The reigning consensus holds that the combination of free markets and democracy would transform the third world and sweep away the ethnic hatred and religious zealotry associated with underdevelopment. In this revelatory investigation of the true impact of globalization, Yale Law School professor Amy Chua explains why many developing countries are in fact consumed by ethnic violence after adopting free market democracy. Chua shows how in non-Western countries around the globe, free markets have concentrated starkly disproportionate wealth in the hands of a resented ethnic minority. These “market-dominant minorities” – Chinese in Southeast Asia, Croatians in the former Yugoslavia, whites in Latin America and South Africa, Indians in East Africa, Lebanese in West Africa, Jews in post-communist Russia – become objects of violent hatred. At the same time, democracy empowers the impoverished majority, unleashing ethnic demagoguery, confiscation, and sometimes genocidal revenge. She also argues that the United States has become the world’s most visible market-dominant minority, a fact that helps explain the rising tide of anti-Americanism around the world. Chua is a friend of globalization, but she urges us to find ways to spread its benefits and curb its most destructive aspects.

This text examines the potential of electoral engineering as a mechanism of conflict management in divided societies. It focuses on the little-known experience of a number of divided societies which have used vote-pooling electoral systems.

Democracy and Ethnic Conflict addresses the problem of establishing durable democratic institutions in societies afflicted by ethnic conflict. While the holding of multi-party elections usually plays a role in the ending of conflict, consolidating democracy presents a much larger challenge, as does preventing the perversion of democracy through the dominance of a particular ethnic group.

In this text, Larry Diamond and Marc Plattner bring together a group of contributors to examine the tensions between new hopes for democratic reform and the ancient rivalries that threaten to extinguish them.

Many new democracies are characterized by majority dominance and ethnocentrism. Varying paths or transitions toward democracy create very different outcomes for how ethnic identities, communities and politics are recognized. This book illustrates the varied consequences of democratization, from ethnic violence, new forms of accommodation to improve minorities’ status, or sometimes only minor improvements to life for ethnic minorities. The book treads a nuanced path between conflicting myths of democratization, illustrating that there are a variety of outcomes ranging from violence or stability, to the extension of rights, representation, and new resources for ethnic minorities. Contributors discuss the complex mechanisms that determine the impact of democratization of ethnic minorities through five factors; inherited legacies from the pre-transition period, institutional configurations, elite strategies, societal organization and international influences. Global in scope, this book features a broad range of case studies, both country specific and regional, including chapters on Nigeria, Kenya, Turkey and Taiwan, Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Southeast and East Asia. This book provides new insights and makes at important contribution to existing debates. Democratization and Ethnic Minorities will be essential reading for students and scholars of democratization, nationalism, ethnic conflict and ethnic politics, political science, history, and sociology.

This volume provides an overall assessment of ethnic diversity in Central Europe in historical context and presents a critical assessment of the conflict in former Yugoslavia. It advances a hypothesis on the origins of ethnic conflict, proposes an approach to the prevention and reduction of ethnic conflict in general and in Central Europe in particular, and forwards concrete policy recommendations for the region of East and Central Europe and beyond.

Can power sharing prevent violent ethnic conflict? And if so, how can the international community best promote that outcome? In this concise volume, Timothy Sisk defines power sharing as practices and institutions that result in broad-based governing coalitions generally inclusive of all major ethnic groups. He identifies the principal approaches to power sharing, including autonomy, federations, and proportional electoral systems. In addition, Sisk highlights the problems with various power-sharing approaches and practices that have been raised by scholars and practitioners alike, and the instances where power-sharing experiments have succeeded and where they have failed. Finally, he offers some guidance to policymakers as they ponder power-sharing arrangements.