Consociationalism vs Centripetalism | Ethnic Conflict Lecture 7

[00:00:01]All right, everyone. Welcome back. This will be uh lecture seven. Uh so this will be the the start of the final unit. I want to take a minute to talk about the papers this week. Some of them were great. Uh some of you did the readings and listened to the lectures.

[00:00:19]Uh, I have a I have a um I don't know an idea that many of you instead of doing the readings and watching the lectures just put the prompt into an AI and the AI dumped out all kinds of false crap uh on other papers that we didn't cover in this class that weren't about the topic of this class um that were about uh a Firon and Leighton paper that was about um the strategic calculations of rebel leaders when uh the domestic system starts to collapse and what can uh increase and decrease the likelihood of rebellion right that's not what we talked about in this class and that's not the paper that I assigned in this class and it's not the lecture um the other paper the varsity paper um most of you wrote about a a different paper about communal ties [Music] um you know communal norms again that is not the paper that we covered and it is not what we talked about in the lectures um so I don't know where that came from other than maybe like a whole bunch of you just stuck the prompt into an AI and the AI fed you garbage uh and that's the problem with AI and I hope that you take this as a lesson because If that happens and you're your job or something, you might get fired for that kind of thing.

[00:01:53]So, if you do not have the context to understand what the AI is telling you, then it is all but useless and it can get you into serious trouble.

[00:02:04]Uh so, I hope many of you take this as as a bit of a lesson. All right. Uh paper seven, we're going to be talking about consociationalism versus centripalism.

[00:02:15]Um so there are two different ideas on how to uh build institutions right uh these institutions include uh maybe the legislature, the judicial branch, the executive branch and who gets like um agency or bureaucracy leadership positions. Um it might mean how is your electoral system set up? Uh do you have federalism? Like say if you're like a territorial minority. um are you allowed to sort of create some of your own rules through federalism or do you have like a unitary system? Uh all of these different ways of structuring institutions, right? And there are sort of two different strains of thought on this. The first is called consociationalism. We've talked a little bit about this. This is the literature that uh for the most part comes from Donald Horowitz. Um it, you know, it's it's been the basis of his entire career. Basically saying that, you know, you should try to build um inclusive institutions that account for ethnicity um and reduce grievances by allowing things like representation, federalism, um you know, the the these sorts of institutional constructs, right?

[00:03:34]guarantees for minority representation in legislature and the judicial branch and in you know um bureaucratic positions whatever it might be. On the other hand you have centrialism. They say look uh that's a that's a scary game to play right.

[00:03:50]Um yes we do need to respect ethnicity but building ethnicity into the institutions can go ary right as we've seen uh in places like Yugoslavia right um uh or Bosnian heritage um uh as we've also seen uh in places like uh where they they institutionalized um ethnicity in places like Rwanda, right and and sort of kind of what we're seeing in places like India right now.

[00:04:25]Um, so yeah, it's a it's a it's an interesting argument about like do we uh respect ethnicity as an institution or do we try to crossbuild institutions um for things like class or um I don't know religion or you know different things than ethnicity, right?

[00:04:50]um and and can we get you to say vote for an overarching party rather than an ethnic party? That's the centripal side of this argument, right? And uh anyone who's interested in this sort of ethnic conflict stuff, this ethnicity literature, um what are like the what you know the next paper we're going to be talking about is like what are the consequences of diversity on an economy?

[00:05:16]um all of this stuff that uh sort of revolves around ethnicity, ethnic conflict, um conflict mitigation, whatever it might be. The Swiss Political Science Review is very focused on this sort of literature, right? So, it's it's very uh it's a very high level um uh publication, but it is also highly focused on this sort of ethnic uh stuff, right? Okay. So Bogard's um kind of you know I don't know that he really makes an argument one way or another about what is better consociationalism or centrialism.

[00:05:51]uh but he is introducing this argument about um look these don't these two ideas don't have to necessarily be uh combative right like we can take pieces of consociational literature and pieces of centripalism and sort of meld them together for an even better institutions right so it's a it's a really interesting piece I also you know my focus has in my career And in my graduate school training was in statistics, right? Uh and so we do a lot of sort of um statistical analyses which are called quantitative and then we do a lot of that sort of um game theory stuff, rational choice, etc. Right? Um but this paper is a really good um a really good example of what we call qualitative research, right? or what is often referred to in the literature as quote thick description, right? And so it's not based on it's not based on statistical testing. Um and you know maybe we can take some of these arguments and test them in other papers or whatever. Uh instead what it does is it just sort of really tries to contextualize the institutions and their effects um through research and description.

[00:07:17]um so that we can just sort of talk about how this works and how these institutions play out and then someone else maybe can test them in the future.

[00:07:26]Right? So this is the thick description proto uh approach or the qualitative approach. Okay. So as we were talking about earlier, this is the intro. Um consociationalism is an institutional theory of power sharing right and mutual respect. Uh, and it's largely based on the works of Horowitz and Donald Leart, Donald Horowitz and Erand Lieart, excuse me. And they say here that, you know, consociationalism advocates for a package of proportionality, right? So, a proportional electoral systems, a grand coalition of communal leaders, right? So everyone gets access to um the maybe the executive branch, maybe we have like power sharing or uh like I was talking about earlier guarantees as a bureaucratic leader or something of that sort. Uh group autonomy, right? So this would be the the federalism piece of it.

[00:08:32]Um and then mutual vetos to protect vital interests.

[00:08:37]The underlying philosophy is one of inclusion, representation and power sharing. And they generally point towards places like Belgium as a good example. Belgium is highly ethnically divided uh between between the sort of French, the Dutch and the German. Um and yet uh because of their institutional structure um there there hasn't been much ethnic conflict, right? they're able to hash that stuff out uh inside of the institutions that exist rather than through violence, right? Um okay, then we move toward centrialism, right? Um oh, I'm sorry.

[00:09:17]This is Horowits. Uh consciism is lifeart centrial centripalism is Horowits. I mixed that up. I I apologize.

[00:09:27]Um Horowit says that yeah like um respect and mutual um institutionalization and and things like proportional representation can be good but uh it can also be very troubling right like if you have a PR system and um let's say you live in a place like India um which has a SM SMD system. So this is hypothetical. Uh and where you know say 75 to 80% of the population is is Hindu where does that leave the Muslims right? Um and sure if you guarantee you know administrative positions and all of these things like yes you will reduce conflict through consociationalism potentially but there's also you're sort of leaving the ethnic problem just simmering on the stove right you're you're almost in a sense um ensuring that your society is based on ethnic tensions rather than say capital tensions environment mental tensions um these sorts of things right uh and so you know liart says we what we need is crosscutting cleavages right where I don't see the entire world through a costbenefit analysis of my ethnic group and and where we are relative to you in the society um I need I what we need is crosscutting cleavages so that not only Muslims but also Hindus and Sikhs and etc. vote for this overarching umbrella party that has its own say left or right-wing philosophy instead of an ethnic party, right? Um and they say uh he says quote um centrialists advocate institutions that provide incentives for the electoral success of cross and multithnic parties and candidates. The aim is to change the nature of ethnic politics by encouraging moderation.

[00:11:41]Right? And the main point that they make here is quote, it would be wrong to conclude that consociationalism and centrialism are incompatible. Okay. Section two, centrialism and consociationalism. Um, markers of a consociational government. So like what what does a consociational government look like? We've talked a little bit about it, but a you have a grand co a grand coalition governing, right? So, you probably have a PR system. You probably have to build a coalition after the elections uh as in most of Europe, right? Not like the US where we only have two parties. One always comes out on top, right? Instead, you might have seven parties and three or four might have to come together to make a coalition government that includes a majority, right? You also probably have proportionality in electoral systems, right? You probably have a PR type of election system. Um, this can look like a lot of different things. It might be a party list system. It might be the alternative vote system. It might just be a straight PR. Um, you know, we'll talk about sort of how that plays out. Um, and this allows for a division of offices and resources, right? Okay.

[00:13:03]C, you have segmental autonomy. So, this generally means you have federalism. Um, um, it doesn't have to be federalism.

[00:13:13]Um, but that's usually what they're discussing. And if it's not federalism, then maybe you have some sort of like um you have some sort of like I don't know ethnic autonomy, right? Like look at Native Americans in the United States or the French in Canada. Um or oftentimes historically Jews in Europe sort of had their own their own judicial system, their own sort of territorial autonomy.

[00:13:45]Um yeah, so think of it that way. Even if it's explicitly a federal system where you have like subunits, right? Um there may be some sense of federalism through power sharing or autonomy, whatever. Um uh okay, D, mutual vetos.

[00:14:04]They talked about that earlier and this is just the idea that like if something is clearly just against your group, then your group has the right to just veto the legislation, right? and and then we'll have to come back to the drawing board in some sense and come up with some semblance of a compromise.

[00:14:24]Right? And some examples of these consociational states are Belgium, Austria, Netherlands, Switzerland. You know, there's a problem in the literature also in that many of these consociational states are also rich Euro states, right? And so does the um just sort of general richness of the population reduce the need for conflict, right? And so is it consociationalism reducing conflict in Europe or is it that they're wealthy?

[00:15:01]Right? And so this is something that we're still sort of trying to tease out, right? Because we know from reading the other literature about the security dilemma anarchy situation and fear on enlightened wrong paper that many of you wrote about that talks about the um the the access to the potential for benefits of conflict when the state collapses. Right? And so just the fact that there's an a very very strong and wealthy and um sort of strong safety net um system in Europe suggest that it might not just be the institutions. Right? All right enough of that. Okay. Uh what are the markers of centrialism? All right. First they say it is associated with institutions that encourage vote pooling, right? And so this would be like a a a party kind of ticket where like you have to cast your vote for a party rather than an individual, right?

[00:16:17]So you may not be able to tell what their ethnicity is. Uh and then the party controls who uh represents them when the vote tallies are are sort of proportioned, right? Um and this is something that they kind of used in like Ireland uh post um troubles right and they say quote in direct opposition to consociational recommendations centrialists maintain that the best way to manage democracy in divided societies is not to replicate existing ethnic divisions in the legislature and other representative organs but rather to depoliticize ethnicity by putting in place institutional incentives for cross ethnic voting to encourage a degree of accommodation between rival groups and that comes from Riley in 2012. Seeing secondary citations uh if politicians are dependent on crosscomunal support to get elected this will encourage them to adopt a moderate stance. Right? So, so if you can't just go screaming to the rooftops about like your particular ethnic group and instead you're trying to boost your um let's say I don't know labor party um then you need to go out there and be talking to laborers and not say tootsies right okay uh the second sort of marker of centrialism is folk pooling Oh. Uh, we just talked about that, but uh they also add vote pooling occurs when political leaders seek support outside their own group to win elections and voters exchange votes across group boundaries.

[00:18:06]Right. However, alternative vote only leads to vote pooling in heterogeneous electoral districts which are difficult to draw when groups are geographically concentrated. So, we have to be careful, right? There are contextual nuances involved here, right? Um vote pooling can be very useful when we're in a heterogeneous district where uh everybody is sort of mixed. Um but when as we know many states are constructed around geographically located ethnic minorities or majorities, right? And so this can become problematic. Um and we have to uh sort of we can't just use vote pooling, right? there have to be other mechanisms in place to ensure that um you're not just voting for your ethnic group or territorially or whatever. Uh these systems are pretty rare. uh they point out right um and though the literature has generally assumed that these two systems are in direct opposition Bogards uh says otherwise right he says the picture changes when we look at countries and self-governing regions where the electoral systems in combination with the party system promotes vote pooling after all preferential voting systems are merely a means to an end the choice between consociationalism and centri capitalism cannot be reduced to a choice between proportional representation and alternative voting. Right? Such a narrow focus would leave out other electoral systems that serve lifearts and Horowitz's purposes. All right. Uh section three, centrialism and consociationalism theoretical relations.

[00:19:47]All right. So here Bogards is just sort of offering examples of how consociationalism and centrialism can work in synergy, right? rather than in opposition. And he says, "Look at the Swiss elections, right? They have this weird geometric mean election." And he says, quote, "It multiplies the vote share for a candidate in the Bernie Jura uh which is the territory or district or whatever uh with the vote share for that candidate across the entire Canton um including the Bernie Jura, right? The and this is because they're so territorially concentrated. thus weighing the vote shares double and then they take the square root of the sum and this ensures mathematically uh that you're likely to get a sort of crossborder candidate right okay um section four Malaysia you know these are examples these are really interesting um and this is sort of the thick description style right okay uh vote pooling in practice but not by design right and he says this is first described by Horowitz. This comes from Horowitz's research and uh as we know in Malaysia the third three major ethnic groups right Malay, Chinese and Indian um and these three groups formed a party an alliance uh not a party an alliance to gather support across ethnic lines in an electoral system where the winner is decided by plurality vote in a single member district. And usually single member district can be problematic, right? because um they're obviously um very close to the people, usually very closely ident identified to sort of race or ethnicity. There are clear skin signals that can be seen, right? All of these sorts of things. And so this is like the the United States election, the single member district plurality, right?

[00:21:44]Uh and he said, look, they put together sort of this ad hoc alliance for power sharing. It wasn't institutionalized by law, but it allowed them to create an alliance that c that cut across ethnic boundaries. And he says it's worrying because um this is changing, right? In contemporary Malaysian politics have seen a shift toward Malay centered ethnic politics, right? Because the Malays are the uh the majority. Um and there have been uh growing reprisals against Chinese and Indians, right? And they are often the Chinese and Indians um don't have sort of full access to the market and labor. Um they they are often sort of um it is it is institutionally or even non-institutionally sort of guaranteed that they can't get some of the better jobs in the society.

[00:22:37]Okay. Section five, Lebanon. How proportional representation threatens consociationalism. Kind of like we were talking about earlier, right?

[00:22:47]And Lebanon has a very weird system. Uh it is very very ethnically divided um and ethnically institutionalized.

[00:23:01]First, their electoral system uses a block vote, right? It says until 18 2018, Lebanon used a variant of the block vote. Voters have as many votes as there are seats in the multi-member district. Votes cast for candidates, not parties, and winners are decided by plurality. So, say you're in a district of uh I don't know, five seats, right?

[00:23:33]This is a multi-member district, very different from the US system. Five people get elected from our district.

[00:23:39]That means I get five votes. Um, and I can vote for any of the, I don't know, 30 candidates or whatever. Okay. Uh, the second um, distinction is the ballot, right? Quote, "Voters could write the names of their preferred candidates on a blank piece of paper in the polling station or they could bring a so-called prepared ballot." This was in effect an electoral list prepared by politicians deciding to run together.

[00:24:09]However, voters could deviate from this list by deleting names and replacing them with others. So, kind of a weird system, right? You could show up to like your your local, I don't know, political organizer, your favorite politician, whatever, and they'll hand you a ballot saying, "This is how we want you to vote." And you could change it, but it's often the way it's done. Okay. Three, the composition of the parliament is pre-ordained. It does not change. there are pre-ordained percentages for certain ethnic groups, right? And he says this is the most important thing that um is is is potent is consociational but is very problematic. Right? Uh quote the 128 seats in the legislature are divided evenly between Christian and Muslim and within these groups a much more fine grain distribution is made among the 11 confessions. right? The different sects of Christianity and Islam, right? Shia, Sunni, um what what is the main Christian Drew Christians, right? Uh so so all of these different sort of fine grained religious relationships, right?

[00:25:26]Uh 11 recognized confessions, confessional seats are then allocated to particular districts. In each district, winners are decided separately for each concession. For example, if a district has three Marinite, that's Christian seats and two Shia, then the three Marinites and two Shia candidates with the highest number of votes are elected. See, it starts to get weird and it starts to get programmatic, right?

[00:25:56]where they are literally guaranteeing like even if your district doesn't want a Marinite Christian in it. You don't get a say about that, right? We're we're guaranteeing them seats. You you get to vote, but we're going to kind of figure out how that lays out, right? So, this can be really problematic and there are growing frustrations in Lebanon about how the system works.

[00:26:18]often the majority group in the voting district, the numerical majority group will choose their own ethnic members, but also the legislative members of the other ethnic group. Right? So, this is where the gets weird. Say you have 80% of the population um but 40% of the seats are guaranteed to the minority.

[00:26:38]Well, the majority in some sense is electing the minority members for them and the minority members aren't getting to actually elect the member that they want to represent them. So, their representation is quite watered down, right? And it says when districts are large, this led to mass vote pooling and centrialism. But after the 2008 Doha agreement, the districts became far smaller. and has increased tensions dramatically. Suggestions for proportional representation are met with criticism uh largely the destruction of consociational tendencies and the grouping into ethnic party, right? Um and so yeah, um there has been a suggestion that maybe we should change this like this system to PR, but that may make things worse, right? So Lebanon is a is a case that we need to keep a close eye on.

[00:27:37]Um, yeah, the next one might be a case we also need to keep a close eye on. And that's strange to say, but post Brexit, there are much bigger concerns about what happens with Ireland, right? So, section six, Northern Ireland, a key case with many unanswered questions. This one was kind of confusing and vague, uh, I'll have to admit. He says this is our best documented case because we have a lot of data on and a lot of interviews and a lot of internal stuff on the troubles, right?

[00:28:13]Um and the troubles ended in 1998 uh with the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 uh which we just saw I guess the what 27th anniversary of um just earlier this month and the troubles end and consociational institutions are implemented.

[00:28:33]Um this they also point out that this is also the only divided society really anywhere that uses the single transferable vote and Leipart says there are Leart the consociationalist says there are problems with the single transferable vote right uh the first is there's a possibility of gerrymandering offered by sort of small electoral districts right uh so gerrymandering as we know in the United States um can be very problematic when it comes to u actually representing people two uh difficulty voters may have in ranking candidates. Right? So like I guess I should explain the single transferable vote. Uh we have one person coming from our district. I would also mention a couple of American states have implemented this like Vermont. Okay. Say you have um you have one person who gets to come from the district, but you have seven people running. Okay. Well, you as the elect the elector uh gets to rank them all, right? So, you'll actually um say, I don't know, um this guy is my number one all the way up to this lady's my number two and then this man is my final, my my dead last. I hate this person. Right? Um, and so what they'll do is they'll they'll uh count all of these votes and you're pretty unlikely to get a majority winner in the first round just because there's so many opponents. And so what they'll do is they'll count up all the votes. They'll tally them. If no one passes 50% um they will scratch the bottom candidate and they will reallocate their votes. And so, um, anyone who voted for that dead last candidate, let's call him Bob, um, Bob's votes will be reallocated. And so, um, any of those number two votes for Bob, like, uh, you know, who do they like next, those votes will go to that individual, right? And they'll keep doing that until we get a majority winner, right? So, it may take uh one round, which is pretty unlikely.

[00:30:49]Again, there's a lot of candidates. Uh we'll go to the next round of of redistribution, and we'll just keep redistributing uh the dead last person's votes until someone has a 50% majority. Okay. Um so, gerrymandering can cause problems with that, right? Um there's also the problem, like they were saying, of just having enough information to actually rank all these candidates, right? Um, I just offered you an example of seven. What if there are 27? How in the hell do you rank all those people, right? That that becomes a little bit problematic. You probably know who your favorite is, right? Or maybe the first couple, but once you get down to like the middle and the bottom, it comes just a crapshoot, right? Okay.

[00:31:35]Uh, number three, the damage that voting for individual candidates can do to party cohesion.

[00:31:42]Right? And this is a point that a lot of people make against like the US system or these candidate centric systems where you vote for individuals rather than a party. Uh is that they reduce they reduce uh the party's like ability to control their people. Um it reduces um the the ability for voters to understand what a a party actually um wants philosophically. all of these issues, right? Okay. And then four, you get less proportional results, right? Because we're not using a PR system. Okay. But Mitchell from 2014 retorts, right? And he says, look, I think Leart's got it a little bit wrong here. And he says that this his research demonstrates that voters are very well able to rank candidates, that single transferable vote can yield highly proportional results. um especially because it it sort of forces people to go to the center, right? You don't want to be an extremist in one of these types of electoral systems because the extremists are a bit unpalatable and likely they're going to be the first few out of the the redistribution rounds, right? And so their votes are just going to get reallocated. So what is your what is your incentive to be an extremist in one of these elections, right?

[00:33:07]Um and then finally, moreover that there's been evidence of interthnic vote pooling among moderate parties. Um they also say additionally cabinet level positions are doled out in a PR style depending on party success which can also stimulate vote pooling.

[00:33:23]And so their final conclusion is pretty vague, right? if as we thus cannot tell where political moderation comes from whether it's due to a centripal electoral system or a consociational grand coalition. So they're like look we just need to we need a longer term study on this. Okay. Section seven Fiji executive power sharing and flawed centrialism.

[00:33:50]uh they say for our purposes the most interesting feature of Fiji's political system between 99 and 2006 so this is a very short period was the combination of alternative voting with constitutionally prescribed executive power sharing okay so the alternative voting system is centrial right equal representate that you get equal representation in the cabinet for parties represented in the house so that's rather centrial excuse me that's consociational Unfortunately, ambiguities with the wording, the gaps in legislation, the problems with implementation, the subsequent litigation, and the refusal of parties to take up the cabinet positions that they were offered means that the executive power sharing was controversial, imbalanced, and incomplete. So, we don't really know much about it because yes, in theory, it was supposed to be helpful, but uh in reality, um it didn't work very well.

[00:34:47]Um and then he also cites some research from Frankle in 2017 who says that centrialism and consociationalism in Fiji were actually working against each other. So this is sort of like the broader picture of how these things work. Uh and Franco identifies a quote mismatch between the principle of PR for the cabinet and the use of majoritarian electoral systems for the elections.

[00:35:12]Right? So you're using uh like the SMD American system for elections which is highly unproportional and then trying to match that to cabinet proportionality but that doesn't make much sense right and he says in 2006 the main ethnic parties won and came to a power sharing agreement but they were shortly thereafter overthrown by the military.

[00:35:34]So again, we don't know much about this case. Section 8, Bundi, mandatory multithnic parties and power sharing. Uh this is an interesting case because this is one that actually works. Hold on, I'm getting a call. I'm sorry. Okay. Um Burundi had troubles with ethnicity and ethnic conflict. Um and so they passed what's called the Arouchia peace agreement which basically ended the Burundi civil war and it guarantees that the assembly includes uh 60% hutu and 40% tootssie um and they have closed list PR system of elections so you have to basically vote for a party rather than a person right and every party is constitutionally mandated to have both ethnic groups represented in their list.

[00:36:33]Right? So, uh you cannot just list your own ethnic groups members. You cannot be a hoju party only. Um if you want to be a nationally recognized political party, you must institutionally include both groups. Right? This ensures that all parties are multithnic by law. uh and you also get this sort of co-optation mechanism, right? And it says it increases the number of the underrepresented group by allocating seats to their candidates without changing the balance between the political parties. Uh and so say um you know, for some reason one ethnicity may have gotten a little bit more than they were mandated um uh because of the way that the parties were uh elected. um they'll just say, "Look, you can't over represent tootssis, right? You're going to have to change the people who who you institute into the legislature. They can they they're there's a member of your party, but they cannot be hood, right?

[00:37:35]Um because there are guarantees of of of of representation."

[00:37:40]And so uh they say despite political turmoil right violence in Burundi in recent years has been political and sort of class-based rather than ethnic. Um so that is a good thing because it hasn't broken out in allout ethnic war. Okay.

[00:37:59]Uh final uh Bosnian um unidirectional vote pooling. Uh and so they say basically that this is the worst of consociational democracies, right? This is consociational democracy of the corporate type meaning that ethnicity is directly wired into the country's institutions. The and that comes from Bieber in 2013. The main positions at the various levels of government are reserved for representatives of the constituent peoples. The Bosnians, the Serbs, or the Croats. This goes so far that no other candidates are even allowed to run for the collective presidency. Right? you can't even be say Romany or say like I don't want to be seen as an ethnic person like you literally have to um and so basically any attempts at centrialism have been complete failures and short-lived and we are seeing rising ethnic tensions um in Bosnia um there are concerns that we may see another ethnic war there has been rising violence we have also seen concerns about rising violence in Kashmir uh between two nuclear armed states, India and Pakistan.

[00:39:12]Um those things are concerning, right?

[00:39:14]So uh yeah, those are those are things to be looking out for. Um we already know there are ongoing ethnic conflicts across uh you know the world including sort of the weaguers and um you know in Myanmar against the the Rohhingas and you know but now it looks like we might be seeing these tensions rise uh in modern contemporary period. So it's concerning.

[00:39:39]Uh anyway uh that's going to be it for today. Uh thank you so much. I'll get the final lecture up soon. Have a great day.