Effects of Ethnic Voting and Inequality on Democracy

Abstract

Ethnic voting and horizontal inequalities are widely considered detrimental to democracy as they reinforce ethnic divisions, make election results more predictable, incentivize electoral violence and patronage politics. Moreover, they lead to ethnic outbidding. While previous studies have analyzed ethnic voting and inequality separately, they have largely overlooked their interaction, leaving an important gap in understanding their combined effect on democratic quality. This study addresses this gap by investigating whether the negative impact of ethnic voting on democracy is moderated by horizontal inequality, offering a more nuanced perspective on the relationship between ethnic based voting and democratic stability. Using data from 58 countries, and a range of Tobit and OLS regression models, this article analyzes the interaction between ethnic voting and horizontal inequalities and their effect on democracy. The results confirm that both ethnic voting and horizontal inequalities individually harm democracy but unexpectedly suggest that at higher levels of horizontal inequality, ethnic voting may have a stabilizing effect. These findings challenge existing theoretical assumptions as well as the Lijphart-Horowitz dichotomy and highlight the need for a more contextualized approach to understanding ethnic voting and democracy.