Balancing and Sharing Political Power in Multiethnic Societies Summary of a Workshop (1993) / Chapter Skim
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Proponents of the primordial approach view ethnicity as a fundamental social category, whereas instrumentalist and constructivist views consider it to be a modern invention that developed out of a particular historical context. Tnstrumentalists see a collectivity's claims to ethnicity as based on a political myth—a myth that is consciously created, propagated, and often manipulated, by elites that are seeking power, material advantages, or both.
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Over the course of the discussion, the participants arrived at a general consensus that nationalism involves the assertion of political legitimacy and generally includes a claim to state power, or at least self-governance, in the name of a nation or people. The defining characteristics of nationhood, however, remained highly contested.
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In the process of "nation building," diverse dialects were homogenized and standarctized into national languages, as were the disparate customs and cultures of the inhabitants of the territories newly defined as the homelands of nations. Individuals who had previously identified themselves in various ways- as Christians, noblemen, peasants, or as the inhabitants of a particular village, for example— were transformed into Germans, Italians, and Hungarians.
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r - - r J These policies triggered similar forms of reaction, including the defensive development of intragroup cohesion among population groups that perceived themselves to be threatened or oppressed, and producecT a series of separatist movements in the newly independent, multiethnic states of the Third WorIc! (for example, in Biafra)
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Nationalism on the Territory of the Former Soviet Union The contemporary upsurge of nationalist movements in the former Soviet Union received considerable attention at the workshop. The presentations and discussions focused on the particular circumstances surrounding conflicts and other expressions of nationalism in the North Caucasus, Central Asia, the Volga region, and the Baltic, including the situations of the Tngush, Kalmyk, and Tatar peoples and issues of the treatment of ethnic minorities in Bashkortostan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, and Latvia.
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ironically, Soviet policies designed to coopt and harness national elites resulted in nationally conscious groups being in a position to use these structures in the interests of their groups when the center's control collapsed. The inclusion of nationality as a fundamental category in the Soviet internal passport also reinforced the conception of nationality as a primordial social category.
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Leokadiia Drobizheva focused on the large Russian expatriate communities in the newly independent states, an issue that is already posing complex policy problems both for the governments of the new states and Russia. Tapirs suggested that the experience of the French expatriate community in Algeria might serve as the most useful analogue for understanding the situation currently confronting the Russians in the Baltic.
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Stanley Tambiah pointed out that democratization in the Third World has frequently been accompanied by increased collective violence and "ethnonationalist" conflict (that is, conflicts over state power fueled by ethnic mobilization or ethnic claims)
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Human rights is a quintessentially modern construct, an outgrowth of Enlightenment rationalism and its attempt to determine universalistic principles for human societies. Grounded in international law in the United Nations (U.N.)
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Majoritarian democracy too often allows dominant groups within societies to apply the coercive power of the state against numerically smaller groups. When majorities and minorities are ethnically based, this can lead to policies of discrimination, forced assimilation, expulsion, and ethnocide, all of which violate human rights.
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Numerous participants discussed the possibility of multiculturalist solutions, which recognize the identity and rights of ethnic minorities and allow them legitimacy and forms of expression within a multiethnic society. The possibilities for multiculturalism are widely debated in the United States and many other countries around the world, and several participants described similar debates in their areas.
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Valery Tishkov argued strongly in favor of multiculturalist solutions, drawing heavily on the example of Yugoslavia. He asserted that multicultural solutions offer distinct advantages over the attempt to form numerous ministates on the basis of national self-determination.
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The thorough intermixing of populations in many geographic areas also makes the supposed ideal of "one nation one state" impossible to achieve on geographic grounds. it was stressed that the attempt to create monoethnic states in mixed geographic areas can lead to the horrors associated with the Holocaust, forced mass migrations, and the contemporary policy of "ethnic cleansing" in the former Yugoslavia.
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However, the attempt to "rectify" these boundaries to make them conform to the geographic distribution of language or ethnic groups, the historical borders of ancient regimes, or various topographical or strategic features threatened to unleash potentially intractable interstate conflicts across the continent. in order to avert the devastation of war and turn their attention to improving living standards within their own frontiers, the leaders of the newly independent African states agreed to mutually recognize the existing boundaries.
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—A— THE SEARCH FOR INSTITUTIONAL STRUCTURES FOR BALANCING POWER Because of the potential for violence, instability, and the violation of human rights in multiethnic states, especially in times of heightened nationalist consciousness like the present,
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One of the central challenges of establishing a democracy in a multiethnic state is to establish a system in which the political leadership is not only responsible to the electorate, but is also held accountable in case of violations of constitutionally established guarantees, particularly in the areas of minority rights and human rights. Participants discussed three classes of institutional structures for balancing and sharing power: those that are based on a group-blind framework, those that are formally structured around group rights, and those that are based on a recognition of group interests but seek to create institutions that transcend them.
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Group-based institutional arrangements can channel the competition for social and political power and conflicts over scarce resources into ethnic categories, thereby politicizing ethnic differences and increasing their salience. Such institutions can also discourage the formation of coalitions that cross ethnic lines, strengthen the belief that ethnic differences are naturally given and cannot be bridged, and obstruct the development of competing or nesting identities that cross ethnic lines.
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His constitutional engineering strategies provide incentives for politicians to promote accommodations between groups and build coalitions across ethnic lines in the competition for every political office and at every branch and level of government. Where ethnic groups are' territorially based, electoral districts can be explicitly designed to incorporate different groups in each district.
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Many of them callec} for a series of follow-up workshops that would promote scholarly discussion about social scientific analysis of nationality and its political implications, as well as more policy-oriented discussions about institutional design options that might be implemented in particular political contexts within the successor states to the Soviet Union. There was particular interest in conducting some of the subsequent activities outside Moscow, in areas where autonomous political entities are currently engaged in making policies that will have far-reaching implications for ethnic relations.
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