Territoriality, Asymmetry, and Autonomy: Catalonia, Corsica, Hong Kong, and Tibet

Minority special status arrangements figure prominently in efforts to articulate universality with territorialized difference in many parts of the world. Yet much of what has been written about this important modality of the asymmetrical state has focused exclusively on the liberal democratic West. This book extends the analysis. It offers a structured-focused comparison of the experience of the People’s Republic of China, France, and Spain. Case studies on central Tibet, Hong Kong, Corsica, and Catalonia are used to identify the conditions that affect the degree to which special status arrangements enhance stability while improving the citizenship of both minority territorial communities and their more vulnerable residents.

Susan J. Henders teaches political science at York University, in Toronto, Canada, where she is director of the York Centre for Asian Research. She is the editor of Democratization and Identity: Constituting Regimes and Ethnicity in East and South-East Asia (2004; 2006) and has published on the domestic and international dimensions of minority and indigenous autonomy and self-government in books and such journals as The Journal of Human Rights, Pacific Affairs, and Nations and Nationalism. She received her DPhil from St Antony’s College, Oxford and her MPhil from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She has been a visiting professor at the Catholic University of Leuven, in Belgium.