Double-Edged: Minority Political Incorporation Policies and Outcomes in 12 European Countries

This paper examines the relationship between the openness of minority incorporation regimes and the forms of political participation they may engender, from voting to violence. Contrary to conventional wisdom which suggests that more open regimes, such as those of the United Kingdom, Netherlands, and France, facilitate minority political inclusion and participation via conventional pathways, empirical evidence suggests the opposite is also true: political openness can facilitate increased political violence, a common marker of exclusion.

Conversely, regimes that are traditionally “closed” to foreigners, such as those in Germany, Austria and Spain, exhibit very low levels of minority political participation and similarly low levels of political violence. To explore this puzzle, we use an original dataset spanning 12 European countries since 2004. This project makes two corresponding contributions. First, we clarify the analytic distinction between the type of political exclusion that is correlated to violence in “open” countries and the type that produces more overall disengagement in “closed” countries. Second, we investigate the extent to which “closed” regimes with legal barriers to participation compensate with stronger social policies and informal networks, creating alternative conditions for minority well-being.