The Impact of Minority-Majority Districts: Evidence from Ukraine

How do minority-majority districts affect the voter behavior of minorities and election of minority candidates in Ukraine? Studies on minority-majority districts in the American politics literature suggest that such districts are instrumental to election of minority candidates. Very few scholars have extended such research to other countries. This article examines the impact of minority-majority districts on electoral outcomes in Ukraine, in which ethnicity is apparently a salient issue but ethnic identity is complicated by multiple cleavages based on ethnicity, language, and region. Using district-level census and electoral data, the relationship between the ethnic composition of an electoral district and election of minority candidates is examined. W impact, if any, does the concentration of ethnic minorities into so-called minority-majority districts have on the election of ethnic minorities? The numerous studies on minority-majority districts in the United States suggest that such districts are instrumental to the election of minority candidates. Similarly, studies of minority representation in the comparative politics literature suggest that geographic concentration is a primary factor promoting minority representation in ethnically divided states, particularly when single-member-district (SMD) electoral systems are used (see, for example, Barkan, 1995). However, while the impact of geographic concentration on minority representation and ethnic voting is often asserted or presumed, very few studies have systematically examined their effect outside the American context (for an exception, see Banducci et al., 2004). This article seeks to fill this gap in the literature through a study of the election of minority candidates in SMD contests within the mixed electoral system used in the 2002 Ukrainian parliamentary election. 1Julie George is Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, City University of New York; Robert G. Moser is Associate Professor, Department of Government, University of Texas, Austin; and Marko Papic is an analyst with STRATFOR in Austin, Texas. THE IMPACT OF MINORITY-MAJORITY DISTRICTS 59 Ukraine provides a particularly interesting test case for theories on the inclusion of ethnic minorities in democratic polities for many reasons. First, Ukraine has a relatively large minority population (one of the largest in Eastern Europe and Eurasia) that is geographically concentrated in the eastern and southern parts of the country, thus making the issue of geographic concentration and minority-majority districts relevant in that country. Second, unlike many countries in Eastern Europe and around the world with large ethnic minorities, Ukraine does not have successful ethnic parties that appeal exclusively to a particular ethnic group or set of ethnic groups.2 Instead, parties with wider ideological, economic, and regional appeals, such as the Communist Party and a regional party based in the east, have made ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers a core but by no means exclusive part of their broader constituencies (see Barrington, 2002; Hesli, Reisinger, and Miller, 1998). Third, while the ethnic cleavage is a key voting cleavage in Ukraine it is not the only or even, necessarily, the most prevalent division that separates voting constituencies. Moreover, ethnic divisions are complicated by competing and overlapping ethnic, linguistic, and regional identities that may mitigate the effects of geographic concentration. Finally, Ukraine is a crucial country from a geopolitical context, straddling a vital political, military, and economic corridor (especially in terms of natural resources) connecting Western Europe to Russia. As a potential NATO and EU candidate, and a democratizing state with an ethnically diverse population, Ukraine is an important case with which to study the transition to democratic rule. In short, Ukraine offers a chance to examine the role that geographic concentration plays in minority representation and ethnic mobilization within a new democracy with a dramatically different type of ethnic cleavage than the United States, the most common case used for detailed analysis of this issue. Our article seeks to examine the extent to which the minority-majority districts (defined here as districts with 45 percent or less ethnic Ukrainians), geographic concentration more generally, and region affected the election of minority deputies in the SMD tier of Ukraine’s mixed electoral system in the 2002 legislative election. Drawing upon the extensive literature on the American context and the minority empowerment theory (Banducci et al., 2004), we expect minority-majority districts to be positively correlated with the election of ethnic minorities. This article proceeds by first surveying the literature on minority representation, drawn mainly from the American context. We then take a close look at the context of Ukraine’s 2Horowitz defines an ethnic party as a party that “derives its support overwhelmingly from an identifiable ethnic group ... and serves the interests of that group” (1985, p. 291), while Chandra bases her definition of an ethnic party on the nature of its public appeal to voters—“an ethnic party is a party that overtly represents itself as a champion of the cause of one particular ethnic category or set of categories to the exclusion of others, and that makes such a representation central to its strategy of mobilizing voters” (2004, p. 3). None of the major Ukrainian parties qualify as an ethnic party on either of these grounds, since ethnic Ukrainians constitute a majority of legislators from every party, even those electing a large proportion of Russians, and no major party appeals to an ethnic minority to the exclusion of ethnic Ukrainians.