Separatism
A common definition of separatism is that it is the advocacy of a state of cultural, tribal, racial, governmental or gender separation from the larger group. While it refers to full political secession, separatist groups may seek nothing more than greater autonomy. While some critics may equate separatism with religious segregation, racist segregation, or sexist segregation, most separatists argue that separation by choice may serve useful purposes and is not the same as government-enforced segregation. There is some academic debate about this definition, in particular how it relates to secessionism, as has been discussed online. Separatist groups practice a form of identity politics, or political activity and theorizing founded in the shared experiences of injustice visited upon members of certain social groups; such groups believe attempts at integration with dominant groups compromise their identity and ability to pursue greater self-determination. However and political factors are critical in creating strong separatist movements as opposed to less ambitious identity movements.
Groups may have one or more motivations for separation, including: Emotional resentment and hatred of rival communities. Protection from genocide and ethnic cleansing. Resistance by victims of oppression, including denigration of their language, culture or religion. Influence and propaganda by those inside and outside the region who hope to gain politically from intergroup conflict and hatred. Economic and political dominance of one group that does not share power and privilege in an egalitarian fashion. Economic motivations: seeking to end economic exploitation by more powerful group or, conversely, to escape economic redistribution from a richer to a poorer group. Preservation of threatened religious, language or other cultural tradition. Destabilization from one separatist movement giving rise to others. Geopolitical power vacuum from breakup of larger states or empires. Continuing fragmentation as more and more states break up. Feeling that the perceived nation was added to the larger state by illegitimate means.
The perception that the state can no longer support one has betrayed their interests. Opposition to political decisions. How far separatist demands will go toward full independence, whether groups pursue constitutional and nonviolent or armed violence, depend on a variety of economic, political and cultural factors, including movement leadership and the government's response. Governments may respond in a number of ways; some include: accede to separatist demands improve the circumstances of disadvantaged minorities, be they religious, territorial, economic or political adopt "asymmetric federalism" where different states have different relations to the central government depending on separatist demands or considerations Allow minorities to win in political disputes about which they feel through parliamentary voting, etc. Settle for a confederation or a commonwealth relationship where there are only limited ties among states; some governments suppress any separatist movement in their own country, but support separatism in other countries.
Ethnic separatism is based more on cultural and linguistic differences than religious or racial differences, which may exist. Ethnic separatist movements include the following: Eurasia The Soviet Union's dissolution into its original ethnic groupings which formed their own nations of Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, Russia, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Chechen separatism in the Caucasus the Republic of Chechnya is part of the Russian Federation. Serb separatism in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. Albanian separatism in Kosovo, North Macedonia, Serbia Greeks separatism in Northern Epirus region of Albania. Turkish separatism in Cyprus. South Ossetian and Abkhazian separatism in Georgia. Armenian separatists of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan. Azeri separatists in Iran want to unite the provinces of East Azerbaijan, West Azerbaijan and Ardabil with Azerbaijan. Kurdish separatism in Turkey, Syria and Iran. Sorbs separatism in Germany. Silesian separatism in Czech Republic. Basque and Catalan separatism in Spain.
Minor separatist movements in Andalusia, Balearic Islands, Canary Islands, Galicia, León, Navarre and Valencia. "Celtic nations" in the British Isles have created various separatist movements from the United Kingdom described as Scottish independence, Welsh Nationalism, Irish Republicanism and Cornish Nationalism. France's Basque, Corsican, Breton and Savoyan separatists. Italy's separatist movements in Friuli, Sicily, South Tyrol and Veneto. Bavarian separatism in Germany, despite the Bavarian Land being referred to as the Bavarian Free State. Belgium granting Dutch-speaking Flanders and French-speaking Wallonia greater autonomy. In the Netherlands, some Frisians covet an autonomous area. Switzerland's division into cantons along geographical and linguistic lines. Russian separatism in Crimea Separatist movements of Pakistan including Balochistan movement and the Sindhudesh movement. Separatist movements of India Jammu and Kashmir Assam separatist movements Insurgency in Northeast India Sri Lanka's ethnic Tamil minority separatism in Tamil Eelam.
Several ethnic minority groups fighting for separate states in Myanmar, including the Chin, Karen, Rohingya
Cultural governance
Cultural governance is governance of culture. It includes cultural policy made by governments but extends to cultural influence exerted by non-state actors and to policies which influence culture indirectly; the tendency to discuss cultural governance rather than policy corresponds to the broader shift from government to governance, with the emphasis shifting from state policymakers to include the influence of civil society organizations and the private sector. A broad interpretation of "governance" could include government policies outside the scope of cultural policy which impact culture; the precise meaning of "cultural governance" depends on the definition of culture, which can range from narrow reference to institutions like museums and concert halls connected with the arts to broad meanings such as a society’s way of life or its systems of knowledge and symbols. In the broader view, cultural governance deals holistically with the production of meaning in a society, through aspects including the culture industry, the formation of taste, the use of language.
The dominant actor in global cultural governance is UNESCO, a United Nations specialized agency created in 1946 and headquartered in Paris, France. UNESCO produces documents which local governments use as guidelines and may incorporate into law, it has promoted the development of networks such as the Global Alliance for Cultural Diversity to promote public/social/private partnership in the cultural area. In recent years the organization has emphasized the importance of cities as cultural actors with networks such as the International Coalition of Cities Against Racism and the Creative Cities Network. UNESCO itself relies upon partnerships with the private sector in selecting and promoting World Heritage Sites. Meetings for the selection of these sites attract several hundred attendees, including representatives of interested groups. "World heritage" issues gain prominence through promotion in the mass media with publications such as National Geographic and many others. All steps of the process promote the development of a metaculture capable of adjudicating global cultural issues and producing a global literary canon from a vantage point of universality.
Agenda 21 for culture, administered by an international organization called United Cities and Local Governments, represents a vector for global governance conducted by its members at a local level. This concept endorses "culture as a fourth pillar of sustainable development", adding to the three pillars of sustainable development identified in Agenda 21: economy and environment. Cultural governance in the European Union includes a range of cultural policies geared toward promoting European culture; the European Commission's 2007 communication "on a European agenda for culture in a globalizing world" describes interaction with culture through a various channels, including support for and consultation with cultural organizations, encouragement of artist mobility and intercultural communication, use of European culture in international relations, maintenance of EU copyright law, promotion of European cultural goods and services. The European governments consider it necessary to promote and guide cultural development because of deficiencies in cultural outcomes of the free market.
Further, intercultural communication and integration are considered intertwined with economic integration. In the People's Republic of China a major goal of cultural governance is to reinforce the legitimacy of the government. Culture has long played a role in the governance of China, from the harmonious society promoted by Confucianism to the Cultural Revolution and other Chinese Communist Party strategies for transforming traditional society into industrialized communism. Present-day Chinese leaders have made significant references in speeches to a continual tradition of Chinese culture and its importance for nationalist and geopolitical purposes. Cultural governance is integrated with propaganda, censorship and education. Within the Chinese Ministry of Culture, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage has stated that China's cultural heritage should be used to "strengthen national unity and promote sustainable development of the natural culture". Localities in China have assumed much of the responsibility for identifying heritage sites, with the result that 300,000 such sites have been declared, many without state protection and support.
Local governments have turned to private companies to manage these sites and operate tourism businesses. Sites may come under many overlapping authorities, as in the case of Mount Wutai, a national park and World Heritage Site, managed by eight government agencies and governed by 29 international and local laws. Macdonald, Susan & Caroline Cheong; the Role of Public-Private Partnerships and the Third Sector in Conseving Heritage Buildings and Historic Urban Areas. Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute. ISBN 978-1-937433-19-2. Psychogiopoulou, Evangelia. Cultural Governance and the European Union: Protecting and Promoting Cultural Diversity in Europe. Palgrave- Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-137-45375-4. Schmitt, Thomas. Cultural Governance as a conceptual framework. Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. MMG Working Paper 11-02. ISSN 2192-2357. Shepherd, Robert J. & Larry Yu. Heritage Management and Governance in China: Managing the Past to Serve the Present. Springer Science+Business Media.
ISBN 978-1-4614-5918-7
Social democracy
Social democracy is a political and economic ideology that supports economic and social interventions to promote social justice within the framework of a liberal democratic polity and a capitalist economy. The protocols and norms used to accomplish this involve a commitment to representative and participatory democracy, measures for income redistribution and regulation of the economy in the general interest and welfare state provisions. Social democracy thus aims to create the conditions for capitalism to lead to greater democratic and solidaristic outcomes. Due to longstanding governance by social democratic parties and their influence on socioeconomic policy development in the Nordic countries, in policy circles social democracy has become associated with the Nordic model in the latter part of the 20th century. Social democracy originated as a political ideology that advocated an evolutionary and peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism using established political processes in contrast to the revolutionary approach to transition associated with orthodox Marxism.
In the early post-war era in Western Europe, social democratic parties rejected the Stalinist political and economic model current in the Soviet Union, committing themselves either to an alternative path to socialism or to a compromise between capitalism and socialism. In this period, social democrats embraced a mixed economy based on the predominance of private property, with only a minority of essential utilities and public services under public ownership; as a result, social democracy became associated with Keynesian economics, state interventionism and the welfare state while abandoning the prior goal of replacing the capitalist system with a qualitatively different socialist economic system. With the rise of popularity for neoliberalism and the New Right by the 1980s, most social democratic parties have incorporated Third Way ideology, which aims to fuse liberal economics with social democratic welfare policies. Modern social democracy is characterized by a commitment to policies aimed at curbing inequality, oppression of underprivileged groups and poverty, including support for universally accessible public services like care for the elderly, child care, health care and workers' compensation.
The social democratic movement has strong connections with the labour movement and trade unions which are supportive of collective bargaining rights for workers as well as measures to extend decision-making beyond politics into the economic sphere in the form of co-determination for employees and other economic stakeholders. During late 19th and early 20th centuries, social democracy was a movement that aimed to replace private ownership with social ownership of the means of production, taking influences from both Marxism and the supporters of Ferdinand Lassalle. By 1868–1869, Marxism had become the official theoretical basis of the first social democratic party established in Europe, the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany. In the early 20th century, the German social democratic politician Eduard Bernstein rejected the ideas in classical and orthodox Marxism that proposed a specific historical progression and revolution as a means to achieve social equality, advanced the position that socialism should be grounded in ethical and moral arguments for social justice and egalitarianism, was to be achieved through gradual legislative reform.
Influenced by Bernstein, following the split between reformists and revolutionary socialists in the Second International social democratic parties rejected revolutionary politics in favor of parliamentary reform while remaining committed to socialization. In this period, social democracy became associated with reformist socialism. Under the influence of politicians like Carlo Rosselli in Italy, social democrats began disassociating themselves from Marxism altogether and embraced liberal socialism, appealing to morality instead of any consistent systematic, scientific or materialist worldview. Social democracy made appeals to communitarian and sometimes nationalist sentiments while rejecting the economic and technological determinism characteristic of both Marxism and economic liberalism. By the post-World War II period, most social democrats in Europe had abandoned their ideological connection to Marxism and shifted their emphasis toward social policy reform in place of transition from capitalism to socialism.
The origins of social democracy have been traced to the 1860s, with the rise of the first major working-class party in Europe, the General German Workers' Association founded by Ferdinand Lassalle. 1864 saw the founding of the International Workingmen's Association known as the First International. It brought together socialists of various stances and occasioned a conflict between Karl Marx and the anarchists led by Mikhail Bakunin over the role of the state in socialism, with Bakunin rejecting any role for the state. Another issue in the First International was the role of reformism. Although Lassalle was not a Marxist, he was influenced by the theories of Marx and Friedrich Engels and he accepted the existence and importance of class struggle. However, unlike Marx's and Engels's The Communist Manifesto, Lassalle promoted class struggle in a more moderate form. While Marx viewed the state negatively as an instrument of class rule that should only exist temporarily upon the rise to power of the proletariat and dismantled, Lassalle accepted the state.
Lassalle viewed the state as a means through which workers could enhance their interests and transform the society to create an economy based on worker-run cooperatives. Lassalle's strategy was electoral and reformist, with Lassalleans contending that the working c
Hegemony
Hegemony is the political, economic, or military predominance or control of one state over others. In ancient Greece, hegemony denoted the politico-military dominance of a city-state over other city-states; the dominant state is known as the hegemon. In the 19th century, hegemony came to denote the "Social or cultural ascendancy, it could be used to mean "a group or regime which exerts undue influence within a society". It could be used for the geopolitical and the cultural predominance of one country over others, from, derived hegemonism, as in the idea that the Great Powers meant to establish European hegemony over Asia and Africa. In international relations theory, hegemony denotes a situation of great material asymmetry in favour of one state, who has enough military power to systematically defeat any potential contester in the system, controls the access to raw materials, natural resources and markets, has competitive advantages in the production of value added goods, generates an accepted ideology reflecting this status quo.
The Marxist theory of cultural hegemony, associated with Antonio Gramsci, is the idea that the ruling class can manipulate the value system and mores of a society, so that their view becomes the world view: in Terry Eagleton's words, "Gramsci uses the word hegemony to mean the ways in which a governing power wins consent to its rule from those it subjugates". In contrast to authoritarian rule, cultural hegemony "is hegemonic only if those affected by it consent to and struggle over its common sense". In cultural imperialism, the leader state dictates the internal politics and the societal character of the subordinate states that constitute the hegemonic sphere of influence, either by an internal, sponsored government or by an external, installed government. From the post-classical Latin word hegemonia from the Greek word ἡγεμονία hēgemonía, meaning "authority, political supremacy", related to the word ἡγεμών hēgemōn "leader". In the Greco–Roman world of 5th century BC European classical antiquity, the city-state of Sparta was the hegemon of the Peloponnesian League and King Philip II of Macedon was the hegemon of the League of Corinth in 337 BC.
The role of Athens within the short-lived Delian League was that of a "hegemon". Ancient historians such as Xenophon and Ephorus were the first who used the term in its modern sense. In Ancient East Asia, Chinese hegemony existed during the Spring and Autumn period, when the weakened rule of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty led to the relative autonomy of the Five Hegemons, they were appointed by feudal lord conferences, thus were nominally obliged to uphold the imperium of the Zhou Dynasty over the subordinate states. 1st and 2nd century Europe was dominated by the hegemonic peace of the Pax Romana. It was instituted by the emperor Augustus, was accompanied by a series of brutal military campaigns. From the 7th century to the 12th century, the Umayyad Caliphate and Abbasid Caliphate dominated the vast territories they governed, with other states like the Byzantine Empire paying tribute. In 7th century India, ruler of a large empire in northern India from AD 606 to 647, brought most of the north under his hegemony.
He preferred not to rule as a central government, but left "conquered kings on their thrones and contenting himself with tribute and homage."From the late 9th to the early 11th century, the empire developed by Charlemagne achieved hegemony in Europe, with dominance over France and Burgundy. During the 14th century, the Crown of Aragon became the hegemon in the Mediterranean Sea. In The Politics of International Political Economy, Jayantha Jayman writes "If we consider the Western dominated global system from as early as the 15th century, there have been several hegemonic powers and contenders that have attempted to create the world order in their own images." He lists several contenders for historical hegemony. Portugal 1494 to 1580. Based on Portugal's dominance in navigation. Spain 1516 to 1659. Based on the Spanish dominance of the European battlefields and the global exploration and colonization of the New World; the Netherlands 1580 to 1688. Based on Dutch control of credit and money. Britain 1688 to 1792.
Based on British textiles and command of the high seas. Britain 1815 to 1914. Based on British industrial supremacy and railroads. Phillip IV tried to restore the Habsburg dominance but, by the middle of the 17th century "Spain's pretensions to hegemony had and irremediably failed."In late 16th and 17th-century Holland, the Dutch Republic's mercantilist dominion was an early instance of commercial hegemony, made feasible with the development of wind power for the efficient production and delivery of goods and services. This, in turn, made possible the Amsterdam stock concomitant dominance of world trade. In France, King Louis XIV and Napoleon I attempted French true hegemony via economic and military domin
Sortition
In governance, sortition is the selection of political officials as a random sample from a larger pool of candidates, a system intended to ensure that all competent and interested parties have an equal chance of holding public office. It minimizes factionalism, since there would be no point making promises to win over key constituencies if one was to be chosen by lot, while elections, by contrast, foster it. In ancient Athenian democracy, sortition was the traditional and primary method for appointing political officials, its use was regarded as a principal characteristic of democracy. Today, sortition is used to select prospective jurors in common law-based legal systems and is sometimes used in forming citizen groups with political advisory power. Athenian democracy developed in the 6th century BC out of what was called isonomia. Sortition was the principal way of achieving this fairness, it was utilized to pick most of the magistrates for their governing committees, for their juries. Aristotle relates equality and democracy: Democracy arose from the idea that those who are equal in any respect are equal absolutely.
All are alike free, therefore they claim that all are free absolutely... The next is when the democrats, on the grounds that they are all equal, claim equal participation in everything, it is accepted as democratic. In Athens, "democracy" was in opposition to those supporting a system of oligarchy. Athenian democracy was characterised by being run by the "many" who were allotted to the committees which ran government. Thucydides has Pericles make this point in his Funeral Oration: "It is administered by the many instead of the few; the Athenians believed sortition to be democratic but not elections and used complex procedures with purpose-built allotment machines to avoid the corrupt practices used by oligarchs to buy their way into office. According to the author Mogens Herman Hansen the citizen's court was superior to the assembly because the allotted members swore an oath which ordinary citizens in the assembly did not and therefore the court could annul the decisions of the assembly. Both Aristotle and Herodotus emphasize selection by lot as a test of democracy, "The rule of the people has the fairest name of all and does none of the things that a monarch does.
The lot determines offices, power is held accountable, deliberation is conducted in public."Past scholarship maintained that sortition had roots in the use of chance to divine the will of the gods, but this view is no longer common among scholars. In Ancient Greek mythology, Zeus and Hades used sortition to determine who ruled over which domain. Zeus got the sky, Poseidon the sea, Hades the underworld. In Athens, to be eligible to be chosen by lot, citizens self-selected themselves into the available pool lotteries in the kleroteria machines; the magistracies assigned by lot had terms of service of 1 year. A citizen could not hold any particular magistracy more than once in his lifetime, but could hold other magistracies. All male citizens over 30 years of age, who were not disenfranchised by atimia, were eligible; those selected through lot underwent examination called dokimasia in order to avoid incompetent officials. Were selected citizens discarded. Magistrates, once in place, were subjected to constant monitoring by the Assembly.
Magistrates appointed by lot had to render account of their time in office upon their leave, called euthynai. However, any citizen could request the suspension of a magistrate with due reason; the brevia was used in the city states of Northern Italy during the 12th and 13th centuries and in Venice until the late 18th century. Men, who were chosen randomly, swore an oath that they were not acting under bribes, they elected members of the council. Voter and candidate eligibility included property owners, guild members, at times, artisans; the Doge of Venice was determined through a complex process of nomination and sortition. Lot was used in the Venetian system only in order to select members of the committees that served to nominate candidates for the Great Council. A combination of election and lot was used in this multi-stage process. Lot was not used alone to select magistrates, unlike in Athens; the use of lot to select nominators made it more difficult for political sects to exert power, discouraged campaigning.
By reducing intrigue and power moves within the Great Council, lot maintained cohesiveness among the Venetian nobility, contributing to the stability of this republic. Top magistracies still remained in the control of elite families; the scrutiny was employed in Florence for over a century starting in 1328. Nominations and voting together created a pool of candidates from different sectors of the city; these men had their names deposited into a sack, a lottery draw determined who would get magistracy positions. The scrutiny was opened up to minor guilds, reaching the greatest level of Renaissance citizen participation in 1378–82. In Florence, lot was used to select magistrates and members of the Signoria during republican periods. Florence utilized a combination of lot and scrutiny by the people, set forth by the ordinances of 1328. In 1494, Florence founded a Great Council in the model of Venice; the nominatori were thereafter chosen by lot from among the member
Soil governance
Soil governance refers to the policies and the processes of decision-making employed by nation states and local governments regarding the use of soil. Globally, governance of the soil has been limited to an agricultural perspective due to increased food insecurity from the most populated regions on earth; the Global Soil Partnership, GSP, was initiated by the Food and Agriculture Organization and its members with the hope to improve governance of the limited soil resources of the planet in order to guarantee healthy and productive soils for a food-secure world, as well as support other essential ecosystem services. Governing the soil requires international and national collaboration between governments, local authorities and citizens to ensure implementation of coherent policies that encourage practices and methodologies that regulate usage of the resource to avoid conflict between users to promote sustainable land management. In the European Union's environmental policies, soil is recognized as a non-renewable resource, but its governance is maintained at a national level, unlike other non-renewable and climate sensitive resources.
In the developing world, soil governance is biased towards promoting sustainable agriculture and ensuring food security. Governance of the soil differs from soil management. Soil management involves practices and techniques used to increase and maintain soil fertility and carbon sequestration, etc. Soil management techniques are utilized in agriculture, because of the need to regulate the various practices, such as tillage techniques, fertilizer application and crop rotation by the various stakeholders involved; the need to monitor and avoid the negative effects of agricultural land use such as soil erosion has formed the basis of the discourse and awareness on soil governance, has seen the emergence of science and technology as the link between soil management and governance. Soil governance mechanisms are encapsulated within the context of land governance, with little focus on urban and industrial soil governance in developing countries that have rapid urbanization rates. With an aim to make soil data available to all, the Food and Agriculture Organization and UNESCO created a global soil map in 1981 as the main information on the distribution of soil resources.
Under the GSP framework, a new global soil information system will be developed. In 2002, the International Union of Soil Sciences proposed December 5 to be "World Soil Day" to celebrate the importance of soil in our lives. Under the framework of the GSP, the sixty-eighth session of the United Nations General Assembly in December 2013 designated December 5 as the World Soil Day and declared 2015 as the International Year of Soils with the aim to raise awareness on the importance of soils for ecosystem functions and food security. Changes in land use, population growth, the impacts of climate change have led to a gradual process of soil degradation. Soil degradation is a gradual process involving the natural and anthropogenic processes that result in the physical loss and reduction in soil quality; the recognition of anthropogenic effects on soil degradation has influenced discourse of urban soil management, formulation of policies by regional organizations. However, soil remains as the primary medium for food production, thus global soil governance is directed towards the impacts of soil degradation on food production and conflicts that arise between the need for human settlements and space available for food production.
The impacts of climate change contribute to the conflict because carbon dioxide emissions have progressively led to higher average global temperatures, which has led to an increase in soil degradation through erosion, increased salinity, a reduction in the flora and fauna that contribute to its quality. The Global Soil Partnership was launched in 2011, it is an initiative of the FAO and the European Commission that aims to "Support and facilitate joint efforts towards sustainable management of soil resources for food security and climate change adaptation and mitigation" and to update the 1982 World Soil Charter. The World Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development, the Plan of Action of the UN Conference on Desertification to combat land degradation and desertification initiated international discourse on effective soil management and governance, however the initiatives were limited to the soil and its relation to agricultural productivity; the GSP's ultimate goal is to achieve food security and restoration of ecosystem services through conserving and restoring soil resources through productive and sustainable use.
In addition to being a global partnership, the GSP aims to create Regional Soil Partnerships to provide guidance on goals and priorities within specific regions and develop relevant activities within each region. The GSP meets in Plenary Assembly form to meet the different demands from each region; the First Plenary Assembly, held in June 2013 at the FAO's headquarters adopted the Rules of Procedure and established an Intergovernmental Technical Panel of Soils, started thinking about the 5 pillars of action, supported the implementation of Regional Soil Partnerships and developed a GSP roadmap. The Second Plenary Assembly will be held in July 2014; the vision of the GSP is to improve governance of soil resources to guarantee healthy and productive soils for a food-secure world and support other essential ecosystem services. The mission of the GSP is capacity building and contribute t
Dominion
A Dominion was the "title" given to the semi-independent polities under the British Crown, constituting the British Empire, beginning with Canadian Confederation in 1867. "Dominion status" was a constitutional term of art used to signify an independent Commonwealth realm. The Balfour Declaration of 1926 recognised the Dominions as "autonomous Communities within the British Empire", the 1931 Statute of Westminster confirmed their full legislative independence. Earlier usage of dominion to refer to a particular territory dates to the 16th century and was used to describe Wales from 1535 to 1801 and New England between 1686 and 1689. A distinction must be made between a British "dominion" and British "Dominions"; the use of a capital "D" when referring to the'British Dominions' was required by the United Kingdom government in order to avoid confusion with the wider term "His Majesty's dominions" which referred to the British Empire as a whole. All territories forming part of the British Empire were British dominions but only some were British Dominions.
At the time of the adoption of the Statute of Westminster, there were six British Dominions: Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the Irish Free State. At the same time there were many other jurisdictions that were British dominions, for example Cyprus; the Order in Council annexing the island of Cyprus in 1914 declared that, from 5 November, the island "shall be annexed to and form part of His Majesty's dominions". Use of dominion to refer to a particular territory dates back to the 16th century and was sometimes used to describe Wales from 1535 to around 1800: for instance, the Laws in Wales Act 1535 applies to "the Dominion and Country of Wales". Dominion, as an official title, was conferred on the Colony of Virginia about 1660 and on the Dominion of New England in 1686; these dominions never had full self-governing status. The creation of the short-lived Dominion of New England was designed—contrary to the purpose of dominions—to increase royal control and to reduce the colony's self-government.
Under the British North America Act 1867, Canada received the status of "Dominion" upon the Confederation of several British possessions in North America. However, it was at the Colonial Conference of 1907 when the self-governing colonies of Canada and the Commonwealth of Australia were referred to collectively as Dominions for the first time. Two other self-governing colonies—New Zealand and Newfoundland—were granted the status of Dominion in the same year; these were followed by the Union of South Africa in 1910 and the Irish Free State in 1922. At the time of the founding of the League of Nations in 1924, the League Covenant made provision for the admission of any "fully self-governing state, Dominion, or Colony", the implication being that "Dominion status was something between that of a colony and a state". Dominion status was formally defined in the Balfour Declaration of 1926, which recognised these countries as "autonomous Communities within the British Empire", thus acknowledging them as political equals of the United Kingdom.
The Statute of Westminster 1931 converted this status into legal reality, making them independent members of what was called the British Commonwealth. Following the Second World War, the decline of British colonialism led to Dominions being referred to as Commonwealth realms and the use of the word dominion diminished. Nonetheless, though disused, it remains Canada's legal title and the phrase Her Majesty's Dominions is still used in legal documents in the United Kingdom; the phrase His/Her Majesty's dominions is a legal and constitutional phrase that refers to all the realms and territories of the Sovereign, whether independent or not. Thus, for example, the British Ireland Act 1949, recognised that the Republic of Ireland had "ceased to be part of His Majesty's dominions"; when dependent territories that had never been annexed were granted independence, the United Kingdom act granting independence always declared that such and such a territory "shall form part of Her Majesty's dominions", so become part of the territory in which the Queen exercises sovereignty, not suzerainty.
The sense of "Dominion" was capitalised to distinguish it from the more general sense of "dominion". The word dominions referred to the possessions of the Kingdom of England. Oliver Cromwell's full title in the 1650s was "Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England and Ireland, the dominions thereto belonging". In 1660, King Charles II gave the Colony of Virginia the title of dominion in gratitude for Virginia's loyalty to the Crown during the English Civil War; the Commonwealth of Virginia, a State of the United States, still has "the Old Dominion" as one of its nicknames. Dominion occurred in the name of the short-lived Dominion of New England. In all of these cases, the word dominion implied no more than being subject to the English Crown; the foundation of "Dominion" status followed the achievement of internal self-rule in British Colonies, in the specific form of full responsible government. Colonial responsible government began to emerge during the mid-19th century; the legislatures of Colonies with responsible government were able to make laws in all matters other than foreign affairs and international trade, these being powers which remained with the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
Bermuda, was never def
