Abstract

This contribution examines some normative assumptions and fundamentals of the multinational states, specifically those containing minorities coexisting with a national majority that has historically been the backbone of the state. The crisis in tradiditionally unitary states and post-communist ones that pursue compulsory policies of national homogenization and assimilation have forced a re-examination of the normative and institutional conditions conducive to the coexistence of several nationalities within the same state, against the classic maxim that every state should become a nation and every nation should become a state. The present study contains a constructiviste critique of the ethnic, prepolitic concept of nation an suggest a cooperative and competitive reformulation of federalism as a democratic and processual device to institutionalize multinationalism by means of accomodation.