Linking Constitutional Asymmetry with Multinationalism. An Attempt to Crack the Code in Five Hypotheses

Abstract

Constitutional asymmetry means that the component units of a federation do not have equal relationships with each other and the federal authority. While in traditional federal theories this is considered an anomaly, leading to instability, other scholars have presented asymmetry as a form of multinational conflict management in multinational multi-tiered systems. To examine this relationship, this chapter defines key concepts such as multinationalism, multi-tiered states, subnational entities, political and constitutional asymmetry and strong and weak asymmetry. Five working hypotheses are introduced as a connecting thread to the country reports: (1) Constitutional asymmetry emerges from political asymmetry; (2) Multinationalism is not the exclusive but a determining factor for constitutional asymmetry; (3) The correlation is stronger when the divide based on identity is reinforced with congruent political asymmetries of another nature; (4) Privileged status is attributed to identity markers rather than territory-based entities; and (5) Factors that facilitate symmetrisation or further asymmetrisation processes are, amongst others, the presence of competing national groups, the presence of non-competing non-distinct groups, the dynamics of strongly divided fragmenting states, internal dynamics created by asymmetries.