Draft:Tove H. Malloy

Tove Hansen Malloy is a political theorist focusing on the political and legal aspects of national and ethno-cultural minority rights in international law and international relations, primarily in the European context. She is currently adjunct Professor of European Studies at the Europa-Universität Flensburg, Germany and External Lecturer in International Studies at Roskilde University. Before becoming an academic, she worked for the Danish Foreign Service from 1981 to 2002, including serving at the Danish embassies in Greece, Hungary, Zambia, Italy and the United States. In 1991, she received the Uffe Ellemann-Jensen award for young diplomats.

Academic career

Tove Malloy earned her PhD in Government from the University of Essex in the United Kingdom, where she studied with Prof. Michael Freeman and Prof. Geoff Gilbert.

In 2003-2004, she was Assistant Academic Coordinator and Lecturer at the European Union Master (E.MA) in Human Rights and Democratisation in Venice before she joined the European Centre for Minority Issues in Flensburg, Germany as Senior Research Associate from 2004-2006. In 2006, she was a fellow at the Department of Law at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. From 2006 to 2009, she worked at the Institute for Minority Rights at the European Academy (EURAC Research) in Bolzano/Bozen, Italy, where she headed up the EU-funded project, Human and Minority Rights in the Life Cycle of Ethnic Conflicts (MIRICO). In 2009, she returned to the European Centre for Minority Issues as Director. From 2010 to 2013, Tove Malloy was External Lecturer at the University of Southern Denmark. Since 2020, she has been attached as consultant to the Council of Europe, the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities and the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Lund, Sweden.

Professional engagement

Tove Malloy is a co-founder of the COST project, European Non-Territorial Autonomy Network (ENTAN) funded by the European Union 2019-2023 where she heads up the working group on Regional and socio-economic development.

From 2011 to 2018, Tove Malloy was a member in respect of Denmark in the Council of Europe’s Advisory Committee on the European Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. From 2016-2018, she also functioned as the Gender Equality Rapporteur of the Committee.

Tove Malloy serves as Senior Editor of the European Yearbook of Minority Issues and has previously served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe (JEMIE), the Ethnopolitics and Social Inclusion. She also sits on the advisory board of the Tom Lantos Institute, (Budapest, Hungary), and she is a substitute on the scientific board of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency (Vienna, Austria).

Tove Malloy has provided expert advisory opinions to local and national governments, including committees of the German Bundestag, the Danish Folketing, the regional parliament of Schleswig-Holstein (Kiel), the Serbian and Hungarian parliaments, the European Parliament’s LIBE and DROI committees as well as the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly. She regularly delivers consultant expertise to the OSCE’s High Commissioner on National Minorities and the Council of Europe and contributes to current debates on human and minority issues in printed and online news media.

Scholarship

Inspired by the legal scholarship of Philip Allott and the political thought of Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe and William E. Connolly,  Tove Malloy saw the potential of using political philosophy to explain phenomena of ethno-cultural minority existence in Europe. She applied post-structuralist theories to minority-majority relations to explain tensions and conflicts in modern society. Her contribution to the knowledge production on minority rights and the protection of ethno-cultural groups has been recognised by peers. Recently, she has focused on non-territorial autonomy for ethno-cultural groups living dispersed within mainstream societies. Other areas of her work, which have been noticed, are Green minority citizenship as ethno-ecologism (or eco-nationalism), minority indicators and inter-sectional discrimination.

Minority rights

In 2005, Tove Malloy published her book, National Minority Rights in Europe, which for the first time examines comprehensively the European approach to minority protection. In the book, she defended the notion that national minorities should have equal moral worth with majority groups due to the historical legacies of the Westphalian system’s inability to create equal access to power. The out-of-power position has resulted in a paternalistic approach to minority protection in Europe. She argued that moral and legal recognition of national minorities and degrees of autonomous administrative division would overcome societal tensions.

Ethical standing and minority status

One important conflict prevention tool that Tove Malloy argues for is recognition of certain national minorities as “co-nations”. A co-nation is an honourable designation for an ethno-cultural minority group that previously belonged to the in-power group but which fell out of power when borders changed as a result of land-grabbing or transfer of sovereignty. The co-nation label, she argues, avoids the stigma of the minority designation and provides ethnical standing for groups who previously held power in what used to be their homeland territory. The designation would not depend on size and numbers but on previous historical ties to the land and their mother nation.

Non-territorial autonomy

Another conflict prevention tool that Tove Malloy has sought to develop together with scholars of statecraft, is the concept of non-territorial autonomy. Early on, she argued that, unlike territorial autonomy, non-territorial autonomy (or cultural autonomy) for ethno-cultural minorities had been eclipsed in contemporary academic research. She held that with a few exceptions, the concept of non-territorial autonomy had not been developed beyond the early Austro-Marxist theories of Karl Renner (1870-1950) and Otto Bauer (1881-1938). Following the arguments of Ephraim Nimni, Tove Malloy agrees that for modern societies, the concept has new potentials for abating tensions in diverse and deeply divided societies, as it offers both governments and ethno-cultural minority groups a win-win outcome that promotes stability. For governments it offers a greater chance of social unity and peace, while for ethno-cultural minority groups it offers empowerment and self-rule over own affairs related to the preservation of cultural identities.

In order to develop the concept further, and inspired by Engin Isin’s theory of "acts of citizenship," Tove Malloy has challenged the tendency to assess autonomy in terms of legal entrenchment and argued that autonomy or self-governance is not only a top-down phenomenon but also emerges bottom-up through active citizenship acts and actions of members of ethno-cultural groups. As editor of the five-volume book series, Minorities and Non-Territorial Autonomy, Tove Malloy began a systematic knowledge gathering of the scientific exploration of case studies and theoretical themes in relation to non-territorial autonomy. Drawing on James Tully’s "politics of cultural recognition," she developed the ‘theory of voice’ arguing that non-territorial autonomy in post-modern societies of pluralism, multiplicity and multiculturalism can exist at different degrees of autonomy. Rather than establishing legal entrenchment only, non-territorial autonomy can be established in terms of the degree of voice in the political processes that ethno-cultural minorities achieve through actions and agency. According to her theory, non-territorial autonomy can be slotted on a continuum from non-voice over quasi-voice to full-voice.

European Union and minority protection

Another aspect of minority issues that Tove Malloy has pursued is the role of the European Union (EU) in minority protection. Acknowledging that the EU law does not include competences on minority protection, she has argued early on for a potential expansionist role of the European Commission. She has defended the view that in its programming, the European Commission could indirectly promote the rights of ethno-cultural minorities via the regional policy programmes. Subsequently, other scholars have also developed similar arguments. In her most recent writings, Tove Malloy has pointed out that the decisions of the Council of the EU unfortunately does not seize any opportunities to broaden the minority rights scope for the EU. The enlargement process has been stalled due to the Council taking power back from the European Commission and the issue of 'internal enlargement' for Catalonia (and previously Scotland) is a non-politics within the EU.

Indicators of ethno-cultural non-territorial autonomy

Building on her theory of voice and her previous work on minority indicators, Tove Malloy has recently developed for the first time in minority studies an index of non-territorial autonomy indicators drawing on Anthony Giddens’ theory of structuration. In her Introduction to the edited volume, Non-Territorial Autonomy and Decentralization (with Levente Salat), she describes five indicators based on self-empowering values that promote degrees of autonomy in terms of how non-territorial autonomy is internally organized, ruled, managed, regulated, and adjudicated by members of ethno-cultural groups.

Selected bibliography

Monographs

2005: National Minority Rights in Europe, Oxford University Press. ISBN: 9780199274437

Edited volumes

2022: Minority Politics in the European Union (edited with Balazs Vizi), Edward Elgar. ISBN: 978 1 80037 592 5

2021: Non-Territorial Autonomy and Decentralization (edited with Levente Salat), Routledge. ISBN 9780367564773

2019: Minority Issues in Europe, vol. 2: New Ideas and Approaches (edited with Caitlin Boulter), Frank & Timme ISBN 978-3-7329-0505-8

2018: The Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. A Commentary (edited with Rainer Hofmann and Detlev Rein), Brill Publisher ISBN: 978-90-04-33967-5

2015: Managing Diversity through Non-Territorial Autonomy. Assessing Advantages, Deficiencies, and Risks (edited with Alexander Osipov and Balazs Vizi), Oxford University Press, ISBN: 9780198738459

2015: Minority Accommodation through Territorial and Non-Territorial Autonomy (edited with Francesco Palermo), Oxford University Press ISBN: 9780198746669

2013: Minorities, their Rights, and the Monitoring of the European Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (edited with Ugo Caruso), Brill Publishers ISBN: 978-90-04-23656-1

2013: Minority Issues in Europe, vol 1: Rights, Concepts, Policy (edited), Frank & Timme ISBN 978-3-86596-543-1

Selected Journal Articles

2023: “Integration and special rights: Greenlanders living in Denmark and the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities” in the International Journal for Minority and Group Rights, Vol. 30 (2023), No. 1, pp. 1-20

2021: “Concepts of Non-Territorial Autonomy (NTA): Autonomy, or Arrangements?” in the German Yearbook of International Law, Vol. 63 (2020)

2016: “Linguistic Minority Rights in the Danish-German Border Region: Reciprocity and Public Administration Policies” in International Journal on Minority and Group Rights, Vol. 23 (2016), pp. 485-504 with Sonja Wolf

2014: “Achieving Equality for the Sinti and Roma of Schleswig-Holstein,” European Yearbook of Minority Issues, Vol. 11 (2014)

2013: “Nordic (Minority) Autonomies and Territorial Management in Europe: Empowerment through Regionalisation?” International Journal on Minority and Group Rights, Vol. 20 (2013), pp. 87–108

2013: “Denmark Adopts Unilateral Legislation in Favour of Kin-Minority” European Yearbook of Minority Issues, Vol. 9 (2012), pp. 669-682

2010: “Creating New Spaces for Politics? The Role of National Minorities in Building Capacity of Cross-Border Regions” in Regional and Federal Studies, Vol. 20, No. 3 (July 2010), pp. 335-352

2010: “Co-nationhood and co-nationship: A research framework in quest of a philosophy that binds” in IES Proceedings, No. 7 (Summer, 2010), pp. 74-99

External links

Professional website

Google Scholar profile

ORCiD

PURE