Plural States and Conflictivity in the 21th Century: Institutional Solutions

Abstract

National States are multicultural. Throughout history, the particular political and legal structureshave been forced to adapt different mechanisms in order to manage the coexistence of culturallydistinct groups, within the State’s borders. Nevertheless, in the modern age we are witnesses of the emergenceof unifying paradigms of political diversity, in which, due to the dynamic of power, cultural diversitygot trapped within unitary States, which needed centralization and the hegemonic exercise ofpower. The construction of National States meant the reification of mono-cultural State fiction, the sameState that can only concrete itself in the midst of internal political diversity; it also meant the reificationof an international community, which, together with the mono-cultural state fiction, headed towards thefortifying the national states’ unity and, with this, a monolithic national culture. In the last four decades, the governmentalmulticultural policies have been forcibly modified, due to the emergence of demands and conflictswith ethnic and cultural origins. This justifies a review of the array of measures adopted to counter,domesticate or co-exist with these ethnically produced conflicts, with the intention of identifying thosemeasures that have a more ample democratic vocation