Doctoral Dissertation Research: Why Do Ethnic Parties Flourish or Die?

族裔政党--即主张某一特定身份群体利益的政党--是世界各地民主政体的一个普遍特征，而且往往是有问题的。种族政治化可能加深基于身份的分歧，导致种族间冲突，并破坏政府的问责。鉴于这些严重的负面后果，重要的是要问一问：为什么一些少数民族政党成功地动员了他们的目标民族人口，而另一些政党却失败了？这个项目通过研究巴基斯坦卡拉奇的案例来解决这个问题，卡拉奇是世界上最大、最多样化的特大城市之一，也是一个普遍存在种族冲突的地方。特别是，它将比较卡拉奇最大的两个民族--穆哈吉尔人和普什图人--的政治行为，以发展和检验民族政党成败的理论。与现有的方法不同，这一方法认真对待特定群体的信仰和规范是身份政治化的重要驱动因素这一观点。该项目基于通过三次到卡拉奇的实地考察收集的大量定性数据，将民族政党的集体投票概念化为一个协调问题。当同族人开始分享这样一种信念时，这种协调问题就解决了--通常是因为遭受了共同的冲击--他们相信(1)他们的政治命运是‘相连的’，(2)他们的民族政党最有能力为这些相连的利益服务。相比之下，现有的种族政治理论主要集中在对种族投票的工具性解释上，这些解释虽然有用，但由于理论和经验上的原因都是不完整的。从理论上讲，对种族投票的主要描述并没有认真对待种族之间的差异，实际上无视了一本关于群体规范和社会激励结构发展的长期社会心理学文献，以及一本认识到不同种族的政治理解和行为的异质性的重要意义的小型早期文献《迄今仅限于美国政治》。从经验上讲，这项工作使现有的辩论超越了几乎只关注非洲和印度的范围。社会科学家选择的案例会影响他们得到的答案，这使得将文献扩展到特定地区以外的研究是一项至关重要的任务。最后，这个项目纠正了文献侧重于农村地区的倾向：随着世界的快速城市化，身份政治的研究必须特别关注不同大都市的种族如何在政治上表现出来。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Ethnic political parties - i.e., parties that advocate for the interests of a particular identity group - are a pervasive and often problematic feature of democracies around the world. The politicization of ethnicity can deepen identity-based divisions, cause interethnic conflict, and undermine government accountability. Given these significant negative consequences, it is important to ask: Why do some ethnic parties succeed in mobilizing their target co-ethnic population, whereas others fail? This project tackles this question through studying the case of Karachi, Pakistan - one of the world's largest and most diverse megacities, and a site of endemic ethnic conflict. In particular, it will compare the political behavior of the two largest ethnic groups in Karachi - the Muhajirs and the Pashtuns - in order to develop and test a theory of ethnic party success and failure. In contrast to existing approaches, this approach takes seriously the idea that group-specific beliefs and norms are an important driver of the politicization of identity.Based upon extensive qualitative data collected through three field trips to Karachi, this project conceptualizes bloc-voting for an ethnic party as a coordination problem. This coordination problem is solved when co-ethnics come to share -- often as a result of suffering a common shock - - the belief that (1) their political fates are 'linked' and (2) their ethnic party is best able to serve these linked interests. By contrast, existing theories of ethnic politics are heavily focused on instrumental explanations of ethnic voting that, while useful, are incomplete for both theoretical and empirical reasons. Theoretically, dominant accounts of ethnic voting do not take seriously differences between ethnic groups, in effect disregarding a longstanding social psychology literature on the development of group norms and social incentive structures, and a small incipient literature " limited so far to American Politics " that recognizes the importance of heterogeneity in political understandings and behaviors across ethnic. Empirically, this work moves existing debates beyond an almost exclusive focus on Africa and India. The cases social scientists choose affect the answers they get, which makes extending the literature beyond the study of particular regions a critical undertaking . Finally, this project corrects the literature's tendency to focus empirically on rural areas: as the world rapidly urbanizes, the study of identity politics must pay special attention to how ethnicity manifests politically in diverse metropolises.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.