Suchergebnisse

AbstractEthnic diversity is considered detrimental to national unity, especially if ethnicity is politically mobilized: Ethnic parties in electoral competition in particular are thought to increase the salience of ethnic differences and, with it, ethnic tensions. Yet the individual links of this psychological chain have only been examined cross‐sectionally, and never together. This article employs original longitudinal survey data to simultaneously assess changes in ingroup identification, outgroup aversion, and national identification over the election period within one diverse society: Romania. While ingroup identification does increase, ethnic relations do not worsen. On the contrary, outgroup aversion decreases while national identification increases, for minority and majority Romanian citizens alike. I explain these findings with the common ingroup identity model from social psychology: Elections in ethnically diverse societies may not only increase the salience of ethnic groups but also that of the superordinate, national identity. The findings question the often assumed automaticity of intergroup threat.

AbstractResearch on the effects of ethnic politics abounds, but much less attention has been paid to where and why ethnic parties form. This article tests the explanatory power of rational‐choice and social‐movement informed approaches to ethnic party formation that, it argues, differ in their assumptions about the location of agency (elite vs. grassroots) and motives for party formation (office‐ vs. policy‐seeking). The assumptions are tested through an analysis of original data on party registration and socio‐economic factors in 327 Bolivian municipalities during the 2004 local elections. The elections took place under new electoral rules during a period of political restructuring, allowing an analysis of party entry decisions per se. Through a series of logistic regression models and various robustness checks, this article finds that social‐movement approaches are better able to explain ethnic party formation, and in particular that grievances over political maladministration and socio‐economic inequalities drive ethnic party formation.

The consequences of marginalized ethnic group emancipation for historically privileged groups are rarely examined, despite assertions that the disruption of traditional power balances leads to backlash. This article addresses identity change in a 'most probable case' of intergroup threat, examining reactions to indigenous empowerment in Bolivia. After translating theory on identity change into testable implications, it explores meso-level rhetoric of the Santa Cruz Autonomy movement through diverse sources and micro-level identification through time-series survey data. It finds evidence for the constructionist power of discourse: its ability to create societal consensus on collective identity in a relatively short time span.

Ethnic diversity is often seen to be detrimental to peace and stability, particularly if ethnicity is the basis for political mobilization. Mobilization is assumed to increase the salience of ethnicity, and with it in-group cohesion, out-group animosity, and national instability; yet the mechanisms have rarely been studied empirically. This article argues that we need to study ethnicity as the outcome of political processes, focus on the attitudinal mechanisms underlying ethnic relation; and examine this phenomenon at the individual level. To this end, the article first disaggregates the term "ethnicity" into attributes, meanings, and actions. Referring to constructivism, it then argues that political science should focus on meanings. Building on the theory and findings of social psychology, this paper shows that political science must distinguish analytically between meanings regarding different in- and out-group processes. Doing so can help advance the study of ethnic relations and conflict-management practices.

Establishing electoral legitimacy across the population is vital for democratic stability, yet in contrast to other measures of political support, perceived electoral fairness has received scant scholarly attention. Moreover, while research into other measures of political support has shown that they differ by both ethnicity and socio-economic status, no study examines both at once, potentially overlooking important interrelationships between the two variables. This paper combines data from the Ethnic Power Relations project and the World Value Survey to examine respondents' perceptions of electoral fairness according to their ethnic group's access to power, their individual socio-economic status, and the intersection of these two. It finds that one's ethnic group's political status does affect perceived fairness, but that the effect interacts strongly with one's socio-economic status. Poorer members of non-represented ethnic groups have significantly lower perceptions of fairness, while richer members' perceptions do not differ from those of represented groups. The results suggest a levelling effect of socio-economic status on ethnic inequalities.

AbstractStudies of public contentious action in response to mineral resource extraction have rarely employed quantitative methods. In a highly disaggregated statistical analysis we examine local protest dynamics in Bolivia and argue for a political conditioning of the so-called resource curse. We find that mineral gas resources spark disputes over both extraction and rent redistribution at the local level, and that this relationship is especially pronounced where the population has highly heterogenous political values and interests. In contrast, where the population is relatively united in their political views, significantly fewer protests occur.

The legitimacy of the electoral process is crucial for the consolidation of democracy. We here focus on individual perceptions of electoral integrity (IPEI) and seek to understand what factors can explain different degrees of IPEI. In particular, we use the sixth wave of the World Values Survey (2010–14) to examine how antiauthoritarian values affect individuals' directional bias, driven by political party support, in evaluating electoral integrity. The results show that IPEI do depend on an interaction of political party support and the strength of antiauthoritarian values. However, the addition of the latter does not lead to a convergence of integrity evaluations among winners and losers, as may be expected under the assumption that antiauthoritarian values drive voters to more carefully monitor and evaluate the electoral process. Instead, it leads to greater polarization between electoral winners and losers. We explain the result with reference to the motivated reasoning literature on biased information processing: While antiauthoritarian convictions lead people to obtain more information on the electoral process, their political leanings bias their reading of this information, which in effect leads to stronger polarization in perceptions.