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What does Autonomy mean?
Translated from Meyers Konversations-Lexikon, 1890:
„The authority of a community, irrespective of the state legislative right, to enact regulations with legislative power for its people, in order to direct interior matters.”
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Autonomy (Greek: Auto-Nomos - nomos meaning "law": one who gives oneself his own law) means freedom from external authority. In politics, an autonomous entity means a subnational entity.
Full autonomy
States or territories are considered autonomous if they get represented internationally by other states, but remain independent internally. These are often areas within states in which strong minorities are living:
In the context of this book series see these.
Partial autonomy
Certain administrative units of a centrally governed state occupy certain areas of competence, where they decide freely on their affairs. Example: The French region of Alsace has a partial autonomy within the otherwise centralized Education (extent and form of German language education, extent of use of the German in language lessons).
Special case Italy
Italy, similarly to France, is governed centrally. Only the islands (Sicily, Sardinia) and the border regions inhabited by minorities (Friaul-Venetia Julia, Aosta Valley, Trentino-Alto Adige) are granted autonomy regulated by a special statute (a law derived from the constitution), de facto a partial autonomy. In Italy these regions are termed autonomous. In the past years, the Italian state has transferred some of its competencies to the regions (devolution).
Restricted autonomy
An administrative unit of a state, e.g. a federal state, can decide competely independently over its own affairs in certain competence areas. Example: The Cantons of Switzerland are free to act in all areas which have not been expressly delegated to the Eidgenossenschaft (education, internal security, social affairs, health), and as long as their acts do not contradict the federal constitution.
In contrast to that, autarky (Geek αvτάρκεια „self-sufficiency“) means in general that organizational units or eco-systems generate or produce all what they consume or use out of their own resources.
Autark systems are, among others, economical units (political economies, economical regions, households), which exclusively self-supply themselves (with food, raw materials, goods, services, production factors) and are independent of imports.
Translated from Thomas Benedikter's article "Regionalautonomie: ein Joint Venture zur Konfliktlösung", Academia, the scientific magazine of the European Academy Bozen, March 2007, p. 34 - 37:
"To survey the functioning regional autonomies world-wide, a definition and precise qualification criteria are required. Is Corsica, for example, autonomous? No, for its regional assembly can only propose laws, but cannot execute them. [...] Some states, such as Russia and Spain, exhibit a surprising multitude of autonomous regions. But while Russia is an "asymmetric federal state, whose member states are also labelled "autonomous" on historical grounds, Spain is a "State of Autonomous Communities", which makes regional autonomy the fundamental principle of its structure.
Differentiations have therefore to be made to related systems of territorial power allocation, in particular to federal systems. As a rule, federal states are created to transfer to all member states an equal extent of competencies. On the central level, the member states form the second executive authority. On the contrary, autonomies are granted to allow a minimum of internat self-governance to regions with ethnic and linguistic pecularities, without changing state boundaries. Autonomies often aim for comprehensive protection of minorities, but can also be formed due to their distant location (eg., Azores and Madeira), to history (eg., Scotland), or because of an overriding concept of a state organization (eg., Spain's autonomous regions).
Territorial autonomy exists in Europe since 1921, when the Âland Islands received their special status within Finland. Most autonomy systems were formed in the post-war time in Europe. The only true autonomy in East Europe has been instituted in Gagausia, Moldavia.
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