The minority/majority issue, as far as I understand it, is dead and buried ever since the Makarios/Denktash and the Kyprianou/Denktash summit agreements. I cannot see how in a bizonal, federation there can be such an issue. It simply does not fit. We, the GC's have agreed on this and placed our signuture on the agreements and as far as I know only one GC party has challenged the agreements and this party in the recent euro elections got less than 1%.
Does Piratis, or anyone else, really believes that we can designate the minority label to the TC's and incorporate them, with full democratic and human rights into the RoC?
Minority
by Piratis » Sun Aug 01, 2004 7:39 am
I cannot see how in a bizonal, federation there can be such an issue. It simply does not fit.
Why it does not fit? In the USA or Russia or other federal countries, all states have equal power? No. For example the Rhode Island state has way less power than California. It depends on how much population each state has.
We agreed for federation, yes. Show me the part of the agrement that we signed that says that both federal states will have equal power. We never agreed for such thing.
Does Piratis, or anyone else, really believes that we can designate the minority label to the TC's and incorporate them, with full democratic and human rights into the RoC?
Either incorporated in RoC or with a federal system, TCs are a minority.
Of course it would be better to incorporate TCs in RoC with full democratic and human rights. The question is not if we can do that, the question is if they want that, and if the big powers will allow for such thing, since it apparently doesn't serve their interests.
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Piratis - Moderator
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by insan » Sun Aug 01, 2004 11:45 am
Federalism is a Solution to Resolve Ethnic Conflict
Ellis Katz
• About ICES
• Research Ellis Katz is Professor of Political Science at Temple University, Philadelphia. Pennsylvania, USA and Fellow at the Center for the Study of Federalism (http://www.temple.edu/federalism/) at the University. He is an authority on Federalism and co-edited the volume Federalism and Rights (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996). Professor Katz recently spoke at the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Kandy on Federalism. This article, based on the text of that lecture, was prepared by ICES researcher Amalie Ellegala.
In recent years with the rise of ethnic conflict federalism has been seen as a solution to conflict in multi-ethnic societies. Back in the 1950s an eminent Political Scientist from Czechoslovakia did a survey of about 150 countries of the world. According to the survey 90% of them were multi-national, and multi-ethnic. The idea of one nation one state was the exception rather than the rule. Hence Sri Lanka is not alone in trying to deal with the problems posed by a multi-ethnic society. Many of these countries turned to federalism as a way of accommodating ethnic diversity, though it takes a lot of different forms.
Among the 25 constitutional federations, some are quite multi-ethnic. Belgium and Switzerland are two examples. After Second World War countries turned to highly centralised political models, either influenced by Marxist models of centralised planning, or in other cases, by the French model of democracy. However, since the 1980s the debate has shifted. Marxist central planning is no longer in vogue. The concern today is how to decentralise, devolve power, and how to deal with the problems of over centralisation in a democracy. This is a move away from the centralised French model of the democratic state.
Failure of Centralised State
Today there are over 25 countries in the world that are constitutionally federations. They range from very large countries such as Russia, United States of America, and Brazil to smaller countries such as Switzerland, Austria and Belgium. Federalism is generally associated with large territories. But smaller countries have also experimented with it.
There are a variety of reasons for countries to seek alternatives to centralisation. Failures of centralised government and planning are one reason. The introduction of free market economies is also an incentive to decentralization. In other countries federalism is an alternative to an authoritarian regime. One example is Spain. With the death of Franco, and the pressure for regional autonomy, Spain rebuilt itself more or less as a federal democracy. Spain has been relatively very successful in this experiment. The new federal democracy also allowed Spain to enter the European Union.
In South America, Brazil and Argentina suffered long military dictatorships. When democracy finally emerged from those dark periods, there was a deliberate decision to decentralise political authority. They believed that federalism would safeguard them against military governance. The federal experiment has been quite successful in Brazil, although it has had its share of problems. Federalism has been less of a success in Argentina. But then different countries have different experiences.
Power Sharing
Spain and the US are very diverse countries, with different ethnic and racial groups. Thus there is a demand for regionalism in both countries. In Spain, for example, there is a demand from the Basque region, and to lesser extent from Catalonia for more autonomy. Spain dealt with it by negotiating with them on a series of autonomy statutes that differed from one region to another giving different levels of autonomy. Catalonia, for instance, has a great deal of autonomy especially over cultural matters and some of the other regions have less.
The UK is a union that has a federal arrangement. Power has been considerably devolved to Ireland, Wales, and especially to Scotland.
Federalism is a system of power sharing or self-rule. That, and not the institutions of federal government per se, constitutes the substance of federalism. Power sharing takes many different forms. Spain, UK, and the European Union, none of which is a formal federation, are examples of federalism in the modern world. In other words federalism is an idea broader than its institutional structure.
Decentralisation Vs. Non-centralisation
Decentralisation is essentially an administrative concept. That is the centre decentralises power to the periphery. American businesses have become much more decentralised in this sense. It is not very effective and efficient to have centralised decision-making. It takes too long, mistakes are too costly, and therefore authority is decentralised to the field offices. According to the notion of decentralisation if there is a centre to decentralise that centre continues to exist to recentralise. Devolution is a kind of political decentralisation where the centre can devolve political authority but ultimately the periphery is accountable to the centre. Non-centralisation is a different concept. Federalism belongs to the camp of non-centralisation.
People as Source of Power
In federalism the centre does not give power. In federalism the people give power in their sovereign capacity The delegate power to both the national government and the states. It is a constitutional arrangement. Thus neither can the centre take power away from the states, nor can the states take power away from the centre. It is an arrangement created by the people. Through constitutional processes only the people can change it. In order to change this arrangement in the US it would require a constitutional amendment. To amend the US constitution it requires a national majority; you must get a 2/3 vote in both the House of Representatives and in the United States Senate. Then it also requires a majority of the states. In the US system it is 3/4 of the states, an extraordinary majority to ratify a proposed amendment. There is nothing magical about the 3/4, the point being that there is a system of compound majority, a national majority and state majority and you often find this sort of arrangement built in to federal systems. In federalism it is power that is delegated by the people and can only be changed by the people.
Accountability
Accountability does not run upwards in an authentic federal system. A few years back in Turkey, they were trying to give more powers to the mayors. One of the big issues there was if the mayor had more control over his budget. In Turkey a mayor who wants to buy an expensive car with public funds must seek permission from Ankara. It is the national government that holds him accountable. In the US if a mayor bought a Rolls Royce or Mercedes that would be in the newspapers the next day and in the next election, the voters would hopefully vote him out of office because he is accountable to his constituents and not to some higher authority. This is the difference between decentralisation and non-centralisation. In genuine federalism we have non-centralisation.
In true federalism the states are represented in the national government. In the US we do this by having a bi-cameral legislature. The people are represented in the House of Representatives and states are equally represented in the United States Senate. So that, based on the notion of equality of states, a huge state like California with 30 million people or so has two senators, and a small state like North Dakota or Wyoming each of which has about half a million people also has two senators. It is this balance in representation for the state that permits US to have a compound majority for constitutional change.
Confederation
The second distinction between decentralisation and non-centralisation is the distinction between federalism as in the US, Canada, Brazil, and Switzerland and confederation. They are both examples of the idea of federalism. Until the Americans wrote their constitution 1787 and created the first federation, the only examples of federations were confederations. For example, the Netherlands existed at sometime as a confederation The US existed as a confederation after it declared the war of independence against Great Britain.
A confederation has several important characteristics. First, tt is clearly a union of states and not of people. It's the states that enter into the constitutional arrangement. A serious weakness of the confederation is that individuals are citizens of the state, not of the national political community. Central national laws do not operate on individuals. National laws operate on states and individuals may then relate to the state and try to seek enforcement of national laws. One of the problems of this is that it involves the question of individual rights. And if the state violates minority rights there is no redress beyond the state.
This was a serious issue in the US, one of the things that troubled James Madison enormously. He sought a system by which if a state violated individual rights, there would be some recourse to the national government to remedy that violation. Madison did not get exactly what he wanted at the constitutional convention but certainly today the US Supreme Court states that law in a very important kind of way. Many of these are concerned in protecting the rights of individuals against a state. This is a major difference between a confederation and federation.
Second, another weakness with the confederation is that the centrifugal forces of state interest tend to force the system to break apart. Clearly this was true in the US. If the Americans did not write a constitution in 1787 and create a federation, the thirteen colonies would have gone in their own individual directions. They would have separated into at least two or three different countries. In 1789 the British and French had armies in North America and the Spanish controlled large territories of the present United States. They were great imperial powers. Had the states not been able to unify in a federation they would have been ripped apart and re-colonised by their European powers. So the centrifugal forces created a real danger in the international community for what were small states.
There is no real permanence in a confederation. In the US when federations were created, people like Madison and Hamilton and others thought about it very carefully. It was really a new concept. The idea that an individual can be a citizen of the state and the national community, the best description they gave was a system that was partly national and partly federal by which they meant confederal. In the southern states where slavery was practiced they used the arrangement in old con-federal terms. They maintained that states were sovereign and they had the right to secede from the union and they tried this in the 1860s. The US went through a terrible civil war that took the lives of over half a million people. But what that civil war did was to establish a federation that goes beyond an association of states. Only the people of the US can alter the present US union and no individual state or alliance of states can destroy that union.
Confederation is not a very stable form of government. It would either move towards federation as it seems to be happening in the European Union or it will fall apart as it happened recently when the Czech and Slovak Republics established a confederation that lasted only a few years.
Power Sharing
Distribution of power and responsibility between the national government and the states is a critical issue in a federal government. When the US constitution was written the national government was created to deal with essentially four problems.
First, before the US constitution was written each state issued its own currency. Each state had tariff barriers so that if someone manufactured goods in Pennsylvania and tried to ship them to New York, New York would put high tariffs on that. The development of a national commercial system was impossible in this situation. So one of the functions of the national government was economic unity.
Second, national defence was the second task that was given to the national government.
Third, in foreign policy, the nation must speak with a single voice. Hence the US states are constitutionally forbidden to enter into treaties and dabble in foreign policy that is a federal government preserve.
Fourth, Madison in particular recognised the protection of individual rights as a problem. He said that if you had a small community in a state that was relatively homogenous, there was nothing to prevent the majority tyrannising the minority. This was a crucial problem for the Americans who valued liberty. The solution was to make it possible for the person to appeal from his/her state to the national political arena. American history is filled with countless examples of minority groups persecuted by their individual states that find redress in the national arena. To a great extent that is what the civil right movement has been about. African Americans could not walk through Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, or Georgia for redress of their grievances but they were able to turn to the national arena, especially to the US Supreme Court and the US President, to get relief.
US Federalism
The above were the four major areas that were reserved for the national government in the US. But in other respects the distribution of power is rather vague in the US. The power of the national government has expanded enormously in the 200 plus years of American constitutional history. Part of the reason is financial. The national government collects a lot of tax revenue and doles it out to the states and cities. Part of this is the nature of the US economy. But society also has changed. Some people still have loyalties to their communities and states but it is clear that they are Americans and they look to Washington for leadership on a wide variety of issues.
The media and the popular culture have also had a big impact on the evolution of US federalism. . US has a national media, so that whatever part of America you live in, you watch the same television programmes, listen to the same radio programmes, eat the same McDonald's food, so there is nationalisation of their culture. This strengthens the national government. But it is not a threat to federalism in the US. The distribution of powers and competencies between the national government and state governments is a dynamic process. It seems federalism is more about the process of negotiation and process of bargaining, as it has been able to maintain unity in diversity. If one state does something differently from another it will not bother the Americans that much. Some states in the United States prohibit capital punishment and others permit it. More recently some cities have allowed gay couples to marry. In the US the belief is that it is not necessary to have uniformity. So long as diversity does not threaten national unity people in the US have been willing to accept a great deal of diversity.
Ellis Katz
• About ICES
• Research Ellis Katz is Professor of Political Science at Temple University, Philadelphia. Pennsylvania, USA and Fellow at the Center for the Study of Federalism (http://www.temple.edu/federalism/) at the University. He is an authority on Federalism and co-edited the volume Federalism and Rights (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996). Professor Katz recently spoke at the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Kandy on Federalism. This article, based on the text of that lecture, was prepared by ICES researcher Amalie Ellegala.
In recent years with the rise of ethnic conflict federalism has been seen as a solution to conflict in multi-ethnic societies. Back in the 1950s an eminent Political Scientist from Czechoslovakia did a survey of about 150 countries of the world. According to the survey 90% of them were multi-national, and multi-ethnic. The idea of one nation one state was the exception rather than the rule. Hence Sri Lanka is not alone in trying to deal with the problems posed by a multi-ethnic society. Many of these countries turned to federalism as a way of accommodating ethnic diversity, though it takes a lot of different forms.
Among the 25 constitutional federations, some are quite multi-ethnic. Belgium and Switzerland are two examples. After Second World War countries turned to highly centralised political models, either influenced by Marxist models of centralised planning, or in other cases, by the French model of democracy. However, since the 1980s the debate has shifted. Marxist central planning is no longer in vogue. The concern today is how to decentralise, devolve power, and how to deal with the problems of over centralisation in a democracy. This is a move away from the centralised French model of the democratic state.
Failure of Centralised State
Today there are over 25 countries in the world that are constitutionally federations. They range from very large countries such as Russia, United States of America, and Brazil to smaller countries such as Switzerland, Austria and Belgium. Federalism is generally associated with large territories. But smaller countries have also experimented with it.
There are a variety of reasons for countries to seek alternatives to centralisation. Failures of centralised government and planning are one reason. The introduction of free market economies is also an incentive to decentralization. In other countries federalism is an alternative to an authoritarian regime. One example is Spain. With the death of Franco, and the pressure for regional autonomy, Spain rebuilt itself more or less as a federal democracy. Spain has been relatively very successful in this experiment. The new federal democracy also allowed Spain to enter the European Union.
In South America, Brazil and Argentina suffered long military dictatorships. When democracy finally emerged from those dark periods, there was a deliberate decision to decentralise political authority. They believed that federalism would safeguard them against military governance. The federal experiment has been quite successful in Brazil, although it has had its share of problems. Federalism has been less of a success in Argentina. But then different countries have different experiences.
Power Sharing
Spain and the US are very diverse countries, with different ethnic and racial groups. Thus there is a demand for regionalism in both countries. In Spain, for example, there is a demand from the Basque region, and to lesser extent from Catalonia for more autonomy. Spain dealt with it by negotiating with them on a series of autonomy statutes that differed from one region to another giving different levels of autonomy. Catalonia, for instance, has a great deal of autonomy especially over cultural matters and some of the other regions have less.
The UK is a union that has a federal arrangement. Power has been considerably devolved to Ireland, Wales, and especially to Scotland.
Federalism is a system of power sharing or self-rule. That, and not the institutions of federal government per se, constitutes the substance of federalism. Power sharing takes many different forms. Spain, UK, and the European Union, none of which is a formal federation, are examples of federalism in the modern world. In other words federalism is an idea broader than its institutional structure.
Decentralisation Vs. Non-centralisation
Decentralisation is essentially an administrative concept. That is the centre decentralises power to the periphery. American businesses have become much more decentralised in this sense. It is not very effective and efficient to have centralised decision-making. It takes too long, mistakes are too costly, and therefore authority is decentralised to the field offices. According to the notion of decentralisation if there is a centre to decentralise that centre continues to exist to recentralise. Devolution is a kind of political decentralisation where the centre can devolve political authority but ultimately the periphery is accountable to the centre. Non-centralisation is a different concept. Federalism belongs to the camp of non-centralisation.
People as Source of Power
In federalism the centre does not give power. In federalism the people give power in their sovereign capacity The delegate power to both the national government and the states. It is a constitutional arrangement. Thus neither can the centre take power away from the states, nor can the states take power away from the centre. It is an arrangement created by the people. Through constitutional processes only the people can change it. In order to change this arrangement in the US it would require a constitutional amendment. To amend the US constitution it requires a national majority; you must get a 2/3 vote in both the House of Representatives and in the United States Senate. Then it also requires a majority of the states. In the US system it is 3/4 of the states, an extraordinary majority to ratify a proposed amendment. There is nothing magical about the 3/4, the point being that there is a system of compound majority, a national majority and state majority and you often find this sort of arrangement built in to federal systems. In federalism it is power that is delegated by the people and can only be changed by the people.
Accountability
Accountability does not run upwards in an authentic federal system. A few years back in Turkey, they were trying to give more powers to the mayors. One of the big issues there was if the mayor had more control over his budget. In Turkey a mayor who wants to buy an expensive car with public funds must seek permission from Ankara. It is the national government that holds him accountable. In the US if a mayor bought a Rolls Royce or Mercedes that would be in the newspapers the next day and in the next election, the voters would hopefully vote him out of office because he is accountable to his constituents and not to some higher authority. This is the difference between decentralisation and non-centralisation. In genuine federalism we have non-centralisation.
In true federalism the states are represented in the national government. In the US we do this by having a bi-cameral legislature. The people are represented in the House of Representatives and states are equally represented in the United States Senate. So that, based on the notion of equality of states, a huge state like California with 30 million people or so has two senators, and a small state like North Dakota or Wyoming each of which has about half a million people also has two senators. It is this balance in representation for the state that permits US to have a compound majority for constitutional change.
Confederation
The second distinction between decentralisation and non-centralisation is the distinction between federalism as in the US, Canada, Brazil, and Switzerland and confederation. They are both examples of the idea of federalism. Until the Americans wrote their constitution 1787 and created the first federation, the only examples of federations were confederations. For example, the Netherlands existed at sometime as a confederation The US existed as a confederation after it declared the war of independence against Great Britain.
A confederation has several important characteristics. First, tt is clearly a union of states and not of people. It's the states that enter into the constitutional arrangement. A serious weakness of the confederation is that individuals are citizens of the state, not of the national political community. Central national laws do not operate on individuals. National laws operate on states and individuals may then relate to the state and try to seek enforcement of national laws. One of the problems of this is that it involves the question of individual rights. And if the state violates minority rights there is no redress beyond the state.
This was a serious issue in the US, one of the things that troubled James Madison enormously. He sought a system by which if a state violated individual rights, there would be some recourse to the national government to remedy that violation. Madison did not get exactly what he wanted at the constitutional convention but certainly today the US Supreme Court states that law in a very important kind of way. Many of these are concerned in protecting the rights of individuals against a state. This is a major difference between a confederation and federation.
Second, another weakness with the confederation is that the centrifugal forces of state interest tend to force the system to break apart. Clearly this was true in the US. If the Americans did not write a constitution in 1787 and create a federation, the thirteen colonies would have gone in their own individual directions. They would have separated into at least two or three different countries. In 1789 the British and French had armies in North America and the Spanish controlled large territories of the present United States. They were great imperial powers. Had the states not been able to unify in a federation they would have been ripped apart and re-colonised by their European powers. So the centrifugal forces created a real danger in the international community for what were small states.
There is no real permanence in a confederation. In the US when federations were created, people like Madison and Hamilton and others thought about it very carefully. It was really a new concept. The idea that an individual can be a citizen of the state and the national community, the best description they gave was a system that was partly national and partly federal by which they meant confederal. In the southern states where slavery was practiced they used the arrangement in old con-federal terms. They maintained that states were sovereign and they had the right to secede from the union and they tried this in the 1860s. The US went through a terrible civil war that took the lives of over half a million people. But what that civil war did was to establish a federation that goes beyond an association of states. Only the people of the US can alter the present US union and no individual state or alliance of states can destroy that union.
Confederation is not a very stable form of government. It would either move towards federation as it seems to be happening in the European Union or it will fall apart as it happened recently when the Czech and Slovak Republics established a confederation that lasted only a few years.
Power Sharing
Distribution of power and responsibility between the national government and the states is a critical issue in a federal government. When the US constitution was written the national government was created to deal with essentially four problems.
First, before the US constitution was written each state issued its own currency. Each state had tariff barriers so that if someone manufactured goods in Pennsylvania and tried to ship them to New York, New York would put high tariffs on that. The development of a national commercial system was impossible in this situation. So one of the functions of the national government was economic unity.
Second, national defence was the second task that was given to the national government.
Third, in foreign policy, the nation must speak with a single voice. Hence the US states are constitutionally forbidden to enter into treaties and dabble in foreign policy that is a federal government preserve.
Fourth, Madison in particular recognised the protection of individual rights as a problem. He said that if you had a small community in a state that was relatively homogenous, there was nothing to prevent the majority tyrannising the minority. This was a crucial problem for the Americans who valued liberty. The solution was to make it possible for the person to appeal from his/her state to the national political arena. American history is filled with countless examples of minority groups persecuted by their individual states that find redress in the national arena. To a great extent that is what the civil right movement has been about. African Americans could not walk through Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, or Georgia for redress of their grievances but they were able to turn to the national arena, especially to the US Supreme Court and the US President, to get relief.
US Federalism
The above were the four major areas that were reserved for the national government in the US. But in other respects the distribution of power is rather vague in the US. The power of the national government has expanded enormously in the 200 plus years of American constitutional history. Part of the reason is financial. The national government collects a lot of tax revenue and doles it out to the states and cities. Part of this is the nature of the US economy. But society also has changed. Some people still have loyalties to their communities and states but it is clear that they are Americans and they look to Washington for leadership on a wide variety of issues.
The media and the popular culture have also had a big impact on the evolution of US federalism. . US has a national media, so that whatever part of America you live in, you watch the same television programmes, listen to the same radio programmes, eat the same McDonald's food, so there is nationalisation of their culture. This strengthens the national government. But it is not a threat to federalism in the US. The distribution of powers and competencies between the national government and state governments is a dynamic process. It seems federalism is more about the process of negotiation and process of bargaining, as it has been able to maintain unity in diversity. If one state does something differently from another it will not bother the Americans that much. Some states in the United States prohibit capital punishment and others permit it. More recently some cities have allowed gay couples to marry. In the US the belief is that it is not necessary to have uniformity. So long as diversity does not threaten national unity people in the US have been willing to accept a great deal of diversity.
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insan - Main Contributor
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by insan » Sun Aug 01, 2004 11:55 am
In distinguishing between types of ethnic conflict and stratification, important work has also been undertaken which could provide a fruitful basis for empirical research. The mobilization processes for political autonomy or secession would depend on certain conditions. Certain basic structures determine the course of the conflict and possibilities for resolving it. Rothschild suggests seven different outcomes of stratification from a conflict-resolution perspective:
1. Dominating majority;
2. Dominating minority;
3. Balanced relation with nation-building people and several ethnic groups or nationalities;
4. Division of power between territorially based and functional groups;
5. Oppressed but economically strong minority; 6. Many small groups in balance;
7. Multiplicity of ethnic groups of varying sizes and levels of politicization, manoeuvring within a relatively cohesive political system.
This can provide us with a useful typology for speculating on the types of conflicts each model can generate. With regard to secessionist movements, the worst possible situation is where both the majority and the minority have strong perceptions of being engulfed and dominated. In the dominant majority/minority model, the minority may have cross-border affiliations with a neighbouring country. The conflicts in Sri Lanka and Northern Ireland are examples.
The dominant minority model reflects the apartheid system in South Africa. Here the ethnic stratification system and class are coterminous, with a tendency to polarize the conflict. In both these cases there is a danger that complex issues and a range of conflicts may be reduced to a single win/lose conflict with strong potential for violence.
Taken from the book "Ethnicity and power in the contemporary world"
Edited by
Kumar Rupesinghe and Valery A. Tishkov
United Nations University Press
TOKYO - NEW YORK - PARIS
© The United Nations University, 1996
You may read the whole book on-line @
http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/u ... 12ee00.htm
1. Dominating majority;
2. Dominating minority;
3. Balanced relation with nation-building people and several ethnic groups or nationalities;
4. Division of power between territorially based and functional groups;
5. Oppressed but economically strong minority; 6. Many small groups in balance;
7. Multiplicity of ethnic groups of varying sizes and levels of politicization, manoeuvring within a relatively cohesive political system.
This can provide us with a useful typology for speculating on the types of conflicts each model can generate. With regard to secessionist movements, the worst possible situation is where both the majority and the minority have strong perceptions of being engulfed and dominated. In the dominant majority/minority model, the minority may have cross-border affiliations with a neighbouring country. The conflicts in Sri Lanka and Northern Ireland are examples.
The dominant minority model reflects the apartheid system in South Africa. Here the ethnic stratification system and class are coterminous, with a tendency to polarize the conflict. In both these cases there is a danger that complex issues and a range of conflicts may be reduced to a single win/lose conflict with strong potential for violence.
Taken from the book "Ethnicity and power in the contemporary world"
Edited by
Kumar Rupesinghe and Valery A. Tishkov
United Nations University Press
TOKYO - NEW YORK - PARIS
© The United Nations University, 1996
You may read the whole book on-line @
http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/u ... 12ee00.htm
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insan - Main Contributor
- Posts: 9044
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by Piratis » Sun Aug 01, 2004 12:24 pm
This is why I said that what is proposed in the Annan plan is a confederation and not a federation. It based on the Swiss confederation but way worst.
We had agreed for federation, but never for confederation.
In federations states with larger population have more power than states with less population.
We had agreed for federation, but never for confederation.
In federations states with larger population have more power than states with less population.
A confederation has several important characteristics. First, tt is clearly a union of states and not of people.
Second, another weakness with the confederation is that the centrifugal forces of state interest tend to force the system to break apart.
Last edited by Piratis on Sun Aug 01, 2004 12:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Piratis - Moderator
- Posts: 12261
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by insan » Sun Aug 01, 2004 12:27 pm
In the Republic of Mari, for instance, the Mari - a Finnic ethnic group - make up 43 percent of the population, while ethnic Russians are 47 percent. The Russians, who make up a majority of the urban population and dominate the republic's economy, have solidified their political control during the post-Soviet era, defunded many Mari educational and cultural institutions and systematically purged ethnic Mari from the provincial government.
It may not be too alarmist to envision similar developments taking place in an Israeli-Palestinian federation. Most initial proposals for such a federation call for one of the constituent units to be almost entirely Jewish and the other to be almost entirely Arab. However, these proposals also call for an unlimited right of return to the Palestinian areas of the federation. Given the comparative population density of Israel and the Palestinian territories, combined with the guarantee of internal freedom of residence, it is inevitable that the Arab population will spill over into the Jewish canton. Unless freedom of movement within the federation is restricted - a measure that would make federalism essentially pointless - this irredentism will ultimately affect the balance of power in the Israeli canton and consequently in the federal state as a whole.
What's the difference of Annan Plan:
It calls for one of the constituent units to be almost entirely GC and the other to be almost equally mixed of TCs and GCs. However, GCs also demand for an unlimited right of return to the TC areas of the federation.
So how will we be able to keep stable the balance of the powers in TC constituent state and consequently in the federal state as a whole? Any opinions?
It may not be too alarmist to envision similar developments taking place in an Israeli-Palestinian federation. Most initial proposals for such a federation call for one of the constituent units to be almost entirely Jewish and the other to be almost entirely Arab. However, these proposals also call for an unlimited right of return to the Palestinian areas of the federation. Given the comparative population density of Israel and the Palestinian territories, combined with the guarantee of internal freedom of residence, it is inevitable that the Arab population will spill over into the Jewish canton. Unless freedom of movement within the federation is restricted - a measure that would make federalism essentially pointless - this irredentism will ultimately affect the balance of power in the Israeli canton and consequently in the federal state as a whole.
What's the difference of Annan Plan:
It calls for one of the constituent units to be almost entirely GC and the other to be almost equally mixed of TCs and GCs. However, GCs also demand for an unlimited right of return to the TC areas of the federation.
So how will we be able to keep stable the balance of the powers in TC constituent state and consequently in the federal state as a whole? Any opinions?
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insan - Main Contributor
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by michalis5354 » Sun Aug 01, 2004 1:02 pm
Again about Federation versus confederation. Even a confederation is much better than the statues quo. And what is confederation? Many countries use this system and they consider it to be very democratic and Fully functioning model.
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by Piratis » Sun Aug 01, 2004 1:15 pm
Even a confederation is much better than the statues quo
With the same logic, if they give us 0.1% of land back and at the same time we recognize that the rest belongs to them we should accept because is better than what we have now.
Actually what we would have today if Annan plan was accepted would be much worst for Greek Cypriots than what we have today.
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by insan » Sun Aug 01, 2004 1:35 pm
The conditions of two independent states:
1- The properties exchange agreement should be accepted and made by both parties.
2- After the properties exchange, the excessive part of the land(private and state land) which have been occupied by TCs, should be given back to its legal owners...
Then both independent states may put a quota for GC/TC immigrants who wish and desire to live in any of these states towns or villages.
This could be achieved right after the events of 1974... and still it's not too late and not a hard to achieve task....
1- The properties exchange agreement should be accepted and made by both parties.
2- After the properties exchange, the excessive part of the land(private and state land) which have been occupied by TCs, should be given back to its legal owners...
Then both independent states may put a quota for GC/TC immigrants who wish and desire to live in any of these states towns or villages.
This could be achieved right after the events of 1974... and still it's not too late and not a hard to achieve task....
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insan - Main Contributor
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by michalis5354 » Sun Aug 01, 2004 2:02 pm
The point is not on the benefits of each sides gets but on the overall evaluation of the whole plan. This is what I can not understand and this is a HUGE mistake that is being made.
You can loose something to get something bigger in the future. Thats how is life. Without risks you do not go anywhere!
What make you think that democracy are 100% achieved everywhere! People make consensus , cooperate for the benefit of the whole island and all citisens.
You can loose something to get something bigger in the future. Thats how is life. Without risks you do not go anywhere!
What make you think that democracy are 100% achieved everywhere! People make consensus , cooperate for the benefit of the whole island and all citisens.
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michalis5354 - Regular Contributor
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