Suchergebnisse

Does power-sharing reduce or increase ethnic salience? Drawing on social psychology, I identify two countervailing mechanisms that help reconcile previously opposed findings. First, prolonged power-sharing practices attenuate between-group inequalities. Thereby, they gradually reduce the usefulness of ethnic identities as 'rules of thumb' and decrease their salience. Second, extended periods during which individuals live under ethnically differentiated power-sharing institutions render ethnic identities more accessible and thereby increase their salience. To test these expectations, I rely on the most extensive collection of mass surveys used in the empirical literature on ethnic salience so far, encompassing more than 900,000 respondents from a total of 132 countries. I show that power-sharing affects individuals' self-identification and vote intentions in accordance with my arguments. As my findings are based on specifications that incorporate fixed effects at the group- and group-year levels, they are unlikely to be endogenous to the provision of power-sharing to groups whose identities are most salient in the first place. My findings have important implications for efforts to institutionalize peace in divided societies and for the literature on ethnic conflict.

To safeguard peace in multi-ethnic countries, scholars and practitioners recommend territorial autonomy. However, there is limited cross-national research on how autonomy affects subnational ethnic conflict, and increasing concern that it redirects ethnic violence from the national to the subnational level. Addressing this gap, I argue that autonomy generates tensions over subnational government control and the distribution of local economic goods. However, whether these turn violent depends on ethnic representation in the central government. If groups are unequally represented, violent escalation is more likely due to information and commitment problems and subnational majoritarianism. To test these arguments, I provide new time-variant data on subnational boundaries, territorial autonomy, and ethnically attributed violence. I conduct a systematic analysis of all multi-ethnic countries between 1989 and 2019, instrumental variable analyses, and tests of my argument's intermediate implications. My findings underline the importance of complementing autonomy with inclusive central governments to attenuate the risks of subnational violence.

Extant evidence suggests that power-sharing reduces the participation of minorities in civil conflict by alleviating their grievances. Yet, it remains unclear how and to what degree power-sharing should be institutionalized. Moreover, direct attitudinal evidence for the grievance mechanism remains rare. Addressing these gaps, I argue that corporate power-sharing which is constitutionally-enshrined and explicitly recognizes minorities most strongly alleviates their grievances. However, it simultaneously accentuates the importance of relative inter-group comparisons. This means that minorities with a lower relative degree of corporate power-sharing than their 'peers' in the same country and transnational kin population should have higher grievances, irrespective of its absolute level. Using an extensive combination of mass survey data, I test my expectations in a series of hierarchical multi-level models. By highlighting the importance of institutional design, my results have significant implications for policy in multi-ethnic societies and for the scholarly literature on accommodation and grievances more generally.

Extant evidence suggests that power-sharing reduces the participation of minorities in civil conflict by alleviating their grievances. Yet, it remains unclear how and to what degree power-sharing should be institutionalized. Moreover, direct attitudinal evidence for the grievance mechanism remains rare. Addressing these gaps, I argue that corporate power-sharing which is constitutionally-enshrined and explicitly recognizes minorities most strongly alleviates their grievances. However, it simultaneously accentuates the importance of relative inter-group comparisons. This means that minorities with a lower relative degree of corporate power-sharing than their 'peers' in the same country and transnational kin population should have higher grievances, irrespective of its absolute level. Using an extensive combination of mass survey data, I test my expectations in a series of hierarchical multi-level models. By highlighting the importance of institutional design, my results have significant implications for policy in multi-ethnic societies and for the scholarly literature on accommodation and grievances more generally.

Ethnic power-sharing has been accused of decreasing ethnic inequality in unequal ways: while benefitting larger ethnic minorities, it often tends to overlook the smallest groups. Paradoxically, ethnic micro-minorities may thus find themselves in even more marginalised positions in power-sharing regimes than under institutional settings lacking any mandated inclusion. This article tests for the existence of this exclusion-amid-inclusion dilemma using a new group-based dataset that distinguishes between different types of power-sharing. The findings indicate that this dilemma indeed exists for ethnically based, but not for more liberal types of power-sharing, which increase all minorities' political status in an equal, albeit less strong, manner. The article concludes that adopting one form of power-sharing or the other means not only prioritising one form of equality over another, but also making a decision with severe political ramifications for the numerically most vulnerable ethnic minority communities.

This article evaluates how territorial autonomy affects ethnic mobilization and conflict during regime transitions. Previous research has highlighted its conflict-inducing role during prominent transition contexts. Alternatively, it has shown its pacifying role in the "average" case, without distinguishing transition periods from stable contexts. Addressing these gaps, we argue that the de-escalatory consequences of autonomy depend on critical stabilizing factors which are themselves "muted" during transitions. We test our expectations in a cross-national analysis, covering all regime transitions between 1946 and 2017. We also revisit the 1989 transition from Communism, focusing on the role of "inherited" autonomy in the post-communist successor states. This enables us to address concerns whereby autonomy is offered to ward off transitions or whereby transitions are themselves induced by mobilization. Our findings indicate that during transitions, territorial autonomy increases the likelihood of ethnic mobilization, government concessions in response, and violent escalation where these are not forthcoming.

Extant research highlights low or unequal access of ethnic groups to socio-economic resources as a driver of communal violence. However, less is known about how institutional factors, such as control over ethnofederal units, influence the distribution of these resources in the first place. Conversely, the literature on ethnofederalism has focused on conflicts that involve the central government, while neglecting its unintended consequences at the subnational level. Building on both literatures, we argue that ethnofederalism increases the risk of communal violence between locally dominant and non-dominant groups through two mechanisms. First, it increases grievances among locally non-dominant groups. Second, it increases the utility of coercive strategies for locally dominant groups. Through both processes, ethnofederalism creates incentives for group elites to use communal violence in order to attain or maintain control over local government office. We test our argument in a subnational analysis of Ethiopia's ethnofederal system, combining new spatial data on local demographics, government control, and horizontal inequalities. We further substantiate our analysis with quantitative tests of the mechanisms' intermediate implications and with original interview data gathered during fieldwork. Our results highlight the importance of accounting for institutional factors in the comparative study of communal violence.

Extant research highlights low or unequal access of ethnic groups to socio-economic resources as a driver of communal violence. However, less is known about how institutional factors, such as control over ethnofederal units, influence the distribution of these resources in the first place. Conversely, the literature on ethnofederalism has focused on conflicts that involve the central government, while neglecting its unintended consequences at the subnational level. Building on both literatures, we argue that ethnofederalism increases the risk of communal violence between locally dominant and non-dominant groups through two mechanisms. First, it increases grievances among locally non-dominant groups. Second, it increases the utility of coercive strategies for locally dominant groups. Through both processes, ethnofederalism creates incentives for group elites to use communal violence in order to attain or maintain control over local government office. We test our argument in a subnational analysis of Ethiopia's ethnofederal system, combining new spatial data on local demographics, government control, and horizontal inequalities. We further substantiate our analysis with quantitative tests of the mechanisms' intermediate implications and with original interview data gathered during fieldwork. Our results highlight the importance of accounting for institutional factors in the comparative study of communal violence.

Lijphart's claim that power-sharing spurs democratization in divided societies has strongly influenced 'institutional engineering' and is widely accepted among scholars despite the fact that empirical tests of its merits remain rare. This article revisits the democratic effect of power-sharing, arguing that it has two antagonist faces. On the positive side, it provides guarantees of inclusion to political elites, allowing them to commit to democratic rules. On the negative side, it also has an illiberal face, entailing limits on competition and individual rights. In this article, these contrary characteristics are traced back to two institutional types of power-sharing: a more flexible and open, liberal, type and a more rigid, corporate one. Using a novel dataset on power-sharing rules for 138 multi-ethnic countries and the period from 1945 to 2016, their respective democratic merits are tested. Conforming to theoretical expectations, the findings indicate that only liberal forms of power-sharing exhibit strong positive effects on democracy while corporate forms exert mixed or even negative ones. These findings are robust to a series of alternate model specifications and operationalizations as well as to instrumental variable approaches. In conclusion, the article indicates only a partial democratic effect of power-sharing, limited to its liberal subtype.

Lijphart's claim that power-sharing spurs democratization in divided societies has strongly influenced 'institutional engineering' and is widely accepted among scholars despite the fact that empirical tests of its merits remain rare. This article revisits the democratic effect of power-sharing, arguing that it has two antagonist faces. On the positive side, it provides guarantees of inclusion to political elites, allowing them to commit to democratic rules. On the negative side, it also has an illiberal face, entailing limits on competition and individual rights. In this article, these contrary characteristics are traced back to two institutional types of power-sharing: a more flexible and open, liberal, type and a more rigid, corporate one. Using a novel dataset on power-sharing rules for 138 multi-ethnic countries and the period from 1945 to 2016, their respective democratic merits are tested. Conforming to theoretical expectations, the findings indicate that only liberal forms of power-sharing exhibit strong positive effects on democracy while corporate forms exert mixed or even negative ones. These findings are robust to a series of alternate model specifications and operationalizations as well as to instrumental variable approaches. In conclusion, the article indicates only a partial democratic effect of power-sharing, limited to its liberal subtype.

Mounting evidence indicates that power-sharing supports transitions to democracy. However, the resulting quality of democracy remains understudied. Given the increasing global spread of power-sharing, this is a crucial oversight, as prominent critiques accuse it of a number of critical deficiencies. The present article advances this literature in two ways. First, it offers a comprehensive discussion of how power-sharing affects the quality of democracy, going beyond specific individual aspects of democracy. It argues that power-sharing advances some of these aspects while having drawbacks for others. Second, it offers the first systematic, large-N analysis of the frequently discussed consequences of power-sharing for the quality of democracy. It relies on a dataset measuring the quality of democracy in 70 countries worldwide, combining it with new fine-grained data for institutional power-sharing. The results indicate that power-sharing is a complex institutional model which privileges a particular set of democratic actors and processes, while deemphasizing others. ; ISSN:1755-7739 ; ISSN:1755-7747