POLITICAL REGIMES IN PLURAL SOCIETIES: Institutions and Performance of Majoritarian and Power-Sharing Democracy in Ethnically Divided Countries Guido Panzano Submitted to Central European University Supervisor: Professor Daniel Bochsler In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of CEU eTD Collection Master of Arts in Nationalism Studies CEU, Budapest/Vienna, Hungary/Austria Academic Year 2019-2020 “Establishing the absolute right of the majority to impose its will on the minority, or minorities, amounts to establishing a working rule that works, in the longer run, against the very principle that it extols. If the first winner of a democratic contest acquires unfettered (absolute) power, then the first winner can establish itself as a permanent winner. If so, a democracy has no democratic future and ceases to be a democracy at its inception; for the democratic future of a democracy hinges on the convertibility of majorities into minorities and, conversely, of minorities into majorities. At a second view, then, the limited majority principle turns out to be the democratic working principle of democracy” Giovanni Sartori CEU eTD Collection ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS/RINGRAZIAMENTI .................................................................................... vi INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................ 1 CHAPTER I - MAJORITARIAN AND POWER-SHARING DEMOCRACY IN PLURAL SOCIETIES ........... 6 1.1 Majoritarian and power-sharing regimes for and in ethnically divided countries: origins and critiques of an unbalanced typology .................................................................................................... 6 1.2 Power-sharing and democracy: old and new variants ................................................................. 13 1.3 Majoritarianism and ethnicity: theory of an uneasy relationship ................................................ 17 1.4 Previous categories on majority rule and ethnicity and their incompleteness ............................. 20 CHAPTER II - CLASSIFYING INSTITUTIONS AND PERFORMANCE OF PLURAL DEMOCRACIES ...... 24 2.0 Overview, relevance and preliminary results .............................................................................. 24 2.1 Definition, operationalization and measurement of ethnically divided countries ....................... 25 2.2 Definition, operationalization and measurement of majoritarianism and power-sharing ........... 29 2.3 Explanation of the dataset and descriptive statistics: a two-dimensional map of democratic regimes in deeply divided places ....................................................................................................... 35 2.4 De facto ethnic inclusion/exclusion: a three-dimensional map ................................................... 42 2.5 Framing de facto ethnic relations through democratic quality: a comprehensive map of political institutions and social relations in plural democracies ...................................................................... 49 CHAPTER III - FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION: MAJORITARIANISM AND ETHNICITY ....................... 52 3.0 Majoritarian and plural democracies: the new object of study .................................................... 52 3.1 Majoritarian and exclusive democracy: the case of Turkey (2000-2010), from an exclusive and defective democracy to a closed ethnocracy ..................................................................................... 54 3.1.1 Overview: ethnicity and institutions ..................................................................................... 54 3.1.2 Horizontal majoritarianism .................................................................................................. 57 3.1.3 Vertical majoritarianism ...................................................................................................... 62 CEU eTD Collection 3.1.4 Recent autocratization .......................................................................................................... 64 3.2 Majoritarian and inclusive democracy: the case of Mali (2003-2010), or the fragility of the poster child of African (majoritarian) democracy ............................................................................. 66 3.2.1 Overview: background and democratization ....................................................................... 66 3.2.2 Horizontal majoritarianism .................................................................................................. 69 3.2.3 Vertical majoritarianism ...................................................................................................... 73 3.2.3 Mali’s exceptionalism and recent democratic collapse ....................................................... 75 iii 3.3 Political institutions, ethnic relations, regime dynamics and change: limitations and new research directions ............................................................................................................................. 79 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................. 85 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................. 88 APPENDIX I - TOTAL VARIANCE EXPLAINED AND SCREE PLOT - TABLE 3................................. 97 APPENDIX II - TOTAL VARIANCE EXPLAINED AND SCREE PLOT - TABLE 5 ............................... 98 APPENDIX III - POWER-SHARING/MAJORITARIANISM INDICATORS IN PLURAL DEMOCRACIES.99 APPENDIX IV - MAJORITARIAN AND PLURAL DEMOCRACIES AND DEMOCRATIC DECAY (A VERY FIRST ENQUIRY)…………….………………………...............................................................101 LIST OF TABLES Table 1. 47 Ethnically divided democracies, selected years and polyarchy index...............................28 Table 2. De jure power-sharing/majoritarian institutions: dimensions, variables, acronyms, explanations and sources.....................................................................................................................36 Table 3. Factor analysis for two dimensions - Rotated component matrix...........................................40 Table 4. De facto ethnic relations and ethnic inclusion/exclusion: dimensions, variables, acronyms, explanations and sources..............................................................................................................…...44 Table 5. Factor analysis for three dimensions - Rotated component matrix.........................................46 Table 6. Majoritarian and plural democracies and ethnic relations......................................................53 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Power-sharing/majoritarian democracy in plural societies...................................................41 Figure 2. Horizontal power-sharing/majoritarianism and ethnic relations..........................................48 Figure 3. Vertical power-sharing/majoritarianism and ethnic relations...............................................48 Figure 4. Democratic regimes in plural societies: institutions and group relations..............................51 Figure 5. Political regimes in plural societies: towards a four-dimensional classification...................82 CEU eTD Collection iv ABSTRACT The thesis classifies cases of majoritarian and power-sharing democracy in plural societies. The research questions are: How are democratic regimes in plural societies articulated? Which dimensions can grasp the institutional varieties and practical performances of political regimes in ethnically divided democracies? What is the effect of majoritarian institutions in plural democracies, in terms of ethnic inclusion and exclusion? Accordingly, I shall map 47 plural democracies through 18 variables along 2 institutional dimensions: (i) majoritarianism or power-sharing in the government, parliament and electoral system and (ii) the territorial articulation of power. I shall then add another dimension on (iii) regime quality related to group relations: ethnic inclusion or exclusion. This framework, coupling de jure institutions with de facto performances, proves that: (i) power-sharing democracy is associated with ethnic inclusion; nonetheless (ii) majoritarian democracy occurs in plural societies and can coexist with ethnic inclusion. A simple quantitative analysis is insufficient to explain this pattern. I will thence conduct a most similar comparison of 2 majoritarian democracies of my sample – Turkey (majoritarian/ exclusive) and Mali (majoritarian/inclusive) – to confirm that: (i) majoritarian institutions in plural societies often lead to ethnic exclusion, albeit (ii) this scenario can be avoided when exogenous factors are at play (party system, political culture/tradition of accommodation). However, as the diachronic analysis will show, these factors remain precarious and (iii) majoritarian institutions, in particular the centralization of power, are demonstrated to be ill- suited to deal with territorially concentrated minorities. CEU eTD Collection The thesis offers a detailed and useful classification and discusses examples of majority rule and power-sharing in plural democracies, and finally proposes further research directions, including authoritarianism and regime