Political Participation Programme

ECMI Political Participation Programme focuses on two main research areas:

Electoral and party systems
Research activities in this area are focused on analyzing the programmatic and organizational responses of party systems to challenges of accommodating ethnic diversity.  There exists a very substantial body of research on effects of electoral systems on minorities' ability to participate in the political process. At the same time, there has been little systematic analysis on how the organizational and programmatic characteristics of mainstream political parties as well as minority parties affect patterns of minority representation and participation in post-communist countries. ECMI research will address the existing gap in this area. Given the rigidity of electoral institutions and low likelihood of their modification, party systems' responses to minority issues deserve more attention and consideration.

Legislative and executive representation
Representation is a key aspect of minority political participation. Political systems vary greatly in terms of scope of representation and in terms of opportunities (constraints) on minorities' ability to voice their concerns and to have access to the political arena.  Research questions about the patterns of minority representation on party lists and in the leadership bodies/organizational structures of parties as well as questions about substantial policy representation by parties are a part of currently developed project proposal  "Representation of minority issues in political party system," which was discussed in the previous section of this document.

Minority representation in national parliaments and national executives is a topic which is analytically distinct from a more general issue of minority representation in party system. Two general issues  inform a proposed research on legislative and executive representation of minorities. One issue is proportionality of representation. Given a substantial size of minority population in majority of countries of Eastern Europe, there is little systematic analysis on the extent to which minorities are represented by members of their own ethnic communities in legislative and executive branches of government.  The second is the content of representation. If minority representatives can be identified (either in terms of descriptive or substantive representation), their actions in capacity of minority representatives have to be examined.