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It is not how many votes you get, but also where you get them. Territorial determinants and institutional hurdles for the success of ethnic minority parties in post-communist countries

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Abstract

Electoral rules have long been held as important for the success of new political parties, but research has neglected the dimension of territory in this equation. This article argues that the territorial structure of social groups, in interaction with the electoral system, makes a crucial difference for the ability of new parties to enter parliament. In district-based electoral systems, social groups that are highly concentrated face much lower hurdles with an own party than groups that are spread throughout the country. The argument is tested on a novel database on ethnic minority groups from post-communist countries in Europe, including 123 minorities in 19 countries. To test hypotheses with complex interaction effects and binary variables, Qualitative Comparative Analysis appears as the most suitable method. After controlling for size and special minority-relevant provisions in the electoral systems, there is strong confirmation for the hypothesised effect.

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Notes

  1. For instance Inglehart (1981), Kitschelt (1995), Ignazi (1996), Moraski and Loewenberg (1999), Meguid (2005), Minkenberg and Perrineau (2007) or Tronconi (2006).

  2. At the absence of malapportionment, the rate of voters per mandate should be approximately constant across all electoral districts.

  3. The study of African elections by Mozaffar et al (2003, pp. 386–387) shows that the investigation of joint effects of electoral systems and social cleavages merits deepening. Mozaffar and colleagues come, however, to a hard-to-explain positive impact of concentrated ethnic group if district magnitude is large (positive impact of the triple interaction variable magnitude*ethnic fractionalisation*concentration). This is contrary to their expectations, according to which for concentrated ethnic groups district magnitude should not matter. Mozaffar et al (2003, p. 386) argue that, ‘increased number of group cleavages encourages candidates to forge inter-group alliances to improve on their electoral gains’. It remains unclear why this should be less the case if district magnitude is large and groups are concentrated (as their results suggest). Brambor et al (2007) have refined the analysis, but their results – as the original analysis – still show in the opposite direction of common expectations.

  4. Ethnic minorities are numeric minorities in a country. Ethnicity refers here to the self-definition or social definition of social groups that are considered to have common characteristics, even if such characteristics are often socially constructed. Ethnic minority parties define themselves explicitly or implicitly as representatives of an ethnic group and their programme is focussed on a conservation or improvement of rights of their minority group; see Horowitz (1985, p. 291), including as well parties with a clear ethnic agenda.

  5. Only in two cases, the parliamentary representation of ethnic minorities has changed after the mid-1990s in a major way. One case is Serbia, where ethnic minority parties were increasingly represented starting with the 2007 national parliamentary elections, after the 5 per cent national threshold has been abolished for minority parties. The other case is Estonia, with parties of the Russian-speaking minorities gaining seats in 1995 and 1999, before they were challenged by the Centre Party's appeal to minorities, split, and became marginal after losing parliamentary representation in 2003.

  6. Probabilistic methods of analysis hardly yield any results at standard levels of statistical significance, as the number of cases is too small for the fairly complex form of the hypothesised interaction terms, especially since outcomes can only be measured dichotomously.

  7. Especially in Serbia and in Macedonia, ethnic minority parties often join the electoral lists of non-ethnic parties, in order to circumvent restrictive electoral rules. Such minority parties do not have the same autonomy and independence as parties with their own list, and are not identifiable separately on the ballot. This is well-illustrated by a case from Serbia, in 2005, when the non-ethnic Democratic Party (DS) attempted to headlock its small electoral partner, the Bosniak minority's ‘Lista za Sandžak’, when the minority party wanted to enter government (while DS stayed in opposition). As a lack of their own electoral list, they entirely depended on the DS to replace their MPs.

  8. In mixed electoral systems, voting behaviour and strategic choices of political parties are often influenced both by PR rules and by the single-seat districts simultaneously (Cox and Schoppa, 2002; Ferrara et al, 2005). However, the necessary conditions on which this study focuses rely heavily on the mechanical effect of electoral systems. In this regard, each part of mixed electoral systems works independently, and this is reflected by the operationalisation of this study. In Albania, 40 (out of 140) PR seats are allocated in order to provide overall proportionality of votes and seats (cf. Massicotte and Blais, 1999), with a 2.5 per cent legal threshold. There, I treat the 100 majoritarian seats as in other mixed electoral systems, while the compensatory PR tier is treated as a 140-seats district with a 2.5 per cent threshold.

  9. Legislation in Albania and in Bulgaria bans political parties founded on ethnic grounds (Juberías, 2000; Cesid, 2002). Nevertheless, one important minority party in each of both countries has been tolerated all over the post-communist period under non-ethnic label, the parties of Turks in Bulgaria (‘Movement of Rights and Freedom’) and of Greeks in Albania (‘Human Rights Union Party’).

  10. Parties of the following minorities ran in elections, but did not enter parliament: Roma in Bulgaria and in Hungary; Bosniaks in Montenegro; Moravians in the Czech Republic; Russians in Estonia, Moldova and Ukraine; Serbs and Turks in Macedonia. In three cases (Bosniaks in Montenegro, Russians in Estonia, Russians in Ukraine), the conditions would have been fulfilled, according to my hypotheses, to enter parliament, but the parties could not rely on a sufficiently united electorate of the ethnic minority. In the six other cases, the electoral system is too restrictive.

  11. The analysis is carried out with the software Tosmana, which allows the user to find parsimonious terms. Positive and contradictory outcomes are merged, as the hypothesis suggests only necessary, but no sufficient conditions.

  12. Logical remainders might include configurations that were not expected to belong to the hypothesised solution, and result in a formula that seemingly contradicts the hypotheses, bare any empirical proof and based solely on an artificial attribution of counterfactuals. A formula with an extensive use of logical remainders is presented in the online Appendix C.

  13. The Polish minority in Lithuania is heavily concentrated – mainly in the areas surrounding Vilnius – and they are a clear majority in two (out of 71) single-seat districts, where most of the Lithuanian Poles live. The Russian minority, which is larger in numbers, is more spread, so that a Russian minority party would lose in nearly all single-seat districts, and remain heavily underrepresented.

  14. The group that arguably suffers most under its territorial spread is Roma and Ashkali minorities. Alternative explanations put forward that Roma and Ashkali lacked effective political organisations (Sobotka, 2001; Alionescu, 2004, p. 62). Others, however, stress that attempts to organise the Roma minority has been substantially supported by the international community (Barany, 2005, p. 83). Roma or Ashkali parties only succeed, where profit from special electoral rules, either special PR quotas (Kosovo), reserved ethnic minority seats and an exception from the national legal threshold (Romania), or a lowered electoral threshold for ethnic minorities (Serbia). In Macedonia, a Roma party has in certain elections had access to parliament in an electoral alliance with a mainstream party.

  15. In Lithuania, the Labour party addresses many ethnic Russian voters. In earlier elections, Russian parties formed coalitions with non-ethnically defined parties (Jurkynas, 2005, pp. 775–776). Besides a mixed-ethnic party or mixed-ethnic coalitions, there is not a lot of space to form a Russian minority party. In Estonia, Russians have recently voted heavily for the mixed-ethnic Centre party and votes of the remaining Russian speakers were split on several smaller parties (Mikkel, 2006). In Ukraine, several overlapping conflicts heavily correlate with the conflict between Russians and Ukrainians (Birch, 2000). Bosniaks in Montenegro used to have their own party in parliament until 1998 (Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 1998, p. 7), but voted mostly for non-ethnically defined parties thereafter.

  16. For other questions, such as the number of seats that a minority party wins in parliament in single-seat district systems, or the degree to which minority views are affecting policy outcomes, local concentration might also work at the group's disadvantage. See King (1990) for partisan biases arising from local concentration, and Cameron et al (1996) for policy consequences.

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Alex Fischer, Simon Hug, Pascal Sciarini, Carsten Schneider, the journal editors and two anonymous reviewers, for their helpful comments. An earlier version of this article was presented at the SSEES Postgraduate conference London, February 2006.

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Bochsler, D. It is not how many votes you get, but also where you get them. Territorial determinants and institutional hurdles for the success of ethnic minority parties in post-communist countries. Acta Polit 46, 217–238 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1057/ap.2010.26

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