Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Ethnic Party Bans And Civil Unrest: A Measurement Modeling Approach To Predicting Effects Of Constitutional Engineering, Kelly Gleason

Theses and Dissertations

Political representation through exclusively ethnic parties has long been thought to create, or enforce, social cleavages leading to conflict. To gain support and mobilize ethnic constituents, ethnic party leadership has incentive to exaggerate differences between, or even antagonize, members of other ethnic groups through the process of ethnic outbidding. Classic political theory cautions that the exclusive nature of ethnic parties can also produce a dangerous zero sum game between ethnic groups that cannot be solved by compromise via democratic institutions. Several institutional solutions have been proposed to counter the problem of instability ethnic divisions create for new democracies, encountering varying …