Ethnic Parties and Democratic Stability

“族裔政党和民主稳定”项目扩大了族裔和体制的建构主义数据集，目前该数据集涵盖100个国家和1 346个政党，1996年又包括1976年和1986年。CDEI是根据某一年世界各地政党的分类，分为族裔、多族裔和非族裔。主要研究者利用这一分类产生了40多个与种族和制度有关的变量，在时间序列扩展中获得最高优先级的变量是EVOTE --1996年每个国家种族政党获得的选票百分比。PI对其他几个变量进行了编码，这些变量与政党对种族认同的隐性和显性动员有关。建立和扩大CDEI的目的是检验关于种族政党崛起和民主稳定的相互竞争的命题。根据经验民主理论的一个经典命题，族裔分裂的社会必然会产生族裔政党，而族裔政党则会破坏民主制度的稳定。但其他工作认为或暗示，无论他们如何出现，民族政党可能会产生相反的效果，他们实际上可能会通过制度化的不满，否则可能会通过暴力来表达稳定民主。由于缺乏跨国数据民族政党和他们获得的支持程度indemocratic系统，这两个命题都没有得到经验验证。我们确实有关于族裔群体的跨国数据，这些数据输入到民族语言细分指数（ELF）中，是探索民族多样性与民主稳定性之间关系的研究的基础。但这些数据和ELF指数都脱离了对种族群体性质的理论理解。虽然族群起源的理论是建构主义的，但关于族群的数据和ELF测量仍然是绝对的原始主义。因此，我们不知道族裔问题的任何方面与民主稳定之间的关系，尽管就这一问题开展了大量工作。CDEI融合了建构主义的见解，专门用于测试民主理论中关于民族政党起源和影响的命题，旨在填补这一空白的一部分。尽管CDEI的动机是我自己对测试将民族政党行为与民主巩固联系起来的命题的兴趣，它产生的数据可以用来回答社会科学中关于政治化种族身份的起源和影响的一系列非常广泛的问题，因此可以为公共政策提供有关种族身份与政治化种族身份之间关系的信息。政治化的种族认同和政治经济结果。这些问题的例子包括：种族分裂的明确政治化对某些利益结果的影响，包括战争、骚乱、经济增长、公共政策、福利支出等？特定类型的种族划分（如地区或宗教或语言或部落）的政治化是否与特定类型的结果有关？是什么决定了一个少数民族政党可能动员的联盟的规模？我们是否更有可能在新的民主国家看到政治的民族化？殖民地历史和种族政治化的程度之间是否有联系？随着时间的推移，政治激活的种族身份变化有多快？如何解释这种变化？种族多数主义和冲突之间有联系吗？更广泛的社会价值：首席研究员以两种方式促进CDEI生成的数据的广泛使用：（1）通过邀请其他学者参与数据集的设计，使数据广泛提供，并提供了一个密集的介绍，在设计的数据集，那些谁希望使用它。研究人员这样做，通过结合基于网络的门户网站和脸-toface工作室(2)通过将数据收集过程融入研究生教育。研究生目前作为合作者和共同作者参与了该项目的各个方面，研究人员计划引入一门新的实验室课程，将理论指导与纽约大学数据收集的实践经验相结合。

The project Ethnic Parties and Democratic Stability expand a constructivist dataset on ethnicity and institutions (CDEI), which currently covers 100 countries and 1346 parties for the year 1996, to include two additional years 1976 and 1986. CDEI is based on a classification of political parties around the world in a given year as ethnic, multiethnic and on-ethnic. The Principal Investigator uses this classification to generate over forty variables related to ethnicity and institutions.The variable that gets the highest priority in the time-series expansion is EVOTE -- the percentage of voteobtained by ethnic political parties in each country for the year 1996. The PI codes several other variablesrelated to the implicit and explicit mobilization of ethnic identities by political parties.The purpose in building and expanding CDEI is to test competing propositions on the rise of ethnic parties anddemocratic stability. According to a classic proposition in empirical democratic theory, ethnically divided societies invariably give rise to ethnic political parties and ethnic political parties destabilize a democratic system. But other work argues or implies that no matter how they arise, ethnic parties may have the opposite effect they may actually stabilize democracy by institutionalizing discontent which might otherwise be expressed through violence.Because of the lack of cross-national data on ethnic political parties and the degree of support they obtain indemocratic systems, neither proposition has been empirically verified. We do have cross-national data on ethnic groups, which, input into the Index of Ethnolinguistic Fractionalization (ELF), have been the basis for studies that explore the relationship between ethnic diversity and democratic stability. But these data, and the ELF index, are divorced from a theoretical understanding of the nature of ethnic groups. Although theories of the origin of ethnic groups are constructivist, the data on ethnic groups and the ELF measure remain resolutely primordialist. As a result, we do not know what the relationship between any aspect of ethnicity and democratic stability is despite the large body of work on the subject. CDEI, which incorporates constructivist insights, and is specifically designed to test propositions in democratic theory about the origins and effects of ethnic political parties, aims to fill one part of this gap.Although CDEI is motivated by my own interest in testing propositions linking ethnic party behavior and democratic consolidation, the data it generates can be used to answer a very broad range of questions in the social sciences about the origins and effects of politicized ethnic identities and therefore to inform public policy on the relationship between politicized ethnic identities and political and economic outcomes. A sample of such questions includes the following: What is the effect of the explicit politicization of ethnic divisions on some outcome of interest, including war, riots, economic growth, public policy, welfare spending and so on? Is the politicization of particular types of ethnic divisions associated (e.g. region or religion or language or tribe) associated with particular types of outcomes? What determines the size of the coalition that an ethnic party is likely to mobilize? Are we more likely to see the ethnification of politics in new democracies? Is there a link between colonial history and the degree of ethnic politicization? How rapidly do politically activated ethnic identities change over time and what explains such change? Is there a link between ethnic majoritarianism and conflict? And so on.Broader Social Value: The Principal Investigator facilitates the broad use of the data generated by CDEI in two ways: (1) By inviting the involvement of other scholars in the design of the dataset, making the data widely available and offering an intensive introduction in the design of the dataset to those who wish to use it. The researcher does this through a combination of web-based portals and face-toface workshops. (2) By integrating the data collection process into graduate student education. Graduate students are currently involved as collaborators and co-authors in all aspects of the project, and the researcher plans to introduce a new laboratory course that combines theoretical instruction with hands on experience in data collection at NYU.