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Ethnic democracy is a political system that combines a structured ethnic dominance with democratic, political and civil rights for all. Both the dominant ethnic group and the minority ethnic groups have citizenship and are able to fully participate in the political process. Ethnic democracy differs from ethnocracy in that elements of it are more purely democratic. It provides the non-core groups with more political participation, influence and improvement of status than ethnocracy supposedly does. Nor is an ethnic democracy a Herrenvolk democracy which is by definition a democracy officially limited to the core ethnic nation only. [1]
The term "ethnic democracy" was introduced by Professor Juan José Linz of Yale University in 1975, [2] and subsequently by University of Haifa sociologist Professor Sammy Smooha in a book published in 1989, [3] as a universalised model of the Israel case. [4] [2] The model was used widely in subsequent decades; in 1993 for a comparison of several countries, in 1997 for a comparison of Israel and Northern Ireland, applied to Estonia and Latvia in 1996 and Slovakia in 2000. [2]
Smooha defines eight features that are the core elements of his model of an ethnic democracy: [5]
Smooha also defines ten conditions that can lead to the establishment of an ethnic democracy: [5]
The model has been applied by researchers to several countries, with various levels of fit.
The State of Israel is seen as a country that utilises the ethnic democracy model in its relations with the country's Arab minority, as Israel has combined viable democratic institutions with institutionalized ethnic dominance. [6] [7]
There is a spectrum of opinion among authors as to the classification of Latvia and Estonia, spanning from Liberal or Civic Democracy [8] [9] through Ethnic democracy [10] to Ethnocracy. Will Kymlicka regards Estonia as a civic democracy, stressing the peculiar status of Russian-speakers, stemming from being at once partly transients, partly immigrants and partly natives. [11] British researcher Neil Melvin concludes that Estonia is moving towards a genuinely pluralist democratic society through its liberalization of citizenship and actively drawing of leaders of the Russian settler communities into the political process. [12] James Hughes, in the United Nations Development Programme's Development and Transition, contends Latvia and Estonia are cases of ‘ethnic democracy’ where the state has been captured by the titular ethnic group and then used to promote ‘nationalising’ policies and alleged discrimination against Russophone minorities. [10] (Development and Transition has also published papers disputing Hughes' contentions.) Israeli researchers Oren Yiftachel and As’ad Ghanem consider Estonia as an ethnocracy. [13] [14] Israeli sociologist Sammy Smooha, of the University of Haifa, disagrees with Yiftachel, contending that the ethnocratic model developed by Yiftachel does not fit the case of Latvia and Estonia; it is not a settler society as its core ethnic group is indigenous, nor did it expand territorially or have a diaspora intervening in its internal affairs as in the case of Israel for which Yiftachel originally developed his model. [15]
However the notion that Estonia or Latvia are ethnic democracies has been rejected by some commentators. [16] On the one hand, the citizenship laws of these countries are not based on ethnic criteria, treating citizens of Russian extract, including a number of people who automatically became citizens because their families have resided there since before 1940, with the same rights as the ethnic majorities. [17] [18] Moreover, non-citizens enjoy social rights on a par with citizens. [19] On the other hand, given the proportion of non-citizen minorities without certain political rights (7.5% in the case of Estonia [20] ), Estonia and Latvia may not yet even qualify as ethnic democracies: in Smooha's definition of ethnic democracy, minority groups should enjoy full rights as citizens of the country. [21]
Smooha describes Canada from independence in 1867 to the Quiet Revolution of 1976, which raised the status of French Canadians to the level of English Canadians, to have been an ethnic democracy. [1]
Smooha describes the Government of Northern Ireland (1921–1972) from the Partition of Ireland in 1921 to the Sunningdale Agreement in 1972 as an ethnic democracy, favoring Protestants of mainly Ulster Scots descent to the native Irish Catholics. [1]
Article 153 of the Constitution of Malaysia, as well as the Ketuanan Melayu (Malay supremacy) ideology followed by post-independence Malaysian governments since the 1970s, gives more rights to the Bumiputra in general and to Malaysian Malays than to Malaysian minorities, such as Malaysian Chinese and Malaysian Indians. [1]
Slovak nationalism is grounded in ethnicity and language. "State-building and nation-building in Slovakia are designed to install ethnic Slovaks as the sole nation and to prevent any sign of binationalism. This objective is made clear in the preamble of the Slovak constitution which begins with the following words: “We, the Slovak nation, bearing in mind the political and cultural heritage of our predecessors, the experience gained through centuries of struggle for our national existence and statehood…” [22]
The Copenhagen criteria are the rules that define whether a country is eligible to join the European Union. The criteria require that a state has the institutions to preserve democratic governance and human rights, has a functioning market economy, and accepts the obligations and intent of the European Union.
An ethnocracy is a type of political structure in which the state apparatus is controlled by a dominant ethnic group to further its interests, power, dominance, and resources. Ethnocratic regimes in the modern era typically display a 'thin' democratic façade covering a more profound ethnic structure, in which ethnicity – and not citizenship – is the key to securing power and resources.
Russians in the Baltic states is a broadly defined subgroup of the Russian diaspora who self-identify as ethnic Russians, or are citizens of Russia, and live in one of the three independent countries – Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. As of 2021, there were nearly 900,000 ethnic Russians in the three countries, having declined from ca 1.7 million in 1989, the year of the last census during the 1944–1991 Soviet occupation of the three Baltic countries.
In Estonia, the population of ethnic Russians is estimated at 306,801, most of whom live in the capital city Tallinn and other urban areas of Harju and Ida-Viru counties. While a small settlement of Russian Old Believers on the coast of Lake Peipus has an over 300-year long history, the large majority of the ethnic Russian population in the country originates from the immigration from Russia and other parts of the former USSR during the 1944–1991 Soviet era of Estonia.
The European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI) is an academic research institute based in Flensburg, Germany, that conducts research into minority issues, ethnopolitics, and minority-majority relations in Europe. ECMI is a non-partisan and interdisciplinary research institution. It is a non-profit, independent foundation, registered according to German Civil Law.
Palestinian citizens of Israel, also known as 48-Palestinians are citizens of Israel that self-identify as Palestinian. No official statistics exist on this population; according to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, the Arab population in 2023 was estimated at 2,080,000, representing 21.1% of the country's population.
Estonia–Russia relations are the bilateral foreign relations between Estonia and Russia. Diplomatic relations between the two countries were established on 2 February 1920 after the Estonian War of Independence ended in Estonian victory with Russia recognizing Estonia's sovereignty and renounced any and all territorial claims on Estonia.
The Intermovement(International Movement of Workers in the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic) was a political movement and organisation in the Estonian SSR. It was founded on 19 July 1988 and claimed by different sources 16,000 - 100,000 members. The original name of the movement was Interfront, which was changed to Intermovement in autumn 1988.
The concept of demographic threat is a term used in political conversation or demography to refer to population increases from within a minority ethnic or religious group in a given country that is perceived as threatening to the ethnic, racial or religious majority, stability of the country or to the identity of said countries in which it is present in.
Non-citizens or aliens in Latvian law are individuals who are not citizens of Latvia or any other country, but who, in accordance with the Latvian law "Regarding the status of citizens of the former USSR who possess neither Latvian nor other citizenship," have the right to a non-citizen passport issued by the Latvian government as well as other specific rights. Approximately two thirds of them are ethnic Russians, followed by Belarusians, Ukrainians, Poles, and Lithuanians.
Oren Yiftachel is an Israeli professor of political and legal geography, urban studies and urban planning at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Beersheba. He holds the Lynn and Lloyd Hurst Family Chair in Urban Studies.
Human rights in Latvia are generally respected by the government, according to the US Department of State and Freedom House. Latvia is ranked above-average among the world's sovereign states in democracy, press freedom, privacy and human development. The country has a relatively large ethnic Russian community, which has basic rights guaranteed under the constitution and international human rights laws ratified by the Latvian government.
The main ethnic minorities in Georgia are Azerbaijanis, Armenians, Ukrainians, Russians, Greeks, Abkhazians, Ossetians, Kists, Assyrians and Yazidi.
Al-Ard was a Palestinian political movement made up of Arab citizens of Israel. It was active between 1958 and some time in the 1970s.
Human rights in Estonia are acknowledgedas being generally respected by the government. Nevertheless, there are concerns in some areas, such as detention conditions, excessive police use of force, and child abuse. Estonia has been classified as a flawed democracy, with moderate privacy and human development in Europe. Individuals are guaranteed on paper the basic rights under the constitution, legislative acts, and treaties relating to human rights ratified by the Estonian government. As of 2023, Estonia was ranked 8th in the world by press freedoms.
Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People, informally known as the Nation-State Bill or the Nationality Bill, is an Israeli Basic Law that specifies the country's significance to the Jewish people. It was passed by the Knesset—with 62 in favour, 55 against, and two abstentions—on 19 July 2018 and is largely symbolic and declarative in nature. The law outlines a number of roles and responsibilities by which Israel is bound in order to fulfill the purpose of serving as the Jews' nation-state. However, it was met with sharp backlash internationally and has been characterized as racist and undemocratic by some critics. After it was passed, several groups in the Jewish diaspora expressed concern that it was actively violating Israel's self-defined legal status as a "Jewish and democratic state" in exchange for adopting an exclusively Jewish identity. The European Union stated that the Nation-State Bill had complicated the Israeli–Palestinian peace process, while the Arab League, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and the Muslim World League condemned it as a manifestation of apartheid.
"Jewish and democratic state" is the Israeli legal definition of the nature and character of the State of Israel. The "Jewish" nature was first defined within the Israeli Declaration of Independence in May 1948. The "democratic" character was first officially added in the amendment to Israel's Basic Law: The Knesset, which was passed in 1985.
Sammy Smooha is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Haifa.
Ethnic nationalism, also known as ethnonationalism, is a form of nationalism wherein the nation and nationality are defined in terms of ethnicity, with emphasis on an ethnocentric approach to various political issues related to national affirmation of a particular ethnic group.
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