Governing communal diversity as good governance

Abstract

This study asks whether existing standards of good governance have incorporated ideals and measures to manage communal diversity. The context is an intellectual landscape in which the efficacy of heterogeneity policies has typically been compared through their impact on the likelihood of violent conflict. Alternate approaches would fine‐tune the outcome variable and/or enlist new independent variables. The Ethnic Power Relations project provided measures of the groups' co‐determination position (egip, excl) and measures of empowerment through self‐governing start to follow suit, such as improved indicators of territorial autonomies, decentralization, and language use rights. We also crafted a measure of functional autonomies, based on the ENTA Network's case‐study collection. With the exception of territorial autonomies, all existing measures of policies that accommodate the difference tend to improve the group's relationships with other groups and with the country as a whole. They also correlate well with the general good governance indicators.