Yiftachel O. (2006), Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine

Yiftachel O. (2006), Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine, Pennsylvania Press, p.368

The analysis presented in this book is guided by a critical, materialist perspective, which emphasized the interdependence of geographical, economic, cultural, and political processes. The emphasis is on political geography and political economy as key pillars of shaping ethnic relations and politics. The approach draws inspiration from neo-Gramscian perspective (see Laclau and Mouffe 1985; Hall 1992; Lustick 1993), from related critical approaches (see Lefebvre 1991; Said 1992; I.M. Young 2002), and from critical analysts in the social science mainly in geography, political science, and urban studies (see Friedmann 2002; Harvey 2001; Marcuse and Van Kempen 2000; Samaddar 2000; Sibley 1995).

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« I define ethnocracy as a particular regime type, frequently found on the world political map but rarely studied by social scientists and geographers. This regime facilitates the expansion, ethnicization, and control of a dominant ethnic nation (often termed the charter or titular group) over contested territory and polity. Regimes are defined as legal, political, and moral framework determining the distribution of power and resources. They reflect the identity, goals, and practical priorities of a political community.

The state is the main vehicle of the regime, providing institutions, mechanisms, maws, and legitimized forms of violence to implement the projects articulated by the regime.

            Ethnocratic regimes may emerge in a variety of forms, including cases of ethnic dictatorships or regimes implementing violent strategies of ethnic cleaning, as occurred in Rwanda and Serbia, and those whose strategies consist of control and exclusion, as happened in Sudan and pre-1994 South Africa (Mannn 1999). In this chapter, however, I am interested in ethnocratic regimes that represent themselves as democratic and uphold several formal democratic mechanisms, such as elections, civil rights such as freedom of movement, a parliamentary system, and a relatively open system of media and communication. But despite their democratic representation, these regimes still facilitate as underdemocratic expansion of the dominant ethnonation.

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Political and historical forces that shaped the politic and territory of ehnocracy regime:

Intersection of 3 major political-historical regimes

-The formation of a (colonial) settler society

-the mobilizing power of ethnonationalism

-the ethnic logic of capital

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Studies have also shown that "pure" settlers societies are generally market by a broad stratification into three ethnoclasses: (a) a founding charter group, such as the protestant-Anglos in North America and Australia; (b) a group of later immigrants from different cultural backgrounds, such as southern Europeans in North America and Australia; and (c) dispossessed indigenous groups, such as the Aborigines in Australia, Maoris in New Zeeland, North American Indians in Canada and the United States, and Palestinians in Israel/Palestine (Srasiulis and Yuval-David 1995). In recent times, a fourth stratum has emerged in most settler societies – "alien" or foreign workers. This groups is incorporated economically, but largely remains excluded fro the society's main political and social arenas (Sassen 1999).

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Ethnonationalism, as a set of ideas and practices, constitutes one of the most powerful forces to have shaped the world's political geography in general, and that of Israel/Palestine in particular.

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The principle of self-determination is central for our purpose here. It appears in its simplest from enshrined in the 1945 United Nations Charter -“every people has the right of self-determination”. This principle has formed the political and moral foundation for the establishment of popular sovereignty and democratic government. Yet most international declarations, including the United Nations, leave vague the definition of a "people" and the meaning of self-determination, although in contemporary political culture it is commonly accepted as independence in the group's "own" homeland state.

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When state is created, the issue of territory and national survival is link to the ethnonational history and culture. Affect the social life by male dominance, militarism, and ethnoreligions.

“But despite its dominance, the political geography of nation-state is for from stable, as a pervasive nation-building discourse and material reality are continually remoulding the collective identity and homeland ethnic minorities. Such minorities often develop a national consciousness of their own that destabilizes political structures with campaigns for autonomy, regionalism, or sovereignty, intensifying, in Anderson’s words, “the impending crisis of the hyphen between nation and state” (Anderson 1996, 8).”

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-The (Ethnic) Logic of Capital

Labor markets and development are ethnically segmented, charter-immigrant-indigenous hierarchy

Charter group occupies privileged niches in the labor market, immigrant are marginalized from the centers of economic power and indigenous people are excluded from access to capital or mobility within the larbor market

The accelerating globalisation of market and capital movement has weakened the state’s economic power. These forces have widened the socioeconomic gaps. The globalization of capital and the associated establishment of supranational trade organizations may also subdue (soumettre) ethnotionalism and expansionism previously fuelled by territorial ethnic rivalries.

Globalization of the leading class, increase search for opportunities and mobility within a more open regional and global economy.  Tension between local and global, which can intensify intranational tension or and ease (reduire) international conflicts, case of Spain, South Africa, Northern Ireland ( Agnew 1999; Murphy 2002).

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Ethnocratic nation building fully exposes the tension between the use of ethnic and civil categories because it entails an active exclusion of groups of citizens or residents represented as external by the prevailing discourse of the dominant nation.

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However, I claim that there exists a qualitative difference between  what Brubaker (1996) terms "nationalizing states", and ethnocratic regimes. This differences lies in the deliberate undermining of the political demos. As elaborated below, ethnocratic regimes work ceaselessly to prevent the making of an inclusive demos- a community of equal citizens within definable territory. Instead, they use the rhetoric of the rhetoric of the nation-state but do not allow minorities any feasible path of inclusion. Indeed, the ethnocratic project is often constructed specifically against these minorities. There is no attempt to assimilate "external" communities of citizens; to the contrary, their identity is well demarcated and structurally marginalized.

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