Ethnic Parties and Political Ideologies
Ethnic parties may take different ideological positions.
For instance, the parties competing for Jewish votes in interwar Poland and Lithuania had a range of different political views. There were Zionist parties (themselves divided into Revisionist, General, Religious or Labour parties), there was Agudat Israel (an Orthodox religious party), the Bund (Marxist) and the Folkspartei (liberal).
In some political systems, party politics are mostly based on ethnicity, as in Bosnia-Herzegovina and its federal regions, in Israel, in Surinam, in Sabah, in Sarawak or in Guyana. In Fiji, 46 seats out of 71 are elected from ethnically-closed Communal constituencies, as there was in the pre-Israel Palestine Jewish Assembly, the Asefat ha-Nivharim with separate 'curiae' for Ashkenaz, Sepharad and Oriental, and Yemeni Jews.
As a consequence, it would be somewhat irrelevant to classify some parties in these systems as 'ideological' (social-democrat, liberal, christian democratic etc.) and some others as 'purely autonomist', 'purely ethnic' or 'purely minority' parties.
The Swedish People's Party of Finland (SFP) is a full-fledged member of the Liberal International, as well as the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, representing the Turkish minority in Bulgaria, the South Tyrol People's Party (SVP, grouping German- and Ladin-speaking inhabitants of Italy's South Tyrol province) is a member of the Christian Democratic European People's Party, whereas the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), an Irish Catholic party in Northern Ireland is a member of the Socialist International, etc.
In interwar Poland, Jewish, German and Ukrainian parties never attracted all Polish Jews, Germans and Ukrainians of whom some were members of 'national' ideological Polish parties, mostly the Socialist and Communist parties, who were considered more open-minded than the conservative or nationalist parties.
Read more about this topic: Political Parties Of Minorities
Famous quotes containing the words ethnic, parties, political and/or ideologies:
“Caprice, independence and rebellion, which are opposed to the social order, are essential to the good health of an ethnic group. We shall measure the good health of this group by the number of its delinquents. Nothing is more immobilizing than the spirit of deference.”
—Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985)
“Mixed dinner parties of ladies and gentlemen ... are very rare, which is a great defect in the society; not only as depriving them of the most social and hospitable manner of meeting, but as leading to frequent dinner parties of gentlemen without ladies, which certainly does not conduce to refinement.”
—Frances Trollope (1780–1863)
“Every community is an association of some kind and every community is established with a view to some good; for everyone always acts in order to obtain that which they think good. But, if all communities aim at some good, the state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
“Authoritarian political ideologies have a vested interest in promoting fear, a sense of the imminence of takeover by aliens—and real diseases are useful material.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)