Conclusion

Abstract

Abstract The concluding chapter summarizes the arguments and findings of the book. It underscores how ethnic minority status shapes political preferences and how its mobilization and representation influence the trajectories of liberal democracies. It restates how mobilized ethnic minorities mold constitutional liberal poles of politics, leading organized ethnic minorities, faced with the constant exposure to the dominance of the majority, to seek constitutional liberalism in order to ensure group survival and mitigate the potential for majority abuse. The chapter restates how eastern Europe is a useful testing ground to demonstrate how ethnicity informs programmatic political competition, shapes party systems, and reinforces liberal democracy. The chapter reemphasizes how ethnic liberalism, while contingent on specific conditions and circumstances, fortifies the liberal pole of politics, structures party competition, and invigorates democratic resilience. The chapter highlights how this argument advances knowledge about the role of ethnicity in politics, about the social bases of political competition in eastern Europe, as well as about the role of identity as a source of programmatic political preferences and party competition. To assess how the argument of ethnic liberalism might travel beyond eastern Europe, the chapter provides three vignettes, demonstrating some aspect of ethnic liberalism among minorities in France, the United States, and Malaysia.