3 - Enduring Ethnicity: The Political Survival of Incumbent Ethnic Parties in Western Democracies

Summary

Introduction

Ethnonationalist parties have been successful in mobilizing voters within Western parliamentary democracies. In their century-long existence, these parties have helped foster ethnic identities as well as voter loyalty and electoral support. In so doing, they have drawn supporters away from parties on the left and the right; they have pushed their agendas for autonomy and devolution, for cultural protection, revival, and assertion; they have built stable and, in many cases, large and enduring constituencies; their numbers have mushroomed in the multiethnic political systems of the West. One might even claim that ethnonationalist parties in Western parliamentary democracies have done better than class-based parties. For example, at the start of the twenty-first century, they continue to increase their electoral support while class-based parties have difficulties maintaining their past electoral records. The saliency of the ethnic cleavage not only endures but is growing stronger as class seems to fade in Western postindustrial societies (Table 3.1). Why have ethnonationalist parties been comparatively successful?

One possible answer could be that ethnic identities, once created, tend to be stable. Ethnic voters are more rigid in their loyalties than other types of voters, and ethnonationalist parties transform this rigidity into an electoral advantage. There is no agreement among social scientists about how strongly individuals are tied to their ethnic identities. Primordialists would say that people think about ethnicity in primordial terms and, therefore, individual ethnic identities, once constructed, are highly perdurable (Geertz 1973; Gellner 1983; Horowitz 1985; Gil-White 1999; Van Evera 2001).