Political Science and Political Economy Working Paper Department of Government London School of Economics No. 6/2006 Extremist Outbidding In Ethnic Party Systems Is Not Inevitable: Tribune Parties in Northern Ireland Paul Mitchell (LSE) Geoffrey Evans (Oxford) Brendan O'Leary (University of Pennsylvania) Extremist Outbidding In Ethnic Party Systems Is Not Inevitable: Tribune Parties in Northern Ireland Paul Mitchell, Geoffrey Evans and Brendan O’Leary Contacts : Dr Paul Mitchell (all correspondence please) Department of Government and the Methodology Institute London School of Economic and Political Science Houghton Street London WC2A 2AE UK
[email protected] Tel: 44+207-79556340 Professor Geoffrey Evans Director, Centre for Research Methods in the Social Sciences University of Oxford Official Fellow & Senior Tutor Nuffield College, Oxford OX1 1NF UK
[email protected] Tel: 44+1865-278613 Professor Brendan O'Leary Lauder Professor of Political Science Director of the Solomon Asch Center for the Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict University of Pennsylvania 3819-33 Chestnut Street, Suite 305, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
[email protected] Extremist Outbidding In Ethnic Party Systems Is Not Inevitable: Tribune Parties in Northern Ireland Abstract Ethnic out-bidding models correctly suggest that democratic stability is much more difficult to achieve in divided societies with fully mobilised ethnic party systems. But they are not correct when they predict that ethnic party systems inevitably lead to perpetual extremist outbidding leading to inevitable democratic collapse. We argue that the incentives of power- sharing institutions combined with Downsian vote-seeking motivations can encourage the development of electoral strategies based on ‘ethnic tribune appeals’, where parties combine robust ethnic identity representation with increased pragmatism over political resource allocation.