Abstract

Starting from the legal regime which protects the English-speaking minority in Quebec and the French-speaking minorities in the Rest of Canada, the essay examines the influence of ethnic-linguistic factors on the organization of political power. It does so in relation not only to the needs of demographically large linguistic minorities, like the French-speaking majority in Quebec, for example, but also less compact ones which claim the right to conserve and promote their cultural values also through forms of local self-government.