Ethnic Parties and Democratic Stability in Divided Societies

Introduction

Intellectually, specialists can be of great assistance to independent constitution-scholars in racially alienated nations. This is because such specialists are in a position to create certain suggestions, as opposed to overpowering them with a stream of alternatives. Particularly, the following requires the best precedence and ought to be the center stage of constitutional discussions or consultations. First, ballot votes should be through comparative representation. Secondly, there should be a democratic government and a cabinet in which power sharing is described in adherent or racial terms. The leader of a nation should also be democratically elected, and his/her administrative center of power combined with that of the prime minister, federalism and devolution. A centralized chamber that is low-powered communally funded self-governing institutions for spiritual groupings and less utilization of the referendum (¹) are the other requirements. The essay will examine issues regarding ethnic parties and democratic stability in divided societies.

Several questions have been posed regarding the way political societies ought to react to the chances and predicaments expressed by racial, linguistic, ethnical variations and spiritual sectors and by these reactions, thereafter improve self-governing, permanence, social fairness and tranquility (²). This is one of the hardest and significant matters of current politics.

In several examples like in Nigeria, Sudan, Northern Ireland, Iraq, Canada and Spain just to mention, it is certainly a major issue in political life (¹). As a grouping of constitutional and political evaluation, this phrase does not relate only to the societies which are racially, lingually, spiritually or ethnically diverse. What mostly makes a divided society recognizable is because all these variations are politically significant, meaning that they are important indicators of political individuality as well as bases for political militarization. Political arguments are mirrored by the lens of individuality; hence, political disagreement can be tantamount to disagreement amongst ethno-cultural groupings (³).

In addition, how divided societies react to the opportunities and a predicament expressed by the equality of ethno-cultural individuality and political attention is of great risk. The tremendous effects of a failure to solve these predicaments appropriately are well understood: segregation and unfairness, civil war and racial purification, absorption by force and the worst of it genocide (³).

Literature review

Available literature on the government of societies documents the efforts made by scholars and academicians alike, in their attempt to shed more light on this issue. Amongst the most notable scholars that have had a real impact in as far as the issue of governing divided societies is Lipset and Rokkan. These two scholars were convinced that the settings of a party were a reflection of the existing divisions (or lack of) in such a party. The most recent work by scholars in the area of governing societies appears to examine the existing variables in the management of societies. The presence of variables in the governing of societies is important because this acts as a pointer to the wide range of beliefs and tenets to which such parties may subscribe to. During the 1800s, Christian Democratic parties in Europe had already started to firmly politicize their beliefs. At certain times, parties may be seen to embrace certain societal sections and not others (^{4; 5}). A shift from one societal section to another is also likely depending on the circumstances that inform such a decision. For example, attention to financial matters within a society may result in such cleavages being observed (^{6; 7}).

Even as an increasing number of scholars endeavor to examine the form of communication that exist between on the one hand, the social system and on the other hand, party structures, nonetheless, little attention has been given to the study of how various parties are able to effectively increase the salience of certain actions.

Information that is currently available on mobilization is very insightful. It not only offers a clear definition of a strategy from a political point of view, but also offers an insight into the issue of campaign plans. At this point, it is important to note that much of this information appears to shed more light on institutional issues (⁸). Ongoing discussion on the same has endeavored to identify those institutions that have endorsed the implementation of all inclusive campaign please, at the expense of restricted ones. Nevertheless, the principle informing the decision by these institutions has time and again come under a scathing attack from its opponents who are opposed to the existence of comprehensive campaign please. In this case, those in favor of ballot poling regulations have especially been very vocal regarding this issue. Their argument is that this form of voting that they are so passionate about acts to serve several and not a single ethnic team (⁹).

On the other hand, additional assistance is necessary to enable these organizations experiment and implement partite plans. This is important, because the identification of existing difference can be accomplished here. Such scholars as Horowitz and Reilly appear to favor unusual institutions that operate in moderation. There are also a number of democracies in Africa for example who apart from being governed by one president over a long period of time, have also sought to embrace the policy of single-member regions (¹⁰). Even within a democratic country, we could have parties that are in support of the principle of a comprehensive please, even as other parties frown on this idea. Furthermore, history shows that with time, the strategic plans of parties get altered. In the same way, unsteady organizations may not enjoy transparency and enthusiasm in their daily operations, compared with their steady counterparts.

The role the dimension or size of team play in the assessment of members of a party actively involved in its activities requires to be emphasized. For example, it is far much easier for party applicants to endorse campaign pleas that are restrictive in nature if the party in question can manage its affairs unaided, as opposed to a smaller party that requires assistance to accomplish its operations.

Practical evidence from both the mayoral and congressional voting in the United States hint at a possible bias against party applicants on the basis of whether they are marginalized across the ethnic divide, or not. Even as applicants from large constituencies appear more inclined to favor ethnicity or race their counterparts from areas that are ethnically marginalized do not (¹¹). For example, we could have a candidate of White descent in an electoral district that is predominantly black. In a bid to avoid racism, such a candidate may opt to overlook race. On the other hand, if the same candidate was in a district that is highly inhabited by Whites, the support they get from the Black voters may not be decisive. In this case, such a candidate may opt to glorify the white race for example, and still not compromise his chances of winning an election. The issue of the impact that size has on regions that are politically divided across ethnic lines has also been explored by Dickson and Scheve. (¹²). Separately, Posner (⁴) illustrates how politicians are careful to avoid mobilize only those segments of a constituency that are large enough to have a real impact.The strategy that a party may adopt could also be determined by how powerful its current preferences are. For example, Rabushka and Shepsle (¹³⁾ are convinced that the demands of party voters coerce it to embrace positions that are extreme in nature.

In this case, the assumption of party candidates is that at all times voters shall be drawn to a candidate with whom they share the same ethnic background. The reasoning behind this is that the issue of patronage would take effect, resulting in a choice of a candidate of the same ethnic descent as the majority of the voters. Moreover, candidates who have a moderate stand in the existing party principles are more likely to less support from voters, in comparison with their counterparts who may opt to adopt an extreme stand. Likewise, Chua (¹⁴) is of the opinion that economic injustices are to blame for the voter mobilization exercise by parties who identify the existing animosity between for example, two separate political camps. Nonetheless, one cannot always predict with certainty how powerful the current preferences of a party are. This is because it is not always that parties seek to exploit existing hostility between groups as a conduit to mobilize voters. However, this does not mean that parties would be opposed to ethnic divisions when there is compelling evidence to indicate that such a division would act in favor of a party in question during an election (¹⁵). Time determines the preferences of a party while the relevancy of ethnicity may act as a hindrance to a party. What this means is that in the course of their existence, parties are duty-bound to alter their sizes, in line with their projected results. For example, in a case whereby the fundamental ethnic group of a party is more inclined towards exclusive policies.

In the event that the size of such a group is small when compared with similar groups, there is the likelihood that the party in question (¹⁶). Regarding the issue of mobilization, a lot of the related information in literature appears to view parties as entities that have been unified by common principles. As a result they endeavor to provide a similar and clear message that resonates across the various constituencies affiliated with the party in question. From a theoretical perspective, parties are regarded as teams consisting of politicians with a common goal. Hypothetically, parties are viewed as models that enable its members to assume their stand based on the existing principles. At the same time, such individual can also compare their opinions with those of their peers. However, the likelihood that the candidates of one party may interpret the intended message of the party to their constituents in diverse ways has also been considered, both at the national as well as the national level.

Integration of sustainable democracy

Questions arise on the way one can form a sustainable egalitarianism in severely divided societies. Such kinds of societies are mostly characterized by parties formed mainly around racial individuality or identities like Sri-Lanka, Bosnia and Northern Ireland, and are therefore susceptible to form common or general politics that recompense radical racial pleas as a foundation of voter militarization (¹⁷). This motivates zero amount of political character along racial scales, leading to the deterioration of democracy.

Regardless of the remarkable sector of scholarship concerning the constitutional structure and electoral designing for last several years, there has been astonishingly little interest offered to the techniques on how multi-ethnic parties need to be improved and maintained. This is regardless of some important current studies at forming extensive, cross-national parties in nations like Philippines, Nigeria, Indonesia and Kosovo. This studies or experiment have gotten little attention because of the division that is experienced in different societies (¹⁷).

Ethnic identities- in this case referring to a compartment of identity groups in which membership or relationship- is dependent on the features related to, or thought to be co-related with descent features. Ethnicity refers to an umbrella that readily houses different individuals who differ in race, religion, color and language (¹⁸). Therefore, ethnic identity and models associated with ethnic identity like ethnic riots, ethnic diversity, ethnic conflict, ethnic parties and ethnic violence among others either have no importance or they might have been made to look important by several preceding hypothetical effort on ethnic identity as an autonomous variable (¹⁹).

Several professionals on constitutional designing and divided societies generally accept that serious society divisions create a major predicament for democracy and as a result, it becomes harder to form and sustain democratic government in divided society, compared with standardized society. In addition, the challenge of racial and other serious divisions is bigger in nations that have not yet adopted democracy, or are entirely self-governing than in well-accomplished democracies within the 21^st century (²⁰).

Successes and failure of divided societies

Successful organization of self-governing government in the divided societies needs two major components. These component include; group or team independence and power division.

Power division indicates the contribution of representatives of all important corporate teams in political decision making, particularly at the higher or executive scale. On the other hand, team independence denotes that these teams have power to manage their own domestic issues or affairs, particularly in the fields of learning and ethnicity (²¹). Therefore, for a successful democratic government in divided societies, these two features (power sharing and teams independence) need to be implemented. This is because they are the main features of the type of democratic setting which is mostly defined as power division, democracy or constitutional democracy.

A group of professionals have evaluated the key responsibility of these two attributes and are sympathetic to their adoption by divided societies (²²). Power sharing as one of the attributes that has been used to govern divided societies has been implemented in several societies. For instance, the agreement on the significance of power sharing has been demonstrated by commentators’ responses to the formation of the Governing or leading Council in Iraq. This council has been condemned on different grounds, though there is no one who has queried its widely representative combination. In addition, the power of power division system has been verified by its regular realistic applications (²³). Long before professionals started evaluating the concept or model of power division democracy in the year 1960s, politicians and constitution scholars had engineered or formed power division resolutions for the predicaments or challenges of their divided societies. Some of the divided societies that shared a common institution included Netherlands, Canada, India and Switzerland, to name but a few. The outcome of these similar institution or feature of power sharing has similar outcome whereby the model or system of power sharing is criticized by several scholars saying that is not ideally democratic or effective way of governing divided societies (²⁴).

Though there have been several criticisms towards power sharing, there are few substitutes. For example, in the situation of Northern Ireland, collaboration without cooptation has been suggested. In addition, the alternative that was applied to the situation of the country of Iraq Governing Council was a Council made mostly and completely of reasonable associates of the Shiite bulk, with the excepted Kurds and Sunnis in disagreement (²⁵). This is a crude resolution to racial pressures and radicalism, and it is primitive to anticipate minorities criticized to everlasting antagonism to remain trustworthy, reasonable and productive (²⁶).

Divided Societies with a similar feature

Although the above alternatives were proposed as alternatives for power sharing, the only feature that has confirmed to be the best democratic system which can be implemented or adopted by the divided societies is power sharing model. More than adequate probable dilemmas and hindrances are already intrinsic in the deliberation of the several substitutions in power division.

Opposite to the argument that power sharing is a primitive system, the power division model implemented before the year 1960 by countries like Bosnia, South Africa, Northern Ireland, Belgium and Czechoslovakia, indicate huge difference (²⁷). For instance, extensive representation in the management has been attained by a lawful need that need to be made up of similar quantities of the two key ethno linguistic teams; by offering all parties with least amount of five proportion of the governmental seats the chance to be stood for in the cabinet.

Similarly, the most significant selection experienced by the constitution scholars is the governmental electoral structure, where the three major groups include; intermediate model, comparative representation and majoritarian model. Therefore, to ensure the election of a greatly representative legislature in divided societies, legislature ought to be the significant contemplation and the best way to do so is through the comparative representation. In addition, if any simplification on institutional structure is maintainable, it is because majoritarian models are advised wrongly for nations with serious ethnic or racial, spiritual, regional or other feeling and polarizing separations. Where cleavage teams are piercingly distinct and groups’ individuality or identities seriously understood, the superseding essential thing is to eliminate extensive and unclear segregation from authority of any important team (²⁸).

Similarly, the intermediate system can be categorized into; semi-relative models, mixed category and majoritarian models, which give definite representation to certain low-powered societies. Semi-relative models such as the restricted and collective vote and the solitary non-moveable vote might be in a position to produce nonage representation, though not as correctly and constantly as proportional representation. On the other hand, mixed models have resulted to being well-liked since the year 1990. For instance, some of the societies that implemented mixed systems include New Zealand and Germany and in such situations, the proportional representation at that time overcame the popularity of mixed models.

In case of divided societies with geologically intense communal teams or groups, a centralized model or setting is unquestionably an exceptional method to offer independent for these teams (²⁹). For parliamentally models, two governmental sections with similar or considerably similar, authority and various combinations is not a practical agreement. Normally, it is recommendable that the federation should be comparatively decentralized and that its element areas like provinces or states be relatively small in order to improve the future that each area will be relatively homogeneous and to eliminate dominance by large states on the federal scale. On the other hand, in case where in the divided societies, the corporate teams are not geologically intense, independence can also be organized on a non-territorial foundation (³⁰).

A resolution that has been utilized excellently Netherlands, India and Belgium is to offer educational sovereignty by providing similar state economic support to all institutions including the private schools as long as the required standards of education are obtained.

Conclusion

In conclusion, many professional on divided societies and governmental designing generally declare that serious society divisions create a major predicament for democracy, therefore making it hard to form and sustain democratic government within divided societies that homogeneous societies. Several questions are asked concerning the way political societies ought to react to the chances and predicaments expressed by racial, linguistic, ethnical variations and spiritual sectors and by these reactions, thereafter improve self-governing, permanence, social fairness and tranquility In addition, the successful and effective ways of forming a democratic government in divided societies is through the implementation of two major components; team independence and power division.

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Footnotes

1. Conner, Walker. A Nation is a Nation, Is a State, Is an Ethnic Group, Is a….” in Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding
2. Ra’anan, Uri. “The Nation-State Fallacy,” in Joseph Montville, ed., Conflict and Peacemaking in Multiethnic Societies
3. Oxford University and New York University of Law. Constitutionalism in divided societies. International Journal of Constitutional Law Advance Access originally published online on International. Journal of Constitutional Law.
4. Posner, Daniel. The Political Salience of Cultural Difference: Why Chewas and Tumbukas are Allies in Zambia and Adversaries in Malawi. American Political Science Review
5. Chandra, Kanchan. Ethnic Parties and Democratic Stability. Perspectives on Politics
6. Miller, Gary and Norman Schofield. Activists and Partisan Realignment in the United States. American Political Science Review
7. Wilkinson, Steven. Votes and Violence: Electoral Competition and Ethnic Riots in India.
8. Horowitz, Donald. Making Moderation Pay: The Comparative Politics of Ethnic Conflict Management. In Joseph Montville, ed., Conflict and Peacemaking in Multiethnic Societies. New York: Lexington Books
9. Reilly, Benjamin. Democracy in Divided Societies: Electoral Engineering for Conflict Management. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
10. Kuenzi, Michelle and Gina, Lambright. Party Systems and Democratic Consolidation in Africa’s Electoral Regimes. Party Politics.
11. Glaser, Edward. The Political Economy of Hatred. Quarterly Journal of Economics
12. Dickson, Eric and Kenneth Scheve. Social Identity, Political Speech, and Electoral Competition.
13. Rabushka, Alvin and Kenneth Shepsle. Politics in Plural Societies: A Theory of Democratic Instability
14.  Chua, Amy. World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability. New York: Doubleday. 2003.
15. Chandra, Kanchan. What Is Ethnic Identity And Does It Matter?
16. Segura, Gary and Rodrigues, Halen. Comparative Ethnic Politics in the United States: Beyond Black and White. Annual Review of Political Science. 2006.
17. United Nations University Centre. Political Parties in Divided Societies. Policy and Institutional Frameworks
18. Chandra, Kanchan. Forthcoming in the Annual Review of Political Science.
19. Fearon, James. Ethnic Structure and Cultural Diversity by Country” Journal of Economic Growth.
20. Fox, James and Sandler, Schaller. Separation of Religion and State in the Twenty-First Century: Comparing the Middle East and Western Democracies. Comparative Politics.
21. Geller, Ernest. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.1983.
22. Berkeley, Cherty. Power-Sharing in South Africa, Institute of International Studies, University of California. 1985.
23. Barry, Brian. The Consociational Model and Its Dangers. European Journal
24. Lijphart, Arend. Constitutional Design for Divided Societies. Journal of Democracy .
25. Smith, Anthony. The Ethnic Origins of Nations
26. Abbott, Andrew. Things of Boundaries, in: A. Abbott, Time Matters. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press
27. Anderson, Benedict .Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
28. Glickman, Harvey. Ethnicity, Elections, and Constitutional Democracy in Africa. In Timothy Sisk and Andrew Reynold
29. Tilly, Charles. National Self-Determination as a Problem for All of Us,Daedalus
30. Marx, Anthony. Faith in Nation: Exclusionary Origins of Nationalism