With particular attention, Seymour treats the question of national minorities within a nation-state as well as people belonging to supranational organizations. He reflects upon the conditions which enable a “plurinational” arrangement to be viable, this includes not only nation-states which encompass several national minorities but multinational states and supranational organizations that encompass sovereign states.

He deals with the question of “political recognition” for a people, which he sees as a basic condition for assuring the viability of any plurinational arrangement, but which he also accepts for purely moral reasons. He examines in this way the recent arguments for or against giving collective rights to national groups within a political entity. His interest in collective rights stems from the fact that they are all that allow for the political recognition of a people.

De la tolerance à la reconnaissance marks a major contribution to the concept of collective rights in political philosophy. Michel Seymour offers up a work essential to the conceptualization and the definition of our unique place in the concert of nations.