Abstract
The argument advanced in this volume rests on the interaction of three principle variables: the electoral system, the concentration of power, and the relative size of various ethnic groups in the country. Parties will court the societal, interest or identity-based groups that are capable of forming minimum winning electoral coalitions for the tier of power at which they desire to secure representation. In a context of nationalized power and small ethnic groups, parties can be induced to turn away from mobilizing ethnicity because this strategy does not deliver large enough support coalitions. Smaller groups become more relevant when power is decentralized and policymaking and spending powers are genuinely devolved to regional or local spheres, which are elected independently from the national tier. In this context, the relevance of groups that are too small to be viable vehicles to secure power at the national level can assume a greater relevance for elections at more local levels, where they may constitute larger shares of the total population. When there are no incentives to seek out ethnic power, ethnic mobilization diminishes, and ethnicity is less likely to become an axis of political competition. Without sustained political mobilization, ethnic identities are less likely to become vested with an importance that could lead to conflict and violence.
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Notes
See, for example, Benjamin Reilly, Democracy in Divided Societies: Electoral Engineering for Conflict Management (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001) for a recent and comprehensive work on the subject. The full discussion of this literature can be found in chapter 3.
Robert Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), and Shaheen Mozaffar,“The Institutional Logic of Ethnic Politics: A Prolegomenon,” in Ethnic Conflict and Democratization in Africa.
Donald L. Horowitz, A Democratic South Africa? Constitutional Engineering in a Divided Society (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1991)
Arend Lijphart, Electoral Systems and Party Systems: A Study of Twenty-Seven Democracies, 1945–1990 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994)
Mozaffar, “The Institutional Logic” Andrew Reynolds, Electoral Systems and Democratization in Southern Africa (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)
Andrew Reynolds and Benjamin Reilly, The International IDEA Handbook of Electoral System Design (Stockholm, Sweden: International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, 1997)
Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976)
Giovanni Sartori, Comparative Constitutional Engineering: An Inquiry into Structures, Incentives and Outcomes (New York: New York University Press, 1994).
The classic works on this subject include Giovanni Sartori,“The Influence of Electoral Systems: Faulty Laws or Faulty Method?” in Electoral Laws and Their Political Consequences, ed. Bernard Grofman and Arend Lijphart (New York: Agathon, 1986)
Sartori, Comparative Constitutional Engineering; Lijphart, Electoral Systems; Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977)
Arend Lijphart, Pat-terns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Twenty-Six Countries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). Andrew Reynolds in Electoral Systems and Democratization in Southern Africa, provides a comprehensive overview of the impact of electoral systems on democratization, including a chapter discussing the tradeoffs involved in choosing alternate electoral systems.
To date, most analyses of the nonmechanical effects of electoral systems have focused on coalition building, proportionality, and the representation of women. See Dennis Farrell, Comparing Electoral Systems (New York: Prentice Hall, 1997), chapter 7.
Regarding proportionality, the general consensus is that district magnitude is the most important determinant of proportionality (Rein Taagepera and Matthew Soberg Shugart, Seats and Votes: The Effects and Determinants of Electoral Systems [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989])
Douglass Rae, The Political Consequences of Electoral Laws [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967].
Maurice Duverger’s Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State (New York: Wiley, 1954) is the seminal work in this subset of the field. Duverger’s “law” sparked off a debate over whether proportional representation created multipartyism, or whether countries that already had multiparty systems tended to choose proportional representation electoral formulas. See William Riker, “Duverger’s Law Revisited,” and Sartori, “The Influence of Electoral Systems: Faulty Laws or Faulty Method?” both in Electoral Laws and Their Political Consequences, ed. Bernard Grofman and Arend Lijphart, for both sides of the debate; consult Farrell, Comparing Electoral Systems for the synthesis.
Comments of Carina Perelli, the chief of the United Nations Electoral Assistance Division, cited in Adeed Dawisha and Larry Diamond, “Iraq’s Year of Voting Dangerously,” Journal of Democracy 17, no. 2 (April 2006): 89–103, 93.
Joel Barkan,“Elections in Agrarian Societies,” Journal of Democracy 6, no. 4 (October 1995): 106–116.
John Coakley, ed., The Territorial Management of Ethnic Conflict (London: Frank Cass, 1993).
Nancy Bermeo,“The Import of Institutions,” Journal of Democracy 13, no. 2 (April 2002): 96–110, 107.
Larry J. Diamond, Class, Ethnicity and Democracy in Nigeria: The Failure of the First Republic (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988)
Rotimi T. Suberu,“The Struggle for New States in Nigeria, 1976–1990,” African Affairs 90, no. 361 (1991): 499–522
John A. Ayoade,“Ethnic Management in the 1979 Nigerian Constitution,” Publius: The Journal of Federalism 16, no. 2 (Spring 1986): 73–90.
Andrew J. Milnor,“Institutions,” in Comparative Political Parties: Selected Readings, ed. Andrew J. Milnor (New York: Crowell, 1969).
Daniel Posner recently argued that regime type exerts similar influences. Daniel N. Posner,“Regime Change and Ethnic Cleavages in Africa,” Comparative Political Studies40, no. 11 (November 2007): 302–327.
This is an insight adapted from my own earlier work on South Africa, as well as from John A. Ayoade“Ethnic Management in the 1979 Nigerian Constitution,” Publius: The Journal of Federalism 16 (Spring 1986): 73–90
Rotimi T. Suberu, Federalism and Ethnic Conflict in Nigeria (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2001)
Rotimi T. Suberu,“Federalism and Nigeria’s Political Future: A Comment,” African Affairs, no. 348 (1988): 431–439
Daniel Posner,“The Political Salience of Cultural Difference: Why Chewas and Tumbukas Are Allies in Zambia and Adversaries in Malawi,” American Political Science Review 98, no. 4 (2004): 529–545. Posner was analyzing individual identity selection rather than party strategies, but the logic holds.
Paul Lazarsfield, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet, The People’s Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948)
Bernard Berelson, Paul Lazarsfield, and William McPhee, Voting: A Study of Opinion Formation in a Presidential Campaign (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1954).
Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan,“Cleavage Structures, Party Systems and Voter Alignments: An Introduction,” in Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives, ed. Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan (New York: Free Press, 1967).
See Richard Rose and Derek Urwin,“Social Cohesion, Political Parties and Strains in Regimes,” Comparative Political Studies 2 (1969); and Richard Rose, “Comparability in Electoral Studies,” in Electoral Behavior: A Comparative Handbook, ed. Richard Rose (New York: Free Press, 1974).
William Claggett, Jeffrey Loesch, W. Phillips Shively and Ronald Snell,“Political Leadership and the Development of Political Cleavages: Imperial Germany, 1871–1912,” American Journal of Political Science 26, no. 4 (November 1982): 643–663.
See Coakley, Territorial Management; Ulrich Schneckener and Stefan Wolff, eds., Managing and Settling Ethnic Conflicts: Perspectives on Successes and Failures in Europe, Africa and Asia (New York and London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
Horowitz (Ethnic Groups in Conflict) provides a prime example of this focus, as does Benjamin Reilly,“Electoral Systems for Divided Societies,” Journal of Democracy 13, no. 2 (2002): 156–170. As an example, in his volume on electoral engineering, Benjamin Reilly does not even once consider the way that federal and electoral systems interact to shape development of political parties and the bases on which they campaign (Reilly, Democracy in Divided Societies).
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© 2009 Jessica Piombo
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Piombo, J. (2009). Shaping Strategies of Political Mobilization. In: Institutions, Ethnicity, and Political Mobilization in South Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230623828_2
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