One of the most urgent conceptual, normative, and political tasks of our day is to think anew about how polities that aspire to be democracies can accommodate great sociocultural and even multinational diversity within one state. Must every state be a nation and every nation a state? Or should we look instead to the example of countries such as India, where one state holds together a congeries of “national” groups and cultures in a single and wisely conceived federal republic?
About the Authors
Alfred Stepan
Alfred Stepan is the founding director of Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion (CDTR), and author (with Juan J. Linz) of Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe.
Majoritarian nationalism is a defining feature of our time. If we are to resist ethnonationalist leaders trying to recast our societies into imagined majorities, we must revise our conception of…
The most challenging type of diversity for democracy is religious diversity. This also helps explain why modern democracy first took root in Western Europe: Religiously homogenous populations went hand in…
In recent years several Westminster-style parliamentary democracies have considered cutting their ties with the British monarchy and becoming republics. The difficulties involved in trying to make such a shift were…
