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Targeted policy in multicultural societies: Accommodation, denial, and replacement
Abstract
Targeted redistribution in multicultural societies can pose “the dilemma of recognition”: the beneficiary groups have to be officially recognised, defined, and sometimes mobilised, which accentuates group distinctions and thus threatens to contribute to conflict, discrimination, and inequality instead of combating it. Many governments are well aware of this dilemma, and to resolve it they modify the category system used in redistributive policies. This paper analyses the options governments have – accommodation, denial, and replacement – and concentrates on the latter. Replacement means that a government constructs the targets of redistributive policies so as to avoid accentuation or recognition of inconvenient group distinctions, but still allow redistribution that benefits these groups. The question is, does it work? Replacement is increasingly in demand, in countries around the world, but its effects are little researched. This paper elaborates on two exemplary cases – India and Nigeria – which have experimented with replacement ever since the 1950s and provide ample opportunity to research its long-term effects.
... Recognition facilitates interethnic comparisons and ethnic mobilization and, thus, may entrench ethnicity as a political cleavage (Horowitz, 2000). This is to plurality groups' advantage, but for minority groups it presents a risk. 1 The potential gains, paired with the risks, produce the 'dilemma of recognition' (De Zwart, 2005). This dilemma has political bite for minority group leaders, but not for plurality group leaders. ...
... Recognition strategies have the potential to redress grievances by granting groups status or allowing for more precise targeting of resources along ethnic lines (Cunningham, Loury & Skrentny, 2002;Horowitz, 2000: 657-659). Other scholars make the case that integrative institutions that reduce the political salience of ethnic groups best prevent conflict (Horowitz, 1991(Horowitz, , 2000De Zwart, 2005). This could avoid 'freezing' divisions that emerged in the heat of conflict (Simonsen, 2005) and open more space for conflict transformation (Taylor, 2001). ...
An enduring debate in the conflict management literature concerns the wisdom of recognizing versus avoiding reference to ethnic identities in institutions to manage ethnic conflict. Understanding why ethnic recognition occurs is crucial for informing this debate. We develop a theory based on functional and political mobilization effects of recognizing ethnic groups. Contrary to reasoning that minority leaders would be most interested in recognition, the theory suggests that recognition consistently favors the interests of leaders from larger, plurality groups, whereas minority leaders face a ‘dilemma of recognition’ between functional gains and mobilization threats. We use mixed methods to test our theory. For our quantitative analysis, we draw on an original coding of recognition in constitutions and comprehensive political settlements from 1990 to 2012. We find that for cases with leaders from plurality groups, recognition is adopted 60% of the time. With leaders from minority groups, the rate is about 40 percentage points lower, even after accounting for many background factors. Additional quantitative tests and a qualitative analysis present more detailed evidence to show that the processes correspond to the logic of our theory. Answering these questions about when and why recognition is adopted is a crucial step in evaluating its effects on conflict.
Since its beginnings in the 1970's to the proclamation of its death in 2010-2011 by the most important European leaders of the time (Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron) to its present day reinterpretation due to increasing migration and globalization, multiculturalism has been on the agenda of policy makers worldwide. And rightly so, as a liberal multicultural society, at least in theory, "cherishes the diversity of and encourages a creative dialogue between its different cultures and their moral visions." (Lord Bhikhu Parekh, What is Multiculturalism?). This is indeed the desired (some would say utopian) perspective, but how successfully has it been implemented? As far back as 2007 Will Kymlicka was challenging his readers with two possible options: either to abandon the project of internationalizing multiculturalism (highly undesirable, in his opinion) or to rethink it and put it on a more coherent footing of liberal multiculturalism (Multicultural Odysseys). In this paper I address multiculturalism in the postcommunist and postcolonial contexts and explore possible points of intersection between the two. If, as I have shown elsewhere, the postcommunist condition is (to a certain extent) part of the postcolonial framework, I am seeking to find out whether their approaches towards multiculturalism are similar. The case studies analyzed are Romania and India and the respective states' policies towards 'nation', as well as their relations with the minorities living on their present day territories. With different historical, political, ideological and geographical backgrounds, the two countries are taken as illustrations to test the validity of liberal multiculturalism and its theoretical and practical potential.
A central question in the study of political development is how conflict between ethnic groups might be transcended. Findings from social psychology suggest that ethnically integrating institutions such as militaries or representative bodies may remove prejudices and exclusionary behavior that perpetuate inter-ethnic animosity. Political scientists have tended to be skeptical, arguing that such processes may actually intensify or "freeze'' conflicting ethnic identities. I use evidence from a hard case --- military reform in the aftermath of a brutal, ethnically-charged civil war in Burundi --- to study this issue. At the macro-level, the Burundian military undertook extensive quota-based integration that nonetheless resulted in a cohesive institution. A micro-level natural experiment, which produces quasi-random exposure to ethnic integration through the military retirement age, shows that exposure to ethnic integration decreases prejudicial behavior and is benign with respect to ethnic salience. Together, these results suggest promise in ethnic integration.
A growing trend in the comparative politics literature on patterns of minority incorporation emphasizes the emerging policy convergence in this area, conventional oppositions between national models notwithstanding. This convergence is further illustrated by drawing upon the cases of two countries often analyzed within an "exceptionalist" framework and generally viewed as polar opposites as far as the political legitimacy and legal validity of race-based classifications are concerned: the United States and France. The analysis of recent programs designed to increase the "diversity" of the student body in selective institutions of higher education demonstrates that indirect affirmative action is the instrument around which French and U. S. policies have tended to converge. This increasingly visible convergence obtains in part because of the current move toward color-blindness as a matter of law in the United States. Yet it is also a reflection of the fact that the ultimate purpose of affirmative action in liberal democracies requires a measure of indirection and/or implicitness.
Most social scientists today agree that identity is a social construction, not a primordial given. They also agree that the state (through its power to dominate discourse) is a key agent in the process of identity construction. The literature on caste in India is illustrative. Caste used to be thought of as an ancient fact of Hindu life, but contemporary scholars argue that the caste system was constructed by the British colonial regime. The social construction thesis should apply a fortiori to a project begun by the Indian government almost 50 years ago and still going strong, namely affirmative action for the 'backward classes'. This project is strikingly similar to the British colonial project that ex hypothesi constructed the caste system. The government defines social categories (official constructions) under which people must register in order to qualify for the material rewards - jobs and education - that made these constructions real in their consequences. The tangible effects of affirmative action differ, however, from what the social construction theory predicts. The backward classes never emerged as a viable identity. What emerged instead was a multiplicity of castes. The government's prolonged attempt ever since independence to construct the 'backward classes' only reinforced the caste system. The logic of affirmative action explains this unintended outcome.
This dissertation seeks a better understanding of the operation and effects of federalism on intergroup relations in multiethnic states in a ‘developing’ context. It hopes to contribute to the debates on decentralization, devolution and state building. Though formally diverse, Nigeria (1960 to 1998 intermittently) and Ethiopia (1991 to 1998) are both ‘federations of many nations.’ They provide the best evidence available on the phenomenon of ‘horizontal federalism’ where the federal state becomes a broker institution between major ethnolinguistic groups.
The study focuses on three core issue areas of intergroup contention and conflict These are the distribution of territory (internal units), the organization of fiscal relations (the interregional collection and allocation of revenues), and the regulation of group access to state-brokered opportunity and representation (in higher education, public sector employment and national decision making). Horowitz (1985) argued that the success of federalism as conflict-management depends on its ability to 1) disperse conflict by proliferating decision making; 2) to deemphasize intergroup conflict by emphasizing intragroup conflict; 3) to promote intergroup cooperation; 4) to encourage non ethnic alignment; and 5) to reduce intergroup disparities (Horowitz, 1985). The
study takes up these five mechanisms in each issue area across the two cases.
The data suggests that federalism is better understood as an instrument of limited utility rather than a panacea for societies in conflict With regards to intergroup relations it has played a largely mitigating role but has also produced substantial aggravation in particular instances. It has produced a reality of territorial fragmentation in Nigeria. Repeated boundary adjustments in both states produced substantial conflict on the ground and sharpened the fault lines of identity. Federal fiscal dominance (a vertical fiscal imbalance) in both cases has ensured the continued aggregation of conflict toward the center rather than its dispersal and undermined political devolution. While national wealth appeared to provide the supporting platform for federalism, regionally concentrated wealth (particularly of a mineral nature) threatened it Finally, while preferential policies were justified as necessary to redress existing imbalances in particular functional areas, they induced centrifugal tendencies, negatively affected intergroup relations and decreased professional and geographic mobility.
"The Truly Disadvantagedshould spur critical thinking in many quarters about the causes and possible remedies for inner city poverty. As policy makers grapple with the problems of an enlarged underclass they—as well as community leaders and all concerned Americans of all races—would be advised to examine Mr. Wilson's incisive analysis."—Robert Greenstein,New York Times Book Review "'Must reading' for civil-rights leaders, leaders of advocacy organizations for the poor, and for elected officials in our major urban centers."—Bernard C. Watson,Journal of Negro Education "Required reading for anyone, presidential candidate or private citizen, who really wants to address the growing plight of the black urban underclass."—David J. Garrow,Washington Post Book World Selected by the editors of theNew York Times Book Reviewas one of the sixteen best books of 1987. Winner of the 1988 C. Wright Mills Award of the Society for the Study of Social Problems.
FEDERALISM AND ETHNIC CONFLICT IN NIGERIARotimi SuberuWashington DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2001, xxvi, 247pp, $14.95, ISBN 1-929223-28-5ETHNICITY AND SUB-NATIONALISM IN NIGERIAMichael VickersOxford: WorldView, 2000, xviii, 410pp, [Symbol Not Transcribed]49.95 cloth (ISBN 1-872142-43-5), [Symbol Not Transcribed]29.95 paper (ISBN 1-872142-44-3)These ambitious volumes address the development of Nigerian federalism and the complex internal challenges to it. Michael Vickers offers a comprehensive treatment of the pre- and immediate post-independence struggles by ethnic minorities for a restructuring of the then tri-regional arrangement into one that would give them statehood within the federation. Rotimi Suberu explores issues of revenue allocation, state creation, political representation, and population enumeration that have been at the centre of Nigerian federal design.Vickers provides a wealth of information concerning the evolution, development, and triumph of the Midwest State movement in an age when majority group elites held veto powers over political demands of minorities, and international norms were against self-determination for subnational groups. He makes the insightful observation that, apart from separate historical links with Benin, the various minority groups of the western region were not united. He provides a detailed account of how the Oba of Benin toured all the minority areas to try to forge a pan-midwest unity (pp 76-82).This invention project, Vickers shows, had limited success as the Itsekiri, the western Ijaw, and the western Ibo refused to be part of a new state in which they would be marginalized. Without a defined territory, the midwest movement could barely prove a case before the Minorities Commission of 1957-8. The same difficulty arose in the east and the north where there were separatist demands. What is missing from Vicker's rich narrative is the Commission's major justification for dismissing the state creation demands: the proposed states contained groups that preferred to opt out, and it was difficult to draw a definite boundary without creating fresh minorities with new demands.The fears of the Commission seem to have been justified. Although the Midwest state was constitutionally created in 1963, separatist movements emerged soon after, and it finally gave way in 1991 to Delta and Edo states. Still, there are ongoing pressures for Anioma and True Delta states. This is representative of the rest of the country where majority subgroups are continuously differentiating and receiving recognition in separate states. …
The ghetto, the modern Jewish immigrant settlement in the Western world, has arisen out of the medieval European urban institution by means of which the Jews were effectually separated from the rest of the population. It represents a case study in isolation and accommodation, and indicates the processes involved in the formation and development of local communities in city life. The natural history of this institution shows that it developed as a gradual and undesigned adaptation to a strage habitat and culture, and its disintegration proceeds independent of legal enactment. The Jews, in so far as they are a separate ethnic group, are a product of ghetto life, which accounts for the reappearance of the ghetto wherever Jews settle in large numbers. The modern ghetto in its location and structure is determined by the unique status of the Jew and by his traditions. His neighbors in the new world tend to be the same as in the old. Eastern ghettos differ from those of the West in that the latter generally have as many local areas of settlement as there are waves of immigrants. As the Jew becomes conscious of his subordinate position in the ghetto he flees, but he is pursued by fellow-Jew until his new habitat assumes the atmosphere of the ghetto itself. In the course of his migration, his personality changes as the culture of his group fuses with that of the larger world outside.
In Nigeria, state creation was originally conceived as a solution to the problems of ethnic minority groups. Louis Wirth (Hepburn 1978, 1) defined an ethnic minority group as a group of people who because of their physical or cultural characteristics, “are singled out from the others in the society in which they live for differential and unequal treatment and who therefore regard themselves as objects of collective discrimination.” Stavenhagen (1983, 122) pointed out that the exploitative relationship, which often characterize the interaction between the minority and the dominant group can take the form of “unequal regional development (when ethnic groups are geographically localized) or of differential access to positions of privilege or power, or different forms of segregation and discrimination in social, economic and political life.” The inferior status imputed to ethnic minority groups explains the conflict potential in minority/dominant relationship. The experience of ethnic minorities world wide has shown that several approaches can be adopted to eliminate or reduce minority situations. They include assimilation, ethnocide, genocide, constitutional safeguards, reversal of status and territorial solution. Assimilation permits ethnic minorities to adopt the values of the dominant group at their own pace. This policy could be adopted where the minority situation resulted from immigration and where the minorities accept the authority of the dominant groups as legitimate. The approach has been adopted to some advantage in the United States.
Theory: The theory of policy particularism attributes the greater popularity of race-neutral policies compared to race-specific policies not to the fact the former only benefit blacks or minorities but to the fact they target only a particular segment of the population. The theory, moreover, points to a neglected distinction - between how a policy is targeted and how it is justified. Applied to race, a policy may be particularistic or race-specific in its focus, yet universalistic or race-neutral in its justification, or universalistic in both, with politically significant consequences for the level of public support the policy wins. Hypotheses: If what limits the appeal of racially-specific politics is not that they are restricted to blacks specifically but that they aim to benefit only a particular and limited group, then policies targeted to an equivalently particularistic group of whites should be similarly limited in their appeal. There should be more support among whites, moreover, even for policies explicitly targeted to blacks if they are justified on more universalistic grounds. Methods: Regression analysis and analysis of variance is used in a survey-based experimental design that varies randomly both the target of the policy and the justification for it. Results: Public support for programs directed at an equivalently limited group of whites - new immigrants from Europe is not just as limited as support for blacks and minorities, but more so. Differentiating between the target of a policy and its justification is also important because even programs directed at blacks gain more support if justified on more universalistic grounds, although programs that are universalistic in both focus and justification gain the widest measure of support. Universalistic arguments in behalf of government assistance for minorities have a persuasive force for whites generally, very much including liberals. Only conservatives are relatively unaffected by altering the justification and focus of proposed government programs.
While scholarly discussions of citizenship, social movements and racial identity-formation have generally remained distinct, these social institutions and processes are intimately connected. Official policies of exclusion from citizenship according to race have drawn boundaries solidifying subordinated racial identity, which then forms the basis for collective action in response to shifting state policies. Forms of domination are thus two-edged; exclusion of officially specified groups has the unintended consequence of defining, legitimating and provoking group identity and mobilization, forging struggles for inclusion between state agents and emerging political actors. This dynamic has generally been overlooked by those theorists of social movements, who have focused on relative deprivation, resource mobilization and responses to political opportunities, without explaining the related process of identity formation.
Affirmative action has been fiercely debated for more than a quarter of a century, producing much partisan literature, but little serious scholarship and almost nothing on its cultural and political origins. The Ironies of Affirmative Action is the first book-length, comprehensive, historical account of the development of affirmative action. Analyzing both the resistance from the Right and the support from the Left, Skrentny brings to light the unique moral culture that has shaped the affirmative action debate, allowing for starkly different policies for different citizens. He also shows, through an analysis of historical documents and court rulings, the complex and intriguing political circumstances which gave rise to these controversial policies. By exploring the mystery of how it took less than five years for a color-blind policy to give way to one that explicitly took race into account, Skrentny uncovers and explains surprising ironies: that affirmative action was largely created by white males and initially championed during the Nixon administration; that many civil rights leaders at first avoided advocacy of racial preferences; and that though originally a political taboo, almost no one resisted affirmative action. With its focus on the historical and cultural context of policy elites, The Ironies of Affirmative Action challenges dominant views of policymaking and politics.
In many Western countries, rights that once belonged solely to citizens are being extended to immigrants, a trend that challenges the nature and basis of citizenship at a time when nation-states are fortifying their boundaries through restirictive border controls and expressions of nationalist ideologies. In this book, Yasemin Soysal compares the different ways European nations incorporate immigrants, how these policies evolved, and how they are influenced by international human rights discourse. Soysal focuses on postwar international migration, paying particular attention to "guestworkers." Taking an in-depth look at France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, she identifies three major patterns that reflect the varying emphasis particular states place on individual versus corporate groups as the basis for incorporation. She finds that the global expansion and intensification of human rights discourse puts nation-states under increasing outside pressure to extend membership rights to aliens, resulting in an increasingly blurred line between citizen and noncitizen. Finally, she suggests a possible accommodation to these shifts: specifically, a model of post-national membership that derives its legitimacy from universal personhood, rather than national belonging. This fresh approach to the study of citizenship, rights, and immigration will be invaluable to anyone involved in issues of human rights, international migration, and transnational cultural interactions, as well as to those who study the contemporary transformation of the nation-state, nationalism, and globalization.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Columbia University, 1990. Includes bibliographical references. Photocopy of typescript.
Peer Reviewed http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/43651/1/11186_2004_Article_243859.pdf
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