A confederalist demand to transform the liberal discourse: A comprehensive analysis of international minority protection regimes

Abstract

This study seeks to analyze the advancement and present matters of international minority protection regimes. It is an interdisciplinary article that draws on the methods of international human rights law and constitutional politics. Global developments have dramatically affected the scope of minority rights since the 1800s. Religious and national characteristics were the basis of domestic minority protection regimes until the foundation of the League of Nations (LoN). The LoN established the first international protection mechanism for minority rights. This communitarian mechanism was replaced with its liberal individualist counterpart with the establishment of the United Nations. Many states have incorporated the liberal discourse of minority rights into their constitutional, statutory and regulatory documents since the 1950s. According to this study, the liberal discourse would need to enlarge its scope in the near future. Some national minorities, including the Catalans and Scots, reject the existence of national borders in the presence of supranational confederalist institutions, e.g. the European Union (EU). They do not want to exercise self-government rights within their home states. Instead, they would like to transform their autonomous regions into the sovereign states of EU-like confederalist organizations. This study maintains that finding a resolution for this transformation process would be one of the main research questions that the liberal discourse should answer in the near future.