Ensuring representation of ethnic minorities in national level decision making is one of
the important challenges that ethnically diverse societies face. A number of alternative
institutional arrangements aimed at securing minority representation has been discussed1
in the
academic literature. This discussion is energized by the practical need to provide policy advice on
how to craft institutions in ethnically plural states that go through the periods of democratization
and/or post conflict reconciliation. While the relevance of this discussion is ensured by political
developments in different parts of the world, the evidential base for judging the effectiveness of
different institutional arrangements has remained somewhat limited. This is due partly to the
newness of some institutional arrangements and partly to the lack of systematic inquiry into
different type of consequences of choosing a specific mechanism of communal representation.
For example, a recent review of reserved seat provisions, which constitute one type of targeted
electoral mechanisms, suggests that reserved seats are much more common and much more
understudied2
than it has usually been assumed.