Universal expansion of transnational and international regimes including the human rights standards and democratic arrangements along with the broad interpretation of the UN Charter regarding the maintenance of world peace and security are among the most important consequences of globalization in the late decades of the 20th Century. These are able to pose serious threats to and create opportunities for ethnic movements and multi-ethnic states. On this basis, world regimes have gradually turned out into competitors for the basic rights and domestic systems remaining from the Westphalian model. More than to be an instrument for the execution of power and regulation of relations by the states, they are groundwork for the future identity coherence and proliferation of demands on part of the sub-national groups and ethnic movements. This change can also indicate the weakening of the will to suppress ethnic minorities thus promoting the status of ethnic movements in the national and international milieus. Such change in status is realized through intermediary variables such as the theoretical strength of identities, impact of the audience’s beliefs, emotional appeal of identities as well as the shift in power equations. This provides the grounds for ethnic movements to wield more appropriate and balanced theoretical leverage and practical opportunities in comparison to nation-states. This implies that the transnational globalized regimes have changed the status of ethnic movements and their identity-building sources in the early third millennium.
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