[Discussion] ETHNIC, RELIGIOUS OR/AND CULTURAL PLURALITY

[Gonul Pultar]

*PRE-CONFERENCE OF SECTION SESSION 22 "ETHNIC, RELIGIOUS OR/AND CULTURAL 
PLURALITY AND ECONOMIC INSTITUTION BUILDING" XIVth WORLD CONGRESS IN 
ECONOMIC HISTORY. *
*Location:* 	Germany 
<http://www.h-net.org/announce/geography.cgi?geography=Germany>
*Call for Papers Deadline:* 	2005-05-01

	

	

# No restrictions (but 19th and 20th century preferred) for papers.
# Theoretical and empirical papers are welcome.
# Applicants should focus on economic history.
# Participants should be willing to publish their paper in our anthology.

Juergen Nautz (University of Kassel; University of Vienna) * and Maria 
Eugénia Mata (Universidade Nova de Lisboa) are organizing a session on 
the subject of "Ethnic, Religious, or Cultural Plurality and Economic 
Institution Building" for the 14th World Congress of the International 
Economic History Association to be held in Helsinki, in Summer 2006.

In preparation for this panel we plan a pre-conference. Participants are 
responsible for their traveling expenses, the cost for attending the 
conference are about 450 Euro, including 3 nights (single occupation) 
and all meals, and conference service, 500 Euro for 4 nights. Last time 
we were able to cover the most of the traveling cost of our 
participants. We'll do our best that we can reimburse the participants 
of our pre-conference and are very hopeful that we will have success. 
But we can't guarantee a reimbursement at this time, but we will have 
the information a half year before the pre-conference latest. For the 
conference in Helsinki participants have to help themselves.
*Deadline for paper proposals: October, 15, 2004
Deadline for paper submission: May, 1, 2005*

Please submit your proposals to Juergen Nautz 
Juergen.nautz@univie.ac.at. Your application should contain:

# (1) an abstract of not more than 1,500 words
# (2) a short CV of not more than 300 words
# (3) affiliation, and address.

THE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK OF THIS PROJECT:
Economic and social sets of human rights (like political and civil 
rights) have been primarily defined as individual rights. John Rawls for 
instance deals with the problem "how a society should determine what 
constitutes a basic set of rights and thus constitutes justice: each of 
us should go behind a metaphorical veil of ignorance where we determine 
what we think outrights should be with no knowledge of what our actual 
economic standing, educational level, gender, or ethnic origin would 
be." (Nikolas K. Gvosdev) The individual and methodological 
individualism are basic assumptions of Western economic theory 
(Neoclassical economic theory or New Institutional Economics).

History and also the experience of our days provide a number of examples 
that the individual doesn't ignore its group relationship. This applies 
to family relationships just like for religious, cultural or ethnic 
senses of belonging. One perhaps also can talk about a splitting between 
individuals with strong group identity and monadic individuals with no 
ties to others: If we accept that individual people are defined by their 
group membership, which thus differentiates them from others in society, 
we must take attention to the effects of this identity to the 
functioning and the structure of economic institutions and 
organizations; and of course to institutional change. In their analysis 
of the limits of institutional competition in the development of the 
European Economic and Monetary Union Daniel Kiwit and Stefan Voigt have 
reached the conclusion that external institutions that discriminate are 
frequently supported by a society's internal institutions. External 
institutions such as an economic order are supported by the population 
when their substance is in harmony with the society's internal 
institutions. Only then is their legitimacy and survival guaranteed.

History provides a wealth of illustrations for this theory. For instance 
if this argument is applied to the ethnic interests within the Habsburg 
empire, evidence can be found to support such a position. This is true 
both of the successful Czech efforts to develop their own banking system 
and industrial structure as well as Hungarian industrialization 
policies. Economic and monetary policy and their results affect 
different social segments and groups of economic subjects differently 
and have distributional and social policy consequences. For this reason, 
interest groups try to influence the formulation of the economic and 
monetary order as well as economic, monetary and fiscal policy. In the 
Habsburg Monarchy this expressed itself in the competition between the 
political representatives of the various nationalities for mobile 
resources. To the extent that they possessed their own external 
institutions (laws, state ordinances etc.), as in the case of the 
Germans and Hungarians they also made use of them. Competition using 
external institutions was a characteristic but not the only feature of 
the rivalry between the Austrian and Hungarian lands. A second 
component, the only one available to the national minorities in the two 
halves of the empire, was competition using internal institutions 
(social mores, morality, language etc.: "Pláč koruny české"). This was 
done by criticizing real or imagined political, social and economic 
discrimination as well as emphasizing values such as national 
self-determination, protection of ethnic, cultural or linguistic 
identity and cohesion etc. The ethnically oriented organizations pinned 
their hopes in a new definition of the citizen that no longer emphasized 
the position of the individual as a citizen, but his role as a member of 
an ethnic group. In the Roman Empire Jews possessed the status of a 
religio licita, and as such enjoyed specific rights as Jews like the 
right not to work on the Sabbath. Such rights were not granted to an 
individual Jew but to the Jewish collective. This distinguished them for 
example of the Celts. The millet system of the Ottoman Empire - a 
further example - defined each group in the state via their religious 
community with the consequence that inhabitants of the same town or 
village had different rights and duties, dependent on their faith. 
Further examples of a tension relationship between group interests and 
central economic institutions are found also in other societies. It is 
therefore meaningful and productive to deal with this problem 
definition: "ethnic, religious or/and cultural plurality and economic 
institution building".

This project doesn't intend a discourse about the well-known 
associations question, cartels, labor unions or similar. The interaction 
shall rather be examined between central economic institutions and the 
social plurality or fragmentation, according to the definition of Arend 
Lejphardt. When a society is deeply divided among different ethnic 
groups, democratic politics that emphasize individual rights and 
liberties may contradict with ethnic collective demands. Thus, scholars 
like Lijphard claim that it is not democracy but the "type" of 
democratic institutions that matter in conflict management in ethnically 
or religious plural societies. These scholars consider political 
institutions a means in ameliorating violence in ethnically plural 
nations. Therefore, according to them, a democratic political system may 
be problematic unless proper political institutions are established for 
the accommodation of ethnic differences. They suggest consensus and 
decentralized (federal) type of democratic institutions as more feasible 
alternatives for these societies than majoritarian and centralized 
(unitary) democratic institutions. Democratic politics can be considered 
as a competition for the representation of various interests in 
politics, meaning rule by the "people." However, in multi-ethnic nations 
there might be a gap between the interests that are represented in the 
state and the demands that are raised by the "people" because the 
society is divided into different linguistic, cultural, or religious 
sects. When the society is sharply divided along such lines, the 
legitimacy of democracy may be questioned from each group's own 
perspective according to whether their interests and preferences are 
reflected in public policy. For some groups democratic governments may 
not have any legitimacy unless they have representation and influence 
over policies. As important constituents of modern politics, ethnic 
groups may aim at the promotion of their cultural, socioeconomic, and 
political goals. Although most democratic states recognize individual 
rights equally for each citizen regardless of his ethnic, cultural, or 
religious background, this does not seem to hamper the development of 
certain collective demands such as quotas for ethnic representation in 
the political system or local political autonomy. In some cases ethnic 
groups mobilize against the state through separatist movements claiming 
their own nation. Accordingly, democracy may not always ameliorate 
political violence in ethnically plural societies. Ethnic cleavages are 
said to lay the ground for conflicting issues in politics. For example, 
the French in Canada or the Basques in Spain are two ethnic 
nationalities; one was relatively poor (Quebec) and the other wealthy 
(Basque), that seek ultimate formal collective recognition contends that 
ethnically plural Western democracies face difficulties in accommodating 
multinationalism within a single state. The German-speaking people of 
the Italian Tyrol were not content with the dominant political rule.

The institutional perspective asserts that the function of democracy may 
become problematic in multi-ethnic societies if institutional 
arrangements are made without taking ethnic divisions into 
consideration. Arend Lijphart coined the term "consociationalism" to 
describe the sharing of power between segments of society joined 
together by a common citizenship but divided by ethnicity, language, 
religion, or other factors. Some rights are given, therefore, to 
communities rather than to individuals, resulting in over- or 
under-representation for individuals from some areas of society. (One 
long-standing example is the creation of the United States Senate. Each 
state gets two senators; geographic equality. Alaska, with 400,000 
people, has two senators, while California, with thirty million people, 
also has two senators. Alaskans are over-represented in the Senate by a 
factor of approximately 100 compared to Californians. This exists even 
though in the United States we uphold the principle of one person, one 
vote.) A number of countries are openly and deliberately governed by the 
principles of "consociationalism." These include Belgium, South Africa, 
Zimbabwe, India, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Cyprus, etc.

In this project we want to discuss two fundamental questions for every 
economic cooperation (regularly discussed under the premise of 
cooperation between sovereign states): Are the advantages of the 
cooperation great enough in her sum to compensate for the possible 
disadvantages? Is the incentive to observe the agreements for every one 
involved great enough to ensure the cohesion of the cooperation?

	Univ.-Doz. Dr. Jürgen Nautz
Dep. of Economics
Kassel University
D-34109 Kassel
Email: juergen.nautz@univie.ac.at <mailto:juergen.nautz@univie.ac.at>