- Provides a basis for future research in language policy and planning in international, national, regional and local contexts - Approaches language policy as public policy that can be studied through the policy cycle framework. It offers a systematic and research-informed view of actual processes and methods of design, implementation and evaluation - Includes original contributions from leading senior scholars and rising stars - Features a substantial introduction, 38 chapters and an extensive bibliography

Australia, Canada, and Ireland are all engaged in questions of multiculturalism and in the politics of recognition and reconciliation, the opportunities and pressures of geographic regionalism, shifts in political agendas associated with the impact of neo-liberalism, and moves to frame political agendas less at the macro-level of state intervention and more at the level of community partnership and empowerment. In related but distinct ways, each state is being challenged to devise policies and offer outcomes that address an unfolding and unsteady synthesis of issues relating to citizenship, the role of nation-states in a 'borderless' world, and the management of economic change while preserving an enabling sense of national identity and social cohesion.

Analyzing issues ranging from urban planning and the provision of broadcasting services for minority languages, to principled debates over basic rights and entitlements, these essays offer penetrating summaries of each political culture while also prompting comparative reflection on the broad theme of "democracy and difference."

Language policies are political. They have political consequences as well as political origins. In State Traditions and Language Regimes, scholars from Asia, Europe, and North America shift focus from the consequences of language policies to how and why states make language policy choices. This shift, theorized through the concept of "language regime," inserts an urgently needed political science perspective into the current dialogue between sociolinguists, who research the societal effects of language policies, and political theorists of language rights, who analyze the normative implications of policies. New analytical tools drawn from comparative politics are showcased to analyze paths taken by different states in establishing language regimes, at times disrupted and redirected at critical junctures. Contributions to the volume include analyses of Canada's increasingly court-driven language policies, the United States' bifurcated language regime in the aftermath of 9/11, Ireland's conflicted protection of the Irish language, France's linguistic Jacobin tradition disrupted by Europeanization, the role of political parties and coalitions in language regime stability and change in Taiwan and Southeast Asia, Poland's war-torn history informing policy toward regional languages, and the role of English in international peace-building. While other books look at the political and societal effects of language policy, none seeks to employ a historical institutionalism approach which sets language policy choice in the context of power relations embedded in state traditions. State Traditions and Language Regimes offers a comparative politics perspective, one that enriches interdisciplinary debate on language policy.