Minority representation in a semi-democratic regime

The Georgian case

Datos Bibliográficos

ID6252987
AutoresDaniel Zollinger, Daniel Bochsler (0000-0001-6423-5560, NCCR Chemical Biology - Visualisation and Control of Biological Processes Using Chemistry)
Año2012
Volumen19
Número4
Páginas611-641
Fecha de publicación2012-08-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaDemocratization (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1351-0347 • E-ISSN: 1743-890X
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13510347.2011.605996
OpenAlexW2079665997
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas9
Referencias citadas25

This article suggests that in most semi-democracies, the same solution might not be that favourable to minorities. Many semi-democratic countries either restrict party competition or limit parties of ethnic minorities, including: Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kirgistan, Cameron, Equatorial Guinea, Tanzania, Gabon, Kenya, Mauritania, and Congo (Brazzaville). This article highlights the impact of the electoral system and the importance of political plurality and electoral district design in such contexts. The article argues that the interests of minorities are best protected if they can elect their representatives in small, ethnically homogeneous electoral districts. Plurality or majority voting systems offer minorities the possibility to run with independent candidates. The case study in this article elections to municipal councils in Georgia in 2006 under a mixed electoral system seem to reflect the hypothesized pattern. Keywords: electionsdemocracyminoritiessemi-democracyGeorgiaplurality Notes Cameron, Epstein, and O'Halloran, 'Majority-Minority Districts'; Lublin, Gerrymander for Justice; Norris, Electoral Engineering, chap. 9; Rule and Zimmerman, Electoral Systems. Diamond, 'Thinking about Hybrid Regimes', 30; Levitsky and Way, 'Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism'; Sørensen, Democracy and Democratization, 446–7. For instance, in 2001, out of the 10 post-communist countries classified as neither fully democratic, nor authoritarian, seven were multi-ethnic. Levitsky and Way, Competitive Authoritarianism; Schedler, Electoral Authoritarianism. Carothers, 'End of the Transition Paradigm'. Diamond, 'Thinking about Hybrid Regimes'; Schedler, Electoral Authoritarianism. For similar definitions, see Carey, 'Dynamic Relationship', 4; Diamond, Linz, and Lipset, Democracy in Developing Countries, xvi–xvii. For an overview, see Gandhi and Lust-Okar, 'Elections under Authoritarianism'. For instance, Fumagalli, 'Framing Ethnic Minority Mobilisation'; Melvin, 'Centre-Regional Relations'. Studies with a more general scope include Bogaards, Electoral Systems, Party Systems; Bogaards, Basedau, and Hartmann, 'Ethnic Party Bans'. Such a restriction might be the result of spatial rules of party registration (a party, in order to be registered, needs to have a considerable number of members in several or most regions of a country), of high national legal thresholds in the electoral law, of spatial electoral thresholds (electoral thresholds which require a party to win votes from several regions), or of other kinds of explicit bans on regional parties. Birnir, 'Stabilizing Party Systems'; OSCE ODIHR, 'Republic of Moldova', 4. Out of nine African countries, which Carothers classifies are typical dominant power systems, seven ban parties on ethnic, religious, regional, racial, or linguistic grounds. Out of the five dominant power-systems in the post-Soviet space, four have ethnic party bans, and the fifth has no relevant ethnic minorities. We do not have systematic information on ethnic party bans on other continents. Bogaards, Basedau, and Hartmann, 'Ethnic Party Bans'; Fumagalli, 'Methodological Note', 81; Matveeva and McCartney, 'Policy Responses', 237; Moroff, 'Party Bans in Africa'. A wide literature with a quantitative and formal approach has debated different forms of inclusion of ethnic minority in representation and their consequences, with some important work on minority representation in the USA: Cameron, Epstein, and O'Halloran, 'Majority-Minority Districts'; Glazer, Grofman, and Owen, 'A Neo-Downsian Model'; Lublin, Gerrymander for Justice; Lublin, Paradox of Representation; Lublin, 'African-American Representation'. Looking beyond the US case, the centripetalist school has advocated representation through multi-ethnic or non-ethnic political parties. Reilly, Democracy in Divided Societies. For an excellent analysis, see, among others, International Crisis Group, Armenian and Azeri Minorities; Lohm, Javakheti after the Rose Revolution; Wheatley, Integration of National Minorities; Wheatley, Regional Integration of the Javakheti; Wheatley, Regional Integration of the Kvemo Kartli. Moser and Scheiner, 'Mixed Electoral Systems'. Such a restriction might be the result of spatial rules of party registration (a party, in order to be registered, needs to have a considerable number of members in several or most regions of a country) (Birnir, 'Stabilizing Party Systems'), of high national legal thresholds in the electoral law, of spatial electoral thresholds (electoral thresholds which require a party to win votes from several regions), or of other kinds of explicit bans on regional parties. Schedler, Electoral Authoritarianism, 3. Bogaards, Basedau, and Hartmann, 'Ethnic Party Bans'; Moroff, 'Party Bans in Africa'. Bochsler, 'It is not how many votes you get'. Lijphart, 'Proportionality by Non-PR Methods'; Norris, Driving Democracy, 122–3; Rule and Zimmerman, Electoral Systems, and many others. Horowitz, 'Primer for Decision Makers'; Stojanović, 'Counterevidence from Switzerland'. Reilly, Democracy in Divided Societies. Bochsler, Territory and Electoral Rules. Certainly, if the large districts is composed of 70% members of group A, and 30% members of group B, it might in theory be possible to create some smaller districts that are even more heterogeneous (with a 50%:50% composition), but only at the price of other small districts being ethnically homogeneous. Hence, on average, the smaller districts might not be more heterogeneous. Bertelsmann Transformation Index, Georgia, 4–7, 21; Carothers, 'End of the Transition Paradigm', 13. Levitsky and Way, Competitive Authoritarianism, 225–8; Nodia, Georgia; Nodia and Scholtbach, Political Parties, 29–30. Wheatley, Integration of National Minorities. The opportunity of having two different election modes applied in parallel has been discussed as natural laboratory to test the effect of electoral systems. Moser and Scheiner, 'Mixed Electoral Systems'. We should, however, take the issue of contamination seriously. The candidate selection, electoral campaigns, and voting behaviour under both systems might affect each other. Contamination effects lead an assimilation of the electoral competition in both parts of the system. Cox and Schoppa, 'Interaction Effects'; Ferrara, Herron, and Nishikawa, Mixed Electoral Systems, and many others. If these findings can be generalized, and if we should find differences between both tiers, they persist despite contamination, but the measured degree of difference is not fully informative about the magnitude of the effect. Wheatley, Tsalka, 8–9; Wheatley, Regional Integration of the Kvemo Kartli, 7. Nodia, Polietničnost' Gruzii, 64. Lohm, Javakheti after the Rose Revolution, 23; Nodia, Georgia, 245. Losaberidze, Kandelaki, and Orvelashvili, Local Government in Georgia; Nodia, Georgia, 245; Wheatley, Regional Integration of the Javakheti, 12. See also Evers, 'Samtskhe-Javakheti', 311; Wheatley, Regional Integration of the Javakheti, 19. In larger temi, mayors have been elected since 2001, but they were recommended by the municipal authorities and informally subordinate to them, which made them look like little independent. Wheatley, Regional Integration of the Kvemo Kartli, 18. International Crisis Group, Armenian and Azeri Minorities, 12. Carothers, 'End of the Transition Paradigm'; OSCE ODIHR, 'Georgia. Partial Repeat'. Unified Election Code, §115, §118, §119, §123, §124, §126. Election Code of Georgia, as of 2005, English translation available from the European Commission for Democracy Through Law (Venice Commission) (Opinion no. 358/2005). Nodia, Polietničnost' Gruzii, 63–4. Party law, article 6. See also International Crisis Group, Armenian and Azeri Minorities, 17; Nodia and Scholtbach, Political Parties, 46. Party law, article 26, section 3. See also Nodia and Scholtbach, Political Parties, 43. International Crisis Group, Armenian and Azeri Minorities; Lohm, Javakheti after the Rose Revolution; Wheatley, Regional Integration of the Javakheti; Wheatley, Regional Integration of the Kvemo Kartli. Sources for the election data: Central Electoral Commission http://www.cec.gov.ge (accessed April 2010). Partly, information is provided by the Central Electoral Commission. We further investigated lists of candidates and of elected deputies to ascertain the ethnic affiliation, and cross-checked with other listings and with the counting of the Electoral Commission to assure the accuracy. Armenian and Azeri names are easily distinguishable from Georgian names. Wheatley, Regional Integration of the Javakheti, 31. Ibid., 16. Evers, 'Samtskhe-Javakheti', 316; International Crisis Group, Armenian and Azeri Minorities, 22. International Crisis Group, Armenian and Azeri Minorities, 9. Wheatley, Regional Integration of the Javakheti, 12. Evers, 'Samtskhe-Javakheti', 311; International Crisis Group, Armenian and Azeri Minorities, 9–10. International Crisis Group, Armenian and Azeri Minorities, 10. Wheatley, Regional Integration of the Kvemo Kartli, 12–19. Ibid., 20, 37. ISFED, Local Self-Government Elections, 14–5; OSCE ODIHR, Georgia, Municipal Elections, 9. Regnum, Fraud in Local Elections. OSCE/ODIHR and Council of Europe Congress, Press Release. In Marneuli, electoral protocols were manipulated and electoral observers were hindered from conducting observations. Minority regions are located in remote areas, where the level of education is lower. Especially, lacking knowledge of Georgian language by members of the Electoral Commissions, while voting protocols are available only in Georgian, opens the door for procedural shortcomings and election fraud in minority regions. Freizer, Ethnic Minorities and Elections, 121–3; ISFED, Local Self-Government Elections, 34–5; Nodia and Scholtbach, Political Parties, 27. Expert interview with International Crisis Group representative, Tbilisi, May 2010. Wheatley, Regional Integration of the Javakheti, 13. Ibid., 14. International Crisis Group, Armenian and Azeri Minorities, 15–7; Lohm, Javakheti after the Rose Revolution, 17–8; Nodia and Scholtbach, Political Parties, 46. Freizer, Ethnic Minorities and Elections, 125. United Javakhk claims that more than twice this number of votes. Ibid., 124; Lohm, Javakheti after the Rose Revolution, 26. Freizer, Ethnic Minorities and Elections. International Crisis Group, Armenian and Azeri Minorities, 15–6; Lohm, Javakheti after the Rose Revolution, 12. Lohm, Javakheti after the Rose Revolution, 13. Wheatley, Regional Integration of the Kvemo Kartli, 18. Not considering minorities in territories not controlled by the central government. Due to data availability, our index instead of votes relies on seats, which given the PR electoral system should not widely deviate. Also, we count the overall number of seats won by opposition parties (which, given the low seat percentage of the opposition, only leads to a minor bias). 1 indicates maximal possible competition. Empirically, the index varies from 0 (all 10 seats held by UNM, measured in nine municipalities) to 0.96 (6 seats held by UNM, 4 by the opposition, in the municipality of Dusheti). This avoids concerns about endogeneity. If employing the share of elected PR candidates from all lists as dependent variable, then any positive effect would reflect an inverse causality (in municipalities where the opposition runs with ethnic minority candidates, minorities vote for the opposition, and hence increase both the index of competition and the representation of minorities in the PR tier). In models with interaction effects, one should also test for the simple effect of competition, in order to be certain that competition affects minority representation in interaction with the structure of the population. Braumoeller, 'Hypothesis Testing'. Interviews were conducted in May 2010 in Zurich and in Tbilisi. Lohm, Javakheti after the Rose Revolution, 25. Regnum, Armenian leaders of Javakheti. International Crisis Group, Armenian and Azeri Minorities, 14. Due to the paternalistic social structures and due to a lack of knowledge of Georgian language by members of the Election Commissions, elections are more easy to manipulate in minority regions. This particularly applies to rural municipalities with low rates of literacy (expert interviews). See also Nodia, Polietničnost' Gruzii, 65. For example, Chandra, Why Ethnic Parties Succeed, 14; Doorenspleet, 'Electoral Systems', 366; Norris, Electoral Engineering, 209–29, Norris, 'Stable Democracy'; Rule and Zimmerman, Electoral Systems. Note that parts of the literature highlight that minorities can also succeed in small and non-PR electoral districts, if these are homogeneous. Diwakar, 'Duverger's Law'; Bochsler, Territory and Electoral Rules, 'It is not how many votes you get'. Our argument that small and plurality electoral districts are better for minority representation (if competition is restricted), seems not to apply for liberal democracies, and has not been made so far. International Crisis Group, Armenian and Azeri Minorities, 22. Wheatley, Regional Integration of the Javakheti, 6–8. Lohm, Javakheti after the Rose Revolution, 22. Only in Marneuli, a municipality in Kvemo Kartli with an 83% ethnic Azeri population, and a 7.9% Armenian minority, Armenians were largely over-represented in the majoritarian part. The four (partly) Armenian temi in Marneuli are three times smaller than the ethnic Georgian temi, and even nine times smaller than Azeri temi in the municipality. Additional informationNotes on contributorsDaniel Zollinger Both authors have contributed equally to the article. Daniel Bochsler Both authors have contributed equally to the article

Authoritarianism · Democracy · Democratization · Minority rights · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Proportional representation · Sociology · Voting · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Law · Political Conflict and Governance · Turkey's Politics and Society