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Exploring the Link Between Power Concentration and Ethnic Minorities

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Exploring the Link Between Power Concentration and Ethnic Minorities Exploring the Link between Power Concentration and Ethnic Minorities’ Mobilization in Post Soviet Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine by Stela Garaz Department of Political Science, Central European University A Doctoral Dissertation submitted to the Central European University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Date of submission: April 30, 2012 Supervisor: Dr. Zsolt Enyedi CEU eTD Collection Budapest, Hungary 2012 I hereby declare that this thesis contains no materials accepted for any other degrees in any other institutions. I hereby declare that this thesis contains no materials previously written and/or published by any other person, except where appropriate acknowledgment is made in the form of bibliographical reference. Stela Garaz Budapest April 30, 2012. CEU eTD Collection ii Abstract In political science literature, power concentration is dominantly viewed as a negative phenomenon that encourages strategies of confrontation and causes protest. The regimes with concentrated power are believed to be particularly dangerous for the states with deep ethnic cleavages. This latter concern is a question of great importance for the post-Soviet region, because since the collapse of the Soviet Union some of the multi-ethnic post-Soviet states had the experience of both ethnic conflicts and concentration of power. Consequently, the main goal of this research is to determine whether power concentration encourages the escalation of ethnic conflicts. For this, I explore three mechanisms that may link the degree of power concentration with ethnic minorities’ mobilization against the state: identity-related state policies, electoral rules, and centralization. The empirical investigation is built on the analysis of three post-Soviet cases – Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine – based on the structured focused comparison technique. The data presented in this research reveal that the highest level of ethnic minorities’ mobilization against the state in the three post-Soviet republics occurred in periods with dispersed power, and not in periods with concentrated power. The research further shows that contrary to the common expectation, the reason for this was not the presumed suppressive character of concentrationist regimes over ethnic groups as citizens. Instead, the incumbent elites in the periods with power concentration combined minorities’ cooptation in central and local power with the enhanced control over the regional elite formation and regional access to financial resources, and in some cases, with a gradual de-politization of societal multi- ethnicity. Specifically, the leadership of concentrationist regimes tended to increase the threshold for accessing power through electoral rules with disproportional elements, which prevented the consolidation of ethnic parties and at the same time attracted minority leaders to the ruling parties. In addition, concentration of power tended to augment territorial centralization. This implied an increased control by central level political incumbents over the financial, administrative, and political affairs at regional level, which reduced local potential mobilizers’ access to mobilization resources. Finally, as the leadership of power concentration tended to implement integrationist rather than accommodationist policies towards minorities, this de-emphasized the political importance of multi-ethnicity. The research concludes that at least in the three cases included in the analysis, concentration of power did not trigger, but it rather discouraged ethnic mobilization against the state, due to its intrinsic tendencies to increase the threshold for access to power of potential challengers and also to co-opt minority leaders, to strengthen centralization of power, and to de-politicize ethnicity. Hence, the success of concentrationist regimes in reducing minorities’ mobilization against the state did not consist in suppressing ethnic groups as citizens, but in hindering the formation of a self-standing ethnic minority elite. Therefore, if power concentration is to be avoided in the post-Soviet region, it should be for other reasons than for fear of ethnic CEU eTD Collection instability. iii Acknowledgments: While looking back at the years of research that lead to this thesis completion, I can say that it has been an experience that greatly shaped my attitude towards the events happening around me, as well as my style of work in the years to come. My work on this thesis taught me to be perseverant, to question commonly accepted viewpoints and my personal beliefs, and to cope with excessive ambiguity. The most important skill I acquired is seeing the positive side of failures, as the moments in which I learnt the most were those in which I realized I was wrong. Therefore, although at times painful, the PhD journey was definitely a life-valuable experience to me. For this, I am mostly grateful to my supervisor Zsolt Enyedi, who saw potential in me and who helped me develop it, by making me go beyond my own limits, by challenging my arguments, and by encouraging me to challenge other people’s arguments. The completion of this thesis required an extensive access to primary data, for which I was lucky to have the help of many enthusiastic people from the three countries included in this research. I am thankful to the employees of the European Centre for Minority Issues in Caucasus and particularly to Tom Trier who arranged my trips to Akhalkalaki, Marneuli, and around Tbilisi, as well as all my interviews with ethnic minority leaders in Georgia. I am also thankful to my friends and former CEU colleagues Nino Kobakhidze, Lela Chakhaya, Elena Prohnitchi, Natalia Timus, and Olena Podolyan for their precious help in arranging my in- country interviews with former MPs and for facilitating my access to primary data, as well as to Anna Pavlyuchenko for having been such a wonderful host during my stay in Kiev. I am thankful to Alexandra Goujon who facilitated my stay as visiting graduate student at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris and who helped me with the data analysis on Ukraine. I am also thankful to Oleh Protsyk for having supervised my work during my traineeship at the European Centre for Minority Issues in Flensburg, for having helped me develop valuable methodological skills, and most importantly – for having co-authored my first refereed article. I would also like to thank the faculty members of CEU Political Science Department and particularly Matteo Fumagalli, Carsten Schneider, and Nenad Dimitrijevic for having given me valuable feedback on previous parts of this thesis. Finally yet importantly, I would like to thank my family for the precious moral support in the most difficult moments of my research, for their patience with my occasional absent- mindedness, and for the practical support in my work. For the latter, I am particularly thankful to my mother Eleonora Garaz, who was ready to collect last-minute pieces of factual data on Moldova every time I needed it and I could not travel back to my home country, and to my husband Renaud Cuny, who greatly helped me with the face validity test in various stages of my research. My special gratitude goes to George Soros, whose generosity made my stay at CEU and in CEU eTD Collection Budapest possible for so many years, and whose life story continues to be a great inspiration for mine. iv Table of Contents: INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................................................. 1 RESEARCH QUESTION: ........................................................................................................................................ 1 THE INDEPENDENT AND THE DEPENDENT VARIABLE:......................................................................................... 4 CASE SELECTION: ............................................................................................................................................... 7 INPUTS FROM THE STATE-OF-THE-ART ON THE POST-SOVIET REGION: ............................................................ 12 METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH:........................................................................................................................ 15 STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS:.............................................................................................................................. 19 CHAPTER I : THEORETICAL LINKAGES BETWEEN POWER CONCENTRATION AND ETHNIC MINORITIES’ MOBILIZATION .................................................................................................................... 20 1.1. MAIN THEORETICAL APPROACHES: ........................................................................................................... 20 1.1.1. Political Opportunity Structure for Social Mobilization:.................................................................. 20 1.1.2. Consociationalism:............................................................................................................................ 23 1.2. POWER CONCENTRATION AND STATE-MINORITY RELATIONS ................................................................... 26 1.2.1. “Multi-Ethnic” States, Ethnically “Plural States”, and Ethnic Mobilization:.................................. 26 1.2.2. Consociationalism and “Plural Societies”........................................................................................ 28 1.2.3. Power Concentration and State-Minority Relations: .......................................................................
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