Abstract (may include machine translation)
Parties of ethnic minorities are flourishing in a large number of ethnically divided democracies. While academic research has studied their emergence and success, we know little about intra-group party competition. This paper discusses the reasons for intra-group political plurality, with a focus on intra-party conflict and intra-group party competition: it explains the political orientation of ethnic minority parties and their intra-group challengers as a consequence of the inclusion of minority parties into government. The inclusion of minority parties into national governments produces an inherent conflict between pragmatic office-seekers and radical partisans. In minority parties that have governmental responsibilities, the pragmatist view overwhelms, while in those parties in opposition, radical voices dominate. The formation of two intra-Hungarian challenger parties in Romania and in Slovakia in 2007 and 2009 represents two very similar cases, which appear to be in line with our hypotheses.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 761-779 |
Number of pages | 19 |
Journal | Nationalities Papers |
Volume | 41 |
Issue number | 5 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2013 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Electoral competition
- Ethnic minority parties
- Government participation
- Intra-ethnic competition