Who Gets to Play? Enfranchisement in Diverse Societies

• In Event: With or without You: Minority Enfranchisement in Europe

Abstract

Why do ethnically diverse states choose to enfranchise certain minority groups before others? Like many Western European states, Central Eastern European states underwent a process of nation-state consolidation alongside democratization, resulting in a gradual approach to granting political rights. Through historical comparative analysis and an examination of evidence from the democratizing period in the Kingdom of Hungary (1867-1918), I demonstrate how different types of threats, both internal and external to parliamentary systems, influenced the decision-making of elites regarding which groups to include in the enfranchisement process. I consider the national, political, and economic preferences of these elites and assess the characteristics at the group level that I hypothesize and subsequently illustrate to have an impact on the (dis)enfranchisement of minority groups in diverse democratizing states. These characteristics, specifically size and cohesion, play a significant role. The evidence reveals that well-organized minority groups, especially those that are small and cohesive, engage in political organization. Conversely, the least organized among the ethnonational minorities were enfranchised to form minimum-winning coalitions for the incumbent party, as they posed a lower level of political and national threat. In other words, political organization can have unintended consequences for minority groups when it comes to their inclusion in the political processes of diverse states.

Author

• Lotem Halevy, University of Konstanz