Most western political scientists have tended to neglect the ethnic dimension in China, and have overemphasized the development from large empire to unified nation. This book attempts to repair this neglect, by bringing together a number of case studies on the ethnic and regional dimensions of Chinese politics and society. Most of the contributors to this study use largely Chinese-language sources. Five are social anthropologists, and three (in addition to the editor) are political scientists. They provide in-depth analyses of Han relations with Mongolians and Muslims; the relations between...

Focusing on approaches to autonomy in countries whose societies are marked by ethnic diversity, this study examines the effects of territorial solutions to the safeguarding of cultural identities. Studying the problem from a cross-national and analytical perspective, the contributors distinguish among the types of autonomy and their impact on pluralism, democracy and the unity of the state. Post-Franco Spain, in the process of continuing democritization, has become important as a laboratory of institutional accomodation of ethnic and regional identities, and the second section concentrates on...