Political Parties of Minorities - Ethnic Parties and Elections

Ethnic Parties and Elections

Common lists or electoral agreements can be organized either between ethnic parties (Flemish parties 'Kartel's for municipal elections in Brussels or Union des Francophones in Flemish Brabant, the coalition for the 2001 parliamentary elections in Bulgaria between the - mostly Turkish - Movement for Rights and Freedoms and the Roma party Euroroma) or between two parties having common ideological options beyond ethnic differences, as the Bund and the 'Polish' socialist party PPS for the municipal elections in 1939.

Some ethnic parties only take part in substatal electoral competition, thus making them somewhat invisible to outside observers: the South Schleswig Voter Federation in Schleswig-Holstein, the German parties in Denmark (Schleswigsche Partei) and Poland (German Minority in Silesia), the Silesian Autonomy Movement in Poland, the Roma parties in Slovakia (Roma Civic Initiative).

It can occur that a single 'supra-ideological' party achieves, with varying shades of success, the representation of a whole ethnic group, as for the Svenska Folkpartiet in Finland, the South Schleswig Voter Federation for Danes and Frisians in the German Land of Schleswig-Holstein, the Unity for Human Rights Party for Greeks in Albania, the Slovene Union for Slovenes in Northeastern Italy, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms for Turks in Bulgaria, the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania.

In most cases, ethnic parties compete inside electoral systems where voters aren't compelled to vote according to ethnic affiliations and may vote too for 'non ethnic', 'transethnic' or 'supraethnic' ideological parties. In most Near Eastern Arab countries, the only such parties were the Communist parties, whose founding fathers and subsequent leaders came mostly from the Jewish, Armenian, Kurdish or Shi'ia minorities. The socialist movement in Thessaloniki (present Northern Greece) during the last decade of the Ottoman Empire was divided across ethnic lines between the Sephardi Jews (who formed the majority of the population), the Bulgarian and Macedonian Slavs and the Greeks, but all groups united when it came to election time.