Democracy in Divided Societies

Reilly analyzes the design of electoral systems for divided societies examining various divided societies which utilize vote-pooling electoral systems--including Papua New Guinea Sri Lanka Northern Ireland and Fiji. He shows that political institutions which encourage the development of broad-based aggregative political parties and where campaigning politicians have incentives to attract votes from a range of ethnic groups can under certain conditions encourage a moderate accommodatory political competition and thus influence the trajectory of democratization in transitional states. This is a challenge to orthodox approaches to democracy and conflict management.