. History Think tanks and power in foreign policy: a comparative study of the role and influence of the Council on Foreign Relations and Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1939–1945. By Inderjeet Parmar. A ‘special relationship’? Harold Wilson, Lyndon B. Johnson and Anglo‐American relations ‘at the summit’, 1964–68. By Jonathan Colman. The flawed architect: Henry Kissinger and American foreign policy. By Jussi Hanhimäki. The first domino: international decision making during the Hungarian Crisis of 1956. By Johanna Granville. Britain, Kenya and the Cold War: imperial defence, colonial security and decolonisation. By David Percox. Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 coup in Iran. Edited by Mark J. Gasiorowski and Malcolm Byrne. Britain and the confrontation with Indonesia, 1960–1966. By David Easter. Europe Easier fatherland: Germany and the twenty‐first century. By Steve Crawshaw. The European dream: how Europe's vision of the future is quietly eclipsing the American dream. By Jeremy Rifkin. EU development cooperation: from model to symbol. Edited by Karin Arts and Anna K. Dickson. Russia and the former Soviet republics Vladimir Putin and the new world order: looking east, looking west? By J. L. Black. Russian crossroads: toward the new millennium. By Yevgeny Primakov. Middle East and North Africa What we owe Iraq: war and the ethics of nation building. By Noah Feldman. The missing peace: the inside story of the fight for Middle East peace. By Dennis Ross. The war for Muslim minds: Islam and the West. By Gilles Kepel. Contending visions of the Middle East: the history and politics of orientalism. By Zachary Lockman. Modern Iran: roots and results of revolution. By Nikki R. Keddie. Inventing Iraq: the failure of nation building and a history denied. By Toby Dodge. Asia and Pacific The international relations of Northeast Asia. Edited by Samuel S. Kim. Holding China together: diversity and national integration in the post‐Deng era. Edited by Barry J. Naughton and Dali L. Yang. Japan's security agenda: military, economic, and environmental dimensions. By Christopher W. Hughes. North America More equal than others: America from Nixon to the new century. By Godfrey Hodgson. Hegemony or survival: America's quest for global dominance. By Noam Chomsky. The decline of American power: the US in a chaotic world. By Immanuel Wallerstein. Latin America and Caribbean Reforming Brazil. Edited by Mauricio A. Font and Anthony Peter Spanakos. The last colonial massacre: Latin America in the Cold War. By Greg Grandin.     

Sectarian identity and national identity in the Middle East

This article looks at modern sectarian (here referring to Sunni/Shi'a) identities and their interaction with nationalism in the Middle East. In doing so I make three interrelated claims: 1) the term ‘sectarianism’ is distortive and analytically counterproductive. A better understanding of modern sectarian identity requires us to jettison the term. 2) Once discarded, our focus can then shift to sectarian identity: how it is constructed, perceived, utilized and so forth. A holistic understanding of sectarian identity must recognize the multiple fields upon which it is constructed and contested. The model adopted here frames sectarian identity as simultaneously operating on four fields: doctrinal, subnational, transnational and, crucially for our purposes, the national dimension. 3) Thirdly, this article challenges the assumptions regarding national and sectarian identities in the modern Middle East. Contrary to conventional wisdom, modern sectarian identities are deeply embedded in the prism of the nation‐state and are inextricably linked to nationalism and national identity. The article will rely primarily on the example of modern Iraq but, as will be seen, the Iraqi example is significantly echoed in the cases of Bahrain, Syria and Lebanon.     

Infrastructure Nation: State Space,Hegemony, and Hydraulic Regionalism in Pakistan

Large‐scale infrastructures are often understood by state planners as fulfilling a national integrative function. This paper challenges the idea of infrastructures as national integrators by engaging theories of state/nation formation and infrastructure in a postcolonial context. Specifically, I put Lefebvre's characterization of the production of state space as a homogenization‐differentiation dialectic in conversation with Gramsci's understanding of hegemony, bureaucracy, and nationalism to analyze the controversy surrounding the giant Tarbela Dam in Pakistan in the 1960s. I use the Tarbela controversy as a case study to elaborate a theory of postcolonial nation‐formation through state‐led infrastructural projects. I argue that in a postcolonial context the failure to articulate a hegemonic nationalist ideology to accompany the production of large‐scale infrastructure results in a fragmentation of state space in some ways, even as state space is homogenized and integrated in other ways. The paper also offers a “hydraulic lens” on the politics of regionalism in Pakistan.     

Performing the national territory: The geography of national‐day celebrations

The nation is a relatively abstract imagined community that is visualised through a variety of symbols as well as communicative and performative practices. In this paper, we explore how the national territory, one of the foundations of the nation‐state, is performed on national‐day celebrations and brings the nation into being. Drawing on ethnographic research on national days in Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, we show how the state's internal administrative divisions and ethnic differences are at once made explicit but also subordinated to the nation. Moreover, we show how in such celebrations, potentially disruptive or competing affiliations such as ethnicity and regional loyalties are re‐imagined. Both the rotation of the central celebration and its replication all over the national territory carry the nation into the regions and integrate the regions into the nation‐state. The ‘co‐memoration’ turns participants and spectators from locals into national compatriots and thus not only performs nationality but also performs the relationship among nation, state and citizen, set within a particular territory.     

The Political Art of Patience: Adivasi Resistance in India

Abstract: This article documents the emergence of the Denotified Rights Action Group (DNG‐RAG), a national social movement orchestrated to assert the citizenship rights of adivasi (indigenous) populations in India. It assesses the movement's efforts to engage the central Indian government in meaningful dialogue to accommodate the inclusion of marginalized adivasis in the democratic politics of the nation. In doing so, the DNT‐RAG reasserts the primacy of the Indian state as the principal engine driving the project of nation building, and as such, the site that activists target to further an agenda of equitable development and democratic rights for those known as India's Denotified Tribes.     

Book reviews

Book reviewed in this article: International Relations theory Weltordnungspolitik. By Rüdiger Voigt. Human rights and ethics Studying human rights. By Todd Landman. International law and organization Staying together: the G8 summit confronts the 21st century. By Nicholas Bayne. NATO renewed: the power and purpose of transatlantic cooperation. By Sten Rynning. Foreign policy The secret history of al‐Qa'ida. By Abdel Bari Atwan. Zarqawi: the new face of Al‐Qaeda. By Jean‐Charles Brisard. Diplomacy and developing nations: post‐Cold War foreign policy‐making structures and processes. Edited by Justin Robertson and Maurice A. East. The Atlantic alliance under stress: US–European relations after Iraq. Edited by David M. Andrews. Conflict, security and armed forces Knowing the enemy: jihadist ideology and the war on terror. By Mary Habeck. Liberalism and war: the victors and the vanquished. By Andrew Williams. The psychology of nuclear proliferation: identity, emotions and foreign policy. By Jacques E. C. Hymans. Al Qaeda in Europe: the new battleground of international jihad. By Lorenzo Vidino. Politics, democracy and social affairs The rise of political lying. By Peter Oborne. A better globalization: legitimacy, governance and reform. By Kemal Dervi? with Ceren özer. The politics of good intentions: history, fear and hypocrisy in the new world order. By David Runciman. Independence from America: global integration and inequality. By Jon V. Kofas. Ethnicity and cultural politics Citizens abroad: emigration and the state in the Middle East and North Africa. By Laurie A. Brand. Culture troubles: politics and the interpretation of meaning. By Patrick Chabal and Jean Pascal Daloz. Energy and environment Paths to a green world: the political economy of the global environment. By Jennifer Clapp and Peter Dauvergne. The state and the global ecological crisis. Edited by John Barry and Robyn Eckersley. Governing water: contentious transnational politics and global institution building. By Ken Conca. History Blind oracles: intellectuals and war from Kennan to Kissinger. By Bruce Kuklick. The road to Jerusalem: Glubb Pasha, Palestine and the Jews. By Benny Morris. Jordanian Jerusalem: holy places and national spaces. By Kimberly Katz. The failure of American and British propaganda in the Arab Middle East 1945–1957: unconquerable minds. By James R. Vaughan. Victims of Stalin and Hitler: the exodus of Poles and Balts to Britain. By Thomas Lane. Europe Governance in contemporary Germany: the semisovereign state revisited. Edited by Simon Green and William E. Paterson. Oltre il declino. By Tito Boeri, Riccardo Faini, Andrea Ichino, Giuseppe Pisauro and Carlo Scarpa. Russia and Eurasia Russia and NATO since 1991: from Cold War through cold peace to partnership? By Martin A. Smith. Middle East and North Africa The‘great Satan'vs. the‘mad mullah’: how the United States and Iran demonize each other. By William O. Beeman. Tehran rising: Iran's challenge to the United States. By Ilan Berman. Saudi Arabia in the balance: political economy, society, foreign affairs. Edited by Paul Aarts and Gerd Nonneman. A framework for a Palestinian national security doctrine. By Hussein Agha and Ahmed S. Khalidi. Reaching for power: the Shi'a in the modern Arab world. By Yitzhak Nakash. The Kurds of Syria: an existence denied. By Harriet Montgomery. Sub‐Saharan Africa Conflict and collusion in Sierra Leone. By David Keen. Dangers of co‐deployment: UN co‐operative peacekeeping in Africa. By David J. Francis, Mohammed Faal, John Kabia and Alex Ramsbotham. Asia and Pacifi c Power shift: China and Asia's new dynamics. Edited by David Shambaugh. State growth and social exclusion in Tibet: challenges of recent economic growth. By Andrew Martin Fischer. ASEAN and East Asian international relations: regional delusions. By David Martin Jones and M. L. R. Smith. Latin America and Caribbean Crafting civilian control of the military in Venezuela: a comparative perspective. By Harold Trinkunas. From movements to parties in Latin America: the evolution of ethnic politics. By Donna Lee Van Cott.     

Types of democracy and modes of conflict management in ethnically divided societies

The Western democratic nation–state is a model state in the world state system. It appears in two variants: individual–liberal and republican–liberal. Both are grounded on individual rights only. In the West there are also several cases of consociational democracy in which separate national communities and their collective rights are recognised. Since World War II the liberal nation–state has been under global and internal pressures to change. It has kept its basic character but partially decoupled nation and state and recognised group differences. Along with individual–liberal democracy, republican–liberal democracy and consociational democracy, multicultural democracy and ethnic democracy are taking shape as alternative types of democracy. This fivefold typology can contribute to the fields of comparative politics and comparative ethnicity. It serves as a broad framework for the analysis of five states in this special issue: Northern Ireland, Estonia, Israel, Poland and Turkey.