This timely Research Handbook provides a multidisciplinary overview of research on ethno-cultural minority issues at the supranational level of the EU. It delivers a state-of-the-art review of the EU's approaches to development and institutional implementation of minority policies from the Treaty of Rome until today. Through critical analyses, this Research Handbook addresses minority politics from the perspectives of politicization and depoliticization of minority rights, anti-discrimination, case law, cultural and linguistic diversity protection, cohesion and regional development as well as enlargement and external action. Chapters also focus on policy areas that indirectly affect the lives of ethno-cultural minorities as well as non-policy approaches emanating from the tensions in the EU architecture and legal framework. Although the Research Handbook confirms the EU's ambivalence towards minority politics, it also offers new views on a policy area that is under pressure to become more flexible. Offering an innovative approach in analysing policy, legislative and institutional developments, this Research Handbook will be an ideal read for students and scholars interested in European politics and public policy. Its critical insights on European policy will also make this a beneficial read to policy-makers.

Non-territorial autonomy (NTA) is a statecraft tool that is increasingly gaining importance in societies seeking to accommodate demands by ethno-cultural groups for a voice in cultural affairs important to the protection and preservation of their identity, such as language, education, and religion. As states recognize the specific rights of identity minorities in multicultural and multi-ethnic societies, they are faced with a need to improve their diversity management regimes. NTA offers policy-makers a range of options for institutional design adaptable to specific circumstances and historical legacies. It devolves degrees of power through legal frameworks and institutions in specific areas of ethno-cultural life, while maintaining social unity at the core level of society. Throughout Europe and North America, NTA exists and is implemented at a state, regional, and local level. Much has been written about the concept of autonomy and its usage as a statecraft tool in states facing regional division, but little literature addresses its non-territorial institutional and public administration functions. This edited volume seeks to fill this gap. Managing Diversity through Non-Territorial Autonomy: Assessing Advantages, Deficiencies, and Risks, carves a space for contextual knowledge production on NTA in law, as well as social and political sciences. Contextual knowledge involves a description of institutions and their functionality as well as of the institutional and legal frames protecting these. What are the institutions, bodies, and functions that ethno-cultural groups can draw on when seeking to have a voice over their own affairs, as well as over issues in society related to their identity production? How are these entities incorporated and empowered to have a voice? What degree of voice do they have, and how are they designed to project this voice? Thus, contextual knowledge also involves critical assessment and risk analysis as well as penetrating insights as to the unintended consequences and hidden agendas that may inform NTA policies. This volume is to provide both policy-makers and ethno-cultural groups with a tool-kit that promotes social cohesion while respecting diversity. This is the first volume in a series of five which will examine the protection and representation of minorities through non-territorial means.