Partisan-Descriptive Ethnic Minority Representation as Politics

Abstract

This book studies whether the partisan-descriptive representation of ethnic minorities contributes to the prevention of conflict. To be sure, this is an old question, which lacks a definite answer, though. Many central and eastern European countries have constitutions which are well-suited to accommodate ethnic minority groups. Most of the time, a variant of proportional representation has been chosen as the electoral system (Tiemann, 2006), and some countries have introduced special means to facilitate inclusion (Bochsler, 2010b), such as Romania where ethnic groups need only a few votes to obtain a seat in parliament (see Chapter 3 for details). In some cases, such as that of Russians in Estonia (Lagerspetz and Maier, 2010, p. 90) or ethnic relations in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Richter and Gavric, 2010), the partisan-descriptive representation of ethnic groups has either not manifested itself or has not brought about a peaceful settlement of ethnic conflict. In other cases, peaceful ethnic co-existence or even cooperation benefits from descriptive representation. The political branch of the Turkish minority in Bulgaria (MRF) has participated in several executives and been instrumental in the integration of the Turkish minority into the Bulgarian political system (Birnir, 2007, pp. 130–7; Riedel, 2010, p. 700). In achieving descriptive representation, the Turkish minority in Bulgaria surely benefits from its numerically strong base of support, the relevance and salience of ethnic issues, and the low electoral threshold in the country, whereas the preconditions are less favourable for Russians in Estonia (Lagerspetz and Maier, 2010, p. 90).