The ethnocracy trap

Journal of Democracy

Volumn 23, Issue 4, 2012, Pages 155-169

  Howard, Lise Morjé ^a  

^a GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84871586364     PISSN: 10455736     EISSN: 10863214     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jod.2012.0068     Document Type: Note

References (46)

1. Eric Schmitt and Helene Cooper, "U.S. Focuses on Efforts to Topple Assad Government," International Herald Tribune, 23 July 2012.
2. Ethnicity here is defined broadly, as is customary in the sociological and comparative- politics literature, as deriving from such categories as language, religion, race, and common culture.
3. Liberal democracies have not been free of unjust discrimination, but their larger story has been one of widening inclusion, with a basis in the logic of liberal principles built into political institutions. In the United States, some policies such as affirmative action appear to favor group rights over those of the individual, but the policies' flexibility and institutionalized commitments to individual rights generally preclude the encroachment of ethnocracy
4. Belgium's 2010 Polity IV score is 8 (decreased in 2007 from the highest score of 10). Freedom House rates it as "Free," with scores for 2011 of 1 (the freest possible) for both civil liberties and political rights
5. Liesbet Hooghe, "Belgium: Hollowing the Center," in Ugo Amoretti and Nancy Bermeo, eds., Federalism and Territorial Cleavages (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).
6. Britt Cartrite, "Contemporary Ethnopolitical Identity and the Future of the Belgian State," Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 8 (Autumn 2002): 43-71
7. John Fitzmaurice, The Politics of Belgium: A Unique Federalism (London: Hurst, 1996);
8. Dirk Jacobs, "Becoming Part of a Disintegrating Nation-State," working paper, December 2011.
9. Ulrich Schneckener, "Making Power-Sharing Work," Journal of Peace Research 39 (March 2002): 206.
10. Oren Yiftachel, Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).
11. Sammy Smooha, "Types of Democracy and Modes of Conflict Management in Ethnically Divided Societies," Nations and Nationalism 8 (October 2002): 423-31.
12. Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985),
13. Ali Mazrui, Soldiers and Kinsmen in Uganda: The Making of a Military Ethnocracy (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1975).
14. David Collier and Steven Levitsky, "Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Research," World Politics 49 (April 1997): 430-451.
15. Note that consociational democracy is already a diminished subtype of democracy.
16. Arend Lijphart, "Consociational Democracy," World Politics 21 (January 1969): 216.
17. Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 1.
18. Arend Lijphart, The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968).
19. Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies.
20. Matthijs Bogaards, "The Uneasy Relationship between Empirical and Normative Types in Consociational Theory," Journal of Theoretical Politics 12 (October 2000). 395-423.
21. Ian Lustick, "Stability in Deeply Divided Societies: Consociationalism vs. Control," World Politics 31 (April 1979): 325-344.
22. Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies, 24.
23. Rogers Brubaker, Ethnicity Without Groups (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 3.
24. Arend Lijphart, "Consociational Democracy," 212.
25. D. Sisk, Power Sharing and International Mediation in Ethnic Conflicts (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 1996).
26. Philip G. Roeder and Donald Rothchild, eds. Sustainable Peace: Power and Democracy After Civil Wars (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005)
27. Rupert Taylor, ed., Consociational Theory: McGarry and O'Leary and the Northern Ireland Conflict (London: Routledge, 2009).
28. Caroline A. Hartzell and Matthew Hoddie, Crafting Peace: Power-Sharing Institutions and the Negotiated Settlement of Civil Wars (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007).
29. Joseph Rothschild, Ethnopolitics: A Conceptual Framework (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981).
30. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict.
31. Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).
32. Arend Lijphart, "Constitutional Design for Divided Societies," Journal of Democracy 15 (April 2004): 96-109.
33. Richard Hrair Dekmejian, "One Nation, Loosely United," New York Times, 18 December 2001.
34. Robert D. Blackwill, "A De Facto Partition for Afghanistan," Politico, 7 July 2010.
35. Anne-Lucie Chaigne-Oudin, La France et les rivalités occidentales au levant: Syrie-Liban, 1918-1939 (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2006).
36. Robin Wilson, The Northern Ireland Experience of Conflict and Agreement: A Model for Export? (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010).
37. Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone (New York: Vintage, 2006): 322-323.
38. Wilson, Northern Ireland Experience, 135.
39. Giovanni Sartori, "Political Development and Political Engineering," Public Policy 17 (1968): 273.
40. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict.
41. Sisk, Power-Sharing
42. Benjamin Reilly, Democracy in Divided Societies: Electoral Engineering for Conflict Management (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
43. Babak Dehghanpisheh, "Rebirth of a Nation," Newsweek, 25 February 2010, available at www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/02/25/rebirth-of-anation.html.
44. This is not to argue, of course, that Iraq is out of the ethnocratic woods, but that shifts toward flexibility are possible.
45. Brubaker, Ethnicity Without Groups, 16.
46. Author's interview with Damir Arnaut, ambassador of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Australia and New Zealand, Washington, D.C., 2 October 2009.