Multicultural Institutions,Distributional Politics,and Postelectoral Mobilization in Indigenous Mexico

Contrary to the predictions of “power sharing” to mitigate ethnic conflicts, multicultural rights recognition can actually increase the frequency of local postelectoral mobilizations. This article demonstrates that the adoption of an ethnic rights regime for electing local government representatives may actually increase conflict if these multicultural laws are not carefully circumscribed to avoid violating human rights. Focusing on the 1995 multicultural rights reforms in Oaxaca, it presents evidence that legal changes purportedly implemented to recognize indigenous rights actually increased postelectoral disputes due to conflicts between county seat communities and peripheral population hamlets over access to funding by the central government. Based on this finding, the article addresses normative implications of “power‐sharing” multiculturalism, recommending that multicultural laws be implemented only together with legal mechanisms to solve postelectoral disputes.     

Collective identities,public spheres,civil society and citizenship in the contemporary era – with some observations on the Israeli scene

This paper falls into two sections. In the first certain macro-social changes that have transformed the nature of collective identities in the modern period are considered. In the second, how these have had an impact on Israeli society is considered.

In the contemporary era there have been taking place in Europe – indeed throughout the world – far-reaching changes and transformation of public spheres, civil society and conceptions of citizenship, in close relation to the crystallization of new patterns of collective identity – processes which entail far-reaching transformations of some aspects of what has been envisaged as the ‘classical’ nation-state or the decomposition of some of its components.

These far-reaching changes, decline or transformation of the ideological and institutional premises of the modern nation state developed in a specific historical context. The most important characteristic of this new context was the combination of first, changes in the international systems and shifts of hegemonies within them; second, processes of internal ideological changes in Western societies; third, the development of new processes of globalization; and fourth, far-reaching processes of democratization, of the growing demands of various social sectors for access into the centers of their respective societies, as well as into international arenas.     

Thinking Outside the (Ballot) Box: Informal Electoral Institutions and Mexico's Political Opening

This article studies the development of informal bargaining tables to mitigate postelectoral conflicts in some 15 percent of Mexico's local elections between 1989 and 2000, even as formally autonomous electoral commissions and courts were being constituted. By documenting the dual institutions that resulted, the study qualifies theories of institutional design that take actor consent for granted. It argues that in the Mexican case and perhaps others, elections, particularly subnational elections, are focal points for informal bargaining over rules that are the true motors of protracted transitions. It finds electoral institutions to be critical to democratization, but for reasons beyond those given by most institutionalists.