Minorităţi

Party Regulation in Central and Eastern Europe¹
The effect on minority representation and the propensity for conflict

 

JÓHANNA KRISTÍN BIRNIR

Parties are at the centre of political life for voters in diverse democracies as the venues for the expression of group concerns in the legislative game. According to some of the more influential political scientists, party system stability is essential to the proper functioning of a democracy. High levels of party system fragmentation are also considered detrimental to the proper functioning of democratic regimes. Fragmentation complicates coalition-building in the legislature and inhibits compromise on policy issues.

Keywords: Democracies, party system, political life

Parties are at the centre of political life for voters in diverse democracies as the venues for the expression of group concerns in the legislative game.² According to some of the more influential political scientists, party system stability is essential to the proper functioning of a democracy.³ High levels of party system fragmentation are also considered detrimental to the proper functioning of democratic regimes. Fragmentation complicates coalition-building in the legislature and inhibits compromise on policy issues.⁴

In general, the greater is social diversity, the greater is the fragmentation of parties in the legislature, since parties will appeal to and represent distinct social cleavages.⁵ Underlying ethnic cleavages interact with institutional barriers to partly determine the number of parties in the legislature. The barriers include allocation rules, particularly the number of seats in each district (district magnitude): the higher the district magnitude, the greater the number of parties in the system.⁶ Interestingly, however, analysis of the effect of party regulation institutions, which affect electoral mobilization into separate political parties and the consequent potential for legislative fragmentation before allocation institutions ever come into play, is only beginning to emerge.⁷

Party formation requirements vary greatly between countries and it is important to define the term more precisely. Broadly speaking, party formation rules can apply to the initial registration of a party and/or regulate its continued survival and political participation. Requirements for registration of a political party and/or independent candidates are usually contained in either electoral law or party law. The most common types of requirement, summarized in Table one, are that a new party must register a certain number or a certain percentage of voters as supporters in order to qualify for the ballot the first time around. If the requirement is a part of electoral law, the party may have to register before every election. Alternatively, the party must have received a certain percentage of the vote in a lower-level election to qualify for the ballot in a higher-level election. When, however, the requirement is in the party law, parties may have to register only once, unless a separate clause in the electoral or party law rescinds their registration owing to, for instance, a lackluster performance in elections.⁸ Post-election requirements are not uncommon both in established democracies and in newer democracies in Latin America,⁹ but they are rare in the Eastern bloc.¹⁰ Occasionally, signature or vote requirements are accompanied by a spatial distribution requirement in that signatures must be obtained from certain parts of the country or state. Sometimes, financial requirements are also a part of the ballot-access requirements, either as a pre-election deposit or as a post-election fine.

Table 1
Some Common Ballot Access Requirements*

* The table does not represent an exhaustive list. A ban on ethnic parties is, for instance, a restriction on party formation but this rule is not common and therefore not included in the table.

Little is written about the role of formation rules in party system development and to my knowledge only Birnir, Bogaards and Reilly¹¹ explicitly make the connection between formation rules and hotly or even violently contested politics. For example, the mechanism investigated by Reilly¹² for the role of formation rules in mediating conflict is that they counteract natural tendencies of inter-group fracture and the consequent propensity for conflict by promoting consolidation of the party system. In contrast, Birnir¹³ argues that ethnic politics are not inherently conflictual. Rather ethnic minority groups likely engage in protest and even violence when other electoral alternatives are exhausted.

Building on the emerging literature this chapter ponders two related questions. First, I ask: which came first, the conflict or the institution? Does ethnic conflict prompt the adoption of institutions aimed at resolving ethnic strife or do institutional constraints contribute to conflict among ethnic groups? Second, once formation institutions are adopted in either conflictual or peaceful diverse societies I ask what their effect is.

The likely answer to the question of which came first, conflict or institution, is that it could be either. Where ethnic minority groups have mobilized and engaged in conflict prior to democratization for reasons exogenous to the electoral process, it is likely that ameliorating the conflict is a priority of democratic state builders. State builders may, for example, use formation institutions as one way to deemphasize the existing divisions around which the conflict is taking place or to prevent the existing conflict from entering the electoral arena. For example, prior to democratization in Indonesia in 1998 several ethnic minorities used significant violence against the state. In addition to the East Timorese, these include the Acehnese, who have sought independence since 1976, and the Papuans, who were only incorporated as the tventy sixth province of Indonesia only in 1969.¹⁴ As noted by Reilly¹⁵ the explicit objectives of Indonesian state builders were to consolidate the party system and counter secessionism by, for instance, requiring that all parties have national support.

In many cases, however, ethnic minority groups are not mobilized¹⁶ for political action and/or conflict prior to democratization. In such cases it is unlikely that state builders consider ethnic conflict resolution an objective in state-building. Nonetheless, they may incorporate formation institutions into the construction of democratic institutions for reasons unrelated to ethnicity.

Generally speaking, formation rules are instituted to consolidate party systems by preventing or reducing systemic fragmentation where parties draw on separate cleavages, but only in select cases are the pertinent social divisions ethnic. The answer to the second question, regarding the effect of these rules once instituted, is more complex. Let us first consider anecdotally the effect where formation rules were specifically instituted to handle ethnic conflict by eliminating ethnic and regional parties. In Indonesia, party fragmentation has decreased since democratization.¹⁷ Conflict has not. According to the Minorities at Risk rebellion score¹⁸ there is no immediate evidence of a decrease in rebellion perpetrated by the Acehnese or the Papuans against the state. In fact, Reilly points out that there may be a significant cost to retarding party fragmentation through the use of formation rules. These costs include favoring incumbents over challengers and upsetting the balance of politics to the point of encouraging a coup or other types of political crisis.¹⁹ Similarly, Birnir and Van Cott²⁰ suggest that the benefits of ethnic representation may outweigh the costs of increasing party fragmentation. Therefore, although formation rules evidently reduce fragmentation it is not clear that they have the effect of reducing ethnic conflict where intended to. However, many of the countries where formation rules were explicitly introduced to counter ethnic tension, manifesting through fragmented party systems, are new democracies and it is possible that the consolidation that is evident in these party systems is across ethnic cleavage lines or will eventually be across cleavage lines with beneficial effects on conflict. It is also possible that such consolidation already has improved ethnic relations though this may not be evident in the available data. For example, in Indonesia the trajectory of the conflict might have been increasing but for the reform.²¹ Alternatively, party system consolidation in these countries simply means that particular cleavages are excluded from representation. The probability of exclusion likely increases as polarization of ethnic groups in society increases and in the long term may have detrimental effects on the development of ethnic conflict.²²

The question that remains unanswered pertains to the effect of formation rules in diverse societies where these rules were probably not instituted to reduce conflict because there was little if any ethnic conflict prior to the institution of the rules. With the exception of conflictual states that were formerly a part of the Yugoslav republic, prior to democratization there was little if any sustained organized violence perpetrated by ethnic minority groups against the state in Central and Eastern Europe or in Latin America.²³ Furthermore, countries in Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America democratized more than a decade and a half ago, which allows for some better inferences about the effect of formation rules where they are temporally prior to sustained violent conflict. Consequently, the remainder of this chapter focuses on the effect of formation rules on political conflict in Central and Eastern Europe excluding the exceptionally violent politics of the former Yugoslav states.

In sum, the following discussion shows that formation rules are very effective at reducing overall party fragmentation. Furthermore, formation rules that by themselves exclude ethnic groups from political representation are problematic because there is circumstantial evidence to suggest that such rules provoke the ethnic minority group and contribute to conflict. Formation rules that pose restrictions that fall short of excluding a group are also associated with a reduction in the number of parties but this reduction might have beneficial effects on the political consolidation of the ethnic group. Consequently, policy makers who want to maximize the benefit of party system consolidation and minimize the dangers of ethnic conflict might consider instituting system-consolidating formation rules, such as signature requirements, that pose barriers and may even encourage inter-ethnic cooperation but do not by themselves exclude a group, provided that the number of required signatures does not exceed the voting population of the ethnic minority.

The origin of formation rules.

With the exception of the emerging literature on formation rules²⁴ there is very little written on why formation rules were adopted in specific countries. The literature on the reasons for the adoption of the electoral rules of allocation is, however, quite substantial. Since both types of institution shape party systems and political careers it is likely that the literature on the adoption of rules of allocation can inform us about the reasons why particular formation rules were adopted. A common belief in the electoral literature is that electoral rules in emerging democracies are adopted as a result of undemocratic pacts among select established actors.²⁵ Furthermore, politicians are thought to try to manipulate institutions or the choice of institutions to their own advantage,²⁶ to the extent possible under uncertainty²⁷ and with multiple and often contradictory incentives of the participating politicians.²⁸

In Central and Eastern Europe, the initial rules governing elections were characteristically forged in roundtables focusing explicitly on procedural issues, and included incumbents and some members of the opposition.²⁹ Although Central and East European actors probably acted in self-interest in the selection of rules, as predicted by the literature, uncertainty in many cases prevented them from making choices that actually served their self-interest in the long run.³⁰ Generally speaking, the primary emphasis was on allocation rules and formation rules were both simple and very minimal³¹ or explicitly aimed at reducing party fragmentation.³² In Poland subsequent electoral reform to reduce party fragmentation have also focused on allocation rules rather than party formation.³³ Changes to allocation rules and theinstitution of deposits for electoral participation have played a similarly important part in reducing party fragmentation in the Czech Republic. In addition, state funding of parties is an important instrument in reducing party system fragmentation and increasing party cohesion in the Czech legislature.³⁴ Whereas other law, for example, in Albania and Bulgaria has been used to restrict ethnic party formation³⁵ and political participation I have found no evidence that in Central and Eastern Europe formation rules were initially instituted for this purpose. On the contrary, the institution of new rules in the late 1990s in Estonia and Latvia that require candidates to have advanced proficiency in the state language is thought by some to be aimed specifically at hampering the participation of Russian minority parties.³⁶

In sum, therefore, and as expected it appears that in ethnically diverse Central and East European countries that had not experienced ethnic conflict prior to democratization formation rules were not adopted with an eye to restricting ethnic representation. Rather these rules were instituted to prevent party system fragmentation and with the objective of furthering incumbent advantage when there was an articulated objective. When these rules were changed, indigenous and/or ethnic concerns or concerns about ethnic populations were not evidently the primary determinants of change, with the exception of liberalizing changes made in Ecuador and restricting ones in Estonia and Latvia.

The effect of formation rules on ethnic populations.

The question then becomes: what is the effect of formation rules on ethnic populations where such rules were instituted for motives of party system consolidation rather than with the ethnic populations in mind? Put differently, do these formation rules have any unintended consequences for the ethnic populations in question? For example, Birnir argues that ethnic group propensity for rebellion against the state increases over time where electorally active ethnic groups are excluded from the executive.³⁷ Ethnic exclusion from the executive occurs where (a) ethnic parties are not institutionally viable; or (b) viable ethnic parties are unable to access government; and (c) non-ethnic parties that over time have access to government do not represent the ethnic issue in the executive. An implication of this argument is that, where ethnic groups are not represented by multi-ethnic parties, formation rules that prevent ethnic representation through ethnic parties are likely to increase the probability that an ethnic group engages in violence against the state.

Prior to examining the possible effects of formation rules on the domain of ethnic politics, it is imperative that we establish the conditionality of this hypothesized causal effect. This conditionality is determined by the interaction of the formation rules with (a) other institutions and (b) the demographics of the country and group in question. Assuming for a moment that we can hold the effect of such intervening institutions constant, below I discuss in some detail how attributes of ethnic minority groups, such as size, cohesion and geographical concentration theoretically interact with formation rules to affect the group propensity for seeking representation by forming ethnic political parties and consequent potential for conflict behavior.

Differences in ethnic diversity and formation rules.
As shown in Table two, generally speaking, ethnic minorities in Central and Eastern Europe are national minorities that often trace their roots to neighboring countries. One notable exception to this is the Roma who may constitute a racially distinct group.³⁸ Furthermore, the size of the minority groups varies– particularly relative to the size of the country’s population.

Table 2
Ethnic diversity in Central and Eastern European countries that did not experience significant sustained ethnic conflict prior to the most recent democratization.

a) Ethnic Fractionalization (EF) calculated by Alesina et al. 2003. „Fractionalization.” Journal of Economic Growth (8): 155–94.
b) Minority Rights Group,World Directory of Minorities. (Minority Rights Group International. London,1997); Hernesniemi, Pivi & Lauri Hannikainen. 2000. „Roma Minorities in the Nordic and Baltic Countries. Are their rights realized?” Rovaniemi: Lapland’s University Press. Publication of the Northern Institute for Environmental and Minority Law. Peter Bakker, at: http://www.minelres.lv/minelres/archive/06032001-12:03:42-13702.html

Variety in diversity leads to the expectation that the content and type of demographic interaction with party registration rules will differ between countries depending on the size, cohesion, geographical concentration, and attributes specific to the group.³⁹ Attributes of the individual group interact with the specific types of party registration rules in ways that make them more or less of a barrier to electoral participation by the group and the resulting group potential for conflict behavior. For example, a ban on ethnic parties affects only linguistically and/or culturally distinct groups such as indigenous peoples and national minorities, but not de facto racial groups. Consequently, where other avenues for the political representation of the group are prevented, one might expect a ban on ethnic parties to augment the conflict potential of linguistically and culturally distinct groups but not of racial groups.

Size of the group is another characteristic that is important to the impact that formation rules will have. Racial groups, for instance, tend to be larger than the average national ethnic minorities and may, therefore, demand greater input in a country’s governance than small national minorities, whose primary objective more likely involves greater autonomy over their own affairs. When restrictive formation barriers successfully keep the larger groups from representation one might expect any subsequent political conflict to be bitterer and have as its objective a more radical change to national politics than the change a small national minority might seek. Which type of group, small or large, formation rules are likely to present the greatest barriers to is not, however, entirely clear. For example, larger more internally diverse groups are less likely to overcome the collective action problem required to mobilize successfully.⁴⁰ An example includes the indigenous peoples in Bolivia, who constitute a racially distinct group but are internally quite divided into divergent linguistic groups. Until recently this group was not unified in its political mobilization.⁴¹ Any additional barriers presented by formation rules will likely further prevent successful collective action by such large groups. At the same time small groups may experience difficulties in mobilizing enough of their members for political action. In the case of small groups formation rules may therefore prevent the successful conclusion of an already difficult task. How small is too small for electoral mobilization is not evident. For example, in the relatively homogeneous Poland the small German minority does run a separate party in national elections, and the same is true for Greeks in Albania, but a party representing the sizeable community of Ukrainians in Moldova has never gained legislative representation.   

Pre-election signature requirements are among the specific rules that interact with the size of the group to alter its potential for mobilization and representation and consequent potential for conflict behavior. Theoretically, pre-election signature requirements place a proportionally heavier burden on smaller groups and groups in the early stages of mobilization than on large and established ones. Indeed, where electoral institutions are very permissive, the registration requirements effectively substitute for the effects of more restrictive electoral institutions. Alternatively, because pre-election signature requirements work as an incentive for internal party consolidation, if the requirements are not sufficiently high, ethnic groups that might otherwise consolidate to run a unified political party fragment in their electoral competition to the detriment of ethnic group representation.⁴²

In Central and Eastern Europe pre-election signature requirements present the greatest burden where the minorities that might seek to mobilize are relatively small. As shown in Table three, signature requirements are used in all of the countries examined here except for Albania, Latvia, Estonia and one Moldovan election. Unless the group is very small, however, pre-election signature requirements probably do not by themselves exclude groups from participating in electoral politics. Thus, it is unlikely that this requirement is responsible for the lackluster political performance of the largest ethnic group in Central and Eastern Europe, the Roma. Table four examines the relationship between the Roma population and the content of the latest signature law in some more detail. The table accounts for the most recent signature requirement, shows Roma as a percentage of the population by country according to one estimate,⁴³ and denotes whether the population has mobilized electorally. The first trend to emerge from the table is that electoral activity by the Roma population in a given country seems clearly tied to the size of that demographic. With the exception of the Czech Republic the Roma are not electorally active where they constitute less than 3.5 per cent of the population. They are electorally active in Romania, Macedonia, Hungary, Moldova, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic and through non-ethnic parties in Bulgaria. In all of these countries there is a signature requirement. Assessing the effect of the signature requirements on Roma mobilization, therefore, requires greater attention to the magnitude of the requirement.

Table 3
Party formation requirements in Central and Eastern Europe and the Roma.

Sources for population: Minority Rights Group. 1997. World Directory of Minorities. (Higher estimate in range); Hernesniemi, Pivi & Lauri Hannikainen. 2000. Roma minorities in the Nordic and Baltic Countries. Are their rights Realized? Rovaniemi: Lapland’s University Press. Publication of the Northern Institute for Environmental and Minority Law. For law see Table three.

Where the Roma are more numerous – in Slovenia, Bulgaria, Moldova, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Macedonia – they have accessed legislatures only in Romania and Macedonia. In Macedonia, the registration requirement is very low and required only once.⁴⁴ In Romania minorities are exempt from the requirement.⁴⁵ In Hungary, the requirement is not much higher than in Macedonia. However, this requirement is associated with each election rather than a party’s foundation.⁴⁶ Consequently, to sustain a political party over time, the organizational capacity of the Roma in Hungary must exceed that of the Roma in Macedonia. In Slovakia⁴⁷ and Slovenia,⁴⁸ too, the requirement is tied to elections. The Roma in Slovenia are not electorally active but do have some organization through the Union of Roma of Slovenia, which is quite dynamic on the cultural scene.⁴⁹ The most important difference in the effects of registration requirements on the Roma populations in Slovenia, Slovakia and Hungary compared with Macedonia is that the group is significantly smaller proportionally, making the collection of signatures potentially more difficult. In Moldova, there is no official registration requirement for elections but the registration obligation for parties of „5,000 active members” for parties is not insignificant. More importantly, however, there is a stringent spatial component to the law in Moldova.⁵⁰ Finally, in Bulgaria ethnic parties are banned by the constitution. Whereas the Turkish minority has been able to circumvent this law to present a party that by and large is recognized as a Turkish minority party the Roma have not.⁵¹ In sum, therefore, registration requirements possibly hampered Roma mobilization in Slovenia but, with the exception of Moldova, the registration requirements clearly did not bar Roma parties from running in elections.

Furthermore, as demonstrated by the relative success of Roma parties in Romania there is nothing inherently apolitical about the Roma but, for an ethnic minority in Central and Eastern Europe, they tend to be unusually poorly mobilized.⁵² Consequently, the anecdotal evidence from Slovakia where Roma parties did register, suggests that the rule might have been of more use to Roma representation had it been more stringent. According to Barany,⁵³ 13„Romani parties registered prior to the 1998 Slovak national elections, but eventually no Gypsy party ran candidates for parliament on its own”. It is possible that the requirement of a declaration of 10,000 members attached to a candidate list in the election may have hampered the participation of these Roma parties.⁵⁴ It should be possible, however, for 13 Roma parties to have a voting age membership exceeding ten thousand because the population constitutes at least 350,000 individuals according to the Minority Rights Group and 400,000 according to Barany.⁵⁵ It is more likely, therefore, that the requirement was just high enough to make electoral follow-through difficult for the high number of would-be contestants, but not high enough to make them consolidate into a single or a few large parties that could have run successfully.

In Moldova,⁵⁶ however, the spatial component of the registration rules prevents the electoral participation of the Roma and other ethnic minorities through ethnic parties. The same is theoretically true for the party formation of geographically concentrated groups in other countries but not of regionally dispersed groups unless the number of group members is very small in any one location.⁵⁷ Many national minorities in Central and Eastern Europe tend to be geographically concentrated but geographical concentration is less common for racial non-indigenous minorities in Latin America, for example. Existing spatial requirements in Central and Eastern Europe are, however, restricted to large parties in Albania and Slovakia or national lists in Hungary and Poland. Romania has spatial registration requirements for all parties but the 1992 election law cancels this requirement out for minorities. Consequently, it is unlikely in Central and Eastern Europe that spatial registration requirements hamper ethnic political participation outside Moldova. This class of requirements has, however, presented some problems in Latin America.⁵⁸

Table 4
Some principal party formation rules in Central and Eastern Europe

Sources: International Foundation for Election Systems. 1995. Election Law Compendium of Central and Eastern Europe. IFES. Kiev. See also: University of Essex.Project on Political Transformation and the Electoral Process in Post-Communist Europe, at http://www.essex.ac.uk/elections/, and Lexadin The World law Guide at: http://www.lexadin.nl/

Assessment and conclusion.

The above anecdotal evidence provides ample support for the idea that formation rules have contributed to party system consolidation in Central and Eastern Europe. Central and East European countries that instituted significant formation requirements experienced less fragmentation than those that did not, which have since had to adjust their electoral law to handle the fragmentation. Similarly, in Latin America there is evidence that an increase in formation requirements reduced party system fragmentation. Clearly, therefore, formation rules are very effective at reducing party system fragmentation.

Assessing the effect on conflict in the political system of formation rules that stop short of excluding minority groups from electoral participation is more difficult. The multitude of indigenous and Roma parties registering where signature requirements are low and the ethnic populations are large but subsequently failing to present a viable electoral alternative suggests that signature requirements may in those cases not have been sufficiently high to induce the necessary cohesion of the ethnic group for successful electoral participation. Increasing signature requirements is, however, a delicate balance, because high signature requirements, for example exceeding the size of the voting age population in a group, may prevent ethnic minority group political participation altogether. In Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania, data on Roma protest before and after democratization shows that protest by this group against the state has increased. Among the countries examined here, the Roma also protest recently in the Czech Republic and Macedonia. It is not clear, however, that formation rules play any role in this protest, although more stringent registration rules might help this minority consolidate sufficiently to achieve representation and address their grievances through the legislative process. Other smaller minorities, such as Greeks in Albania, Albanians in Macedonia and the indigenous in Chile and Honduras have increased their protest against the state during the current democratic period but more information is needed to establish what effect if any formation rules play in this process.

Interpreting the causal effect of formation rules and conflict is similarly difficult because of the contingencies discussed above but some tentative conclusions are nevertheless possible. There is evidence that rules that by themselves exclude minority populations from electoral participation pose problems for democracy by increasing the contentiousness of ethnic politics. Spatial registration requirements in Ecuador and Moldova are examples of such rules. Both Ecuador and Moldova experienced significant ethnic conflict after democratization.⁵⁹ Clearly these conflicts are not exclusively caused by the institution of formation rules, but the presence of such rules under conditions of ethnic polarization does not help in integrating the rebellious populations into the mainstream party system. Other formation rules that in effect, exclude particular populations such as linguistic requirements in the Baltics have also resulted in bitter protest by the affected groups. In none of these countries had the ethnic minorities initiated conflict prior to the institution of these rules and in the case of Ecuador ethnic protest was reduced after the rules were changed to allow for indigenous participation through ethnic parties. Clearly, therefore, exclusionary formation rules have the potential to increase ethnic political conflict. At the same time, we know that reducing party fragmentation has beneficial effects for party system development. The potentially detrimental effects of ethnic conflict owing to the exclusionary effects of formation rules and the benefits of reducing party fragmentation may cancel each other out or have unforeseen consequences. It is therefore imperative that policy makers consider this trade-off explicitly in an effort to create an institutional framework that assists healthy party system consolidation while ensuring minority representation through single or multi-ethnic parties.