Normatively, the notion that ethnic minority interests have a legitimate demand for representation is broadly shared (Banducci et al. 2004). In its Freedom in the World survey, a good indicator of mainstream democratic thought, Freedom House (2016) includes “the participation of minority groups in national or subnational political life” and the right of
“political parties based on ethnicity, culture, or religion that espouse peaceful, democratic values” to contest elections among its indicators of political freedom. Ethnopolitical actors and their sympathizers often take this mainstream view further by arguing that ethnic mobilisation are not just legitimate but necessary; as politics that ignore ethnic cleavages implicitly maintain existing ethnic dominance and marginalise minorities (Mansbridge 1997, Kymlicka 2003: 252, Van Cott 2005: 228). Based on this argument, a disparate body of literature makes the case that ethnic politics have a democratising potential.
Empowerment theory, a mainly American school of thought, holds that the presence of minority representatives “enhance[s] trust in government, efficacy, group pride, and participation,”
legitimising democratic institutions among minorities and empowering members of the minority community by inspiring them to participate in politics and assert themselves (Banducci et al. 2014: 538-39). Mansbridge (1999), for example, argues that the descriptive representation of formerly underrepresented groups elevate these groups from second-class to full citizens, strengthens democratic legitimacy, and articulates uncrystallised interests. As they focus on US politics, empowerment theorists tend to discuss individual representatives rather than parties, but similar arguments have been made regarding ethnic parties elsewhere. In an analysis of
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minority nationalism, Kymlicka (2003: 252) argues that any state “necessarily privilege[s]
particular national cultures” at the expense of others. Despite enjoying equal civil rights, minorities participate in the polity without full cultural citizenship, as the national political culture was constituted out of the majority or dominant group (Ibid.: 250-51). Through minority-national mobilisation – as seen in Catalonia or Scotland – minorities resist assimilation and claim democratic citizenship. This form of ethnic politics may be violent or peaceful, illiberal or liberal; but fundamentally it is about self-assertion (Ibid.: 246-253, 288-89). The empowerment theorists and Kymlicka reach the same conclusion: Without parties and politicians associated with ethnic minorities, ethnic minorities are not represented as democratic citizens.
Recent empirical assessments of the impact of ethnic politics in the developing world reach varying conclusions. In Africa, politicised ethnicity has often undermined democratic institutions (Berman 1998 and 2010). In India, Chandra (2005) finds that competing ethnic bids have resulted in moderation instead of radicalisation, adapting to minimal democracy. In Latin America, the rise of indigenous-based from the late 1990s was widely seen as a democratising development (Van Cott 2005, Panizza and Miorelli 2009, Bull 2013). Van Cott (2005: 228-32) argues that these ethnic parties “have had a number of positive effects on democratic institutions.” They have deepened and legitimized democracy by improving “the level of representation for a once-excluded group” and putting their interests on the agenda. Indigenous-based parties “offer a model of healthy party-society relations for other parties to emulate,”
pursuing movement-based, participatory politics and challenging the corrupt and elitist political culture of the region.
In Latin America, democratisation through ethnic politics thus goes beyond representation of marginalised groups. Latin American ethnic parties challenged the ruling order on overarching political, social, and economic issues; coordinating different opposition movements into an ethnically based, but open alliance (Van Cott 2005: 214-19, Bull 2013). Elsewhere, the Kurdish-based People’s Democratic Party (HDP) in Turkey and the Arab-based Joint List in Israel have built similar coalitions of ethnic minorities and left-wing members of the majority (Fishman 2016). Pieterse (1997: 386) suggests that ethnic politics have an emancipatory potential in its ability to frame a collective struggle, that does not necessarily entail “seeking advantage over other ethnic groups;” and the programmatic and inclusive ethically based left-wing parties of Latin America, Turkey, and Israel seem to be cases in point.
13 3.2.3 Concluding Remarks
The two paradigms have very different points of departure. To the classic theorists, the key problem was democratic stability. Writing in the 1970s and 80s, as most of the newly independent third world had fallen under authoritarian rule, their preoccupation was with whether democracy was at all viable in plural developing countries. From the 1980s on, democracy took root in much of the developing world, and now the predictions of the classic theories seem overly deterministic. However, as the new democratic institutions were deeply flawed and democratic reforms often produced semi-democratic hybrid regimes, the need to problematise the degree of representation within minimal democratic institutions became apparent (Carothers 2002, Törnquist 2009). Accordingly, the second paradigm focuses on representation, not on stability.
Whereas the classic theories are highly deterministic and fail to explain deviant cases (Chandra 2005), the new paradigm of ethnic politics improving representation faces the opposite problem: It is undertheorised, disparate and case-oriented. Empirically, ethnic politics have sometimes undermined democracy (Berman 2010) and sometimes improved it (Van Cott 2005);
and in some cases ethnic parties have not threatened democratic stability, but not necessarily improved democratic representation either (Chandra 2005). While the classic theories overestimate the causal relationship between ethnic politics and ethnic conflict and neglect the legitimate demand for ethnic minority representation, followers of the second paradigm risk ignoring the destabilising element of ethnic politics, and assuming any ethnic party that brings members of a marginalised group into office to have a positive effect on democracy. An ethnic party representing a formerly excluded group should be seen neither as democratising by default or as detrimental to democracy. In the following chapter, drawing on the insights of both paradigms, I sketch out a framework to analyse factors facilitating and undermining democratisation through ethnic politics.
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