This book addresses the constitutional issues, both in theory and in practice, that accompany the existence of national diversity in pluralist democracies. Tierney contends that the democratic plurinational state, characterized by the presence of more than one national group within the State, is a discrete category of multi-level polity which defies the standard classifications of liberal constitutionalism. Building upon this theoretical basis, the book focuses upon recent developments toward the institutional accommodation of Catalonia, Quebec, and Scotland. Tierney examines the legal issues...

The use of referendums around the world has grown remarkably in the past thirty years and, in particular, referendums are today deployed more than ever in the settlement of constitutional questions, even in countries with little or no tradition of direct democracy. This is the first book by a constitutional theorist to address the implications of this development for constitutional democracy in a globalizing age, when many of the older certainties surrounding sovereignty and constitutional authority are coming under scrutiny.
The book identifies four substantive constitutional processes...

This volume explores recent developments in the theory and practice of accommodating cultural diversity within democratic constitutional orders. The aim of the book is to provide a broad vision of the constitutional management of cultural diversity as seen through the prisms of different disciplines and experiences, both theoretical and practical. The contributions, which come from Canada and Europe, comprise a review of the evolving theory of cultural diversity, followed by two main case studies: a substantive study of the accommodation of indigenous peoples within different constitutional...