Этнические партии и этническое голосование: проблемы концептуализации и факторы развития

Abstract

The article deals with the functioning of ethnic parties and the phenomenon of ethnic voting in contemporary political systems. Functions and possible typologies of ethnic movements and parties are analyzed in the constructivist framework. Special attention is paid to the conditions of an ethnic party creation and the overlapping of its discourse with the regionalist party family. Ethnic parties are defined as parties that consequently advocate interests of a particular ethnic group; ethnic voting is a type of electoral behavior that presupposes that votes are distributed according to the ethnic identification of voters. A party status is required for an ethnic group to legally advocate its interests in the national legislature. A voter’s ethnic motivation may be manifested in the voting for an ethnic party, for a candidate that represents a particular ethnic group, for a non-ethnic party that claims its loyalty to a particular ethnic group, and also against parties and candidates that are considered undesirable for this ethnic group. “Ethnic” votes may be distributed amongst several parties or candidates and also accumulated by a single ruling ethnic parties’ coalition. Different kinds of ethnic vote and its possible impact on the political system are analyzed, as well as possible variants of the ethnically motivated electoral behavior. The most relevant for ethnic voting are the following factors: presence of an ethnic party, fragmentation of the “ethnic” party field, localization of ethnic groups, salience of mobilized ethnicity in the entire political system, political opportunities for ethnic parties or candidates, as well as ideological stance of the non-ethnic parties that become an object of ethnic vote.