Layers of Ethnicity

Abstract

What impact, if any, do ethnic federalism and the geographic concentration of ethnic minorities have on the political incorporation of minorities in democracies with single-member district elections? Many studies on ethnic voting in the United States have examined the impact of majority-minority districts on the turnout of minority voters and the election of minority candidates. However, few studies have explored the effects of similar institutions in other countries. The authors address this issue by applying insights on ethnic voting from the American politics literature to Russia’s 1995 parliamentary election. They use multilevel regression models and census and electoral data that are disaggregated at the subdistrict ( raion) level to systematically assess whether ethnic federalism and majority-minority districts increase the vote share of minority candidates and encourage the turnout of minority voters. The findings suggest that district-level characteristics—specifically, majority-minority districts—are more important than ethnic federalism for promoting minority representation in Russia.