Confronting 'Kymlicka's dilemma': settler voting rights, indigenous representation and the 1998-99 electoral reapportionment in Canada's Northwest Territories
Thesis (M.A.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2015 "Settler colonialism" presents a vexing challenge to voting rights theory and praxis in liberal-democratic states. I call this challenge "Kymlicka's dilemma," after Will Kymlicka, the political theorist who has led contempor...
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ftunivalaska:oai:scholarworks.alaska.edu:11122/6077 2023-05-15T17:46:36+02:00 Confronting 'Kymlicka's dilemma': settler voting rights, indigenous representation and the 1998-99 electoral reapportionment in Canada's Northwest Territories Spitzer, Aaron Ehrlander, Mary White, Graham Lovecraft, Amy Brock, David 2015-08 http://hdl.handle.net/11122/6077 en_US eng http://hdl.handle.net/11122/6077 Northern Studies Program Thesis ma 2015 ftunivalaska 2023-02-23T21:36:34Z Thesis (M.A.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2015 "Settler colonialism" presents a vexing challenge to voting rights theory and praxis in liberal-democratic states. I call this challenge "Kymlicka's dilemma," after Will Kymlicka, the political theorist who has led contemporary discourse on "minority nation" rights. As Kymlicka observed, members of a state's dominant cultural nation, or staatsvolk, may, by exercising universal mobility rights, numerically "swamp," and then, by using universal voting rights, democratically dominate, an Indigenous minority nation in its homeland. To prevent this, an Indigenous minority nation may seek to exercise group-based voting protections, such as guaranteed representation. Where "Kymlicka's dilemma" arises - i.e., where minority group-differentiated voting protections challenge the voting powers of individual staatsvolk and vice versa - a constitutional conflict seems certain. In Canada's Northwest Territories, from at least the 1970s until the separation of Nunavut in 1999, the specter of "Kymlicka's dilemma" (mis)shaped the constitutional evolution of the territorial government. There, in what was long Canada's last Indigenous-majority jurisdiction, decades of Indigenous political resistance to settler control hinged on the permissibility of Indigenous overrepresentation in the territorial legislature. In the 1990s, three developments portended changes to Indigenous overrepresentation in that legislature: Charter of Rights-inspired limits on electoral-district malapportionment, constitutional recognition of Indigenous group-based protections, and the amplified danger of settler "swamping" that would result from Nunavut's separation. As if in a natural experiment, these developments created conditions for a potentially volatile constitutional conflict. This thesis analyzes the results of that experiment. It shows that a constitutional conflict did ensue, catalyzed by the territorial electoral reapportionment of 1998-99. This conflict involved a yearlong political clash ... Thesis Northwest Territories Nunavut Alaska University of Alaska: ScholarWorks@UA Fairbanks Northwest Territories Nunavut |
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English |
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Thesis (M.A.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2015 "Settler colonialism" presents a vexing challenge to voting rights theory and praxis in liberal-democratic states. I call this challenge "Kymlicka's dilemma," after Will Kymlicka, the political theorist who has led contemporary discourse on "minority nation" rights. As Kymlicka observed, members of a state's dominant cultural nation, or staatsvolk, may, by exercising universal mobility rights, numerically "swamp," and then, by using universal voting rights, democratically dominate, an Indigenous minority nation in its homeland. To prevent this, an Indigenous minority nation may seek to exercise group-based voting protections, such as guaranteed representation. Where "Kymlicka's dilemma" arises - i.e., where minority group-differentiated voting protections challenge the voting powers of individual staatsvolk and vice versa - a constitutional conflict seems certain. In Canada's Northwest Territories, from at least the 1970s until the separation of Nunavut in 1999, the specter of "Kymlicka's dilemma" (mis)shaped the constitutional evolution of the territorial government. There, in what was long Canada's last Indigenous-majority jurisdiction, decades of Indigenous political resistance to settler control hinged on the permissibility of Indigenous overrepresentation in the territorial legislature. In the 1990s, three developments portended changes to Indigenous overrepresentation in that legislature: Charter of Rights-inspired limits on electoral-district malapportionment, constitutional recognition of Indigenous group-based protections, and the amplified danger of settler "swamping" that would result from Nunavut's separation. As if in a natural experiment, these developments created conditions for a potentially volatile constitutional conflict. This thesis analyzes the results of that experiment. It shows that a constitutional conflict did ensue, catalyzed by the territorial electoral reapportionment of 1998-99. This conflict involved a yearlong political clash ... |
author2 |
Ehrlander, Mary White, Graham Lovecraft, Amy Brock, David |
format |
Thesis |
author |
Spitzer, Aaron |
spellingShingle |
Spitzer, Aaron Confronting 'Kymlicka's dilemma': settler voting rights, indigenous representation and the 1998-99 electoral reapportionment in Canada's Northwest Territories |
author_facet |
Spitzer, Aaron |
author_sort |
Spitzer, Aaron |
title |
Confronting 'Kymlicka's dilemma': settler voting rights, indigenous representation and the 1998-99 electoral reapportionment in Canada's Northwest Territories |
title_short |
Confronting 'Kymlicka's dilemma': settler voting rights, indigenous representation and the 1998-99 electoral reapportionment in Canada's Northwest Territories |
title_full |
Confronting 'Kymlicka's dilemma': settler voting rights, indigenous representation and the 1998-99 electoral reapportionment in Canada's Northwest Territories |
title_fullStr |
Confronting 'Kymlicka's dilemma': settler voting rights, indigenous representation and the 1998-99 electoral reapportionment in Canada's Northwest Territories |
title_full_unstemmed |
Confronting 'Kymlicka's dilemma': settler voting rights, indigenous representation and the 1998-99 electoral reapportionment in Canada's Northwest Territories |
title_sort |
confronting 'kymlicka's dilemma': settler voting rights, indigenous representation and the 1998-99 electoral reapportionment in canada's northwest territories |
publishDate |
2015 |
url |
http://hdl.handle.net/11122/6077 |
geographic |
Fairbanks Northwest Territories Nunavut |
geographic_facet |
Fairbanks Northwest Territories Nunavut |
genre |
Northwest Territories Nunavut Alaska |
genre_facet |
Northwest Territories Nunavut Alaska |
op_relation |
http://hdl.handle.net/11122/6077 Northern Studies Program |
_version_ |
1766150336329809920 |