Politics & Society 2013 Ciepley 135 62

http://pas.sagepub.
com/
Politics & Society
http://pas.sagepub.com/content/41/1/135
The online version of this article can be found at:
DOI: 10.1177/0032329213475585
2013 41: 135 Politics & Society
David Ciepley
Reduce Ethnic Conflict
Dispersed Constituency Democracy: Deterritorializing Representation to
Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com
can be found at: Politics & Society Additional services and information for
http://pas.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Email Alerts:
http://pas.sagepub.com/subscriptions Subscriptions:
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Reprints:
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Permissions:
What is This?
- Feb 13, 2013 Version of Record >>

by guest on July 30, 2014 pas.sagepub.com Downloaded from by guest on July 30, 2014 pas.sagepub.com Downloaded from
Politics & Society
41(1) 135 162
2013 SAGE Publications
Reprints and permission:
sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0032329213475585
pas.sagepub.com
475585PAS41110.1177/003232
9213475585Politics & SocietyCiepley
1
The University of Denver, Denver, CO, USA
Corresponding Author:
Prof. David Ciepley, Department of Political Science, The University of Denver, 468 Sturm Hall,
2000 E. Asbury Ave., Denver, CO 80208, USA.
Email: davidciepley@gmail.com
Dispersed Constituency
Democracy: Deterritorializing
Representation to Reduce
Ethnic Conflict
David Ciepley
1
Abstract
In multiethnic and multi-religious democracies, the chronic danger is that candidates
will engage in identity politics, appealing to one locally preponderant ethnic group
against other groups. The usual formulas for composing multiethnic democracies
ethnic federalism and/or proportional representationoften exacerbate the problem,
ethnicizing political campaigns and carving up the national legislature into ethnic blocs,
each beholden only to its own group. An alternative approachwhat I call dispersed
constituency democracyis to match each legislative seat with a constituency that
reflects the overall ethnic composition of the society in question, so as to encourage
candidates to reach across ethnic divisions rather than play to locally preponderant
ones. I propose a simple way to do this, and explore the likely consequences for
national electoral campaigns and legislative dynamics over a range of demographic
circumstances. I also consider supplemental devices for protecting minority rights
that would be made possible by the proposed constituency system.
Keywords
democracy, ethnic conflict, ethnic federalism, dispersed constituency, deterritorialize
by guest on July 30, 2014 pas.sagepub.com Downloaded from
136 Politics & Society 41(1)
During the 1990s, notes Fareed Zakaria, many observers watched what was happen-
ing in the Balkans with puzzlement. Werent the forces of democracy also the forces of
ethnic harmony and tolerance? Actually, no.
1
It is not that authoritarian regimes are so
much better on this score. Indeed, they are often based on the hegemony of one ethnic
group over others, as was true in Saddam Husseins Iraq, in Syria, and in the Soviet
Union, to name just a few.
2
But democratization, while lifting authoritarian repression,
often has the side effect of inflaming latent ethnic rivalries and resentments, and even of
manufacturing new ones, as candidates compete to secure followings.
In the Balkans, it was Slobodan Milosevic who most quickly played the ethnic card,
securing power for himself by stoking the fires of Serbian nationalism, rekindling
forgotten grievances over the conquest of Serbian lands by Ottoman Turks in the four-
teenth century and precipitating the ethnic cleansing of their supposed descendants,
the Albanian Muslims in Kosovo. Milosevic had not always been a nationalist dema-
gogue. He served as an anti-nationalist communist party leader while Yugoslavia was
under communist rule. It was his search for electoral advantage during Yugoslavias
transition to democracy that spurred Milosevic to transform himself into a Serbian
messiah. The line between Serb and Turk was the cleavage he would ride to the top.
3
Sadly, there is nothing unique about Milosevic and the Balkans in this.
4
Wherever
racial and cultural heterogeneity exists, and where trans-group identities are weak, or
traditions of intergroup accommodation are shallow, leaders may seize the temptation
to whip up ethnic pride, fear, or resentment, in order to secure a following. Once group
identity has been activated and politicized in this fashion, a familiar set of maladies is
all too likely to follow. Trust between groups within civil society is broken and spon-
taneous eruptions of violence increase, possibly to the extreme of civil war, as in
Yugoslavia. Short of this, the likelihood increases that national government either
becomes the instrument of group oppression (if one group is dominant, as the Serbs
were in the former Yugoslavia), or gets knotted into stalemate (if groups are evenly
matched or consociationally wed, as in Bosnia today). In short, when the legitimacy of
politicians comes to be founded on group passion and ethnic authenticity, political
cooperation breaks down; for identity, unlike economic interest, is only weakly ame-
nable to compromise.
Electoral contests are central to the unleashing of this destructive dynamic.
5
This
makes constituency composition and choice of voting system crucial variables in
determining the stability and liberalism of a multiethnic democracyvariables dis-
tinct from, and not inferior to, formal governmental structures and formal civil rights
because they generate the structure of incentives that politicians face in their efforts to
get elected and stay elected. They shape campaigns, and also governance strategies,
inclining politics toward accommodation, or exclusion, or separation.
Of course, constituency composition and voting system are not the only factors in
the stability of a multiethnic democracy. Other governmental structures, and other
dimensions of the social system, can produce intergroup dynamics that swamp what-
ever effects the electoral system might produce by itself. For example, the prospects
for ethnic accommodation can be complicated by large socioeconomic disparities
Ciepley 137
among groups. Likewise, the control of outsized resources by the political center (as
oil revenue is controlled by the central government in Nigeria) can heighten competi-
tion for control of the central government and place a premium on rent-seeking activ-
ity, which can overwhelm any system for containing interethnic conflict.
6
And of
course, the presence of an autonomous military, or of a paramilitary wing of a political
party, can greatly alter how groups interact. Nonetheless, in many countries, electoral
contests are the most common and recurrent source of interethnic violence.
7
Historically, efforts to contain political conflict have been central to the theory and
practice of elections. This was true in the ancient Greek city-states, in the Italian city-
states, and also in the American founding period.
8
Yet our thinking about electoral
systems under conditions of ethnic division is arguablyindeed, hopefullystill in
its infancy. This is because these early democratizers did not have to grapple with
anything like the depth of ethnic division we often see today. Whether one considers
the city-states of the Greeks and Italians, or the mass democracies of the Anglos and
the Frenchthese democracies were in origin (relatively) monoethnic, at least in their
electorates. Only after their democratic institutions and political cultures were rela-
tively settled did some evolve into polyethnic nations (through in-migration, or
through the inclusion of formerly excluded groups, or both). Emerging democracies
today, however, are liable to start out as multination states.
9
They commonly contain
several culturally distinct, territorially rooted, historical communitiesor nations
whose association under a single governmental authority, or state, may be the result of
nothing more than the line-drawing of some external, usually colonial, power. The
import of this is heightened by the fact that, with the end of the Cold War, political
ideology has declined as a focus of national identity, and ethnic and cultural markers
of collective identity have risen to take its place.
10
In this context, even many older
democratic countries are suddenly faced with demands for autonomy from historically
distinct regions (such as Scotland within Britain) or demands for special rights from
recent immigrant communities (such as the Algerian Muslims in France).
For such countriesattempting to found a democracy out of diversity, or preserve
a democracy in the face of surging ethnic demandssomething other than the first-
past-the-post single member district systems of the Anglo democracies may be neces-
sary. Democracy as a political ideal aspires to more than just majority rule. It aspires
to a condition of political equality, where the interests of all are given due consider-
ation.
11
This is not just a matter of political ethics; in a democracy with pronounced
cleavages, it is also a matter of political viability. Unfortunately, first-past-the-post
systems do little to ensure this, because a majority or plurality ethnic group can win
election after election without even attempting to accommodate its rivals, potentially
producing what Ian Peleg has called a hegemonic state with simmering violence
between the dominant and dominated groups.
12
New cultural terrain demandsand
new technology enablesalternative approaches.
Most proposed alternatives suppose that the problem lies in the winner-take-all
aspect of first-past-the-post systems. The creation of majority-minority districts
through some form of ethnic federalism is one approach to mitigating this,
guaranteeing that nonmajority ethnic groups receive some representation in the
national legislature. Proportional representation is another approach to achieving the
same thing. Both approaches have their strengths. But both also suffer from well-
known liabilities. For example, both seek to secure ethnic minority interests by ethni-
cizing representation, which is done by ethnicizing constituencies. This can
institutionalize ethnic cleavages, intensify rather than abate group conflict, and leave
representatives with reduced incentive to cooperate across ethnic lines within the
legislature.
Perhaps, however, the problem is not with winner-take-all seats per se, but with the
usual composition of their constituencies. An opposing approach, long advocated by
Donald Horowitz and followed here, is to de-ethnicize representation by increasing
the heterogeneity of constituencies so as to incentivize politicians to downplay identity
claims and cooperate with other groups.
13
But this quickly runs into a practical limita-
tion. Carving out heterogeneous constituencies when ethnic groups are territorially
segregated, as they usually are in multination states, requires Herculean map work,
and is subject to undoing by population movements over time.
The logical solution, which will be canvassed here, is to deterritorialize constituen-
cies. This would allow them to be maximally heterogenized; and fortunately, it can be
done in a way that is simple to administer, that is impervious to the movement of popu-
lations, and that, if paired with a layer of provincial government, retains what is most
important about territorial representation while shedding its liabilities. With the assis-
tance of new technology, the step outside the box of territoriality is, as Sherrill
Stroschein notes, the logical one to take in order to open up new creative designs for
democratic states facing trying constitutional circumstances.
14
There is no system of representation that can dispense with all of the fearsand
satisfy all of the hopesthat accompany the movement toward democracy. It is a
matter of selecting the most promising among imperfect alternatives in light of the
specific circumstances of the country. But the mixed results that have been attained
with existing electoral systems provide a reason to expand the palette of options. The
present article explores the likely consequences of deterritorializing constituencies.
For the sake of exposition, it focuses on a system of representation with maximally
deterritorialized constituencieswhat I call dispersed constituency democracy.
But hybridity and half-measures also have their place. The objective of this article is
not to insist on a specific set of measures, but to stimulate our political imagination
toward creative construction of new electoral options that the shedding of territorial-
ity makes possible.
I begin by reviewing the respective strengths and weaknesses of todays most popular
electoral devices for composing a multiethnic democracy: ethnic federalism and propor-
tional representation. After this, I introduce the alternative of a deterritorialized electoral
system that I call dispersed constituency democracy. I first consider its general merits
as a system of democratic representation, noting especially its superior claims to demo-
cratic legitimacy over conventional systems of representation. Then I consider its spe-
cific merits as a device for reducing religious and ethnic conflict, using the cases of
Ciepley 139
Lebanon and Iraq to hypothesize how it might operate. Along the way, I show how use
of dispersed constituencies can reduce the downsides ofand heighten the irenic effects
offamiliar modus vivendi strategies such as cultural devolution and minority set-aside
seats. Finally, I discuss the neutrality of dispersed constituency democracy on the issue
of preserving cultural difference. A conclusion summarizes the main argument.
The Reigning Alternatives
Ethnic Federalism
The most favored contemporary response to the problem of ethnic conflict is to insti-
tute ethnic federalism.
15
This takes two main forms, with different consequences for
political stability.
In one form, ethnic federalism is a device for devolving decision making over cul-
turally sensitive issues such as education, language, and religion, to the provincial or
metropolitan level, removing them from national politics. In other words, it means
granting a degree of cultural autonomy to a province jealous of its cultural identity.
The consequences of this step appear to be mixed. On the one hand, it can be, or can
be seen to be, a step toward secession (which is why Turkey opposed it for the Kurds
of northern Iraq).
16
On the other hand, it can provide the elbowroom that insulates a
minority from majority dominance, and can be what keeps a province attached to the
broader polity (as with Quebec, and Scotland).
17
In another form, which is my main concern here, ethnic federalism is an instrument
of political representation. It uses either direct means (such as quotas) or indirect
means (such as ethnically oriented districting) to bring a representative mix of ethnic
representatives into the national legislature, in effect filling the national legislature
with politicians who owe their seats to their ethnic credentials and who are politically
accountable only to their own ethnic group. This is much more problematic, as it sim-
ply brings the forces of ethnic partisanship into the political center, carving it up into
ethnic blocs. Many commentators talk as if this would be beneficent, with each group
providing a check on the others.
18
Where groups are evenly balanced, this is true.
But it is all too literally true. The most likely result is stalemate, not cooperation in
nation building. This is because, in districts expressly designed to provide ethnic group
representation, campaigns easily unleash a dynamic of ethnic outbidding, which
inflates group pride or grievance within the constituency, and sends ethnic ultras to the
national legislature with an ethnic agenda and a disincentive to compromise with other
group representatives.
19
If the constituencies of these representatives are not them-
selves diverse, the compromises that are required to forge a politics of the common
good are liable to be seen as selling out, and uncompromising purists will be sent up
at the next election. Again, stalemate.
One complication for the first form of federalism (which under certain circum-
stances has considerable appeal) is that, under a territorial system of representation, by
default it brings with it the second form of federalism, since the semi-autonomous
province naturally doubles as an electoral district. Thus, a strategy of devolutionary
ethnic federalism that, by itself, might defuse tensions by granting local ethnic control
over culturally sensitive institutions, also entails electoral ethnic federalism, and
therefore on balance can become a source of increased tensions. This significantly
decreases its appeal. As I show below, one advantage of a dispersed constituency sys-
tem is that it allows devolutionary ethnic federalism to be used free from its problem-
atic electoral twin.
Proportional Representation
Another electoral system frequently proposed for multiethnic democracies is propor-
tional representation (PR), in which political parties are awarded seats on the basis of
the percentage of the vote that they secure.
20
Two virtues are ascribed to PR systems.
First, they are more inclusive than winner-take-all systems. They increase the repre-
sentation of minority groups in the national legislature, giving them a stake in the
system. (There are alternative ways of promoting inclusion, however, and I discuss
one below.) Second, they encourage the proliferation of parties. Electoral victory is
the lifeblood of a political party, and when all a party needs to win a seat in parliament
is a few percentage points of the total population, parties proliferate, each catering to
a particular political faction or identity group. This has come to be seen as preferable
to a two-party system, because it forces compromise among ethnic parties, which
must join together to build a majority coalition.
There are any number of examples of ethnically divided yet socially peaceful PR
countriesmost famously, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, as described
by Arend Lijphart in his classic work on consociation (although Belgium should
probably be removed from the list in light of recent developments). Clearly, then,
there are conditions under which a PR system can be beneficent. Unfortunately,
however, many of the favorable conditions that pertain in these Western European
countriessuch as the long national association of ethnic groups, with traditions of
intergroup accommodation and compromise, the absence of strong socioeconomic
differences among groups, and the presence of countervailing social cleavagesare
absent in other parts of the world.
21
Viewed simply in terms of the basic incentive
structure that PR systems create, the same point made above with respect to ethnic
federalism applies here as welltrans-ethnic compromises under a PR system tend
to be short-term affairs of convenience, made only for the sake of forming a govern-
ment. This is because PR constituencies are self-segregated and thus, like the con-
stituencies under ethnic federalism, tend to be homogeneous, with their representatives
accountable only to the self-segregating group. Furthermore, should the prolifera-
tion of parties lead to more than one ethnic party on either side of an ethnic fault line,
as it frequently does in PR systems, compromise generally becomes even more dif-
ficult. First, the competition of these same-ethnicity parties for ethnic supporters
generally leads each to harden its line against rival ethnic groups.
22
Second, even
when cooperation is attained, the system creates room for extreme flank parties to
Ciepley 141
spring up on either side of the compromising parties and attack their concord, either
undermining it or at the least keeping ethnic tensions stirred up in the society at
large.
23
In short, proportional representation sows the same seeds of national divi-
sion as ethnic federalism, but through the medium of sectarian parties, some of
which are likely to find electoral advantage in radicalization. And it adds the further
instability of multiparty government.
In contrast, under winner-take-all systems, in which the candidate with the most
votes becomes the sole representative of her constituency, small parties wither away to
a nub of purists who dont mind wasting their votes. The result, generally speaking, is
a two-party system in which each party vies for the swing votes at the political cen-
ter.
24
In most circumstances, this is a good recipe for stability. Furthermore, evidence
from India suggests that two-party systems provide more public goods than multiparty
systems. This is because each of the two parties, being a large party, must mobilize a
broad portion of the population, which the provision of public goods can do, whereas
the smaller parties of a multiparty system can mobilize voters with the promise of
group-specific club goods, creating a tension-enhancing zero-sum, rent-seeking
politics.
25
Proposals for ethnic federalism hope to secure stability by ensconcing ethnic groups
(and religious and tribal groups) within the system of representation according to some
formula that all parties find fair.
26
Proposals for proportional representation are simply
less rigid devices for doing the same thing. Both devices seek to bring stability by
encouraging political representation along identity group lines. At the outset, this can
facilitate group buy-in, and this is one of its biggest selling points; but it is not a recipe
for enduring social peace.
27
Dispersed Constituency Democracy
An alternative approach to bringing fractious ethnic groups under a single democratic
roof is to take the opposite tack of decoupling representation from group identity.
Decoupling requires two steps. First, increase the heterogeneity of constituencies,
ideally to a point where no one ethnocultural group holds a majority (this point is not
always attainable, and I will have more to say about what can be done when it is not).
Short of physically moving people around, it means deterritorializing constituencies.
Second, require candidates to secure a majority of the votenot just a plurality, but a
majorityto win. Together, these steps maximize the likelihood that candidates will
have to appeal across groups to win and that representatives will have reason to skirt
identity issues where possible and forge compromises where necessary. The majority
requirement also means that elections will be winner-take-all, since only one candi-
date can secure a majority. Thus, the proliferation of sectarian parties would be sty-
mied as well.
Unfortunately, these steps seem to contradict one another, since the usual way
to deterritorialize elections is to make them at-large, proportional representation
elections (as in Israel), and these are not winner-take-all. We thus confront a
dilemma: either establish a system of representation based on territorial districts
and risk ethnic and sectarian fragmentation among individual representatives, or
establish an at-large system of proportional representation and risk ethnic and
sectarian fragmentation at the level of political parties. Is there a way out of this
dilemma?
The most obvious way out would be to make all elections for the national legisla-
ture both at-large and winner-take-all. Every voter would vote on the candidates for
every seat in the national legislature. However, with national legislatures running at
100 seats and upward, this solution would make a mockery of the idea of informed
voting. It would also blur the constituent-representative relationship, diluting the sense
of responsibility that any particular representative had toward any particular constitu-
ent, since there would be (in our hypothetical example) at least ninety-nine other rep-
resentatives the individual could turn to. Finally, in most countries, it would produce
constituencies so large (each constituency would encompass the entire population)
that representatives would be unable to attend to individual constituent requests and
inquiries. Is there another way?
There is. Under the system of territorial representation familiar to Americans, the
resident of a particular district registers to vote by presenting proof of identity and
residency and is assigned a voter registration number. Then, on election day, she
shows up at her local polling station with an ID, her name is checked off the official
registry, and she passes through to cast her ballot for candidates competing to repre-
sent that district. Now compare this to a system of representation canvassed by
Andrew Rehfeld, which might be called a dispersed constituency system.
28
Under
this system, the very first time a citizen registers to vote, she is assigned, for life, a
registration number, and also a constituency number, selected at random and cor-
responding to one of the seats in the national legislature (parliament). In other words,
if there are 100 seats in parliament, all registering voters would be assigned a num-
ber from one to 100, fixed for life (or so long as they remain a citizen), no matter
where they take up residence. Those with a specific numbersay, 23and only
those with this number, may vote for the candidates for that seat, or run for that
seat.
29
The point of this system is that the voters for the seat will be scattered through-
out the entire country, making seat 23, like all the seats, a truly national seat, with a
constituency reflecting the full range of group diversity. The candidate who secures
a majority of the votes for that seatnot a plurality, but a majoritywins the seat.
If such an electoral system sounds complicated, it is only because it is unfamiliar.
With current technology, it would be no more difficult to set up and administer than
most current systems.
Rehfeld did not develop the dispersed constituency idea with the problem of
ethnic conflict in mind.
30
Rather, it came out of a philosophical inquiry into the
pure theory of representation. Nevertheless, with minor modifications, including
crucially the majoritarian constraint already introduced, I believe it holds good
promise under specifiable conditions to reduce ethnic tensions in a polity. And it
continues to provide political benefits should these conditions be outgrown.
Ciepley 143
This last point is important. However effective an electoral system might be at miti-
gating ethnic conflict, it would be a major strike against it if success were to come at
the price of other political dysfunctions, or at the price of significant democratic defi-
ciencies in areas of representativeness, responsiveness, and accountability. Devils
compromises sometimes must be made, but a system that staunches ethnic conflict
only to institute flawed governance would rightly give one pause. The evaluation of
dispersed constituency democracy should thus begin with a consideration of its
strengths and weaknesses as a system of democratic representation and governance,
even before considering its impact on ethnic conflict.
Dispersed Constituencies as a Means to Democratic
Legitimacy and Good Government
At first glance, dispersed constituencies appear marred by a couple democratic deficits.
However, closer examination shows that these apparent deficits are artifacts of measuring
a system of dispersed constituencies against dated or mistaken ideals of representation
that, under modern conditions, cannot be met by any known system of representation,
and therefore are not apposite as objections to a dispersed constituency system.
For example, some will argue that nationally dispersed constituencies make it less
likely that a representative will be personally known to his or her constituents, and
vice versa. But the scale of modern democratic republics made this rationale for ter-
ritorial representation a dead letter long ago. The rationale was already dismissed at
the time of the American founding, when Congressional seats were set at a minimum
of 30,000 constituents (although custom and the mechanics of running elections made
territorial representation the default choice nonetheless).
31
Today, the average
Congressional seat has 710,000 constituents.
32
That is high among democracies, but
few democracies have seats with less than the 30,000 in the early American republic,
which is already well past the level at which any meaningful role can be played by
personal knowledge.
A second democratic deficit might appear to follow from dispersed constituencies
neutralization of localism in national politics. Since dispersed constituencies are com-
prised of a national cross section, strictly local issuessuch as the condition of surface
streets, or the financing for a local museumwould seldom find their way onto the
agenda of congressional (parliamentary) campaigns or the national legislature.
Provincial and local government would attend to such local issues, whereas the
national government would be given over to truly national issues and interests (includ-
ing the transportation system in national view).
It is worth noting that, contra the assumption of postwar pluralists, this is precisely
what the framers of the US Constitution were aiming for. As Rehfeld puts it, The
stated hope (and fear) of the federal system at its founding was to neutralize, not pro-
mote, local communities of interest through the use of very large electoral districts.
33

I believe the framers were right in this and therefore view the neutralization of local-
ism as a virtue of dispersed constituencies and compare it favorably to the prevailing
US system, wherein national tax revenues are frequently used for local pork-barrel
projects, selected less on the basis of their contribution to national development than
on the basis of which individual representatives have the most pull in a given con-
gressional committee, owing to their seniority, their swing vote status, or their will-
ingness to vote for the pork-barrel projects of others.
However, from another perspective, the neutralization of localism might appear
to undermine the grounds of political engagement in national elections. Assuming
that political judgments and motivations are mediated by local conditions and priori-
ties, would the nationalization of constituencies (and consequent neutralization of
localism) not, ironically, leave citizens without grounds for engaging in national
elections? There are two reasons to believe otherwise. First, the premise is suspect.
Evidence on US presidential voting, for example, suggests that voters choose
national candidates based on their assessment of national rather than local economic
conditionsindeed, they even give more weight to changes in national economic
conditions than to their personal financial condition.
34
Second, the failure of strictly
local issues to rise to the national level would not mean that national issues would
not descend to the local level. National agricultural policy would still impact
Midwestern farmers and national energy policy would still impact fracking in the
Rocky Mountain West. In other words, there would still be plenty of opportunity to
vote for national candidates based on what would be good for Evansville, Indiana
(my hometown), or Denver, Colorado (my new home).
While the neutralization of localism is arguably a democratic virtue rather than
a deficit, other aspects of dispersed constituency democracy are virtues without
question, better meeting the ideals of democratic legitimacy than any existing
alternative, and incentivizing good government. First, a dispersed constituency
system best instantiates the democratic ideal of constituency stability. That is,
since the constituency assignments are for life, a representative at her time of
reelection would, to the greatest extent possible, face the judgment of the very
same people she had been representingthe key to accountability within repre-
sentative democracy and something not well-secured by proportional representa-
tion systems especially.
35
Second, a dispersed constituency system would secure equal representation. This is
because each parliamentary seat would have very nearly the same sized constituency,
giving every citizen equal weight in the legislature. (Indeed, if desired, random
assignment could be replaced with an algorithm that would guarantee this parity.) This
contrasts favorably with the Senate in the United States, for example, where a voter in
California is one out of 38 million represented by their Senator, while the lucky voter
in Wyoming is one out of 580,000, giving him, in effect, 65 times more representation
in the Senate.
36
The dispersed constituency system would thus more closely conform
to the one-man-one-vote democratic norm. Even more importantly, it would maintain
parity of constituency size over time, avoiding the baleful process of regular redistrict-
ing that has turned the US House of Representatives into a body of safe, ideologically
polarized incumbents.
Ciepley 145
Third, it encourages political centrism. Constituencies that encompass a national
cross section of the population perforce roughly reflect the national distribution of
opinion across the gamut of political issues. This is the presumptive democratic ideal
for constituency composition in a national legislature based on popular election and
consent. To the extent that political issues fall on a two-dimensional, left-to-right
spectrumand that the country has a competitive two-party systemsuch constitu-
encies would encourage political centrism and compromise. While political activists
may be right that political truth and virtue lies in the wing, centrism best corresponds
with the democratic ideal of legitimate government, and it avoids the problem of
ungovernability brought on by a polarized legislature (a possible offspring of even
moderately polarized, territorial constituencies).
37
The system would also eliminate the bias toward rural interests that often occurs
with territorial representation, as in the US Senate. This would be a matter of no small
significance in countries with a tribal heritage, such as Iraq, since it would bolster the
urban, professional, cosmopolitan elements of society against rural tribal leaders who
might otherwise dominate the legislature.
Finally, a dispersed constituency system could be expected to change the nature
of political campaigning.
38
It would make little sense for an individual candidate to
saturate a media market with mass advertising, when, owing to the mingling of con-
stituencies, only one out of a hundred viewers or listeners would be part of her elec-
torate. Thus, television advertising, the most expensive component of modern
campaignsand the widest doorway to special-interest influencewould drop off.
Instead, campaigns would likely develop in two directions. First, with mobile tech-
nology expanding internet access even in the poorest of countries, the internet
offering secure, constituent-only email lists and websiteswould become the major
medium of campaign literature distribution and, for the more engaged, the medium
of political discussion and deliberation. While there is no reason that discussion of
national issues among neighbors would not continue, online community would
replace local community as the locus of exchange regarding specific candidates.
Because nationally composed online communities would better reflect the national
diversity that national politics should address, this is a gain, not a loss. Second, mass
media advertising would not disappear altogether, but what remained would be
undertaken by the political parties, sounding general party themes, with the aim of
winning support for all their candidates, since candidate constituencies would be
intermingled in any given media market. In fact, with the reduced exposure to can-
didate personalities, citizens would most likely give greater weight to party affili-
ation. Whichever party put forward the most appealing platform would get their
vote. This would raise the stature of parties as a locus of political accountability,
effectively making representatives collectively accountable to the public for the
campaign promises of their party.
39
This contrasts favorably with the US system, in
which representatives freelance their electoral messaging, have considerable inde-
pendence from their party, and can always blame their colleagues if their particular
campaign promises go unfulfilled.
Dispersed Constituencies as a Means of Eliding Social Cleavages
The above are reasons to embrace a dispersed constituency system even where ethnic
conflict is not a problem. Perhaps some day this will come to pass. But at present, the
above are more plausibly construed as background assurances that a system of dis-
persed constituencies will not introduce major democratic deficits or governance
dysfunction, for those considering the system for wholly different reasons. Specifically,
a system as novel as this will likely only be considered by a country facing chronic
ethnic tensionsbecause these are the circumstances in which confidence in existing
electoral systems is lowest and openness to new thinking the widestand because it
is the circumstance in which a dispersed constituency system promises the greatest
improvement over existing systems.
The signal advantage of dispersed constituency democracy for a fractious multi-
ethnic society is that, provided no single faction has an overwhelming majority in the
country as a whole, it would encourage candidates and parties to appeal across ethnic
and religious lines to build a winning coalition.
40
Under such circumstances, ethno-
cultural appeals would be self-defeating, since every candidate, whatever her group
affiliation, would run for office as a minority candidate. Group identity would be
quickly downplayed and depoliticized. Instead, national politics would revolve
around nonidentity issuessuch as health, social security, national security, and
resource development. Meanwhile, the politics of issues where the question of iden-
tity is unavoidablefor example, the content of public school history bookswould
(to the extent that these are the concern of the national legislature) be directed toward
the forging of a national identity, since all constituencies would be national. In
essence, dispersed constituency democracy is a new means of pursuing the Madisonian
strategy of security political stability, and protecting minority rights, by increasing
the range of groups and interests that constituencies encompass.
41
I have so far been speaking loosely about the ability of dispersed constituencies to
discourage ethnocultural appeals and identity politics. It is time to refine this
claim by considering the likely effect of dispersed constituencies on a variety of issue
types, to better understand the kinds of conflicts it can elide and the kinds it cannot.
Dispersed constituencies incentivize candidates and legislators to exclude from the
political agenda divisive issues and proposals that are avoidable and that, though they
might find majority support locally, could only secure plurality support nationally.
Avoidable is the most operative word here. Not all issues are avoidable. The least
avoidable issues are those inherent to the operation of government, such as having a
national security policy, or taxation policy, or deciding on a location for the national
government. Where to locate the seat of government can be a divisive issue, and no
location may have more than plurality support, but some location must be found. The
same is true for national security and taxation. For a similar reason, conflict over the
development of natural resources may not be elidable. That one region of a country is
resource-rich, as the Niger Delta is rich in oil, while other regions of the country are
resource-poor, can create conflict over the distribution of benefits (such as income)
Ciepley 147
and costs (such as pollution) from the development of the resource. This cannot be
elidedat least not without forgoing the development itselfbecause a distribution
must be made, willy-nilly. It cannot be avoided. To take another example, conflict over
the designation of official languages for interaction with the national government may
not always be elidable. Communication has to take place in the medium of some lan-
guage, with mutually understood, legally actionable terms. Practicability requires that
one or a few languages be designated for this, to the convenience of some language
users and the inconvenience of others. Note that language is frequently an identity
issue. I will continue to speak of dispersed constituency democracy as discouraging
identity politics, because it would, in this example, discourage the pursuit of extreme
language policies for political gain (as have been pursued in Quebec, which I construe
as a language policy driven by identity politics). But this is not to say that dispersed
constituency democracy can elide all divisive issues touching on group identity,
because some, such as the selection of official languages, just cannot be avoided.
But there is nothing inherent to government that requires one group to displace or
slaughter another because of actions that the latters ancestors perpetrated before any
of the living were born. This is eminently avoidable. There is nothing in the nature of
government that requires that some ethnic, racial, or religious group receive special
subsidies or legal privileges, that it have its holidays enshrined as national holidays,
that its traditional garb be mandated, that its symbols be incorporated into the national
symbology, that the names of its heroes grace the street signs and the faces of its
heroes grace the currency. These bones of identity politics need not be fought over
if they are never tossed into the political arena.
42
A politician has an incentive to toss
them in ifthough it would divide his constituencyit would leave him with the big-
ger half. Dispersed constituency democracy provides incentives against this by maxi-
mizing the likelihood that it would leave him with the smaller half. We might generalize
by saying that, in countries with plurality groups, dispersed constituency democracy
will be most effective in discouraging proposals for group-specific attributes (or for
the groups themselves) to receive official sanction and support or condemnation and
penalty, because these are highly divisive and, generally speaking, eminently avoid-
able. For lack of a better term, I am calling these the proposals of identity politics.
Nonetheless, a qualification is due, because, while identity politics is generally
speaking avoidable, it may not always be avoidable, because there is a middle terrain
of issues whose avoidability will depend on the intensity with which a group has come
to view it as a fundamental moral issue. A gross violation of human rights likely cannot
be elided once it is recognized as such, as slavery in the American South came to be so
recognized, even though emancipation was initially only a plurality position held pri-
marily by Evangelical Protestants. In some parts of the world, Muslim women being
forced to take the veil is seen as a fundamental moral issue by both sides, and it is
unclear if under these circumstances it can be avoided, because partisans will force the
issue, insisting on their views to the point of violence. Religious conflicts are thus the
most difficult of ethnic conflicts to elide, because religionsespecially the universal
salvation religionsmay promulgate generalized moral imperatives of God-sanctioned
intensity that force issues even when politicians may wish to avoid them. These are not
cases of politicians stirring up conflict for political advantage, but of conflict welling up
from below. In such cases, dispersed constituency democracy may change the institu-
tional locus of conflict (perhaps keeping it out of the national legislature) but may not
be able to elide it. The political incentive to do so may be in place, but whether it can be
accomplished can only be determined in practice. That said, many conflicts among
religious groups are not, in their content, religious or moral conflicts, but are conflicts
arising, at least primarily, from mundane competition over power, prestige, and
resources (or fear of being excluded from these), as in Lebanon and Iraq. The compet-
ing groups may happen to be associated by religion, but the bones of contention are no
different than those typical in conflicts among ethnic or racial groups and are thus no
differently avoidable.
In sum, the use of dispersed constituencies is both a liberal and a republican
strategyliberal,
43
in that it aims to secure social peace by bracketing out of politics
conflict-inducing religious and identity claims; and republican, in that it seeks to focus
politics on the public good rather than factional interests. The conflict-inducing claims
that it can be expected to elide most readily (and which other electoral systems struggle
to elide) are group-specific ethnocultural claimsclaims for special treatment, for a
special destiny, for retribution against other groupsthat have local majority support
but only plurality national support. An ethnocultural claim might be made on behalf of
a race, religion, tribe, or ethnicity (in the narrow sense of a group with a distinct histori-
cal culture). Whether it can be elided does not seem to depend on the kind of group per
se, but on the avoidability of the claim and its degree of moralization.
Hypothetical Examples
Lebanon
Lebanon, with its chronic problem of group-based political instability, is an example
of the kind of country where dispersed constituency democracy might be highly effec-
tive.
44
First, the proportionality of the major subgroups is favorable, as no religious
group (religion being the major political fault line in Lebanon) enjoys an outright
majority. The census data for Lebanon is hopelessly out of dateno official census
has been taken since 1932, primarily because an accurate accounting of demographic
shifts could delegitimize the existing formula for ethnic representation in government
and spark a new round of sectarian violence. Ballpark figures for the largest religious
affiliations are 35 percent Shia Muslim, 20 percent Sunni Muslim, 20 percent
Maronite Christian, 15 percent other Christian sects, and 5 percent Druze (a splinter
off of Shia Islam).
45
Second, and equally important, the desire for political coexis-
tence among all groups is greater than the desire for domination or secession. This is
an important proviso, as one should not expect this electoral system, or any electoral
system, to bring peace where open hostility reigns. Rather, it is a system that can help
fortify situations of fragile peace. The Lebanese, by and large, wish to live together in
Ciepley 149
peace and search only for a constitutional formula in which each religious bloc is
safeguarded against the others and in which the dynamics of factional flare-ups, which
have plagued the country since its independence in 1943, can be contained. The cur-
rent system of sectarian proportional representation in the legislature and sectarian
apportionment of the top governmental posts has a spotty record on this score, and is
subject to delegitimation by demographic shifts. Dispersed constituency democracy
might serve the Lebanese better. It would force candidates to make appeals that reso-
nate across group boundaries and avoid appeals that are ethnoculturally privileging.
Simply put, politicians would be forced to appeal to common goods, making cam-
paigns culturally unifying rather than culturally divisive.
46
To reap the benefits of such a system, it is important that candidates be required to
secure an outright majority of the vote before they are declared the victor; otherwise,
the largest group might ride its plurality to victory in every contest. Runoff elections
or preferably, instant runoffs in an Alternative Vote system
47
would be frequent in
the early years, absent broad political parties. Yet with time, such a system would
likely evolve into a two-party system, producing only two major candidates for each
seat and decreasing the need for runoffs. This is because, seat by seat, it is a winner-
take-all system, rather than the kind of proportional representation system that leads to
the proliferation of small parties. Furthermore, this system would virtually guarantee
that the parties would be multiethnic in composition and national in orientation, since
their ability to win elections would be contingent upon their ability to appeal across
group lines. Political parties would thus become sources of national integration, rather
than sources of national division, as is so often the case in multiethnic and multireli-
gious democracies (India, Israel, and so forth). A system of two multiethnic parties
vying for the political center on the basis of transethnic issues, for political stability
and good governmentthis is exactly what one wants.
48
A possibility that might give one pause is that two of the larger groups (say, the
Shia and Sunni Muslim sects) could strike an electoral alliance against the other
groups (say, the Christian sects). For example, going into an election, they might
divvy up seats between themselves, agreeing to run only Shia for seats 1-60 and
only Sunni for seats 61-100, and then use their combined parliamentary majority to
oppress the other sects. A number of points need to be made in the face of an
example such as this.
First, identities in Lebanon are cross-cutting, highly complicated, and unlikely to
fall into such a neat pattern. The present example posits a relatively high degree, not
just of distrust, but of active hostility on the part of the Muslim groups toward the
Christian groups, and even more implausibly, pairs this with breathtaking solidarity
and coordination within and between the two major Muslim groups as would be neces-
sary to pull off this kind of electoral hijinks and outcompete candidates making trans-
group appeals.
49
If one system of representation were demonstrably better than the rest
at managing such an extreme case, we would want to bear it in mind. Yet we would be
ill advised to allow such extreme cases to dominate our thinking about electoral design,
because a system that best handles the extreme case may produce dysfunctional
governance under less extreme conditions, and may in fact increase the likelihood that
things devolve into the extreme case.
Second, it is not in fact the case that one system of representation enjoys a demon-
strable advantage over the others in preventing this scenario. An oppressive alliance of
this sort could occur under systems of ethnocultural federalism, proportional represen-
tation, or ordinary, single-member-district territorial representation, and with more
ease, so it is no special mark against dispersed constituency representation. This is all
the more reason for the choice among these systems to turn instead on the more ordi-
nary electoral dynamics that each fosters. The nature of politics is such that demo-
graphic groups rarely vote as a unified bloc; but ethnic federalism directly encourages
bloc voting, and proportional representation indirectly encourages it. Dispersed con-
stituency democracy, in contrast, expressly aims at scrambling ethnocultural blocs. It
increases the likelihood that the cleavages that inevitably exist within any large group
(for example, cleavages of class, or ideological cleavages, as on governments proper
role in the economy) will be brought out in the form of majority-seeking cross-group
alliances and will mitigate the possibility of an oppressive ethnic bloc alliance.
Finally, were fears of an oppressive group alliance so great as to become a consti-
tutional deal-breaker, they could be allayed by a constitutional requirement that, to be
elected, a candidate must attract a designated percentage of support from each ethnic
group.
50
Because all constituencies contain a virtually identical demographic mix
under this system, a single formula could be applied to every seat. (This would not be
the case under a territorial system of representation, which is probably why this other-
wise straightforward stratagem is so rarely considered.)
51
On the upside, such a
requirement would render oppressive ethnocultural alliances virtually impossible. On
the downside, it would, like ethnic federalism, formally institutionalizing ethnic iden-
tities within the political system.
52
However, its downside would be less steep than that
of ethnic federalism, for it would have the opposite tendency from ethnic federalism
of exerting pressure away from identity politics, and it could more easily be treated as
a temporary, trust-building measure, to be gradually phased out as a normal trans-
sectarian politics asserted itself.
53
(For other possible protections for minorities, see
the following discussion of Iraq.)
Iraq
At the time of this writing, social distrust in Iraq is probably still too high for it to be
a candidate for dispersed constituency democracy. The desire of the major groups to
live together in a unified country, although strong in the early days after the overthrow
of Saddam Hussein, evaporated in the postconflict security vacuum and is only slowly
recovering. It may eventually make a full recovery, so an examination of the case of
Iraq might not be in vain. But the better reason for examining the Iraqi case is that, in
addition to being familiar to most readers, it differs from the Lebanese case in one key
respect that makes it a more difficult case and also a more generalizable one. This is
the fact that in Iraq one sectarian groupthe Shiahas an absolute majority. I pres-
Ciepley 151
ent it, therefore, as a case of what might have been, a case of what might be in the
future, and in any case, as an instructive hypothetical example.
The ethnic-religious composition of Iraq is roughly 60 percent Shia Arab, 20 per-
cent Sunni Arab, 17 percent Sunni Kurd, and 3 percent other groups (Turkmen,
Christians, etc.) The greatest concern regarding dispersed constituency democracy
under these conditions is the electoral advantage it would give the Shia over all other
groups. Indeed, under this system, Shia would have the advantage in every electoral
contest for every national seat. In evaluating this, it should first be noted that, in any
alternative system, whether territory-based or at large, Shia would also be expected
to enjoy a majority in parliament. This is unavoidable. The objective should not be to
block the Shia from exorcizing majority power, but to arrange the electoral system so
as to encourage the ascendance of Shia moderates. The best way to do this would be
to force candidates to reach across religious and ethnic lines to win. So the question is,
does 60 percent constitute a large enough majority that Shia candidates could risk
appealing to a Shia identity to the exclusion of other groups? Quite possibly, in spe-
cific cases, but there are two reasons for believing otherwise in the general case. First,
the margin is too small. Under this system, most candidates would be loath to write off
40 percent of their electorate at the outset. The chances are just too great that a rival
candidate will run on a transgroup agenda that succeeds in peeling off 20 percent of
ones group, which is all that they would need. Second, the 60 percent Shia majority
is not as solid as it might seem, given that the Shia Arabs are divided both along tribal
lines and along lines of allegiance to rival clerics. This decreases the likelihood that the
Shia would vote as a bloc, especially when multiple Shia candidates are running for
the same seat, and increases the incentive for candidates to reach across ethno-
religious lines, giving priority to nondivisive issues and programs. In short, although a
dispersed constituency system would at the outset likely result in a greater proportion
of Shia representatives than under federal or PR systems, it would select the fewest
politicians identified with Shia partisanship, having eliminated homogeneous Shia
districts and disincentivized Shia ethnic parties. Given that Shia representatives will
preponderate under any system, this may be the safest course for non-Shia.
The fear of Shia dominance could also be mitigated by further institutional
machinery. For example, it would be wise to place underneath the national legis-
lature a provincial system of regional government and administration, as the
United States has with its fifty states. (And there is no reason each province
couldnt be subdivided further, as in the US county system.) This provincial sys-
tem would not be the territorial foundation of the national government. Again, the
national elections are deterritorialized through dispersed constituencies. So the
central government is not federal. But with a truly national legislature, a sub-
system of local government becomes vital, to ensure that issues that are strictly
local are attended to. With dispersed constituencies, it becomes possible for this
province system to take the form of a devolutionary ethnic federalism, allowing
for local cultural autonomy and the protection of minorities, without the ethnic
agitation occasioned by electoral ethnic federalism. Indeed, with dispersed
constituencies, the national government, under the sway of irenic forces, would
instead assume the beneficent role of pressuring the provincial governments not
to discriminate against local subgroups, making cultural devolution that much
more workable.
54
Furthermore, the same side requirement mentioned above for the case of
Lebanonthat candidates secure a certain percentage of the vote of all major
ethnocultural groupscould be instituted here as well, and with more reason. But
again, sunsetting provisions would be desirable to prevent the permanent institu-
tionalization of ethnocultural divisions beyond the point when a transethnic poli-
tics asserts itself.
As a final precaution, a number of seats might be set aside for minority represen-
tatives. The track record of legislative set-asides is actually quite poor.
55
First,
because legislatures are run on majoritarian principles, set-asides do little to guaran-
tee the protection of minority rights (or the advancement of minority interests),
which is their principal rationale. The best surety against democratic illiberalism is
to institute an electoral system that garners representatives who do not wish to tram-
ple minority rights in the first place, and this is precisely what dispersed constitu-
ency democracy aims at. Second, legislative set-asides carry dangers of their own,
for as Dawisha and Dawisha point out, they cement rather than eradicate ethnic
divisions.
56
However, much of this danger is owing to the manner in which repre-
sentatives to set-aside seats are customarily selected. If, for example, only Kurds are
allowed to vote for Kurdish seats, then one can expect the seats to drift into the
hands of ultra-Kurds, as Croat, Serb, and Bosniac seats have drifted into the hands
of ethnic ultras in Bosnia.
A way to leverage the dispersed constituency system in order to prevent this might
work as follows. A handful of seats might be set aside for Kurdish candidates in addi-
tion to whatever seats Kurdish candidates might win outright in the general election.
Among all Kurdish candidates who did not win outright majorities in the general elec-
tion, the handful polling the largest percentagesthe best loserswould be awarded
the set-aside seats and serve as second representatives for their constituencies.
57
This
would create the anomaly of double representation for their constituents, but as this
advantage would likely bounce among constituencies from election to election, it
seems fairly innocuous.
58
Once again, the mixed complexion of their constituencies
would ensure that the Kurdish candidates earning these seats would not be those who
engaged in ethnic appeals, but those who secured significant intergroup support, push-
ing up their poll numbers in the national election.
For those with liberal-democratic sensibilities, set-asides will likely be viewed
as a last resort, and with reason, because they institutionalize group identities
within the national political system, whereas the objective should be to elide
them. However, seats in parliament are often imbued with symbolic significance
beyond their actual utility, and if concessions to identity groups are necessary to
secure their participation in the constitutional system, this is a viable concession
to make.
59
Ciepley 153
Dispersed Constituencies for Countries with More Lopsided
Demographics?
In Iraq, the largest coherent ethnocultural group is the Shia, at 60 percent of the
population. However, it may yet be wondered, is there a level of group preponderance
beyond which dispersed constituency democracy becomes clearly unworkable? For
example, with the largest group at 90 percent?
In countries not prone to ethnic conflict, there is clearly no maximum workable
level of group preponderance. In such countries, dispersed constituencies would not be
needed to disincentivize ethnic appeals, but they would still contribute to good gov-
ernment and democratic legitimacy as noted at the outset.
More to the point, even in countries where ethnic conflict is a problem, it is not
clear that there is a level of demographic imbalance at which the system becomes
worse than the alternatives, provided one is willing to institute set-asides.
60
Let us sup-
pose, using our 90 percent majority example, that 10 percent of parliamentary seats are
set aside for the best losers among the ethnic minority. In a worst-case scenario,
where ethnic tensions are running high, it may be that voting is along strict ethnic
lines, with the outright winner getting all of Group As votes and none of Group Bs
votes, and the best loser getting none of Group As votes and all of group Bs votes.
The result is a national legislature split 90/10 among ethnic purists. This is not a prom-
ising outcome, and if repeated over time, it could be expected to produce the kind of
hegemonic state that Peleg analyzes. But it is a result identical to what one would
expect to get under either ethnic federalism or a proportional representation system. In
other words, the results of a dispersed constituency system at the worst are roughly the
same as those of a system of ethnic federalism or proportional representation. At least
under the dispersed constituency system, the incentive structure is in place for trans-
ethnic candidates to emerge and win should tensions decrease. Thus, the real upper
bound to the systems applicability is not set by its inner logic, but by the willingness
of a large majority group to agree to minority set-asides.
On Minority Rights and the Preservation
of Cultural Difference
In light of the recent surge of interest among political philosophers in granting
official recognition and respect to minority ethnocultural groupswhether on
grounds of justice, equality, or autonomyit is worth emphasizing that dispersed
constituency democracy is formally neutral on the issue. Its object is to minimize
identity politics in national electoral contests, where such politics has the great-
est likelihood of generating social dissolution. A likely consequencein my
view, a beneficent consequenceis the gradual formation of a national concep-
tion of citizenship. This brings unity, increases social trust, and facilitates collec-
tive action for national goal attainmentthings such as social welfare, economic
regulation, anticorruption, and infrastructure development. Yet it does not pre-
clude the maintenance of distinct group identities through other institutional
mechanisms, such as the granting of minority group rights (linguistic, educa-
tional, economic, sartorial, or otherwise), should this be deemed necessary or
desirable. It is even possible to have group governance of these matters without
the need for territorial jurisdiction. This could be done by devolving control to
issue-oriented bodies rather than territorial units. For example, Belgiums non-
territorial federal structure allows French and Flemish speakers to administer
their own schools without fear of involvement by the other group in educational
matters. The fact that educational matters lie under the jurisdiction of the non-
territorial federal units, the linguistic communities, [minimizes] debates on
issues that are most likely to cause controversy between groups.
61
But it should also be noted that dispersed constituency democracy does not
preclude the maintenance of group identities even in the absence of such formal
rights and institutions. For example, it is a boon to the stability of the US republic
that, for a variety of reasons, historical and geographical, African Americans have
not, for any extended period of time, conceived a separate political fate for them-
selves, but on the contrary have emphasized to white America that, in the words
of Martin Luther King Jr., We are tied togetherwhite and black Americansin
a single garment of destiny.
62
Yet at the same time, African Americans have gen-
erally foresworn full cultural assimilation. Without the aid of ethnic federalism or
group cultural rightswithout even the anchor of a traditional culture, enslave-
ment having largely erased their African cultural heritageAfrican Americans
have maintained a distinct identity for themselves, through sundry civil society
institutions and ongoing cultural innovation. A national conception of citizenship
should not be viewed as a blow to cultural difference.
From Legislature to Executive
Of course, settling the question of the formation of the national legislature does
not of itself settle the equally important question of how to select the head of
government. In recent years, the directly elected president has become the pre-
sumptive choice. In an ethnically divided country where no ethnic group com-
prises a majority, requiring an outright majority for victory would create the
same incentive toward transethnic appeals as the dispersed constituency system.
In the same spirit is Nigerias innovative presidential system, which requires a
candidate to win at least 25 percent of the ballots cast in at least two-thirds of the
countrys ethnically diverse provinces to secure the presidency, although the fis-
cal overcentralization of the country has limited the systems irenic possibili-
ties.
63
Under a dispersed constituency system, another promising option for
securing a unifying head of government would be to leverage the integrating
force of the national legislature in selecting him or her. In other words, the head
of government might be a British-style prime minister, chosen by his or her col-
leagues in parliament.
Ciepley 155
Conclusion
In evaluating a system of representation, especially within a divided society, central
place must be given to the fact that elections are preceded by campaigns, and
campaignsin which causes are articulated about and coalitions are formeddeter-
mine much of the character of political life. Constituency composition and choice of
voting system can thus have a dramatic impact on the prospects of a multiethnic
democracy. Chosen well, they can encourage political stability, interethnic coopera-
tion and compromise, and respect for minority rights.
Unfortunately, the reigning systems have a mixed record in these areas. Under eth-
nic federalism, identities are institutionalized and incentives for interethnic coopera-
tion are low. Under proportional representation, identities are more fluid, but they can
too easily become defined against each other in a system of ethnic difference, and the
presence of stable incentives for cooperation is more the exception than the rule.
Under both, coalitions are short-term affairs of convenience, producing no lasting
movement toward a transethnic politics of national citizenship and national concern.
Politics remains subject to breakdown and interethnic violence, even as conscious
campaign strategies. New approaches are much needed.
The basic strategy of dispersed constituency democracy is threefold. First, maxi-
mize heterogeneity in constituencies by assigning citizens to them randomly on a
national basis. Second, require candidates to win an outright majority of the vote,
rather than a mere plurality, to force them to appeal across ethnic lines. Third (by
implication), make the seats winner-take-all, rather than proportional, to encourage
the emergence of a stable system of two parties, each one of which, by virtue of the
prior two conditions, will be multiethnic in composition and transethnic in orienta-
tion. The goal is to provide electoral incentives that will move a society from a poli-
tics of ethnocultural agitation to a normal politics of the common good, and to do
this in a manner that obviates the need for disruptive constitutional renegotiations
along the way.
Dispersed constituency democracy is not the answer for all circumstances. Where
ethnocultural conflict is absent, it would work well, eliminating localism at the
national level, encouraging centrism, and increasing the legislatures democratic
legitimacy by a variety of classic measures. But absent ethnocultural conflict, the felt
need to adopt such a novel system would be absent as well. At the other extreme,
where ethnocultural conflict is chronic, the felt need for a new alternative might be
high. However, if one of the groups comprises a majority of the population, the ability
of this system to diffuse the situation would be limited, at least if used in its unadul-
terated form. Fortunately, the use of dispersed constituencies allows a variety of sup-
plementary devices to be implemented that would substantially increase its
effectiveness at quelling interethnic violence even where one group is preponderant.
These include devolutionary federalism, electoral requirements for minimum levels
of multiethnic support, and ethnic set-asides, all of which would be much more effec-
tive under dispersed constituencies than under conventional electoral systems.
Dispersed constituency democracy would have the most utility and most appeal
under conditions of ethnocultural conflict where no group is in the majority. It would
bring the above-mentioned benefits of national perspectives and legitimacy, and add
to them a set of incentives that, except in sharply divided countries, have a good pros-
pect of rapidly depoliticizing ethnic identity. Under these conditions, it could turn a
multination state into, functionally, a polyethnic nation, in which diversity becomes a
strength rather than a liability.
I have discussed the system of dispersed constituencies in its pure form, as a set of
randomized constituencies. But it should be emphasized in closing, that, once liber-
ated from the constraint of territoriality, constituencies could be engineered with other
mixes as well. Conscious weighting of some seats toward one group, and others toward
another, would be possible. Also possible would be a mix of territorial seats and non-
territorial seats in the legislature. Circumstances may be found where one or another
of these variations would commend itself. Finally, it should be noted that dispersed
constituencies could also be used in provincial elections, and even in local elections,
as an incentive against province-level or local-level discrimination. That is why this
article is ultimately about expanding the political imagination. Because of the many
new options it makes possible, deterritorialized representation may well be the next
frontier in electoral design.
Acknowledgments
The author thanks Eldon Eisenach, David Klein, Donald Levine, Irfan Nooruddin, Andrew
Rehfeld, Julian Wettengel, Erzen Yukleyen, and the editorial board of Politics & Society for
their comments.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of
this article.
Notes
1. Fareed Zakaria, How to Wage the Peace, Newsweek (9 April, 2003): 44-45.
2. Ilan Peleg, Democratizing the Hegemonic State: Political Transformation in the Age of
Identity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 5, 85-88.
3. Adam LeBor, Milosevic: A Biography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002).
4. A report published by Human Rights Watch concludes, on the basis of a worldwide survey,
that most ethnic riots are instigated by political elites, who play on existing communal ten-
sions to entrench [their] own power or advance a political agenda. Human Rights Watch,
Slaughter among Neighbors: The Political Origins of Communal Violence (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1995), 65-66.
Ciepley 157
5. In a study of ethnic riots in India, Stephen Wilkinson marshalls quantitative and qualitative
data to show that proximity to an election, and the competitiveness of an election, are the
leading correlates of Hindu-Muslim violence. No positive correlation was found with fre-
quently cited socioeconomic variables such as rising intergroup labor-market competition
or high refugee concentrations. Wilkinson also provides compelling arguments to discount
the claims that have been made for other explanatory variables such as state capacity and
interethnic civic engagement. Steven Wilkinson, Votes and Violence: Electoral Competi-
tion and Ethnic Riots in India (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
6. Rotimi Suberu, Federalism and Ethnic Conflict in Nigeria (United States Institute of
Peace, 2001).
7. See notes 4 and 5. Kenya could be cited as another prominent example.
8. Bernard Manin, The Principles of Representative Government (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997); Daniel Waley, The Italian City-Republics (London: Longman
Group Limited, 1978). James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, The Federal-
ist Papers (New York: Penguin Books USA, 1961), 71, 72, 77. In contrast, in the second
half of the twentieth century, American political scientists, operating under the shelter of
postwar political stability, turned their attention to issues beyond stability, such as the best
method for aggregating voter preferences, including minimizing wasted votes, tying
lawmakers to the median voter, and suchlike, often on the questionable assumption that
the point of democracy is to translate voter preferences into public policy.
9. The distinction between a polyethnic nation and a multination state is drawn in Will
Kymlicka, Three Forms of Group-Differentiated Citizenship in Canada, in S. Benhabib,
ed., Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1996).
10. Ilan Peleg, Democratizing the Hegemonic State, chap. 1; Samuel Huntington, The Clash of
Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998).
11. Stephen Macedo, Against Majoritarianism: Democratic Values and Institutional Design,
Boston University Law Review 90 (2010): 1029-1042.
12. Ilan Peleg, Democratizing the Hegemonic State.
13. Donald Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1985).
14. Sherril Stroschein, Making or Breaking Kosovo: Applications of Dispersed State Con-
trol, Perspectives on Politics 6, no. 4 (2008): 655-74.
15. Much of the enthusiasm among academics and NGOs for ethnic federalism (as well as for
proportional representation) stems from the work of Arend Lijphart on the success of con-
sociational power-sharing arrangements among linguistic and religious groups in Bel-
gium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland (Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies: A
Comparative Exploration [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997]). It is not clear how
generalizable these cases are, however. Stephen Wilkinson provides an incisive critique of
Lijpharts attempt to extend his argument to India (in Arend Lijphart, The Puzzle of Indian
Democracy: A Consociational Interpretation, American Political Science Review 90, no. 2
(1996): 258-68), and shows that, if anything, consociational practices correlate with higher
levels of Hindu-Muslim violence. Wilkinson, Votes and Violence.
16. Recent studies noting the danger of autonomy leading to succession include David Laitin,
Secessionist Rebellion in the Former Soviet Union, Comparative Political Studies 34,
no. 8 (2001): 839-61; Svante E. Cornell, Autonomy as a Source of Conflict: Caucasian
Conflicts in Theoretical Perspective, World Politics 54 (2002): 245-76; and Ian Lustick,
Dan Miodownik, and Roy J. Eidelson, Secessionism in Multicultural states: Does Sharing
Power Prevent or Encourage It? American Political Science Review 98, no. 2 (2004): 209-
29. Donald Horowitz notes conditions that dampen separatist impulses in Making Mod-
eration Pay: The Comparative Politics of Ethnic Conflict Management, in J. V. Montville,
ed., Conflict and Peacemaking in Multiethnic Societies (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books,
1990), 472.
17. Peleg, Democratizing the Hegemonic State, 114-27.
18. See, for example, Adeed Dawisha and Karen Dawisha, How to Build a Democratic Iraq,
Foreign Affairs (2003): 36-50, making the case for ethnic federalism in Iraq.
19. Neil DeVotta, From Ethnic Outbidding to Ethnic Conflict: The Institutional Bases for
Sri Lankas Separatist War, Nations and Nationalism 11, no. 1 (2005), 141-59; Larry
Diamond, Three Paradoxes of Democracy, in L. Diamond and M. Plattner, eds., The
Global Resurgence of Democracy (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993).
20. See, for example, the arguments of Dawisha and Dawisha, How to Build a Democratic Iraq,
and Zakaria, How to Wage the Peace, 45, in favor of proportional representation in Iraq.
21. Horowitz, Making Moderation Pay, 456-57.
22. Ibid., 456.
23. For a discussion of flank parties as part of a powerful critique of the ability of the most pop-
ular proportional representation systemslist-system PR and single transferable vote
PRto foster ethnic compromise, see Donald Horowitz, A Democratic South Africa?
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991), 167-75. Both of these systems can
be paired with various side requirements to reduce their tendency to ethnic fragmenta-
tionsomething Lijphart in particular insists on. See Arend Lijphart, The Power-Sharing
Approach, 505, in J. V. Montvile, ed., Conflict and Peacemaking in Multiethnic Societies
(Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1991). However, these additions mitigate but do not
reverse the general tendency.
24. Maurice Duverger, Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State
(New York: Methuen; Wiley, 1954), 217. Horowitz notes that under conditions of strong
ethnic group polarization, there are not many swing voters for candidates to go after,
so the median voter logic of two-party systems is only weakly applicable (Horowitz, A
Democratic South Africa?, 198). The key, therefore, would be to put in place a system
with strong incentives for transforming ethnic parties into multiethnic parties, after which
the normal logic of two-party systems would assert itself. Below I describe a system that
would do this.
25. Pradeep Chhibber and Irfan Nooruddin, Do Party Systems Count? The Number of Parties
and Government Performance in the Indian States, Comparative Political Studies 37, no.
2 (March 2004): 152-87.
26. Of course, perceived fairness may decline as population proportionalities shift over time,
as has happened in Lebanon. This is another liability of the federalism approach.
Ciepley 159
27. Kanchan Chandra argues that centrist politics can be achieved in multiethnic democra-
cies by institutionalizing ethnocultural cleavages that are multiple and crosscutting, as are
caste, language, and ethnicity in India (Ethnic Parties and Democratic Stability, Per-
spectives on Politics 3, no. 2 (2005): 235-52). However, Chandra acknowledges that, with
ethnicity institutionalized, nonethnic politics is disadvantaged (241). Furthermore, in the
Indian example, these cleavages are institutionalized (that is, political actors are incentiv-
ized to mobilize around them) by giving designated caste, language, and ethnic groups spe-
cial claims on state resources while leaving these designations open to revision by simple
legislative enactment. The end result is a politics of ethnically based rent-seeking, wherein
groups vie to be included under the privileged designations. While this moderates one-
dimension ethnic polarization, it hardly commends itself as a model for others to follow.
28. Andrew Rehfeld, The Concept of Constituency: Political Representation, Democratic
Legitimacy, and Institutional Design (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005),
chap. 9. Rehfeld uses the term random constituency, but I prefer dispersed constitu-
ency, because I wish to emphasize its translocal composition.
29. This last restriction is not essential. See ibid., 215.
30. Although the possibility was not lost on Rehfeld (communication from the author).
31. Rehfeld, The Concept of Constituency, chap. 3.
32. http://www.batesline.com/archives/2010/12/-census-apportionment-data-r.html (accessed
Dec. 9, 2012).
33. Rehfeld, The Concept of Constituency, 57. On the pluralist misreading of Madison, see
David Ciepley, Liberalism in the Shadow of Totalitarianism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2006), Part III.
34. Gregory B. Markus, The Impact of Personal and National Economic Conditions on the
Presidential Vote: A Pooled Cross-Sectional Analysis, American Journal of Political Sci-
ence 32, no. 1 (1988): 137-54.
35. This is a central point of Rehfeld, The Concept of Constituency, which focuses on issues of
democratic legitimacy.
36. http://2010.census.gov/2010census/data/apportionment-pop-text.php (accessed Dec 9,
2012).
37. The causes of political polarization are debated in the literature, with the evidence point-
ing most strongly toward party activists as the primary culprits. Seth Masket, No Middle
Ground: How Informal Party Organizations Control Nominations and Polarize Legisla-
tures (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2011). However, the polarizing of politicians
finds its base in at least moderately polarized constituencies, since one just about never sees
a right-wing politician representing a neutral or left-leaning constituency, or vice versa.
38. A more extended discussion of consequences for campaigning and party organization can
be found in Rehfeld, The Concept of Constituency, 221-28, although with some difference
in detail.
39. As a result, national party conventions might regain their political relevance. That said,
inferences regarding the impact of such a system on party activity must be considered
highly speculative. Rehfeld, following a different line of reasoning, speculates that ran-
domizing constituencies would actually weaken party discipline. See ibid., 227. Both spec-
ulations may be correct. Central party control might weaken, because, with constituents
mixed in every media market, the benefits of party advertising could not be withheld from
a particular representative for her failure to toe the line of the central party apparatchiks.
Yet party caucuses within the legislature might be strengthened by each representatives
awareness that she will be held accountable to the party platform. This would be the best
of both worlds.
40. In other words, it is a novel way to create incentives for what Donald Horowitz calls cross-
ethnic vote pooling. Horowitz, A Democratic South Africa? 167, 177-203.
41. Extend the sphere and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it
less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights
of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who
feel it to discover their own strength and to act in unison with each other (Madison et al.,
Federalist Papers, 81).
42. Note that the proposals described are qualitatively different in spirit and effect than ones
sanctioned by a national majority to commemorate or even legally privilege a group that
has suffered from a history of discrimination, as has happened for African Americans in the
United States and Dalits in India.
43. The scare quotes are a reminder that embracing a liberal strategy of neutralization does not
entail being a neutralist liberal. Dispersed constituency democracy does not preclude the
forging of a common substantive national identity, with an ethnic, religious, or racial cast,
depending upon the population.
44. I focus on Lebanon for the sake of a concrete example, but the position of Lebanon is
hardly unique. The demographic complexion that makes dispersed constituencies propi-
tious for Lebanon prevails in Nigeria and Ethiopia as well, for example.
45. Estimates are a rough average of numbers drawn from the CIA World Factbook (http://
ciaworldfactbook.us/) and various online encyclopedias. Some estimate that the Shia may
now constitute an outright majority of the population. See the discussion of Iraq below for
the steps that may need to be taken to make dispersed constituency democracy work under
this condition.
46. Recent instability in Lebanon, it should be noted, has stemmed not from electoral dynam-
ics, but from assassinations of anti-Syrian Lebanese officials, presumably by the Syrian
government, which has stirred resentment within Lebanon against Shia groups allied with
Syria. This is a reminder that dispersed constituency democracy, while it addresses one
common source of ethnic tensions, does not address all sources, such as partisan foreign
intervention.
47. In an instant runoff, or alternative vote, system, voters rank candidates in order of prefer-
ence. If no candidate wins a majority on the first count, votes for the lowest vote-getters
are successively reallocated to the voters next preferred candidates, until one candidate
secures a majority. Such a system provides a more immediate incentive for candidates and
ethnic parties to court groups other than their own, hoping to be their second choice. For
details, see Horowitz, A Democratic South Africa? 188-91. Instant runoffs also sift voter
preferences more accurately, preventing scenarios in which, say, a less-popular party field-
ing only two candidates gets both into the runoff because a more popular party fielded four
Ciepley 161
candidates, any of whom would be preferred to the previous two, but who fragmented their
portion of the vote.
48. In a famous argument, Robert Dahl notes the tendency of two-party plurality systems to
intensify conflict in a bifurcated society (less well-remembered, he also notes that propor-
tional representation systems usually do the same). R. Dahl, ed., Political Oppositions in
Western Democracies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 375-76. With the major-
ity requirement, however, parties have a continued incentive to compete for the political
center. A majority requirement also reduces the seat premium that plurality systems give
to the lead party, although not as much as proportional representation systems.
49. Note, this is not a party list proportional representation system, so to secure this kind of
bargain, all potential Sunni candidates for the designated Shia seats would have to restrain
themselves from running, and vice versa. Were such levels of solidarity and coordina-
tion attained, it might well be questioned whether we were still dealing with two distinct
political groups. The case would seem to collapse into one in which a single group has an
outright majority. This kind of case is dealt with in the next section, on Iraq.
50. I thank Justin Fox for this suggestion, which is roughly analogous to the requirement in
Nigeria that presidential candidates win at least 25 percent of the vote in two-thirds of the
(ethnically segregated) provinces (Suberu, Federalism and Ethnic Conflict in Nigeria). It
should be noted that, to prevent a crisis of legitimacy, an official backup plan would be
needed for occasions when no candidate meets the side requirement. This can partially viti-
ate the irenic incentives of the requirement. Horowitz, A Democratic South Africa? 184-85.
51. For a discussion of the difficulties in a territorial system, see Horowitz, A Democratic
South Africa? 184-85.
52. To avoid this, it might be possible, as an alternative to random constituencies, to compose
constituencies out of geographically scattered mini-districts, so distributed as to include,
de facto, a portion of all groups, and to require candidates to win a minimum percentage of
the vote in all or most of these mini-districts. However, this could require some Herculean
geographic calibrations. Also, a backup plan would still be needed, should no candidate
reach the required minimum percentages.
53. The sunsetting of this requirement would not necessarily require a constitutional renegotia-
tion if mileposts for its sunsetting are written into the constitution itself.
54. The influence of higher levels of government on lower level ethnic conflict is made clear
in Wilkinson, Votes and Violence, which shows that, with regard to the virulence and
contagion of ethnic riots, even more important than the local incentives to conflict is the
response of the level of government that controls the police or army.
55. The same thing can be said for racially gerrymandered districts that secure minority rep-
resentatives. See David Lublin, The Paradox of Representation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1997).
56. Dawisha and Dawisha, How to Build a Democratic Iraq, 45.
57. Mauritius presently uses such a best-loser system, although without dispersed constitu-
encies, to ensure representation for ethnic and religious minorities. See www.country-data.
com/cgi-bin/query/r-8638.html. Interestingly, the system, in place since 1968, is now under
assault as a legacy of the colonial practice of population classification on communalist
lines and as a stumbling block to the idea of citizenship. See LALITs position and pro-
posals on Electoral Reform, and in particular on Proportional Representation, Document
No. 3, 1999 (www.lalitmauritius.com/documents/0005 Doc 3-Proportionalrepresentation
paper.doc). This accords with the authors sense that this is a suboptimal solution, but that
it could be necessary as a temporary, trust-building measure.
58. It could even be seen as an incentive for constituencies to support minority candidates.
59. Peleg, Democratizing the Hegemonic State, makes a theoretical and empirical case that in
deeply divided societies, some form of group rights and group representation is a neces-
sity for moving toward a peaceable constitutional order (17). If true, this does not preclude
provision being made for the sunsetting of set-asides, as what evidence we have suggests
that set-asides, after removal, continue to have a sizeable and lasting impact on the willing-
ness of electorates to return the set-aside politicians to office. Rikhil B. Bhavnani, Do
Electoral Quotas Work after They Are Withdrawn? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in
India, American Political Science Review 103, no. 1 (2009): 23-35.
60. Without set-asides, the majority group could be expected to sweep every seat without the
least attempt to woo the minority. This might well be a worse outcome than that of a ter-
ritorial system, which might at least secure a handful of seats for the minority. But either
way, the parliament would be completely dominated by the majority group.
61. Stroschein, Making or Breaking Kosovo, 661.
62. Address at the University of Pittsburgh, November 2, 1966.
63. Suberu, Federalism and Ethnic Conflict in Nigeria.
Author Biography
David Ciepley (davidciepley@gmail.com) is an assistant professor of political science at the
University of Denver. He is the author of Liberalism in the Shadow of Totalitarianism (Harvard
University Press, 2006) and Beyond Public and Private: Toward a Political Theory of the
Corporation (The American Political Science Review 107, no. 1 [2013]). He publishes in the
fields of democratic theory, liberal theory, and corporate theory, and is presently writing a book
at the intersection of these fields that challenges the legal reclassification of corporations from
bodies politic to private concerns.

Politics & Society 2013 Ciepley 135 62

Încărcat de

Informații document

Drepturi de autor

Formate disponibile

Partajați acest document

Partajați sau inserați document

Opțiuni de partajare

Vi se pare util acest document?

Este necorespunzător acest conținut?

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

Politics & Society 2013 Ciepley 135 62

Încărcat de

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

http://pas.sagepub.

http://pas.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Email Alerts:

- Feb 13, 2013 Version of Record >>

S-ar putea să vă placă și

Politics &amp; Society 2013 Ciepley 135 62

Încărcat de

Informații document

Drepturi de autor

Formate disponibile

Partajați acest document

Partajați sau inserați document

Opțiuni de partajare

Vi se pare util acest document?

Este necorespunzător acest conținut?

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

Politics &amp; Society 2013 Ciepley 135 62

Încărcat de

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

http://pas.sagepub.

http://pas.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Email Alerts:

- Feb 13, 2013 Version of Record >>

S-ar putea să vă placă și

Politics & Society 2013 Ciepley 135 62

Politics & Society 2013 Ciepley 135 62