Ethnic party
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An ethnic party is a political party that overtly presents itself as the champion of one ethnic group or sets of ethnic groups.[1][2] Ethnic parties make such representation central to their voter mobilization strategy.[1] An alternate designation is 'Political parties of minorities', but they should not be mistaken with regionalist or separatist parties, whose purpose is territorial autonomy.
Definitions
There are varied definitions of both ethnicity and ethnic parties.[3]
Ethnicity
Kanchan Chandra defines ethnic identity narrowly as a subset of identity categories determined by the belief of common descent. She rejects expansive definitions of ethnic identity (such as those that include common culture, common language, common history and common territory).[4] Jóhanna Birnir defines ethnicity as "group self-identification around a characteristic that is very difficult or even impossible to change, such as language, race, or location."[5]
Ethnic party
According to Donna Lee Van Cott,
Ethnic party is defined here as an organization authorized to compete in local or national elections; the majority of its leadership and membership identify themselves as belonging to a nondominant ethnic group, and its electoral platform includes demands and programs of an ethnic or cultural nature.[6][7]
According to Kanchan Chandra,
An ethnic party is a party that overtly represents itself as a champion of the cause of one particular ethnic category or set of categories to the exclusion of others, and that makes such a representation central to its strategy of mobilizing voters.[1]
Historical ethnic parties
The oldest prototypes of ethnic parties are the Jewish parties of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires, e.g.
Ethnic parties and political ideologies
Ethnic parties may take different ideological positions.
For instance, the parties competing for Jewish votes in interwar
In some political systems, party politics are mostly based on ethnicity, as in
.As a consequence, it would be somewhat irrelevant to classify some parties in these systems as 'ideological' (
The
In interwar Poland, Jewish, German and Ukrainian parties never attracted all
Ethnic parties and elections
Common lists or electoral agreements can be organized either between ethnic parties (Flemish parties '
Some ethnic parties only take part in substatal electoral competition, thus making them somewhat invisible to outside observers: the
It can occur that a single 'supra-ideological' party achieves, with varying shades of success, the representation of a whole ethnic group, as for the
In most cases, ethnic parties compete inside electoral systems where voters aren't compelled to vote according to ethnic affiliations and may vote too for 'non ethnic', 'transethnic' or '
A 2024 study found that when ethnic groups in Africa have an elected local ethnic party politician in parliament, they subsequently are more likely be employed.[8]
Ethnic parties and reserved seats
Some countries create
'Intraethnic parties', or political parties inside diasporic communities
There is also a specifically diasporic type of political parties that could be labelled as 'intraethnic parties', i.e. parties that compete only inside the diasporic political sphere.
The Jewish and Armenian (Dashnak, Ramgavar, or Hentchak) parties belong to this category, as well as the international sections of national parties, such as the (U.S.) Republicans Abroad and Democrats Abroad, the (French) Parti socialiste's Fédération des Français de l'étranger or the American and European branches of the Israeli Likud and of the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party of China).
There can also be specific political groupings representing members of a national community living abroad, such as the
Sources
- ^ ISBN 978-1-108-63552-3.
- S2CID 246488912.
- ISSN 1354-0688.
- ISSN 1094-2939.
- ISBN 978-1139462600. Archivedfrom the original on 2022-04-22. Retrieved 2022-03-21.
- ^ Donna Lee Van Cott, “Institutional Change and Ethnic Parties in South America.” Latin American Politics and Society 45, 2 (summer 2003): 1-39 (abstract)
- )
- ISSN 1945-7782.