What is a Multi‐Ethnic Party and How to Spot a Fake One?

Multi‐ethnic parties have been variously defined: as those which do not champion the interests of, or mobilize against, any specific ethnic group; as those with a recognisably cross‐communal leadership or membership; and as those which acquire some distribution of support across groups. This paper argues that cross‐community support is the best means to distinguish multi‐ethnic parties. The paper draws on a new 132 country dataset cross‐tabulating of party affiliation with ethnicity. In highly ethnicized party systems, we frequently encounter one or more than one group whose political leaders champion communal interests through ostensibly multi‐ethnic parties that are able to advance a liberal agenda promoting either ‘minority rights’ or the importance of ‘majority rule’. Commentators, including both diplomats and scholars, are often highly critical of overtly ethnic parties but may be more easily deceived by these pseudo multi‐ethnic parties. They thereby risk inadvertently taking sides in partisan communal conflicts.