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Ethnocracy

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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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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

After regaining independence in 1991, the Latvian government granted citizenship to those people living in Latvia prior to 1940 and their direct descendants. However, this left almost half of the population who had immigrated to Latvia after it became part of the Soviet Union, the majority of them ethnic Russians, without citizenship - in a class of "non-citizen" permanent residents who were required to pay taxes but had no right to direct participation in the government. For acquiring citizenship through naturalisation, following criteria must be met: conversational knowledge of Latvian, an oath of loyalty, renunciation of former citizenship, a 5-year residency requirement, and a knowledge of the Latvian constitution. As of November 2005, about 109,000 persons have applied for naturalization and about 103,000 of them have been granted Latvian citizenship (see Politics_of_Latvia#Citizenship_issue). The large (nearly 40% in 2006) Russian-speaking minority in Latvia was, and continues to be, under-represented in the Saeima. One of the actions of the Latvian government 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. Currently, more than 18% of the Latvian population do not have citizenship. The political party For Human Rights in United Latvia, which holds 6 seats in the Saeima and is headed by Tatjana Ždanoka and Jakovs Pliners, is working for the establishment of a liberal democracy and the advancement of minority rights in Latvia.

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