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M. Steven Fish is associate professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a coauthor of Postcommunism and
the Theory of Democracy (2001). Robin S. Brooks is a Ph.D. candidate
at the University of California, Berkeley. She is writing her dissertation on ethnic identity and political change in southeastern Europe.
litical rights and civil liberties around the world, Freedom House
president Adrian Karatnycky repeated the claimheard often in academic and public discourse alikethat ethnic diversity hinders open
politics. Reviewing the findings of the 2001 survey, he concluded that
democracy has been significantly more successful in monoethnic societies than in ethnically divided and multiethnic societies. 1
In saying this, Karatnycky was hardly being provocative or
counterintuitive. A number of eminent political scientists have seen
diverse societies as disadvantaged when it comes to democratization.2
According to many observers, ethnic differences divide society and
make compromise and consensus difficult. Heterogeneity poses the risk
of intercommunal violence, which can quickly undermine open politics. What is more, political parties and other organizations coalesce
more readily around ethnic than other identities. Political entrepreneurs therefore have an incentive to play on such divisions and to
neglect efforts to mobilize citizens around civil rights and class concerns.3 And in a particularly ironic twist, well-meant efforts to defuse
ethnic conflict can take the form of elite bargains, made amid political
openings, that later block further democratization. 4
Empirical evidence seems abundant. Writing in the wake of the Soviet demise, Donald L. Horowitz observed: Democracy has progressed
furthest in those East European countries that have the fewest serious
ethnic cleavages (Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland) and progressed more slowly or not at all in those that are deeply divided
Journal of Democracy Volume 15, Number 1 January 2004
156
Journal of Democracy
155
TABLE 1R EGRESSIONS
Constant
Ethnic/Racial
Fractionalization
Linguistic
Fractionalization
OF
5.52***
(0.31)
-3.33**
(1.24)
-2.86*
(1.22)
5.06***
(0.27)
-4.04***
(1.06)
-2.46*
(1.10)
-2.63***
(0.53)
-0.62
(0.57)
0.11
(0.50)
-1.80***
(0.47)
-0.07
(0.45)
0.05
(0.41)
ON
Religious
Fractionalization
Ethnic
Homogeneity
Economic
Development
2.22***
(0.30)
2.13***
(0.28)
2.34***
(0.27)
HYPOTHESIZED DETERMINANTS
7
3.98***
(0.31)
-4.54***
(0.83)
-2.40*
(0.98)
0.76
(0.61)
0.81
(0.50)
-0.48
(0.47)
2.03***
(0.27)
2.38***
(0.23)
11
12
3.10***
(0.42)
10
-4.52***
(0.95)
-3.22**
(1.06)
0.015*
(0.006)
-0.0002
(0.006)
-0.006
(0.005)
2.44***
(0.31)
2.34***
(0.28)
2.07***
(0.24)
Islam
-1.46***
(0.28)
-1.50***
(0.28)
-1.52***
(0.29)
-1.28***
(0.29)
Former
British Colony
0.16
(0.29)
0.13
(0.29)
0.25
(0.31)
0.16
(0.33)
OPEC
Member
-1.46**
(0.52)
-1.42**
(0.50)
-1.47**
(0.52)
-1.61**
(0.51)
Adj. R 2
N
166
.11
.36
161
.54
.06
.36
166
.55
.00
.36
138
.54
.03
.34
.53
Note: OLS regressions. Entries are unstandardized regression coefficients with White-corrected robust standard errors in parentheses. *p<0.05; **p<0.01; ***p<0.001
Sources: For ethnic, linguistic, and religious fractionalization: Alberto Alesina, Arnaud Devleeschauwer, William Easterly, Sergio Kurlat, and Romain Wacziarg, Fractionalization, National
Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 9411, January 2003; for ethnic homogeneity, Freedom House, Freedom in the World: The Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil
Liberties
19992000 (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000); for economic development, CIA World Factbook 2000 (Washington, D.C.: Brasseys, 2000).
15
8
Jo
ur
na
l
of
D
e
m
oc
ra
cy
15
9
Journal of Democracy
159
dence of a sturdy, sizeable link between social homogeneity and democracy. Contrary to Karatnyckys claim, we see that the relative size
of the largest ethnic group is not a good predictor of democratic achievement. In the bivariate regression (model 10) the correlation between the
size of the largest ethnic group and the FH ratings is paltry. Models 11
and 12 show that when controls are added the link between homogeneity and democracy actually becomes negative, though the relationship
is not statistically significant. Greater ethnic homogeneity is not associated with more open political regimes.
Some scholars have suggested that social fractionalization may be important, but with complicated and nonlinear or curvilinear effects that
might not appear in regression analyses. Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler
argue that countries in which one finds ethnic dominancemeaning
that a single ethnic group makes up 45 to 90 percent of the population
are more prone to major civil conflict than either t hose highly
homogeneous countries where one group forms more than 90 percent of
the population or those highly fractionalized countries where each group
comprises less than 45 percent of the population.18 Collier and Hoeffler
focus on ethnic compositions effect on conflict rather than on
democracy, but the logic of the claim may be applied readily to
democracy as well.
If a hazardous intermediate zone between very high homogeneity and
very high fractionalization actually exists, one should see evidence of a
U- or J-shaped curve in diagrams that plot the correlation between FH
scores and four indicators of social diversity. We assembled scatter plots
using these four indicators.19 These plots reveal no such telltale U- or Jshaped arc. They do, however, illustrate what is evident in the
regressions: There is scant correlation between social diversity and
political regime.
In sum, the degree of diversity is not shown to influence democracys
prospects. What social scientists call the null hypothesisthe proposition that social diversity has no appreciable effect on political
regimeis one that in this case we cannot readily reject.
TABLE 2FRACTIONALIZATION
COUNTRIES
Benin
Bolivia
Botswana
Bulgaria
Cape Verde
Dominican Republic
El Salvador
Estonia
Guyana
India
Jamaica
Latvia
Lithuania
Mali
Mongolia
Namibia
Papua New Guinea
Philippines
Romania
Mean: Low-Income
Democracies
Mean: World
ETHNIC
FRACTIONALIZATION*
.79
.74
.41
.40
.42
.43
.20
.51
.62
.42
.42
.59
.32
.69
.37
.63
.27
.24
.31
.46
.46
IN
.44
.40
RELIGIOUS
FRACTIONALIZATION*
.55
.21
.60
.60
.08
.31
.36
.50
.79
.33
.62
.56
.41
.18
.08
.66
.55
.31
.24
.42
.43
AS
M.
St
ev
en
Fi
sh
an
d
Ro
bi
n
S.
Br
oo
ks
71
72
16
1
16
2
Journal of Democracy
162
NOTES
1. Adrian Karatnycky, The 2001 Freedom House Survey: Muslim Countries
and the Democracy Gap, Journal of Democracy 13 (January 2002): 107.
2. Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1977); Robert A. Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971); Alvin Rabushka and Kenneth A. Shepsle, Politics
in Plural Societies (Columbus, Ohio: Merrill, 1972); David Welsh, Domestic
Politics and Ethnic Conflict, in Michael E. Brown, ed., Ethnic Conflict and
International Security (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 4360.
3. Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1985).
4. Courtney Jung and Ian Shapiro, South Africas Negotiated Transition,
Politics and Society 23 (September 1995): 269308.
5. Donald L. Horowitz, Democracy in Divided Societies, Journal of Democracy 4 (October 1993): 1838.
6. Charles L. Taylor and Michael C. Hudson, World Handbook of Political and
Social Indicators , 2 nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972); Erik V.
Gunnemark, Countries, Peoples, and Their Languages: The Geolinguistic Handbook (Dallas: SIL International , 1991); Barbara F. Grimes , ed., Ethnologu e
Languages of the World, 14 th ed. (Dallas: SIL International, 2000).
7. See, for example, David D. Laitin and Daniel N. Posner, The Implications of
Constructivism for Constructing Ethnic Fractionalization Indices, Newsletter of
the Comparative Politics Section of the American Political Science Association 12
(Winter 2001): 1317.
8. See Ashutosh Varshney, Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict, and Rationality,
Perspectives on Politics 1 (March 2003): 8599.
9. Alberto Alesina, Arnaud Devleeschauwer, William Easterly, Sergio Kurlat,
and Romain Wacziarg, Fractionalization, National Bureau of Economic Research
Working Paper No. 9411, January 2003. This study is not the only potentially
fruitful recent effort to overcome the limitations of the older measures of social
diversity. See also, for example, Daniel N. Posner, Ethnic Fractionalization in
Africa: How Should It Be Measured? What Does It Explain About Economic
Growth? Paper presented at the 1999 Annual Meeting of the American Political
Science Association, Atlanta, Ga., September 1999.
10. Adrian Karatnycky, The 2001 Freedom House Survey, endnote 1.
11. Freedom in the World: The Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil
Liberties 19992000 (New York: Freedom House, 2000).
12. See Freedom Houses Annual Survey of Freedom, Country Ratings, at
www.freedomhouse.org.
13. CIA World Factbook 2000 (Washington, D.C.: Brasseys, 2000). In the
regression analysis we use log GDP per capita in 1998 at Purchasing Power Parity
as the measure of economic development.
14. Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday,
1960); Valerie Bunce, Comparative Democratization: Big and Bounded Generalizations, Comparative Political Studies 33 (AugustSeptember 2000): 70334.
15. Adrian Karatnycky, The 2001 Freedom House Survey, endnote 1; Jan
Goodwin, Price of Honor: Muslim Women Lift the Veil of Silence in the Islamic
World (New York: Penguin, 1995); Ann Elizabeth Mayer, Islam and Human Rights:
Tradition and Politics (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1998); M. Steven Fish, Islam
and Authoritarianism, World Politics 55 (October 2002): 437.
16. Myron Weiner, Empirical Democratic Theory, in Myron Weiner and
Ergun zbudun, eds., Competitive Elections in Developing Countries (Durham,
N.C.: Duke University Press, 1987): 337; Seymour Martin Lipset, The Centrality
of Culture, in Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner, eds., The Global Resurgence
of Democracy, 2 nd ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 15053.
17. Michael Ross, Does Oil Hinder Democracy? World Politics 53 (April
2001): 32561.
18. Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, Greed and Grievance in Civil War, October 2001. At http://econ.worldbank.org/docs/1109.pdf . Sit e consulte d Apri l 2003.
A simila r argument , base d o n forma l logic , i s mad e i n Thoma s P . Tangera s an d NilPette r Lagerlof , Ethni c Diversit y an d Civi l War, Researc h Institut e o f Industrial
Economics , Stockholm , Workin g Pape r No . 58 9 (2003) . www.iui.se/wp/Wp589 /
IUIWp589.pdf .
19. These plots could not be reproduced at sufficient size within the pages of
the Journal of Democracy, and so have been posted instead on the Journal
s website at www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/Fish-15-1.pdf.
20. Adam Przeworski et al., What Makes Democracies Endure? Journal of
Democracy 7 (January 1996): 3955.
21. Anthony Annett, Social Fractionalization, Political Instability, and the Size
of Government, IMF Staff Papers 48, 3 (2001). www.imf.org/External/Pubs/FT/
staffp/2001/03/pdf/annett.pdf .
22. James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil
War, American Political Science Review 97 (February 2003): 75. See also Barbara
Harff, No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust? Assessing Risks of Genocide and
Political Mass Murder Since 1955, American Political Science Review 97 (February 2003): 5773.
23. Crawford Young, Deciphering Disorder in Africa: Is Identity the Key?
World Politics 54 (July 2002): 540.
24. William Easterly and Ross Levine, Africas Growth Tragedy: Policies and
Ethnic Divisions, Quarterly Journal of Economics 112 (November 1997): 120350.
25. William Easterly, Can Institutions Resolve Ethnic Conflict? World Bank
Policy Research Working Paper No. 2482, February 2000. See www.eldis.org.
26. Brad Lian and John R. Oneal, Cultural Diversity and Economic Development: A Cross-National Study of 98 Countries, 196085, Economic Development
and Cultural Change 46 (October 1997): 6177.
27. In partial correlations that control for log GDP at Purchasing Power Parity
in 1998, none of the four indicators of social diversity used in the present article
are correlated at a statistically significant level with annual average growth rate of
GDP per capita during the period 199099. Source of data on economic growth
rates: United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2001
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 17881.
Correction
In the article Does Diversity
Hurt Democracy? by M. Steven
Fish and Robin S. Brooks in the
January 2004 issue, there was an
error in Table 1 Regressions of
Freedom House Ratings on
Hypothesized Determi- nants. The
contents of the two rows labeled
Adj. R2 and N should be re- versed,
and every three columns in the table
should appear consolidated in the N
row. The corrected table is available
on the Journal website at
www.journalofdemocracy.org/Articles/FishandBrooksTable-15-1.pdf.