Publication
Does Smallness Enhance Power-Sharing? Explaining Suriname’s Multiethnic Democracy
The smallness of Suriname, according to political scientist Wouter Veenendaal (Leiden University), strongly affects and shapes the nature of democracy in the country. On the one hand, clientelism ensures that members of each ethnic group included in power-sharing arrangements have access to state resources and services, thus providing a large measure of political stability. On the other hand, clientelism undermines the functioning of multiethnic democracy by a host of negative side effects, among which economic and social dependency of citizens, executive dominance and authoritarian politics, endemic corruption that goes largely unpunished, and state predation by elites.
- Author
- Wouter Veenendaal
- Date
- 26 March 2019
- Links
- › Ethnopolitics (Taylor & Francis online)
