A plural society is defined as one which is ethnically diverse and whose ethnic divisions are politically relevant. Extant theories of politics in plural societies focus primarily on democratic political systems— that is, societies which, during some period of their recent political history, have been characterized by Western-style democratic political and governmental institutions. As a consequence, there has been little effort to formulate and apply analytical or theoretical frameworks which are specifically relevant to nondemocratic systems such as the Soviet Union. The principal objectives of this article are: (1) to augment, modify, and reformulate existing theoretical ideas on ethnic political behavior in plural societies so that their scope includes nondemocratic political systems; and (2) to assess the applicability of these ideas to the Soviet Union.
The fundamental assumption of spatial models of party competition is that voters possess cardinal utility functions defined on all combinations of issue positions which candidates may adopt. Furthermore, spatial theorists usually assume that utility functions have a shape common to all voters and that voters' most preferred positions are distributed in some regular manner. Employing these and attendant assumptions, the spatial theorist seeks to ascertain what deductions can be made about candidate strategies, i.e., the positions which vote or plurality-maximizing candidates should adopt in an election. It has been found that, in many situations, convergence to an opponent's positions and/or adoption of the median/mean of the most preferred positions of all voters is an important candidate strategy. In this context, two main problems have arisen: (1) difficulties of empirical or statistical analysis; (2) the abovementioned candidate strategy is generally not applicable to elections in so-called 'plural' societies. One path out of this latter problem has been formulated by Rabushka and Shepsle (1972). This article explores another potential solution by addressing the following question: If voters are not characterized by cardinal utility functions, but some other type, what are the consequences for candidate strategies? The alternate assumption employed is that voters are characterized by lexicographic utility functions. The consequences for candidate strategies of this assumption are then determined for two plurality-maximizing candidates in some one-and two-dimensional, three-, five-, and seven-voter electoral games.
This article is an application to Northern Ireland of theoretical ideas about ethnic politics. Four sets of ideas are relevant: (1) the theory developed by Rabushka and Shepsle (1972); (2) "pluralist" theory, developed by a number of scholars; (3) "consociational democracy," developed by Lijphart (1977a, 1975a, 1969); and (4) "mobilization" theory, developed by Wolfinger (1965) and modified by Peleg and Peleg (1977). It is found that, on the whole, the Rabushka-Shepsle theory is the best of the four. Based on this analysis, it is concluded that the prospects for a political solution to the Northern Irish conflict in the foreseeable future are, at best, slim. While this conclusion could be drawn from unsystematic observation, we engage in theoretically informed discussion which places it on a much firmer logical foundation.
Studies of individuals or groups who might use violence or terrorism in pursuit of political goals often focus on the specific actions which these individuals or groups have taken and on the policies which defenders (that is, governments of states) against such actions may adopt in response. Typically, less attention is devoted to identifying the relevant preconditions of political action and possible escalation to violence and how or why potential actions may be obviated before they occur. In the context of democratic political systems, the present analysis addresses these issues via examination of indigenous peoples, who typically constitute tiny fractions of the population of the states or regions in which they reside, in terms of their past and present treatment by governments and the political actions, whether non-violent or violent, which individuals from these peoples have engaged or may engage. The specific peoples examined are Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders of Australia, Haudenosaunee of North America, Inuit of Canada, Maori of New Zealand, and Saami of Scandinavia.
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