ABSTRACT
John Stuart Mill’s scepticism with regard to the possibility of democracy ‘in a country made up of different nationalities’ (Mill 1861: 230) is perhaps the best-known and most widely cited scholarly reflection of a phenomenon empirically all too often observable as violent ethnic conflict. Yet, Mill’s scepticism has not, to date, resulted in either ever more homogeneous democratic states or in the inability of heterogeneous countries to become democratic polities. Rather, Mill’s dictum has been taken up as a challenge by scholars and practitioners of institutional design in divided societies to find stable and democratic ways in which democracy and diversity can be married. The answers given in theory and practice are vastly different, and a debate thus continues unabated over which institutional design is best able to provide sustainable democracy in ethnically heterogeneous societies.
