Non-territorial autonomy is defined by the allocation of power according to membership and the personality principle. It allows for self-government of dispersed cultural communities in certain policy fields without challenging the sovereignty of the state. It has therefore been offered as possible supplement solving shortcomings of territorial autonomy like the necessity of re-drawing boundaries or the creation of new minorities within substates. However, in multinational federations that have introduced territorial autonomy as a way to manage their cultural diversity, mechanisms of cultural autonomy violate the territoriality principle and may generate new conflicts.
Comparing non-territorial arrangements as supplement in the federal systems of Canada and Belgium, the paper inquiries into the conditions under which conflicts over managing diversity are either successfully contained or increased. The comparison of different arrangements of non-territorial autonomy (legislation for francophone minorities outside Quebec, for the Anglophone minority within Quebec, for the two linguistic communities in Brussels and in the communes with linguistic facilities outside Brussels) demonstrates that they are more likely to reduce conflicts in case the community that forms the minority statewide is benefiting from these additional measures whereas conflicts are increased in case these arrangements are introduced within the territorial units of national communities in order to address the demands of other minorities. Therefore, the two principles – territoriality or personality – generate conflicts when applied simultaneously as mechanism of accommodating diversity within the same territorial unit of a multinational federation.
