Published in the special issue on Globalization and Democracy of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Edited by Ronaldo Munck and Barry K. Gills, May 2002, pp. 35-47.
Globalization involves escalating human mobility - more and more people are able to move from place to place, not just as migrants seeking new homes, but as sojourners, visiting different countries where they may stay for longer or shorter periods of time. The result for any state is growing diversity of its resident population and increasing pressure to support and represent the interests of its citizens living abroad. Moreover, some communities that exist as enclaves within the domain of a state may identify themselves as distinct nations claiming the right to govern themselves. The information revolution based on the spreading use of the Internet and access to radio and television by satellite enables minorities in any country to identify themselves and to mobilize members living both at home and in foreign countries. Three different questions arise: first, how does cultural heterogeneity in modern societies, in the context of globalization, differ from its age old forms throughout the history of civilizations; second, how can and should democratic regimes cope with these pressures, and third, does the constitutional form of a democracy affect its ability to handle ethnic heterogeneity. The prevailing models for organizing a democracy were shaped generations ago and may well be inadequate for coping with the new problems generated by modernity and globalization. Perhaps we need to think about new ways to organize democracies in order to be more effective.1
The analysis that follows is organized under five headings:
We often think of ethnic conflict and nationalism as an historical residue based on conflicts between communities whose members have long lived in tension with each other. Although it is true that all civilizations have, by definition, included cities and hinterlands in which culturally different peoples coexisted, the fact is that their ethnic differences were not, normally, a focus of conflict, although no doubt there were tensions between them. The contemporary problems generated by ethnic diversity are a complex result of modernity and globalization. To see why this is true we need to distinguish between the generic fact of cultural heterogeneity that has existed ever since civilizations arose on an urban basis, and modern forms of ethnic pluralism. Modernity brought about qualitative changes based on the source of legitimation for governance, and globalization has extended these changes around the world.
Traditionally, in all civilizations, members of different communities co-existed symbiotically. Major conflicts erupted between ruling elites who normally depended on their subordinates, as clients or retainers, regardless of cultural differences, to support them in their inter-elite struggles. Ancient tensions between rival tribes and kingdoms have been transformed and reinterpreted in our times to provide primordial or historical rationalizations as justification for contemporary ethnic conflicts. However, to see why these conflicts have now exploded we need to learn more about their modern origins and globalized importance. In this context we can see that democratic values and institutions have both contributed to ethnic conflict and offer possible solutions.
In traditional societies inter-ethnic relations were based on caste rather than on class. In any caste-oriented social system -- India provides the extreme case, but the paradigm was universal -- legitimacy was based on sacred premises: all social differences were institutionalized as hereditary and inviolate. The right to govern was vested in kings (by whatever title) who were seen as having a divine right to rule: loyal service was viewed as a necessary exchange for benefits to be received from sacred sovereigns by virtue of their supernatural mandate. Cultural differences between castes and sub-castes were not only viewed as unavoidable but they could be seen as assets since each community could monopolize occupations and privileges that were protected and reciprocally 5exchanged with members of other communities.
Modernity eroded these relationships, replacing them with class-based notions rooted in the principles of equality and individualism. These new norms have eroded and replaced inequality and communalism as fundamental grounds of being. In this context, cultural differences became politically contentious members of each group began to expect equal opportunities in life and came to see other groups as rivals and potential enemies. The underlying basis for legitimation shifted from the sovereignty of rulers to the sovereignty of individuals the divine right of kings was replaced by the human rights of individuals.
Precedents for this transformation can be found in several historical civilizations, but in the West it triumphed, providing a necessary context for industrialization, democratization and global imperialism. However, as a result of the rise and collapse of industrial empires and the explosion of modern communications and transportation technologies, the whole world is now exposed to the utterly wrenching experience of trying to replace traditional caste-like social structures with modern class-based practices. Such a transformation cannot take place overnight. Instead, it is a violent and devastating process, producing many antagonisms: the more advantaged citizens seek to protect their threatened privileges while activists from marginalized communities strive to obtain the advantages promised to all by the new ethos. Moreover, although this transformative process was launched in the West, contemporary globalization has accelerated its spread throughout the planet. It has generated fundamental problems involving sovereignty, nationalism, and constitutional choices. Each of them will be discussed in turn in the following sections.
The shift from divine to popular sovereignty raised fundamental questions about the status of states and the rights of citizenship. If people were to be sovereign, they had to organize themselves in order to exercise this authority and that involved creating forms of representative governance and establishing boundaries between the states in which governments could govern. The notion of sovereignty became attached both to these states and to the citizens who populated them. The results are perplexing and need to be understood in order to explain and deal with the ethnic problems that emerged in their wake.
At the state level, sovereignty involves exclusive jurisdiction by regimes over their own citizens and immunity from intervention by other states. No doubt, historically, there were many regimes that can, in retrospect, be thought of as states. However, they lacked both the exclusiveness and immunities attributed, from the 17th century, to all post-Westphalian states. To understand this relatively modern phenomenon we need to unpack the notion of a sovereign state and see how it is linked to the notion of popular sovereignty.
Sovereignty. In the post-Westphalian world, royal sovereignty was extended, generally, from kings to their kingdoms, at the expense of the sacred and secular authority of Popes and Emperors at the imperial level, and of feudal lords, dukes and counts at lower levels. Subsequently, during the 19th century, when the right to govern was transferred from kings to peoples, the notion of state sovereignty was claimed by republics as well as kingdoms. Today, the word, sovereignty, is often attributed to states as though they had some intrinsic authority to govern within the arbitrarily constructed boundaries that have emerged from the violence of inter-state conflicts, including the many new states that have arisen on the ashes of collapsed empires.
More realistically, the sovereignty of states is an artifact created by non-states. States acquire their legitimacy from some source of sovereignty outside themselves. Traditionally, because sovereigns were seen as incarnating supernatural powers, they were able to invest the domains they ruled with an aura of sanctity. By contrast, modern states are essentially secular constructions. At an expedient level, they benefit from mutual non-aggression pacts whereby states agree to respect the rights claimed by their neighbors in exchange for the self-serving rights they claim for themselves.
More fundamentally, however, the legitimacy of states with representative government derives from their citizens who exercise sovereignty by delegating authority to their political representatives. State sovereignty, therefore, is derivative -- it exists because it has been recognized by some non-state source. No state is sovereign just because it is a state. The loss of sovereignty based on the divinity of kings has been replaced by popular sovereignty based on the right of individuals to govern themselves, or to be governed by representatives they elect. Many states, in fact, have no such legitimacy because their rulers seized power by violence or conspiracy. Much of the violence associated with the transfer of sovereignty from kings to citizens, therefore, hinges on the rise of dictatorships attributable to the ambitions of their bosses and/or power vacuums created by lost legitimacy. Ultimately, however, the sovereignty of any democratic state hinges on the powers delegated to it by its citizens.
Citizenship. Popular sovereignty, however, remains intangible until the identity of its citizens can be established. As noted above, all traditional civilizations were ethnically heterogeneous under the aegis of kings and nobles to whom subordinates owed service and fealty -- they lacked any sovereign rights. Ranks rooted in caste-like social systems privileged superiors and obligated inferiors. By contrast, the revolutionary principle expressed in the American Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal, unsettled all these hierarchies and implied the right of all individuals not only to govern themselves but also to participate in some form of representative government. This implied, somehow, a universal right of citizenship - everyone ought to be able to exercise sovereignty by participating directly in making public choices or delegating the authority to their elected representatives.
In practice, of course, more powerful groups were reluctant to surrender their privileges and marginalized groups were handicapped in their efforts to secure equal rights. The quest for equality of rights among citizens has been a long and painful struggle. It is difficult even to talk about it, however, because we lack a term for all the people who are linked to a state. Ordinarily, we think of them as the citizens of a state, but on closer scrutiny, it is clear that many people living in or associated with a state lack the legal status of citizens. These include resident aliens, conquered peoples, and others who may be disenfranchised for various reasons, including slavery, serfdom, age, gender, sexual preference, and criminal conduct. For present purposes, I shall use "members" (in quotation marks) to refer to all persons who are linked to a state in any status. Among the "members" of a state, those enjoying constitutive rights to share in its exercise of sovereignty are called citizens. The problems involving ethnic minorities and nationalist protest movements typically involve "members" of a state who lack -- or reject -- the status of citizenship. We need, therefore, to understand the reasons why some state members are not citizens.
Some of the reasons are fairly obvious. Criminals and social deviants plus children under a legal age limit are routinely denied voting rights. Aliens, especially when they have entered a country illegally, are also denied citizenship status. Because elections are typically organized by districts for local residents, wanderers who lack residency, including citizens in diaspora, often face obstacles to their exercise of voting rights and de facto citizenship. More importantly, conquered peoples living in dependencies or enclaves such as those reserved for indigenous populations are often denied citizenship. Slaves, serfs, and their descendants are typically denied equal rights.
Traditionally, language and religion often served as markers that distinguish members of dominant communities from others. Such distinctions were easily maintained under the caste-like conditions that prevailed where royal sovereignty was seen as supernaturally grounded. The secularization inherent in the move from sacred to popular sovereignty undermined these distinctions and made them seem increasingly irrational. A factitious rationality for racial distinctions was created by notions of social evolution that gained widespread acceptance during the 19th century in the wake Darwin's theory of evolution and Herbert Spencer's ideas about social evolution. It became widely accepted that the human race was itself divisible into separate races among whom some were more fit than others.2 This fallacy appeared to legitimize racial discrimination as a substitute for traditional social distinctions that could no longer be accepted as a justifiable basis for granting citizenship to some "members" of a state while denying it to others.
Racist ideas have become so widespread that they play to this day an important role in the development of ethnic diversity and nationalism. The phrase, race and ethnicity, is widely used without any clear explanation of the distinction. Historically, however, one may well argue that culturally different communities were classed as ethnic when they were treated as eligible for citizenship but classed as racially distinct when they were permanently barred from citizenship. In many countries, this distinction has now eroded to such a degree that minority communities are universally viewed as ethnic. Nevertheless, racism persists as an irrational prejudice but few would argue, today, that racial differences provide a legitimate ground for excluding any community from citizenship in a state.
However, even when barriers to citizenship are no longer imposed by a state on some of its members, there are many communities whose members reject citizenship in the state where they live, either because they prefer to remain citizens of another state in which they are already citizens, or they would like to create a new state for themselves. As the norms and hopes of democracy spread, an increasing number of "members" in all states are affected by citizenship problems. Membership of a state as mere subjects is no longer acceptable -- everyone wants to be a citizen with the right to be represented in governance, whether in an existing state or in one that is only imagined. The choice of a state, however, raises questions of identity that are usually thought of as involving membership in a nation. The question of nationality is complex and problematical, however. We need to say more about it here.
It seems plausible to argue that sovereignty cannot be exercised by any random collection of humans -- people become capable of exercising sovereignty only when they enjoy some sense of solidarity based on shared values and customs. This solidarity is reified into the concept of a nation. States are then thought to exercise sovereignty on behalf of a nation rather than just a motley collection of individuals who happen to be there. In contemporary usage, nation and state are confusingly linked, as in the phrase, nation-state. In the name, United Nations, nation has become a synonym for state. Our contemporary problems of ethnicity and nationalism can be understood only when we unpack this linkage - we need to see how nations are related both to states and to ethnic communities.
I shall think of a nation as a community whose members claim the right to govern themselves. Members of such a nation may be referred to as nationals, even though this word has some other confusingly different meanings. If ambiguity seems likely, we might put the word in quotation marks: a "national" is defined as a member of a nation - not, for example, as a non-citizen recognized as a member of a state, a perverse usage that prevails in the United States. In general, nationals - or their leaders, nationalists - transfer the notion of personal sovereignty to a higher level that mediates between individuals and the state. Rejecting the idea that citizenship by itself is enough to support the right of a government to govern, nationalists claim that this right belongs more properly to a collectivity that can be called a nation. This notion provides a new criterion for citizenship: the privilege of being a citizen should be granted only to members of the nation that dominates a state. In principle, every state should represent a nation, and every nation should have its own state - all citizens would be nationals of the state's nation. If this ideal could be actualized, it would result in the creation of national states, an ideal type that surely does not yet exist anywhere in the world. The familiar term, nation-state, misleadingly implies the existence of a national state. At best, one can say that all nation-states are all independent polities as determined by international norms - membership of the United Nations is a widely accepted test for this status.
The utopian ideal of becoming a national state has, paradoxically, led to two contradictory strategies. Existing states have used their claims of sovereignty to create nations by assimilating or destroying their members who are not seen as nationals. In reverse, communities that want to gain recognition as a nation but do not have a state of their own use the claim of sovereignty in their struggle to achieve statehood. We may refer to the outcome of the former process as state nations, and the latter as ethnic nations. They represent different and competing projects in time as well as in space.
This distinction enables us to identify two different brands of nationalism. We can say that state nations promote state nationalism whereas ethnic nations encourage ethnic nationalism. State nationalism is older and well established in many states where ruling elites have assimilated or eliminated ethnic minorities. Ethnic nationalism is a more recent phenomenon. New nations born in the wake of collapsed empires mobilize and demand independence for their communities, as do indigenous peoples inhabiting enclaves in the older industrial democracies. Globalization has accelerated the emergence of these ethnic nations.3
To the degree that state nations have assimilated cultural minorities, their confident exercise of the rights of citizenship permits ethnic heterogeneity to persist in a purely symbolic form. However, two categories of members of contemporary states have emerged as profoundly dissatisfied communities. One category consists of communities whose members are widely dispersed and unassimilated - they typically would welcome citizenship and its political opportunities but feel that, for various reasons, and especially because of persisting racism, they remain economically and socially marginalized. The problems posed by continuing injustices based on discrimination and discontents among members of these communities are conveniently considered under the heading of ethnic diversity.
By contrast, the problems generated by nationalists who reject the status of citizens in the states where they are members and demand statehood or its equivalent for themselves provide the basis for ethnic nationalism. The distinction between ethnic diversity and nationalism is not only conceptually important, but it requires different responses by concerned democracies. Policies that can solve the problems of ethnic diversity will not work for problems of ethnic nationalism. No sharp line can be drawn between the problems of diversity and nationalism, however, and in some contexts it is useful to be able to refer to both as modern forms of ethnic conflict.
Demands for justice by the aggrieved and marginalized members of any state often provoke resistance by members of the more established communities who fear that their privileges will be curtailed if these demands are met. Rationalizations offered in defense of the status quo sometimes take the form of an historical myth that views all demands for ethnic justice as a residual heritage based on ancient rivalries and conflicts. The fact that ethnic communities, even though socially constructed in response to modern problems, often use historical records and myths to rationalize their demands lends credence to this argument. Because of globalization, minorities in many countries are mobilizing to demand justice and respect, and established communities often resist these demands.I believe it is easier for a democracy to cope with the problems generated by ethnic diversity than it is for them to handle the issues raised by ethnic nationalism. However, I also think that democracies are more likely to handle both kinds of issues more successfully than despotic regimes -- although, admittedly, in the short run totalitarian states dominated by a ruling party are able to suppress both kinds of ethnic conflict. When and if such regimes collapse, as seems inescapable, these conflicts still need to be handled by the world's democracies.
Even in a democracy, however, it is by no means easy to empower ethnic minorities wishing to participate in the established decision-making processes of a state, and it is even more difficult to satisfy the demands of ethnonationalists who reject citizenship and demand independence. However, when comparisons are made between parliamentary regimes and those organized on the basis of the separation-of-powers principle (presidentialism) it seems clear that the former is more likely to be able to manage the problem of granting effective citizenship to minority communities in ethnically diverse societies -- perhaps they can also handle grants of autonomy (or independence) to ethnonations, but this is not so clear.
Diversity and Proportional Representation. A democracy can cope with ethnic diversity by means of multi-member electoral districts and one of several available schemes for proportional representation. Such schemes enable minority political parties to obtain a political voice, primarily through seats in parliament but also, quite often, by participation in coalition cabinets. Unfortunately, this solution seems to produce quite negative results when applied in a presidentialist (separation-of-powers) regime, even though it works quite well in parliamentary systems. Arguments for this conclusion are based on both empirical and theoretical considerations.
At the empirical level, we can look at the historical record of countries that have used PR. I have discussed this record elsewhere. I concluded that, in presidentialist systems, by contrast with parliamentary regimes, PR produces centrifugalized party systems that are always dysfunctional for the maintenance of presidentialism. Moreover, neither President nor Congress seems to have any systemic means to counteract these party dynamisms.4
At the theoretical level, similar conclusions arise. In the election of presidents it is important to mobilize a broad consensus in support of a leader who has to be head of state as well as head of government. Under PR it is almost impossible to do that. Even with a run-off election, it is apparent that the candidate with a final majority was only the second or third choice for many voters. As for the Congress, PR produces a multiplicity of parties and increases the difficulty of securing majorities in support of legislation. Moreover, representatives of small parties find themselves always outvoted and marginalized, leading to alienation and negativism. They do not have the possibility of participating in coalition Cabinets, as they do in parliamentary regimes.
For a presidentialist regime to survive without catastrophic break-downs, it seems to be necessary to rely on an electoral system that produces a centripetal (middle way two-party system) in which party discipline compromises with constituency (district) loyalties and the special interests represented in legislative committees. Thus the requisites for survival of democracy in a presidentialist regime include rules that generate oligarchic power and favor sedentary majorities in voting districts, a recipe that marginalizes minority communities.
Ethnic Nationalism. In almost all of the world's democracies there are enclaves where ethnic communities find themselves marginalized and profoundly discontented. Their leaders demand self-government, either with full independence or constitutional autonomy. All the countries that created industrial empires have by the end of the 20th century surrendered authority over their conquered exclaves - i.e. the possessions that were geographically separated - normally by oceans - from their homelands. However, in some of them enclaves exist in which conquered indigenous peoples struggle to perpetuate their own ancient traditions despite pressures for assimilation by the country in which they find themselves. Although it is difficult for any state to grant full independence to the peoples inhabiting enclaves, I believe it may well be easier for those with parliamentary constitutional systems to offer autonomy than it is for countries with presidentialist regimes. Again, the argument can be made on both empirical and theoretical grounds.
Empirically. A quick look at existing cases seems to confirm this impression. We can think of many parliamentary systems in which autonomies have been established: from the Aaland Islands in Finland and Greenland in Denmark to Catalonia and Basque autonomies in Spain; Tyrol in Italy; Quebec and Nunavut in Canada; Scotland and Wales in the UK. Northern Ireland is exceptional because it is torn internally between Unionists and Separatists, but the regime in London has been willing to devolve authority for self-government as soon as these factions agree.
By contrast, in presidentialist countries there are few such autonomies and struggles to establish them are often violent: consider the Chechnya case in Russia and Kosovo in Serbia. The ability of the U.S. to recognize autonomy in Puerto Rico, the Northern Marianas, and many American Indian Reservations is exceptional and reflects some special circumstances in the U.S. situation. This suggests that it is also possible for a presidentialist regime to devolve authority to an enclave - but it may well be more difficult. To find the reasons, we need to look more deeply into the constitutional considerations.
Theoretically. Consider that granting autonomy is not just a matter of making a law that applies to everyone within a country's jurisdiction, but it involves exempting those living within an enclave from these laws, and authorizing them to create their own laws. In a presidentialist regime, this means gaining support for such an exception not only from the President, but also from the Congress and the Supreme Court -- and perhaps also from the population at large by means of a referendum. These are high hurdles -- the establishment of autonomies (reservations) for indigenous communities in the U.S. was possible, I believe, only because such decisions could by-pass normal political procedures due to the special constitutional status accorded to treaties made by the U.S. with existing states, including "tribal" regimes.
In parliamentary regimes, by contrast, Parliaments have the ultimate authority to make decisions, including fundamental laws that have constitutional significance. Procedurally, therefore, it is simpler in parliamentary than in presidentialist systems to make the decisions that involve surrendering authority over a minority community. That does not necessarily make it easy for a government to surrender power. However, when we take into account the dynamics of decision-making in a Congress as compared with a Parliament, we can see how it may well be more difficult for the former to make such decisions.
Moreover, consider that in presidentialist regimes, the separation of powers requires Congress to micro-manage public policy making. There are two reasons. First, its committees second-guess in detail all Presidential policy initiatives and second, members of Congress are responsive to local constituents who are likely to resist the delegation of authority to unrepresented enclaves - even though they may welcome more authority for the local jurisdictions in which they enjoy power. Moreover, with an elected President as head of government, power is concentrated in one person and even though a cabinet may be constituted with minority members, it is not a ruling body and its members are primarily accountable to one person, the President, not to representatives of their own parties or communities.
By contrast, under parliamentary rule, the fusion of powers enables the Cabinet, subject to parliamentary approval, to make fundamental policy decisions. Because the central governmen's interests override the particularistic interests of locally-elected legislators, they may more easily surrender authority over enclaves, especially when cost/benefit analysis shows that they will gain as a result. Moreover, Cabinet government means that it is possible to process a large number of decisions in a coordinated way, linking powerful senior career officials with politically responsible Cabinet members. I believe they are likely to see that it is advantageous for a state to allow non-nationals to govern themselves. In exchange for the surrender of direct authority over an enclave, the regime avoids the political costs of perpetual conflict with its people and reduces the administrative expenses involved in efforts to enforce unacceptable laws on a rebellious minority. Moreover, the surrender of direct rule does not necessarily mean the loss of influence. The people living in any enclave will surely want to engage in external relations involving trade, travel, and communication and they will need help in many ways from their host country. Because of increased mobility, citizens of any autonomy must live and work in growing numbers outside their boundaries, under the control of their host states. In exchange for whatever external support or assistance a host state can provide, it may legitimately make reciprocal demands that promote harmony between the two jurisdictions.
No doubt any such broad generalizations are subject to exceptions. Although the considerations mentioned above may apply to most cases, it is quite possible that, exceptionally, a presidentialist system (like that of the United States) can work better than one might expect, and a parliamentary regime can fail. However, it is important to remember that exceptions are, indeed, exceptional. This is particularly important when thinking about the American case because superficial analysis often leads observers to conclude, illogically, that because it has succeeded pretty well, its constitutional system must therefore be well suited to the tasks facing all democracies. To make generalizations about any kind of system, we need to think about the normal cases and suspend judgment about the exceptions. In order to understand why the American case is so exceptional, we need to make close comparisons between it and other presidentialist systems - comparisons with parliamentary regimes cannot show why this case differs so significantly from all other countries following the same constitutional principles.5
Returning to the context of globalization, it is important to recognize that the rapid escalation of all the different processes that are so rapidly linking everyone living on our planet today is a result of modernizing forces rooted in the industrial revolution, democratization, and the rise of ethnic nationalism. All of these changes entail the abandonment of traditional caste-like social differences rooted in hierarchic principles of inequality and sacred authority. They must be replaced by class-based social systems that presuppose human equality and justify differences based on individual effort and secular rationality. The state system that emerged since the Peace of Westphalia in the mid-17th century facilitated these transitions, but it now needs to be re-shaped in the context of globalization, not just because of the powerful market-based economic, banking and monetary system that has emerged, but also because old notions of state sovereignty rooted in national identities have become obsolete as human mobility has accelerated. All populations have become increasingly diverse, and the citizens of all states are more diasporized, living or visiting outside their own countries.
Moreover, dispersed ethnic and diasporic communities with distinctive interests of their own need to be accommodated politically both within the evolving global network of international organizations and in the design of democratic states. Notions of royal and state sovereignty need to give way to the principles of personal sovereignty. The fictitious ideal of a national state needs to be replaced by acceptance of the reality of multi-national states, and the "sovereignty" of states needs to be seen as a fiction that requires re-interpretation in a global order. No doubt states will survive but their functions will change. They need to accept superstructures based on confederalism and global organization in a vast network of autonomous systems dedicated to solving a host of complex and interdependent issues. These systems need to focus on preserving the environment, handling population growth, protecting workers, overcoming poverty, promoting health, and securing cultural values.
In this context, democratic states are more likely to succeed and survive if they follow parliamentary constitutional principles - as do all the industrialized democracies except the United States. The continued adherence of some of them to the presidentialist design - in part because of the U.S. example - is likely to jeopardize their viability. However, all democracies also need to make some fundamental constitutional innovations that enable dispersed minorities, both at home and abroad, to be better represented, perhaps in separate legislative chambers.6
The general conclusion offered here is that democracies are better able than non-democratic regimes to handle the problems of ethnic and diasporan identity posed by globalization. Among democracies, those with a parliamentary constitutional system can handle these problems more easily than those following the separation-of-powers (presidentialist) model. However, all existing constitutional democracies are handicapped by their lack of separate legislative chambers able to represent geographically dispersed minorities, both within the country as ethnic communities and autonomous regions, and also to speak for citizens living abroad in diaspora. Finding ways to overcome this handicap is a major challenge for political design in a globalizing world.
1. All democracies confront some fundamental problems that affect their capacity to deal with global challenges. One involves the level of their legitimacy, whether citizens voluntarily support governments as truly representative of their interests or view them with hostility. Another fundamental issue involves the capacity of regimes to deal with important problems generated by modernity, the industrial revolution, and growing ethnic diversity, including demands for autonomy or independence by mobilized ethnonational communities. I have discussed some of these issues elsewhere - see "In Response to Globalization: Can Democracies do Better?"
2. For details, see: Darwin and Evolution Overview.
3. Some of them have banded together to create an international alliance with their own Web Site for "Unrepresented Nations and Peoples". Reports by scholarly outsiders about these nations can be found in the "Minorities at Risk" project, under the direction of Ted Gurr at the University of Maryland.
4. For more details, see: webdata.soc.hawaii.edu/fredr/pres.htm#ele. The analysis was based on data in Juan Linz and Arturo Valenzuela, eds. The Failure of Presidential Democracy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1994. Although this book contains only case studies of selected countries, I believe a comprehensive analysis of all Latin American regimes would confirm my conclusion.
5. For a detailed analysis based on comparisons with separation-of-powers constitutional systems, see the author's "Problems of Presidentialism and the American Exception." Some further reflections on the relation of parliamentarism to the solution of problems of ethnic diversity can be found in my paper, "Ethnic Diversity, Nationalism and Constitutional Democracy."
6. I have discussed these possibilities elsewhere: see "Mobility and the Internet: Problems of Global Democratization."