Practicing Minority Representation in Multi‐Ethnic Party Systems: The Politics of Reparations for Slavery in Mauritius

Multi‐ethnic party systems, which are mainly composed of multi‐ethnic parties, face a distinctive form of the “exclusion‐amid‐inclusion” problem. In such contexts, ethnic minorities cannot rely on their own ethnic party to represent them, and risk being represented in merely tokenistic ways by multi‐ethnic parties. This article examines how this risk can be mitigated by identifying the actors, practices, and affordances of multi‐ethnic party systems that made substantive minority representation possible against the odds in Mauritius. Despite a long history of tokenism, substantive representation of the Creole minority was achieved in the 2000s, notably through the establishment of a Truth and Justice Commission on the legacy of slavery and indentured labour. Building on archival research and interviews, we use controversy mapping to study substantive representation in practice. Our findings suggest that, while multi‐ethnic party systems can enable tokenism, they also offer minorities unique avenues for achieving substantive minority representation.