Non-Territorial Autonomy as an Enrichment of Representative Democracy

Abstract

This thematic issue brings together five scholarly articles, each tackling from both theoretical and practical perspectives a sensitive and elusive issue of accommodating minority rights within a wider national and political framework. These timely considerations are framed through a broader, vibrant and rapidly emerging approach of non-territorial autonomy (NTA), which is not so much a particular model but a generic term that refers to different practices of minority community autonomy that does not entail exclusive control over territory. In this way, novel forms of national self-determination can take place while the self-determining communities reside in shared territorial spaces. NTA can thus have a number many different forms such as consociationalism, national cultural autonomy, and can be particularly well suited for communities or nations that do not live in a unified or joint territory but are territori-ally dispersed or scattered.