Minority Rights

Majoritarian Process, Exclusion, and Ethnic Conflicts

The majoritarian process is sound in principle but becomes problematic in practice in culturally diverse societies. It works in societies where cultural divisions are not salient bases of mobilization. People regularly change their political or economic preferences, and this facilitates alternation of power among different groups and political parties. However, in ethnically diverse societies, people's preferences on specific cultural issues may differ perennially. Such situations create permanent majorities and minorities. The ethnic minority groups may never form governments. Thus, the majoritarian process often leads to the exclusion of minorities. As the dominant group influences and defines the state and its institutions with their values and norms, the exclusion of minority groups becomes institutionalized. Political institutions rooted in dominant values do not equally address the aspirations of minorities in the society.

If their rights are not protected, minorities may not feel bound by the rules that exclude them. Exclusion has led to violent conflicts in many regions of the world. Most major conflicts around the globe in the post-cold war era are identity related and occur within and across states, not between states. Violent conflicts often occur in developing countries where identity differences coincide with resource inequalities. According to the Minorities at Risk (MAR) project at the University of Maryland, ethnic conflicts have been increasing since the Second World War and reached a peak in the mid-1990s. Since then, there has been a slight decline, but most major conflicts are still identity related.

Minority Groups

Ted Gurr and the MAR project classify minorities broadly into two categories, national peoples and minority peoples, and into three subgroups within each group. Ethnonationalists, national minorities, and Indigenous Peoples fall under national peoples. Ethnoclasses, communal contenders, and religious sects fall under minority peoples. Ethnonationalists are regionally concentrated groups with a history of autonomous governance. National minorities are groups who are a minority in the state of residence but whose kindred control an adjacent state. Indigenous Peoples are descendants of conquered native people. Ethnoclasses, on the other hand, consist of descendants of slaves or immigrants. Communal contenders are ethnoclasses that are politically organized. They could be disadvantaged, advantaged, or dominant groups. Religious sects are groups whose activities are centered on religious beliefs and cultural practices and their defense.

According to Ted Gurr, 17.5% of the world's population in 1998, or more than a billion people, were minorities. However, this count does not include numerous smaller minorities (fewer than 100,000 and minorities in countries of less than 500,000 population) and those that are not politically mobilized. Thus, the overall count of minorities would be much higher if the less mobilized and numerous smaller groups were counted.

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