Our legal institutions must recognize the situational uniqueness of our contemporary political-legal reality. This requires a paradigm shift in our thinking: a shift that both encompasses and enables a deeper and wider understanding of situational complexity, as experienced by individuals culturally and jurisdictionally tied to multiple communities. Since none of the presently available normative or legal models provides an adequate balance between respecting cultural difference and protecting individual rights, we must begin imagining possibilities for institutions through a new approach – joint governance.

The joint governance approach

Joint governance considers the challenges of multiculturalism by recognizing that some persons will belong to more than one political community, and will bear rights and obligations that derive from more than one source of legal authority. More specifically, joint governance promises to foster ongoing interaction between different sources of authority, as a means of improving the situation of traditionally vulnerable insiders without forcing them to adhere to an either/or choice between their culture and their rights.

This can be done by envisioning a radically new architecture for dividing and sharing authority in the multicultural state, one which encourages a mode of governance composed of dialogue between different non-monopolist power centers, rather than an imposition by “all-knowing” state or group officials. Joint governance thus offers an innovative new approach to the paradox of multicultural vulnerability by seeking to translate into concrete policy measures a key normative commitment: enhancing justice between groups and reducing injustice within them.