ABSTRACT
As I noted in the Introduction, I see serious problems in the empowerment of minorities by ensuring the participation of their representatives in the exercise of political power. At first glance, this looks like a promising way to align minority policies with the interests of minority groups. However, power relations have a logic of their own and when that logic governs the protection of the interests of minority groups as well, this leads not to an improvement of a minorities’ plight, but to results of a completely different nature. As we know, political power can be attractive in its own right; that is, for many people who are involved in it in some way it can be not just a means but also an end in itself. The struggle for gaining and retaining political power imposes certain patterns of behavior on those who exercise it, patterns that have little to do with promoting the interests of the citizens represented. This is a systemic problem for every democratic society, but because of the specific issues of minority groups it is especially acute in cases when – as I will try to show in this chapter – minorities manage to get their representatives into the institutions of political power. The prospects for these representatives to benefit from participation in power play a role in this respect, along with the tendencies toward minorities’ self-segregation, which are fueled by the “amalgamation” of power and community relations. In this chapter I will illustrate the above considerations by examining three of the most widely applied models of minority empowerment through their deliberate involvement in the exercise of political power. I will consider the so-called “socialist internationalism” that is familiar from the recent past, consociational democracy, and the policy of setting quotas for minority representatives in institutions of political power as it is conceptualized and theoretically justified by Anne Phillips in her theory of “the politics of presence.” I will also comment on whether or not the creation and operation of ethnic or religious political parties is justified. As a whole, I will argue for the view that the communicative empowerment of minorities is preferable to the deliberate inclusion of minority representatives in the exercise of political power.
