Contextual Determinants of Electoral System Choice - Ã bo Akademi

Leskinen 2002). Narrowly defined, however, ethnicity is similar to race, therebyconstituting a particular type of cleavage on the side of language, religion andother cultural features. The term ethnicity is, nevertheless, more frequently usedthan language or religion when countries’ cultural features are described. In theempirical analysis, I shall use two values of fragmentation – one that measuresonly ethnic fragmentation and one that observes the cleavage – ethnic, linguistic orreligious – that returns the highest level of fragmentation. These variables arecalled the level of ethnic fragmentation and the level of cultural fragmentation.Another reason for this distinction is that information on ethnic affiliation is inmost cases more accurate than information on other cultural characteristics. Thesources used determine which differences between cultural groups are relevant; i.e.an ethnic, linguistic or religious group is considered distinct in every case where itis reported as a separate group. Concerning religious fragmentation, the followinggroups are distinguished: Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Shintoistsand Taoists. In addition, relevant cleavages within these groups are also paidattention to.In a work by C. Anckar, Mårten Eriksson and Jutta Leskinen (2002), accurateindices of ethnic, linguistic and religious fragmentation in all countries of theworld are provided. The index of ethnic fractionalization proposed by Rae and M.Taylor (1970: 24-33) has been used for calculating these measures. However, theseindices are based on contemporary statistics and cannot be regarded asrepresentative of the world several decades ago. Obviously, a simpler strategy isneeded in order to get a comparable measure of fragmentation, considering thatinformation on ethnic and cultural affiliation in older handbooks are often rathermeager. Four categories of fragmentation applies: low, bipolar, medium-sized andhigh level of ethnic and cultural fragmentation. The level of fragmentation isconsidered high when the largest group represents less than 50 per cent of thepopulation. If at least 80 per cent of the people belong to the same group, the levelof fragmentation is low. Accordingly, medium-sized level of fragmentationprevails when the largest group is represented by 50-79.9 per cent of thepopulation.So far, attention to constellations between minority groups has not been paid.Consider, for instance, that the largest group is represented by 60 per cent of thepopulation. According to the aforesaid, the level of fragmentation is, then, of118