Balancing and Sharing Political Power in Multiethnic Societies: Summary of a Workshop (1993)

Summary: This report summarizes discussions at a workshop, “Balancing and Sharing Political Power in Multiethnic Societies,” held in Moscow on January 25–27, 1993. The meeting was jointly sponsored by the Committee on International Conflict and Cooperation of the National Research Council and the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Approximately 100 scholars and policy practitioners engaged in wide-ranging discussions on the nature and sources of ethnicity, nationalism, and ethnic conflict in multiethnic societies. A major focus of the workshop was on the institutions, processes, and strategies for conflict management that balance competing communal interests in democratic, multiethnic states. The workshop organizers anticipated that a broad consideration of the experiences of many countries would suggest approaches applicable to the contemporary situation within and between the successor states to the Soviet Union. Workshop organizers and participants considered the meeting to be an excellent first step in what should be an ongoing dialogue.