Under what conditions do ethnic parties emerge? And how can their conflictive potential be mitigated? This paper makes two important contributions to the study of ethnic politics. First, theoretically, it develops a twofold conceptualization of ethnic mobilization, focusing on both electoral politics and the politically oriented civil society. Second, it builds on novel empirical data of global scope. I argue that ethnic mobilization in electoral politics is driven by two crucial factors: the interplay of the electoral system with ethnic groups’ geographical concentration, and the degree of the ethnicization of civil society. Majoritarian electoral systems, coupled with high geographical concentration, should facilitate the electoral mobilization of ethnic groups. By sharpening conflict lines and polarizing politics, I assume these ethnic parties to increase the risk of ethnic conflict. On the other hand, non-/trans-ethnic civil society organizations may serve as a bulwark against the ethnicization of politics by bringing different socio-political interests to the fore. A strong non-ethnic civil society should therefore moderate ethnic mobilization and decrease the risk of ethnic conflict. Thus, by taking into account the influence of non-party political organizations, this study will go beyond previous quantitative studies on ethnicity in electoral politics. Furthermore, existing studies have either been constrained to cross-sectional analyses or have focused exclusively on countries with electorally active ethnic groups when analyzing conflict risk – thereby ignoring systems without ethnic parties. In order to overcome these shortcomings, this paper draws on new data on ethnic parties, ethnic settlement patterns, and ethnic/non-ethnic civil society organizations worldwide. The arguments will be tested in a quantitative analysis from 1990 to 2009.
