Bringing Politics Back In. Left-wing Parties in the World of Ethnicized Politics

The literature devoted to the question of divided societies tends to concentrate exclusively on one cleavage - ethnicity - takes this to be axiomatic orientation in politics. As a result, most political parties as perceived to be either mono- or multi-ethnic. In that manner position of the party on ethnic spectrum remains the major vantage point from which the functionality and democraticness of the system is assessed. Other, cross-cutting cleavages e.g. class-based mobilization are underappreciated or neglected. Yet, despite Donald Horowitz's dictum that in divided society, ‘the choice for a Left party is to adapt and become essentially an ethnic party or to wither and die' (1985; 2000: 338), entities that rally around ‘leftist issues’ exist in divided societies. On the one hand, we find ethno-national parties that appeal to the issue of the 'thick' redistribution state in their programs while pushing for ethnocentric agendas; on the other, there are parties that express preference for redistribution, and other socio-economic beliefs traditionally associated with the left. Such parties can be found in most divided societies, but particularly surprising is the fact that such candidates succeed in consociational systems: In both liberal and corporate consociations - SDP or NS in Bosnia and Herzegovina, SDSM or Levica in Macedonia, or Frodebu in Burundi - bank considerable success at the ballot box when compared with the centrist/ liberal parties. In our paper we how parties operating in divided societies positioning themselves on the left of the political spectrum; we claim that to understand their electoral success we need to understand how they navigate the contested issues about ethnic identity and why it matters. In our case studies of Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Northern Ireland and Burundi we see that offering an ideological alternative to the stalled identity politics, i.e. 'politics as usual' determines the success of leftist parties.