churches which now exert any important political influence, but those,
whether the Roman Catholic Church in Italy, or versions of Islamic religion
in, for example, Pakistan or Iran, that have a direct mass support with political
overtones (seetheocracy).
Ethnicity
Ethnicity refers to a sometimes rather complex combination of racial, cultural
and historical characteristics by which human groups are sometimes divided
into separate, and probably hostile, political families. At its simplest the idea is
exemplified by racial groupings where skin colour alone is the separating
characteristic. At its more refined one may be dealing with the sort of ‘ethnic
politics’ as where, for example, Welsh or Scottish nationalists feel ethnically
separated from the ‘English’rulers, as they may see them, of their lands. Almost
anything can be used to set up ‘ethnic’ divisions, though, after skin colour, the
two most common, by far, are religion and language (seelanguage groups).
Although racial political divisions have always been vital where they exist, it is
probably only in the post-war decades that other forms of ethnic politics have
become commonly important, though this is not to say that the actual divisions
have not been long established and of personal importance. It is important not
to confuse fully blown ethnic politics with the mere existence of a voting
cleavage based on, for example language, where linguistic differences raise
concrete policy issues. There are, for example, crucial ethnicity problems in
Belgium and Canada (mainly language conflicts, but with associated religious
splits), Britain (historical-cultural divisions sometimes fought around language
politics but also with religious connections and stemming from English
domination over formerly independent areas), and remnants of such divisions
in Scandinavian countries (mainly language again), to mention just a very small
sample.
Ethnicity raises the whole socio-political question of national identity,
which is why ethnic politics are often at their most virulent and important
inThird Worldand other countries whose geographical definition owes,
often, far more to European empire-builders than to any ethnic homogeneity.
It was precisely such problems which led to conflict in Yugoslavia and the
former Soviet Union in the early 1990s once the power of communism, which
had maintained artificial boundaries, collapsed. It is useful to distinguish
between the politics of ethnicity in advanced democratic societies, where it
is somewhat of a luxury, given the overall strength of national identity and the
relative importance of other basic political issues related to organizing a
productive economy, and in countries in the Third World and post-communist
bloc, where ethnic divisions may be absolutely central to the problems of
organizing a working political system. However the re-emergence of racially
Ethnicity