This article examines the role of ethnicity and ethnic parties as stabilizing factors in Southeast European party systems. It compares two ethnically divided countries in Southeast Europe: Bosnia and Herzegovina, where ethnic identities that form the political cleavage are firm, and Montenegro, where they are malleable. Theoretically, it addresses the debate between scholars who either find stability or instability in East European post-communist party systems. The article traces the role of ethnicity in the formation and development of electoral contests and compares the two cases by utilizing measures of block volatility, based on analysis of official electoral data. We argue that party systems in ethnically diverse countries are stable at the subsystems level, but unstable within them. In BiH, firm ethnic identity stabilizes the party system by limiting competition between blocks, leading to closure. Malleable ethnic identity in Montenegro opens competition to non-ethnic parties seeking to bridge ethnic divisions, leading to more instability. We find that party system dynamics in ethnically divided new democracies depend on identity rigidity and cleavage salience, in addition to levels of heterogeneity.

Recent political events have forced an examination of ideologies of populism and nationalism in politics. In this piece, I examine literature on the post-2016 political context to illustrate why the rise of identity-based politics has surprised analysts. An understanding of identity-based parties requires a focus on both the forms by which they navigate electoral and party systems, and the content of their rhetorical appeals to publics. I consider the electoral and party systems literature, and indicate some reasons that majoritarian electoral systems are more likely to foster the dominance of identity-based politics. In such systems, large parties might become weaponized by extremist elements, and lack the potential for checks from new parties. In addition, presidential systems lack a mechanism for no confidence votes, and might also have weak checks on an extremist executive. In terms of content, populism and nationalism might draw differing boundaries to include or exclude perceived elites. However, they can otherwise align in terms of their stances against “Others,” and against individualistic or technocratic stances that may fall under the label of “liberalism.” Nationalism and populism are not simply ideologies, but can be used as strategies by elites who can successfully deploy these mobilizing rhetorical appeals.

This article asks why some Indian districts experience chronic Maoist violence while others do not. The answer helps to explain India’s Maoist civil war, which is the product of the accumulation of violence in a few districts, as well as to generate a new hypothesis about the causes of civil war more generally. The authors argue that, other things equal, the emergence of subaltern-led parties at the critical juncture before armed organizations enter crowds them out: the stronger the presence of subaltern-led political parties in a district at this juncture, the lower the likelihood of experiencing chronic armed violence subsequently. They develop their argument through field research and test its main prediction using an original, district-level data set on subaltern incorporation and Maoist violence in India between 1967 and 2008. The article contributes a new, party-based explanation to the literatures on both civil war and Maoist violence in India. It also introduces new district-level data on the Maoist movement and on the incorporation of subaltern ethnic groups by political parties in India.

How do rebel groups turned political parties adapt their ideological profiles after war? Do they continue to mobilize along the main conflict cleavage or do they adopt new issues that are conducive to peace? This article develops an analytical framework that captures the extent to which parties adapt along two dimensions: conflict cleavage issues and peacebuilding issues. It conducts a qualitative content analysis of party manifestos and related discourse of three former rebel parties with backgrounds as secessionist rebel groups: the Aceh Party, the Serb Democratic Party (Bosnia Herzegovina) and the Tamil National Alliance. It finds that while some parties adopt the language of peace settlements to legitimize themselves and actively downplay wartime divisions, others continue to seek support based on ethnic differentiation. It is argued that the programmatic message that former rebel groups mobilize around has implications for how they contribute to forging more peaceful inter-ethnic relations after war.

Volatility is a central theme of the scholarship on party competition. At the extreme, entire systems collapse. Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela each went through a protracted period of change with the crash of old parties and the rise of new ones, including one representing the “new left.” Average electoral volatility grew by more than 50 percent and remained high for a decade or more. Can this churning surface of party death, birth, and change obscure undercurrents of stabilization in individual voting behavior? This project decomposes electoral volatility into two subtypes: system-level volatility—long-term spatial and temporal trends of change in support (e.g., realignment)—and individual volatility—fluid and cycle-specific fluctuations in support (e. g., electoral swing). It shows that the high volatility through the transformation has been at the system level, not the individual level. The cause is the stronger partisan and ethnic bonds mobilized by the new left.

The main goal of the paper is to understand how substantive representation of minorities works through ethnic parties and what the relationship between substantive and descriptive representation is in this specific case. Focus on the traditional understanding of substantive representation is common when analyzing the representation of minorities and marginalized groups, but only a few studies look at the substantive representation of national minorities from a constructivist approach, and even fewer are centered on Central and Eastern Europe. The paper argues that besides ethnicizing their demands, representatives of minorities have a wide array of strategies to achieve their goals. Using the parliamentary representation of Hungarians in Romania as a case study, I show that the strategies chosen in ethnic claims-making are context-dependent: ethnicizing messages are used only in specific cases, while de-ethnicization is applied in debates thought to be important for their community. These are part of a bargaining process that help representatives to achieve their goals. Thus, the paper broadens the debate on substantive representation and has implications in coding, as most of the studies addressing the issue assume that descriptive representatives, in order to provide substantive representation, must ethnicize their demands.

The Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (RMDSZ) has been the most stable actor in the Romanian party system over the past two decades. However, in this article, we argue that beyond this apparent stability, the linkages between RMDSZ and its voters have undergone a gradual, yet significant shift. The ethnic block voting of Transylvanian Hungarians was closely connected to the concept of a self-standing and parallel “Minority Society,” and to the practices of institution building that the minority elites engaged in in the early 1990s. However, since its first participation in the Romanian government in 1996, RMDSZ has gradually departed from this strategy, a phenomenon that was also closely connected to a process of elite change within the organization. The present RMDSZ leadership puts less and less emphasis on policy programs that could reinforce the institutional system of the minority; consequently, it is unable (and unwilling) to organizationally integrate the community activists of the minority society who previously had played a key role in the process of (electoral) mobilization. At the rhetorical level, RMDSZ did not abandon the goal of building a parallel Hungarian minority society, but in its linkages to the Hungarian electorate, clientelistic exchanges have become predominant.

This paper examines a less researched aspect of East European party politics: change within ethnic parties, which are conventionally regarded as stable or intransigent political actors. The main argument of the paper is that the decreasing relevance of a bipolar model of political competition has affected the relative positioning of ethnic parties. Their programmatic outlook, role in the party system, and mobilization strategies are being mainstreamed. Ethnic parties are no longer regarded as inevitable participants in power sharing and informal elite accommodation. They are increasingly treated by voters and the party system alike as national-level parties and national-level competitors. The paper applies the concept of mainstreaming to explain the long-term evolution of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms in Bulgarian party politics as a critical case study of ethnic party repositioning from proximity to government to parliamentary opposition. It builds an argument about the MRF's continued relevance to the party system, ensuring minority representation beyond ethnicity, as a liberal-centrist party representing distinct economic interests and political orientations within the Bulgarian electorate.