“Does Džeko Live in Bosnia and Herzegovina?”: Demographics as a Hostage of Ethno-politics in the 2013 Census

In ethnically divided societies and political systems organized according to the principles of consociationalism, demography plays a crucial role as a powerful tool for promoting ethno-political interests. The aim of this article is to evaluate to what extent the first post-war 2013 census in Bosnia and Herzegovina became a hostage to the principle of ethno-politics. This study is grounded in Horowitz’s analysis of censuses in deeply divided societies, which assumes that ethnic identity in fragmented societies provides an explanation of who people vote for, and the reverse. We use the data on ethnic voting in 2014 as an indirect estimate of the ethnic structure of the population to verify the 2013 census findings. To do so, we determine the extent to which people enumerated as residents in the 2013 census actually live at the places they were counted, as required by the census law. Although we found that the indirect estimate of ethnic demography based on ethnic voting is largely in line with the census results, we also identified specific structural discrepancies between census results and voting patterns that indicate possible flaws in the census data in general. The method we used revealed significant territorial discrepancies, bringing into question the validity of the census data about the presence of Bosniak and Croat returnees in the Republika Srpska, and especially for Croats across Bosnia and Herzegovina. We argue that these discrepancies may have significant political consequences for the fragile Bosnian power-sharing system based on ethnic quotas and proportionality.

Ethnic Quotas and Foreign NGOs in Burundi: Shrinking Civic Space Framed as Affirmative Action

Since January 2017, foreign non-governmental organisations (ONGEs) active in Burundi are required to respect ethnic quotas (60 per cent Hutu, 40 per cent Tutsi) when employing local staff. The ethnic quota requirement was adopted amidst fears of re-ethnicisation of politics and society, enhanced control on civil society and tense relations between the Burundi government and its aid partners. While authorities justify the measure as a remedy for decades of discrimination along ethnic lines, an analysis of the legal reform shows that a variety of other motivations and dominant party interests account for its adoption and enforcement. While the reform mirrors a wider international trend of shrinking civic space, the Burundi case study also shows how a clever discursive strategy may skillfully divide ONGEs and their funding agencies. Furthermore, the case study reveals the instrumental use of obscurity and ambiguity in terms of the legal wording and enforcement of the ethnic quota requirement.

The Combination of Gender and Ethnic Quotas in Electoral Politics

Around the world, countries are increasingly using quotas to enhance the diversity of political representatives. This chapter considers the histories and policy designs of ethnic and gender quotas that regulate national legislatures. Most countries with quotas target only one type of under-represented group—for example, women or ethnic minorities. Even in countries with both gender and ethnic quotas (called ‘tandem quotas’), the policies typically evolved separately and work differently. Women and ethnic minorities are treated as distinct groups, ignoring the political position of ethnic minority women. However, a handful of countries have ‘nested quotas’ that specifically regulate the political inclusion of ethnic minority women. The second half the chapter focuses explicitly on nested quotas. It lays out how nested quotas work, where and how they have been adopted, and the prospect for their spread to new countries in the future. The chapter concludes with reflections on the promises and pitfalls of nested quotas as a vehicle for multicultural feminism.

“Looking for more Brazilian solutions”: Rhetorical Strategies against Ethnic Quotas in Brazilian Higher Education

Since the 1990s, Brazil has experienced a growing public debate about policies of ethnic affirmative action. The arguments invoked by the opponents of affirmative action quotas, expressed in scientific publications, the mass media and even manifestos, have been the subject of study in several research projects. In their analyses, these scholars have concluded that the the anti-quota arguments suffered from logical inconsistency, theoretical and methodological flaws or simple lack of empirical evidence. However, anti-quota rhetoric appears to persist seemingly unaffected by academic counter-arguments, if not in the academic debate, at least in public opinion. This paper argues that the persuasive power of anti-quota arguments derives from the strategic use of specific rhetorical strategies, based on time-proven classical speech imagery that foreground evidence and logic even where speculation and heuristics are the actual foundation. Using methods of Critical Discourse Analysis I will analyze a representative corpus of prominent public discourses against ethnic affirmative action quotas in order to demonstrate how rhetorical strategies are deployed in these texts, showing how they broadly mirror the proposition of a “Rhetoric of Reaction” (Hirschman 1991). These rhetorics, I argue, draw heavily on the myth of “racial democracy” combined with a long-standing national master-narrative of Brazilian exceptionalism, the combination of which masks racial animosity and defers policy action to support ethnic minorities.

Redescribing the Nation

Boosting national spirit through projection of otherness is not a new phenomenon, at least in authoritarian regimes. Yet the role of anti-Semitism in the Numerus Clausus debates in the Hungarian parliament in 1920 and 1928 is worth deeper analysis, as it bore a peculiar role in the Hungarian interwar counterrevolutionary nation-building. The Numerus Clausus law of 1920 set ethnic quotas to university enrolment; the explicit argument for this was countering the Jewish ‘over-representation’ in Hungarian society. However, in 1928 the law was amended, abolishing (in principle) the said quotas; this time the arguments favoured national consolidation, where segregation was to be moderated. In both cases, the national elites construed and made use of nation-centred political rhetoric, but used it for differing ends in different times. This article shall analyse the debates of the Hungarian Parliament concerning the Numerus Clausus laws, especially from the viewpoints of nation-building and rhetoric of exclusion.

Safeguarding Democracy: Powersharing and Democratic Survival

Democracy is often fragile, especially in states recovering from civil conflict. To protect emerging democracies, many scholars and practitioners recommend political powersharing institutions, which aim to safeguard minority group interests. Yet there is little empirical research on whether powersharing promotes democratic survival, and some concern that it limits electoral accountability. To fill this gap, we differentiate between inclusive, dispersive, and constraining powersharing institutions and analyze their effects on democratic survival from 1975 to 2015 using a global dataset. We find sharp distinctions across types of powersharing and political context. Inclusive powersharing, such as ethnic quotas, promotes democratic survival only in post-conflict settings. In contrast, dispersive institutions such as federalism tend to destabilize post-conflict democracies. Only constraining powersharing consistently facilitates democratic survival regardless of recent conflict. Institution-builders and international organizations should therefore prioritize institutions that constrain leaders, including independent judiciaries, civilian control of the armed forces, and constitutional protections of individual and group rights.

Ethnic Quotas as Term-Limits: Caste and Distributive Politics in South India

While ethnic quotas are primarily used to increase minority political representation, they also act like term-limits for majority-group incumbents, who cannot seek reelection after quota implementation. As such, quotas may have the perverse effect of making incumbents less accountable during their last term, particularly to minorities. Although majority-group incumbents may still have social reasons to distribute benefits to their coethnics, they have less reason to do so for minorities, from whom they derive little social reward. Using the systematic rotation of caste quotas in south India, this article shows that village presidents who expect to be ousted by quota spend significantly less on minorities than those who can run again; however, they do not reduce spending on goods that benefit their own communities. These findings suggest that quota policies must be evaluated not just by whom they bring into office but also by whom they force out.