ABSTRACT
Understanding conditions of democratic ethnic peace requires probing into the relationship between ethnicity and democratic rule. This chapter describes the field of related theoretical concepts and concerns. In the burgeoning literature on democracy one can easily observe a pronounced definitional confusion. Enough is to mention that Collier and Levitsky have identified more than 550 ‘subtypes’ of democracy. The emergence of democracy has always occurred in distinct communities; there is no record anywhere of free, unconnected, and calculating individuals coming together spontaneously to form a democratic social contract ex nihilo. All forms of nationalism contain imagery that gives definition to a unique and distinctive national grouping. These symbols may be either ethnic or civic in character. Classical statements in the debate go back to the 1860s, when two eminent British philosophers debated the nature of the nation-state. Ethnicity is indeed the most difficult type of cleavage for a democracy to manage.
