For a Wider Understanding of Territorial Autonomies

Shane Joshua Barter

Soka University of America

This post urges a wider understanding of territorial autonomy, moving beyond Western, liberal democratic cases. Appreciating a broader universe helps to show that minority self-government is more common than we may think.  Rather than representing some aberration of the nation-state, territorial autonomy has a rich history and many contemporary faces.

Understanding Territorial Autonomy

Technically, any subnational unit in a federal or decentralized system enjoys territorial autonomy.  Terminological confusion has driven terminological proliferation, although some scholars and many real-life cases use the term ‘autonomy’.  Here, territorial autonomy refers to special, asymmetrical forms of self-government for subnational governments representing distinctive minorities.

Territorial autonomy is not a singular institution, as political competencies—special powers—may be tailored to local needs and evolve over time.  A compromise between independence and incorporation, territorial autonomy is an important tool to manage ethnic conflicts and recognize minorities.  At its heart, self-government enables a national minority to see itself as a regional majority.  That it protects minorities should not blind us to its conservative nature, as territorial autonomy helps to maintain the territorial status quo by denying independence.

Scholarship on territorial autonomy is fragmented, studied at the edges of federalism, constitutional law, conflict resolution, and multiculturalism rather than as a political system in its own right.  Research disproportionately focuses on contemporary, Western and especially European democratic cases.  Some scholars suggest that autonomy is a 20th century, European invention and requires liberal democracy.  Although European cases are important, examining a wider universe helps to better understand territorial autonomy and normalize it as a political system.  Democratic autonomy, as in Åland, South Tyrol, Scotland, Wales, and Quebec, is one form, but not the only one.

Self-Government in the Long Durée

Rather than being invented recently, the idea of self-governing entities attached to a larger polity probably, with a more fluid sense of sovereignty, may represent the historical norm.  Not coincidentally, one of the few studies comparing autonomous regions in Europe and Asia states that “asymmetrical distributions of territorial political authority were comparatively common in pre-modern times and in empires”.

Empires were often multiethnic in character.  Rather than being uniform, centralized entities, they were more likely patchworks of regional rulers with varied competencies.  The Ottoman Empire’s Millet System provided self-rule for religious groups, a form of non-territorial autonomy, but also featured territorial autonomy for Albania, Egypt, Bosnia, Yazidis, Bulgaria, and Kurdistan.  Tributary systems featured largely independent regional rulers paying taxes and recognizing their place within the realm of more powerful kingdoms.  Such arrangements were found throughout Meso-America, with the Aztec Triple Alliance loosely ruling over a wide range of quasi-independent kingdoms.  China was the centre of the most sustained, complex tributary system.  Kingdoms such as Tibet, Siam, and Korea were largely independent, with separate rulers, laws, religions, and cultures within the Chinese orbit.  Rather than one centre, Southeast Asian saw several, with the “Galactic Polity” placing small kingdoms between larger ones, whose dominance waxed and waned over time.

European colonialism also featured various degrees of independence and incorporation.  Colonizers often ruled some regions directly, while more distant or powerful, allied kings operated autonomously.  British Malaya featured the directly ruled Straits Settlements, nominal local rule in the federated states, and then unfederated states where Sultans retained their lineages, taxation power, and authority over religion and culture.  South Asia was no different, with a spectrum of direct rule, princely states, and mostly independent kingdoms such as Nepal.

Many faces of territorial autonomy

The above discussion paints the picture of a wide range of self-governing polities before and beyond the Westphalian system.  An emperor could see smaller powers as part of their realm, but the smaller kingdom could see itself as self-ruling.  Even in Europe, cases such as Andorra, Scotland, various Crown Dependencies, the Basque Region, Liechtenstein, and others long defied the ‘nation-state’ model.  History is replete with such examples, and today there exist many forms of territorial autonomy.

There exists considerable research related to contemporary, democratic, Western territorial autonomous regions.  In such places, distinctive minorities are not only recognized, but afforded space to self-define.  It is important to look beyond Western democracies to better understand the full extent of territorial autonomy.

Post-conflict autonomy has been given significant attention, but is not always appreciated as distinctive.  Cases such as Northern Ireland, Aceh, West Papua, Mindanao, and Bougainville involve autonomy as part of a peace agreement involving international mediators.  It is often illiberal, including former armed groups, with its primary goal being to sustain peace.  Such cases may be democratic, but the genesis of these systems, as well as some distinct tasks related to demobilization, managing spoilers, and the threat of violence, may be different than liberal democratic autonomy.

Indigenous autonomy represents another unique form.  Although larger cases such as Greenland and Nunavut are well studied and are democratic, the purpose and nature of autonomy in these cases is in many ways distinct.  Additionally, there exist several examples in Latin America (Nicaragua’s Moskito Coast, Guna Yala and other Comarcas in Panama, Gran Chaco in Bolivia), as well as in Asia (Sabah and Sarawak in Malaysia, parts of northeast India), and in Europe, in the Sami domicile.  In such cases, territorial autonomy—a term used less often than self-governance or sovereignty—is more consciously a decolonizing process.  Powers may focus on communal land rights, ancestral domain, reconciliation, fishing and hunting, restorative justice, and language revitalization.  Indigenous autonomy is often decentralized or granted to smaller administrative units (for example, several treaty areas across Canada).  Regions may feature parallel forms of non-territorial autonomy and powerful public corporations, with some such as Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated playing governance roles.  Territorial in indigenous regions has distinctive goals, powers, scales, and actors, making for an important set of cases.

Territorial autonomy in Indigenous regions shows that self-government may be exercised at lower administrative tiers.  Autonomy is found in municipalities or counties has not been afforded much attention, even though there are several cases in Russia, China, India, and the Americas.  Although harder to study and typically featuring fewer powers, autonomy in smaller regimes may provide economic and cultural protections to smaller groups.  Especially interesting is autonomy nested within autonomy, with Ladin districts in South Tyrol, Val d’Aran in Catalonia, Paku Alam in Yogyakarta, and Nunavik in Quebec representing an extension of minority self-rule.  Xinjiang, for instance, features autonomous countries within autonomous prefectures within the autonomous region.

For some, mention of autonomy in China may invite scepticism, with autocratic autonomous regions written off as ‘shams’ or as ‘fake’.  Increasingly, political scientists are rethinking autocratic politics, understanding that while institutions may not operate as we might expect, they can have substantive political effects.  Autonomous regions such as several in China and Russia, as well as Zanzibar in Tanzania, Karakalpakstan in Uzbekistan, and Gorno-Badakhshan in Tajikistan, may not provide space for genuine self-representation, instead serving to control minorities.  Authoritarian autonomy also seeks to coopt, bringing titular leaders into the ruling system, and in doing so providing symbolic as well as substantial powers related to employment, language education, and more.  Authoritarian autonomy provides a bridge to the historical cases mentioned above, alongside more recent examples such as New Order Aceh and Marcos-era Mindanao.  A better understanding of autocratic forms of autonomy, analysed rather than written off, is essential to better understand forms of minority self-government.

Conclusions

The faces of autonomy discussed in this blog post are neither mutually exclusive nor exhaustive.  We could discuss colonial autonomies, or administrative autonomies such as capital districts or special economic zones.  Above all, the universe of territorial autonomy goes far beyond contemporary Western democracies.  The effect of appreciating a broader universe of cases is hopefully to normalize minority self-rule.  There are many faces of territorial autonomy—historically, today, and going forward—that defy the nation-state.

This blog post is a result of a workshop of the network of scholars of territorial autonomy initiated by the Åland Islands Peace Institute. The network first met and discussed ‘The Many Faces of Territorial Autonomy’ at a workshop in Berlin, convened in cooperation with the Finland Institute in Berlin. The blog symposium is hosted by the IACL Research Group on Constitutionalism and Societal Pluralism: Diversity Governance Compared.

Shane Joshua Barter is Professor of Comparative Politics at Soka University of America.

Suggested citation: Shane Joshua Barter, ‘For a Wider Understanding of Territorial Autonomies’ IACL-AIDC Blog (21 September 2023) https://blog-iacl-aidc.org/territorial-autonomy/2023/9/20/for-a-wider-understanding-of-territorial-autonomies.