Ethnic groups

• An ethnic group is a human population whose members identify with each other, usually on the basis of a presumed common genealogy or ancestry (Anthony Smith).

Political models in multi-ethnic societies

(based on Sammy Smooha)

Individual Liberal Democracy

Ethnic origin is privatized, not the basis for acquiring citizenship, and is not subject to legislation or state intervention. The state administers a policy of non-discrimination to insure equal opportunity.

The state is officially not identified with any ethnic nation, language and culture.

Republican Liberal Democracy

Equal individual rights are granted and collective rights are denied, but the state is identified with a certain language and culture that every citizen is required to adopt.

Legal citizenship and acquisition of the state language and culture are sufficient for inclusion in the nation-state. The criteria for inclusion are non-ethnic, non-religious and non-ascriptive.

Consociational Democracy

Ethnic groups are recognized by the state and given separate language rights, schools and mass media, to preserve their separate existence and identity. Mechanisms of group autonomy, proportional representation, politics of compromise and consensus, and veto power on decisions vital to group interests. The state takes a neutral stand toward the conflict between the groups and impartially implements the compromises reached by group elites.

Multicultural Democracy

Similar to liberal democracy - but minorities are granted minimal collective rights to preserve their cultural heritage and to use their language in schools and other public bodies.

Herrenvolk Democracy

• master-race ‘democracy’: democratic rights are restricted to a particular ethnic or racial community (US before the civil war, South Africa under the Apartheid regime).

Ethnic democracy

A democratic political system that combines the extension of civil and political rights to permanent residents who wish to be citizens with the bestowal of a favored status on the majority group.

A democracy that contains a non-democratic institutionalization of dominance of one ethnic group.

Ethnocracy

• Rights are determined by ethnonational descent, not by universal citizenship.

• The founding ethnic group appropriates the state apparatus and administers discriminatory policies toward other groups.

• Ethnocracy is non-democratic although it exhibits democratic features, like universal suffrage and democratic institutions.

Horowitz’s (1985) thesis:Countries with an ethnic majority and a significant

ethnic minority are at greater risk for civil war.

Homogeneity

Probability of ethnic wars

Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War

(Fearon and Laitin, 2003)

Analyzed 114 violent conflicts between the years 1945 and 1999

Conflicts included: (1) involved fighting between agents of a state and organized, nonstate groups who sought either to take control of a government, to take power in a region, or to use violence to change government policies. (2) The conflict killed at least 1,000 over its course, with a yearly average of at least 100.(3) At least 100 were killed on both sides

• Per Capita income• New States and Political Instability.• Mountains and Noncontiguous Territory.• Population size• Oil• Ethnic fractionalization• Democracy• Linguistic and Religious Discrimination.• Inequality• Islam

Ethnic diversity does not predict civil wars; Low income per capita does

Homogeneity

Heterogeneity

Variables predicting a an ‘ethnic war’ (Fearon and Laitin, 2003)

• Per Capita income

Holding other variables at their median values, what is the likelihood of the eruption of a civil war in a certain country with certain income per capita over a decade?

18%

11%

1%

0%2%4%6%8%

10%12%14%16%18%

10th percntile median income ninetiethpercentiel

Variables predicting a civil war

(Fearon and Laitin, 2003)

• Per Capita income

• New States and Political Instability.

• Mountains and Noncontiguous Territory.

• Population size

• Oil

Variables checked and were not found to have significant correlation with civil wars

• Ethnic fractionalization

• Religious fractionalization (?)

• Democracy

• Linguistic and Religious Discrimination.

• Inequality

• Islam

Tactics used to deal with the threat of demographic inferiority

• Genocide (Rwanda, Sudan, Turkey in WWI)• Expulsion, ‘ethnic cleansing’ (Israel in 1948,

Post-Yugoslavia)• Dictatorship (Iraq under Saddam Hussein) • Political exclusion of certain territories

(Bantustans in South Africa, Israel and the 1967 occupied territories, Jordan in 1988)

• Encouraging birth on your side• Manipulating the election system or counting in

your favor (North Ireland, Lebanon)