ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the relationship between ethnic heterogeneity and stable democracy as illuminated by the insights of political theory. When political theorists have considered the political consequences of immigration, they have usually done so in the context of its relationship with ethnic heterogeneity. The traditional interpretation of ethnic heterogeneity as threatening to stability is understandable. Students of politics tend to argue that ethnic heterogeneity undermines the sentiments of solidarity necessary to the political order. Stable democracy rests on a narrow valuational consensus vulnerable to the unsettling effect of ethnic pluralism. On Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba’s view, the civic culture is best suited to stable democracy because stable democracy itself consists of opposed mandates. The literature of democratic theory cites several other orientations as necessary to political stability, attitudes that are not exclusively related to democratic government but that operate to enhance the prospects of stable democracy.
