Don't Start the Party: Assessing the Electoral Effect of Legal Provisions Impeding Ethnoregional Parties

Abstract

Around the world “free” democracies actively seek to undermine the political influence of ethnic and regional minorities by impeding the formation of parties aimed at furthering their interests. Here, we assess the impact of two kinds of legal provisions against ethnoregional parties—outright bans and ballot-access requirements that indirectly impede their ability to win votes and legislative seats. Despite being less direct, we theorize ballot-access requirements should be much more effective at undermining ethnoregional parties as they provide seemingly objective rules that are easy to enforce. In contrast, outright bans require difficult subjective decisions on parties with a non-ethnoregional façade. Combining in-depth case analysis with multivariate models based on a comprehensive dataset of election results spanning 73 countries between 1990 and 2012, we find that party bans do little to curb ethnoregional party influence. By contrast, registration and ballot-access requirements are much more effective.