Discrimination & Defiant Pride: How the Demand for Dignity Can Create Slack for Poor Governance

Abstract

Why do some voters remain loyal to ethnic parties when these parties have done little to improve their material welfare? I develop a theory that centers the role of dignity concerns in explaining within-group variation in loyalty. Group members who face more discrimination respond with defiant pride, which manifests as ethnicity becoming a larger part of the self-concept. This heightened ethnic identification creates a demand for dignity through descriptive representation. Consequently, high-identifying group members are more forgiving of malfeasance by ethnic parties and more likely to trade-off material goods with symbolic goods. I provide qualitative, descriptive, and experimental evidence for this argument from the context of Karachi, Pakistan – a diverse megacity ruled for three decades by a poorly governing ethnic party. This paper pushes the literature on ethnic voting beyond dominant instrumental approaches and underscores how the demand for symbolic goods – such as dignity – influences political accountability and governance outcomes.

Keywords: ethnic voting, dignity, political accountability, ethnic parties, governance, political psychology