Language and federalism: the multi-ethnic challenge

Ethnic, linguistic, and religious identities have emerged during the past d ecade as major challenges to the institutional capacity of the modern state to cope with cultural diversity. As such, multilingualism, which formulate s a response to this challenge, has emerged as a new focus of empirical res earch on federalism. This provides a contrast to classic studies of federal ism, which concentrated on the institutional division of powers between a s tate and its constituent units. Language plays a double role in this: as a thin bond for communication and negotiation between political actors, and a thick system of meanings, carrying the burden of history, religion, cultur e, ritual, and memory. The article studies this ambivalence of language thr ough a comparison of India and Switzerland, two quite different cases of re latively successful accommodation of linguistic diversity and discusses the constitutional means and policy measures that might enable a modern state to balance regional diversity and national unity in the face of the multi-e thnic challenge.