Personal Principle and Cultural Autonomy: Karl Renner's Non-Territorial Federalism Responding to Multinational Coexistence

Current federalism research is dominated by the successful American model, focusing on a territorialized, mono-national constitutional federalism, where individuals of different nations within a specific territorial scope are jointly subject to and protected by the state. However, this is not the only way federalism can address the coexistence of multiple nations. By reviewing historical figures and theoretical narratives, as well as incorporating contemporary federal theorists on plurality and multiracial coexistence, this study seeks to shed light on a non-territorialized alternative arrangement. Once, facing the complex national coexistence within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Austrian Marxist Karl Renner proposed the personal principle and cultural autonomy, attempting to reshape the federal structure of the Austro-Hungarian Empire through a non-territorial arrangement. Renner reorganizes national communities as legal entities to act as intermediaries between individuals and the state, and to implement non-territorial economic, political, and cultural management for individuals of their own nations. This study also explores the model's non-territorial character, its treaty-based character, and its embodiment of federalism as norm. In Renner's view, this attempt could achieve a balance, avoiding both the oppression of minorities by the majority within territorial structures and the centrifugal tendencies of minority groups within specific territorial scopes. Although Renner's federalist reforms ultimately failed, they still provide valuable guidance for dealing with the political reality of multinational coexistence today, demonstrating the inherent potential of a non-territorial, pluralistic, treaty-based federalism.