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Ethnocracy, also known as an ethnic democracy, is a form of government where representatives of a particular ethnic group(s) hold a number of government posts disproportionately large to the percentage of the total population that the particular ethnic group(s) represents and use them to advance the position of their particular ethnic group(s) to the detriment of others. The minority ethnic groups are systematically discriminated against by the state and may face repressions or violations of human rights at the hands of state organs. Ethnocracy can also be a political regime which is instituted on the basis of qualified rights to citizenship, and with ethnic affiliation (defined in terms of race, descent, religion, or language) as the distinguishing principle. Generally, the raison d'être of an ethnographic government is to secure the most important instruments of state power in the hands of a specific ethnic collectivity. All other considerations concerning the distribution of power are ultimately subordinated to this basic intention. Ethnocracies are not dependent on any particular form of government organization - ethnocratic governments run the gamut from (non-liberal) democracies to dictatorships.
Ethnocracies are characterised by their control system – the legal, institutional, and physical instruments of power deemed necessary to secure ethnic dominance. The degree of system discrimination will tend to vary greatly from case to case and from situation to situation. If the dominant group (whose interests the system is meant to serve and whose identity it is meant to represent) constitutes a small minority (20% or less) of the population within the state territory, extreme degrees of institutionalised suppression will probably be necessary to sustain the status quo. The other side of the coin might well be a system of full-fletched democracy (inclusive and competitive in Robert Dahl's terminology) for the privileged population, making up what Pierre van den Berghe (1981) calls "Herrenvolk democracy" (with reference to apartheid South Africa). This is a system of ethnocracy which offers democratic participation to the dominant group only.
Israel
If the dominant group constitutes a large majority (80% or more), however, it is reasonable to expect that a low level of repressive measures will be required in order to safeguard ethnic domination. This kind of ethnocracy is described by Smooha and Hanf (1992) as "ethnic democracy". Their primary empirical reference is the State of Israel (within its 1949 boundaries where the Palestinian Arabs constitutes some 17% of the population). This is a system where the minority is granted certain political and civil rights as citizens of the state, a factor which, according to Smooha and Hanf, justifies the term "democracy" attached to it. However, as they also make clear, "ethnic democracy differs from other types of democracy in according a structured superior status" to the dominant group, keeping the non-dominant groups out of the highest offices of the state and alienating them from the character of the state (its symbols, official language, religion, immigration policy (Smooha and Hanf 1992:32, my emphasis). And most importantly, it is a system where "the nation takes precedent over the state or civil society" (ibid.).
van den Berghe's use of the term "democracy" is acceptable because it refers to a political structure which, within its own limits, is undoubtedly democratic. "Herrenvolk democracy" could be an expression which fruitfully combines contradicting terms. It relates to the presence of democratic institutions (established for the dominant group), but also to the exclusive and racist (strengthened by the German connotations) nature of the system. Smooha and Hanf's use of "democracy" is more problematic because it refers specifically to the rights accorded to the non-dominant group. These rights are not only limited in important respects, but made conditional on the national interests of the dominant group. A system where "the nation takes precedence over the state or civil society" is not a type which fits with any well-established conception of democracy because it subordinates democratic rights under an exclusivist national doctrine.
The conditionality of democratic rights in an "ethnic democracy" is well illustrated by Smooha and Hanf themselves when they observe that "Israel can afford to extend democracy to Israeli Arabs because they constitute only one seventh of the Israeli population and roughly one seventh of the Palestinian people. This is why ethnic democracy is a realistic option via-a-vis Israeli Arabs only" (1992:38). This statement implies:
- That if the Israeli Arabs increase their ratio of the Israeli population (which they actually do due to a high birth rate) they might lose democratic rights.
- That the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and Palestinian refugees in other countries, have no legitimate claims to be represented by existing democratic institutions in their homeland.
Instead of including Israel in the class of democracies, by definition, "ethnocracy" may invite to more open analyses of democratic as well as non-democratic aspects of ethnic polities. Ethnocracy simply denotes regimes that express the identity and aspirations of one ethnic group in an ethnically divided society. It is a form of government based on the rule of one ethnic group over other groups. The constitutional and institutional character of an ethnocratic regime can be seen as an outcome of or a stage in a conflict where ethnic collectivities struggle for control over space, natural resources, and political institutions, and often as well for international legitimacy and support. Ethnocracy can exist in other kinds of political regimes.
South Africa
Ethnocracy indicates a specific principle of power-distribution in a society. In his book Power-Sharing in South Africa ISBN 0-87725-524-5, Arend Lijphart classifies contemporary constitutional proposals for a solution to the conflict in South Africa into four categories:
- majoritarian (one man, one vote)
- non-democratic (varieties of white domination)
- partitionist (creating new political entities)
- consociational (power-sharing by proportional representation and elite accommodation) (1985:5)
Not surprisingly, Lijphart argues strongly in favour of the consociational model and his categories illustrates that, on the constitutional level, state power can be distributed along two dimensions: Legal-institutional and territorial.
Along the legal-institutional dimension we can distinguish between singularism (power centralised according to membership in a specific group), pluralism (power-distribution among defined groups according to relative numerical strength), and universalism (power-distribution without any group-specific qualifications). The three main alternatives on the territorial dimension are the unitary state, "intermediate restructuring" (within one formal sovereignty), and partition (creating separate political entities).
Latvia and Estonia
Some authors (see ) consider Latvia and Estonia to be Ethnocracies or Ethnic Democracies. The conclusion is based on the citizenship laws of these countries that granted automatic citizenship to people living there prior to 1940 and their direct descendants while decendants of the people migrated after the 1940 could only gain citizenship through a complicated naturalisation process that includes language test, an oath of loyalty, renunciation of former citizenship, a 5-year residency requirement, and a knowledge of the constitution .
As a result a class of "non-citizen" permanent residents was created who were required to pay taxes but had no right to direct participation in the government. Currently, more than 18% of the Latvian and 18% of Estonian population do not have national citizenship. The large (nearly 40% in Latvia and 32% in Estonia) Russian-speaking minority was, and continues to be, under-represented in the national parliaments. One of the actions of the Latvian and Estonian governments was to ban the Russian language, the second official language of the Latvian SSR along with the Latvian language, from government, judicial and partially business use, and severely curtail its use in the education system. Additional even stricter government requirements are enforced on many professions in public and private sectors. As a result the unemployment is much higher than average among the Russian-speaking minorities (e.g. minorities in Estonia has 12.9% vs 5.3 unemployment rate for the ethnic Estonian)
On the other hand, critics of these claims reject the allegations in the ethnic character of these democracies. They point out that the citizenship laws of their countries are not ethnic based and treat citizens of Russian ethnicity, including those whose families have been living in these countries since before 1940 with the same rights as the ethnic majorities. Some critics also point out a need to counter the post-WWII influx of Russophone population caused by the illegal occupation of Baltic states. They also point out that considerable funds are allocated to integration programs that includes education of the non-native people in the native languages (for example, the Republic of Estonia reimburses 100% of money spent on language lessons upon the student's passing the naturalisation language test), also that the basic language requirements for the naturalization are not very high and should not be an issue for the people who have grown in the country.
External links and references
- Melvin, N. J. 'Post imperial Ethnocracy and the Russophone Minorities of Estonia and Latvia' in The Policies of National Minority Participation Post-Communist Europe. State-Building, Democracy and Ethnic Mobilisation, pp. 129-166. J. P. Stein, ed. EastWest Institute (EWI), 2000.
- Discrimination against the Russophone Minority in Estonia and Latvia - synopsis of article published in the Journal of Common Market Studies (November 2005)
- Citizenship row divides Latvia, BBC News
- Latvia: the politics of "ethnic cleansing", The Guardian (Australian Communist Party weekly), May 15, 2002
- Latvian lessons irk Russians, BBC News
- Naturalization has to become more complicated in Latvia, Regnum News Agency
- Estonia Linguistic minorities in Estonia: Discrimination must end Amnesty International Document EUR 51/002/2007 7 December 2006
- Amnesty takes on Estonia (reprint)
- Active Civic Participation of Immigrants in Estonia
- Non-Estonians' Integration Foundation
- Politics of Ethnocracies: Strategies and Dilemmas of Ethnic Domination Nils A. Butenschøn