The institutionalization of a range of (new) participatory measures can be seen as efforts of Latin American states to meet the challenges arising from ethnic diversity. Feasible are instruments for including ethnic groups, f.i. consultation rights, autonomy arrangements, and power-sharing mechanisms. We empirically analyze the effects of varying democratic mechanisms by a systematic comparative analysis of 14 countries in order to test concrete causal hypotheses and offering insights into relevant patterns.
Our aim is to explain the way conflicts that involve ethnic groups are conducted – by force or non-violently/peacefully (dependent variable). We evaluate the adequacy of the institutional design with respect to the societal setting (macro-level). Furthermore, we consider the effectiveness of existing institutional arrangements, therefore features of ethnic organizations (meso-level) and patterns of citizens' attitudes (micro-level) are relevant. To evaluate the conjoint effects of these variables on our macro-level outcome (way of conflict management) a fsQCA is applied.
