Liberal democracies rely on the principle of political equality and equal representation. This principle requires that the preferences of all groups in society are included into the political process. Nevertheless, policy responsiveness to minority demands differs widely between countries which is highly problematic, because it increases the danger of ethnic conflict and political unrest. Since not all ethnic minority groups are territorially concentrated, ethnic minorities' preferences are not sufficiently ensured by territorial autonomy. Instead, some form of non-territorial group rights are needed which apply to both, concentrated and non-concentrated minority groups.
This paper analyses, whether such forms of non-territorial autonomy decrease the likelihood of ethnic conflict in heterogeneous societies. Its argument follows the ethnic grievance literature which claims that political deprivation has an underlying reason such as political or economic discrimination and exclusion. Most of these studies suggest a direct link between inclusion into the central government and ethnic conflict. I question the direct link and argue that it is not merely descriptive representation in the central government which reduces conflict, but the substantive representation of minority interests and especially the guarantee of cultural autonomy.
The level of ethnic minorities’ substantive representation is measured with an original dataset on minority language rights and a measurement of economic discrimination, based on an extension of the MAR-dataset. Ethnic conflict is not limited to violent conflict but includes a measurement of non-violent protest. The study is based on multilevel ordinal regressions with data from 113 (concentrated and non-concentrated) ethnic groups in 50 countries over a minimum of five and a maximum of 23 elections from Western and Eastern Europe, the Americas and the remaining OECD countries.
