South Tyrol's changing political system: from dissociative on the road to associative conflict resolution

Abstract

South Tyrol (Italy), with its three officially recognized language groups (Germans, Italians and Ladins), is a successful model of how a minority problem can be solved. It is based upon the principle of dissociative conflict resolution, which means separating the language groups as much as possible between themselves, as well as the principle of consociational democracy, which focuses primarily on the cooperation between the language groups' elites. In the last few years it has been observed that while the institutional frame has not changed, society has, thereby starting to undermine the existing political and institutional system from below. This concerns mainly the ethnic division, which is being questioned more and more by civil society, as well as aspects of cooperation between the elites. As a consequence of this process, South Tyrol's autonomy is moving toward further integration, with the latter again translating into strengthening the two factors of territoriality and identity.

Keywords:

• South Tyrol
• divided societies
• conflict resolution

Notes

1. After conflicts with the Monti government, in August 2013 the South Tyrolean provincial government replaced the Milan Agreement by the Bolzano Agreement, which was signed by the Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta and the president of the province of South Tyrol Luis Durnwalder.

2. The focus on initiatives of civil society trying to overcome the ethnic division does not mean that the debate about civil and non-civil society has become redundant, but only that the debate cannot be further elaborated here (cf. therefore Kopecký and Mudde 2003).

3. The media play an important role in the process of integration, for they construct social reality and create a public arena. The mass media are, therefore, particularly expected to drive a confidence-building information process in order to increase public trust in the respective opposite language group and in the common institutions. This, however, requires an undivided public arena, while the latter oftentimes disintegrates into various public sub-arenas in ethnically fragmented societies, since the media in South Tyrol are monolingual while oftentimes making ethnic references. For a general discourse on this issue, see e.g. Pallaver (2006b).

4. In 1809, the Tiroleans led by Andreas Hofer, a national hero in Tyrol, fought against French–Bavarian occupation.