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Chapter Four: Institutions and the Management of Ethnic Diversity

“The democratic problem in a plural society is to create political institutions which give all thevarious groups the opportunity to participate in decision-making, since only thus can they feel thatthey are full members of a nation, respected by their numerous brethren, and owing equal respectto the national bond which holds them together. It is necessary to get right away from the idea thatsomebody is to prevail over somebody else; from politics as a zero-sum game. Group hostility andpolitical warfare are precisely what must be eradicated if the political problem is to be solved; intheir place we have to create an atmosphere of mutual toleration and compromise.”

(Arthur Lewis, 1965)

Ethnicity is relevant to economic development because it structures

intersubjective encounters between participants in states and markets. The four

causal narratives I have described—ethnic capital, capital loss, latent costs and

policy perversity—are analytically distinct, but they share one common thread.

All four are the consequence of subjective and politicized distinctions between

members of different groups, and they are activated by tension at the margins

between communities.

This chapter develops a theoretical basis for the claim that institutions can

influence inter-ethnic encounters and modify ethnic diversity’s impact on

economic development. It proposes that inclusive social and political institutions

have been centrally important to the successful accommodation of ethnic diversity

in Mauritius, and therefore to the island’s path of sustained economic

development. At independence, the new nation-building elite inherited a complex

set of institutional resources and strong incentives to pursue the difficult projects

of economic development and democratic consolidation. Faced with the

challenging task of building a single nation from fragmented communal segments,

Mauritius developed new, integrative national institutions engineered to manage

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ethnic diversity. By rewriting the “rules of the game” and creating an “atmosphere

of toleration and mutual compromise,” these institutions have contributed to the

successful political and economic development of Mauritius.

Ethnicity and Institutions: A Theoretical Approach

Ethnicity involves both subjective identification and the intersubjective

communication of cultural differences (Eriksen 1998). As a symbolic and

normative system, it structures what Habermas (1987) calls the social ‘

or the matrix of shared norms and communicative resources that constitute the

cultural basis for social interaction. At the micro-level of social relations, the

narratives of ethnic capital formation, capital loss and latent costs occur because

ethnic identities influence the social choices and behaviors of individual actors in

intersubjective encounters with others. At the macro-level, democratic institutions

can translate ethnic identities into coalitions that influence policies in

particularistic directions; hence the existence of ethnically based policy

perversity. Ethnicity is a major structural feature of lifeworlds in plural societies

because it helps define acceptable sets of social action (Eriksen 1999).

Ethnicity, however, is not the only structural dimension of the lifeworld. A

broader view of intersubjective encounters understands the “rules of the game” as

institutions, defined by Douglass North (1993) as “the humanly devised

constraints that shape human interaction.” Because the world is too complex for

individuals to navigate its infinite possibilities, individuals use subjective heuristic

models to simplify interactions with others. Those subjective models, informed by

social norms and patterns of behavior, facilitate decision-making under conditions

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of imperfect information about the external world and the other individuals who

inhabit it. Institutions aid decision-makers in their assessments of how to behave

in intersubjective encounters and help them predict the consequences of various

courses of action. Broadly speaking, institutions are collectively understood

norms and procedures that lubricate complicated social exchanges.

Though they take many different forms, institutions can be broadly

disaggregated into formal and informal types. Formal institutions are attached to

the state apparatus and include the political and bureaucratic “rules of the game.”

They define the rules of political engagement and tend to be codified in

constitutional guarantees, laws, and judicial decrees. By contrast, informal

institutions include social traditions and the diffuse systems of norms and

ideological commitments that structure social interaction, but are not necessarily

connected to state authority. Both kinds of institutions translate the complex

phenomena associated with social action into simpler incentive systems to which

individual actors can respond.

Ethnicity, then, is part of a broad class of social institutions that inform

individual and group behavior. Indeed, the existence of plural societies, which

Rabushka and Shepsle (1974) define as societies where sub-national ethnic

cleavages are politically dominant, demonstrates both the enduring power of

ethnicity and the importance of supra-ethnic, national institutions. Though

ethnicity may be the most salient political cleavage in a plural society, individuals

in these societies are by definition embedded in a network of other social, political

and institutional commitments, including obedience to the overarching political

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framework of the nation-state. As argued in Chapter One, the state controls

national policies and therefore powerfully structures individual incentives. Norms

and discourses articulated at this institutional level are therefore capable of

influencing intersubjective encounters at all levels of social interaction.

The existence of multiple, overlapping institutional norms means that

ethnic diversity is not an insurmountable obstacle. As Ralph Premdas (1995)

notes, “institutional engineering can seek to depoliticise many areas of

contention” between ethnic groups. The four ethnic political economy narratives

described in Chapter One should not be treated as inevitable consequences of

ethnic diversity. Each causal narrative is “triggered” by ethnic identification, but

ethnic identity is only one of many parts of an individual’s subjective and

normative—that is, institutional—commitments. Institutional norms and contexts

texture and modify social identities; therefore, they can diminish or intensify the

relative importance of ethnic identification.

Variations in institutional design, then, directly influence the net balance

of ethnic diversity’s impact on economic development. William Easterly (2001b)

argues that high quality institutions “constrain the amount of damage that one

ethnic group could do to another,” and while this is certainly true, the theoretical

arguments advanced above indicate that good institutions can do much more.

Institutions can channel intersubjective encounters to avoid the pathologies

associated with communalist behavior. They can encourage individuals to employ

more inclusive heuristic models when interacting with others, rescripting tense

encounters with “ethnic others” into exchanges with “fellow citizens.” Even in

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countries with “deep social cleavages and highly injurious encounters” between

ethnic groups, “a comprehensive picture also shows accommodation, reciprocity,

Rothchild 1997). Integrative institutional processes demonstrate

the capacity of inclusive arrangements to overcome the exclusive norms of ethnic

interaction. By influencing incentives at the level of individuals’ intersubjective

encounters, good institutions can positively influence ethnically linked economic

outcomes. It is the contention of this chapter that supra-ethnically inclusive

institutions account for much of Mauritius’ post-colonial development.

Methodology

If “we cannot see, feel, touch, or even measure institutions” because “they

are constructs of the human mind,” how are we to analyze their role in mediating

ethnic interactions (North 1993)? Institutions may be diffuse abstractions, but

they reify themselves in observable rules and patterns of organizational behavior.

This chapter will analyze historical inheritances from the colonial era and

institutional arrangements developed in the post-colonial period to identify the

root causes of successful ethnic accommodation in Mauritius. Furthermore, it will

adopt an explicitly comparative approach. Whereas Chapter Three made extensive

use of theoretically constructed counterfactual situations that compared Mauritius

to homogeneous societies, this chapter will compare Mauritius to other plural

societies to isolate the impact of institutional arrangements. Though I will contrast

Mauritius with several plural societies, I will make intensive use of comparisons

to Guyana, a country with a similar history and ethnographic landscape, but with

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very different institutions and political economic outcomes. See Appendix C for

comments on unit homogeneity in comparative studies.

Decolonization and Institutional Change

In the years following independence, Mauritius seemed headed down a

path of protracted internecine ethnic conflict. In 1974, Alvin Rabushka and

Kenneth Shepsle cited the “notable absence” of moderation in ethnic political

attitudes among Mauritians and predicted that the constant threat of a “major

outbreak of racial violence” would persist on the island for years to come. Given

the empirical data available so few years after these countries achieved

independence, pessimism certainly seemed justified. In post-colonial plural

societies, ethnically inclusive nationalist movements fractured into inter-

communal distributive conflicts once the state and economy came under local

control (Hintzen 1989, Rabushka and Shepsle 1974, Premdas 1995). Coupled

with the enfranchisement of previously non-voting masses, which left

opportunistic elites searching for ways to mobilize large constituencies efficiently,

post-colonial politics possessed in abundance the ingredients for intense

communal conflict. Independence produced changes in the rules of the game and

reshaped norms and discourses, which in turn altered the incentives and

institutions available to successive generations of political actors (North 1993,

Rabushka and Shepsle 1974).

In countries like Fiji, Trinidad, and Guyana, ethnic groups that had

cooperated in nationalist coalitions frequently fragmented into ethnically based

parties and factions (Rabushka and Shepsle 1974). Since ethnicity became both a

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salient cleavage and a politically convenient axis of mobilization at independence,

subsequent democratic elections only intensified and exacerbated communal

divisions. When ethnically mobilized voters went to the polls in newly

independent plural societies, the competitive atmosphere served to reify and

deepen the sense of what the Guyanese call apanjaht, which in Hindi means

“voting for your own kind” (Rabushka and Shepsle 1974, Premdas 1995).

The prospects for transcending ethnic parochialism with inclusive political

institutions seemed as weak in Mauritius as they did in the similarly situated

countries mentioned above. But while schism and fissure almost uniformly

characterize politics in plural societies, Mauritius has managed to graft functional

and robust national institutions onto an ethnically divided social substrate. Its

ability to do so has permitted it to capture the positive effects of ethnic diversity

while minimizing its costs. Although ethnicity constantly lurks beneath its

politics, Mauritius has managed to avoid overt communalism and entrapment in

what Lewis (1965) and Premdas (1995) call “zero-sum” ethno-political

competition. With several multi-ethnic parties, peaceful transitions and contested

elections, Mauritius has joined the ranks of consolidated democracies, whereas

many countries, including similarly situated peers like Guyana and Fiji, have not

(Brautigam 1997, Carroll and Carroll 1999).

Understanding this divergence requires us to understand that post-colonial

politics has two faces, which I call its deterministic and voluntaristic dimensions.

Future development is path dependent because it is constrained by patterns

established in the past. Decoding the political and economic trajectory of newly

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independent countries therefore requires attention to the historical inheritances, or

“social factor endowments,” that determine the set of presently available choices.

At the same time, decolonization was significant precisely because it devolved

voluntaristic political control to local elites. The autonomous institutional choices

made by newly independent elites are therefore important determinants of

political and economic development. Because the politics of decolonization is

both deterministic and voluntaristic, understanding institutional change requires

attention to each of these dimensions.

Both historical social factor endowments and deliberate institutional

choices have permitted Mauritius to accommodate social pluralism with

pragmatic strategies designed to secure public legitimation for the post-colonial

regime. Social factor endowments include patterns of behavior inherited from

colonial history, while voluntaristic decisions include the active institutional

choices made by political actors in the post-colonial era. In Mauritius,

endowments from colonial history gave the majority community both the

resources and the incentives to support an ambitious nation-building project.

Seeking economic development and democratic consolidation, the new political

elite designed an elaborate system of inclusive institutions meant to secure the

cooperation of minority communities through the use of integrative side payments

in political, economic and cultural domains.

Social Factor Endowments: Resources and Incentives for Development

Though Mauritius clearly did not enter the era of independence with

promising prospects for national integration and social peace, it was nonetheless

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endowed with a historical legacy that facilitated the development of socially

integrative norms. Settlement patterns, a history of social cooperation, the

advantages of late independence and the presence of a clear ethnic majority

formed a comparatively advantageous social endowment relative to countries like

Fiji and Guyana. These factor endowments provided the nation-building elite with

both the resources and the incentives to pursue system-sustaining, nationally

integrating policies.

Initially, settlement patterns in Mauritius yielded ethnically integrated

cities and rural communities. Spatial integration meant that individuals from

different communities were drawn into inter-ethnic encounters on a regular basis;

Bowman (1991) concludes that housing integration was an “important factor

limiting communal identification.” By contrast, settlement patterns in Guyana

tended to create ethnically homogeneous villages and communities. Voluntary

segregation created conditions ripe for communalist appeals that stereotyped and

demonized ethnic ‘others’ (Premdas 1995). When mass politics developed in the

post-colonial era, political parties ruthlessly exploited village homogeneity as a

politically convenient means of carving Guyana into ethnic voting blocs (Premdas

1995). Spatial admixture of ethnic groups in Mauritius may have produced norms

of accommodation that facilitated intercommunal harmony, whereas segregation

in Guyana allowed the seeds of division to fester and grow.

Residential integration is indicative of a broader type of social endowment

that helped Mauritius overcome ethnic divides: a voluntary and cooperative civic

culture. Though Mauritius does have a number of social organizations formed

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along explicitly sectional lines (see Chapter Two), it also has a colorful history of

national cooperation. Following the publication of the Titmuss and Meade

Reports in the early 1960s, which heralded disaster unless Mauritius restrained its

extremely rapid rate of population growth, several civil society organizations

launched campaigns to lower fertility rates. Despite the extraordinarily sensitive

nature of the issue, cross-communal civic organizations like Action Familiale and

the Mauritius Family Planning Association helped cut population growth at a rate

“unequalled for any population of substantial size” (Hein 1977). Members of all

communities were able to encourage large numbers of individuals to change their

sexual habits and even managed to convince the Catholic Church to relax its

stance on discouraging reproductive restraint (Dommen and Dommen 1999). The

birth control campaign is illustrative of a broader tradition of intense civic

engagement that led Miles (1999) to describe Mauritius as a “supercivil society.”

After all, though 20% of social organizations are ethnically based, 80% are not,

and the aggregate number of organizations is higher than in many developing

countries (Miles 1999). By contrast, Guyanese civil society is and always has

been deeply fractured along ethnic lines (Despres 1975, Premdas 1995). Part of

this polarization is undoubtedly related to the spatial segregation of communal

groups, but it is also linked to the fact that political elites encouraged the

development of clientelistic relationships between ethnic parties and co-ethnic

civic associations. These relationships “threw the parties into what appeared to be

an irreversible spiral of ever increasing ethnic conflict” and enhanced the

“political differences between Indians and Africans, reinforcing bifurcation in the

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Guyanese polity” (Premdas 1995). In the vocabulary of the plural society model,

Mauritius was less functionally differentiated along ethnic lines to begin with, and

Mauritians had relatively more experience cooperating across ethnic lines to solve

common problems.

Two other institutional factors may have helped Mauritius avoid some of

the grossest pathologies of pluralism: knowledge associated with late

independence and certainty about the outcome of electoral contests. Mauritius

became independent in 1968, near the tail end of British decolonization.

Independence in Mauritius came after the emancipation of Malaysia, Guyana, and

Trinidad, which gave Mauritians and their decolonizers the opportunity to learn

from the successes and failures of post-colonial adaptation in other plural

societies. Guyana, for example, became an “anti-model” of successful national

integration; its experiences were highly instructive in that they showed other

countries what not to do (Premdas 1995). Having seen outbreaks of violence in

Guyana, the expulsion of Indians from East Africa and rumblings of ethnic

tension in Fiji, Mauritian policymakers knew how much was at stake in the

politics of accommodation (Bowman 1991). Late decolonization gave Mauritians

time and perspective to devise more effective solutions.

Finally, the existence of a clear ethnic majority may have created

conditions favorable for growth. Mauritius is an example of what Rabushka and

Shepsle (1974) call a plural society with a “dominant majority,” where one ethnic

group clearly holds an electoral majority and can afford to pursue policies

“without the cooperation of minorities.” While Rabushka and Shepsle argue that

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“violence frequently erupts” in this particular configuration of ethnic groups, they

do not supplement this generalization with an account of how the majority

group’s incentives influence outcomes. It is entirely possible that a majority

group, armed with the kind of comparative historical knowledge available to

countries that gained independence relatively late, might instead recognize that a

well-functioning system of electoral politics works to the majority’s advantage. A

dominant majority benefits from system-sustaining policies that facilitate national

integration and acceptance of a majoritarian regime. An ethnic group with a clear

demographic majority, assured of continuous electoral and political dominance,

would also pursue economically rational policies to maximize the rents that could

be gained from long-term taxation of healthy enterprises (Olson 2000). Indeed,

the existence of the ethnic compromise described in Chapter Two indicates that

the majority community was indeed confident of its political dominance.

By contrast, in countries characterized by a “competitive configuration,”

two or more ethnic groups are equally likely to seize control of the state

apparatus. In Guyana during the 1960s, for example, East Indians made up 47.8

percent of the population, while the Afro-Guyanese composed 44.8 percent

(Government of Guyana 1974). Under conditions where demographic proportions

are statistically similar, uncertain electoral outcomes create incentives for intense

ethnic mobilization at every election (Rabushka and Shepsle 1972). For the losers,

the closeness of the fight in a winner-take-all system detracts from regime

legitimacy and encourages defection from the system. For the winners, the

uncertainty of winning future elections might inspire heavyhanded state

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manipulation of electoral procedures and/or highly extractive, rent-seeking

policies (Olson 2000).

The foregoing analysis sheds some light on why Mauritius developed the

way it did. Mauritius became independent under conditions that reflected a history

of interethnic integration and cooperative behavior, which meant that some

historical reserves of “social capital” were available for nation-building (Putnam

1993). Meanwhile, comparative historical knowledge and favorable demographics

gave post-colonial elites from the majority community incentives to pursue

ambitious projects of national integration and system stability. These endowments

have undoubtedly contributed to democratic and economic consolidation in

Mauritius, especially in light of the experience of countries like Guyana that

shared few of these benefits.

Institutional Design and the Accommodation of Ethnic Diversity

Mauritius entered the independence era with certain advantages relative to

other plural societies, but local control of politics and the economy certainly

provided ample opportunities to exacerbate the fissures that remained. Fortunately

for Mauritius, post-colonial leaders crafted new institutional arrangements that

accommodated ethnic diversity through a series of working compromises. Facing

incentives to create a stable, prosperous nation, the nation-building Hindu elite

aimed to create institutions capable of eliciting cooperation both from its mass

constituency and from minority communities. The institutional environment in

independent Mauritius revolves around two seemingly contradictory but

pragmatic propositions. Public institutions emphasize centripetal, integrative

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norms and attempt to obscure or equalize the particularistic impacts of public

policies. At the same time, they acknowledge the existence of durable ethnic

identities and encourage quasi- consociational arrangements to secure inter-

communal acceptance. These institutional norms were projected into concrete

policies that effectively channeled side payments to cooperating groups. These

side payments took the form of integrative policies in the political, economic and

cultural spheres.

Political Accommodation

Mauritian political institutions, both formal and informal, have attempted

simultaneously to be ethnically neutral and ethnically representative. The debate

over electoral rules underscores the important role of formal institutions in

securing inter-ethnic political cooperation. In fully integrated societies, elections

are performative expressions of faith and engagement in national institutions.

Because a basic consensus exists on the nature of the political system, elections,

though competitive, are also ritualistic affirmations of national solidarity. In

ethnically polarized countries, however, electoral politics produce the opposite

effects (Premdas 1995). Because ethnic control of the state’s coercive apparatus is

at stake, elections in plural societies can expose the fault lines between

communities and pit them in bitterly competitive zero-sum games.

In Mauritius, the stakes were particularly high in the debate over electoral

rules. Prior to independence, positions on the issue corresponded closely to ethnic

affiliation. Members of the majority community naturally preferred single-

member constituencies elected by a first-past-the-post system, which will tend to

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magnify the political influence of an electoral majority (Mathur 1991). Minority

communities preferred proportional representation (PR), which would guarantee

them representation corresponding to their share of the population. In the end, the

British colonial administration brokered a compromise prior to the 1967 elections

that produced 3-member constituencies elected on a first-3-past-the-post

algorithm. In addition, the electoral laws provided for the distribution of 8 best-

loser seats to under-represented ethnic communities, guaranteeing parliamentary

representation to all minority groups. Under this system, the ethnic breakdown of

the elected legislature is calculated and compared to census data. Four candidates

from communities that obtained a disproportionately small share of seats are

appointed to the legislature.

This heterodox approach, which combined majoritarian and consociational

elements, created institutional incentives for inter-communal mass parties to

emerge, since parties appealing only to small segments of the population would

be unable to outmaneuver broad strategic alliances between different ethnic

political groups. Indeed, the final construction of electoral rules was designed to

force voters to choose between voting for three candidates based on party lines or

communal lines; the intentional division of loyalties has helped Mauritius develop

broadly inclusive multi-ethnic parties (Simmons 1982). Furthermore, the best-

loser system, though frequently denounced as an objectionable formalization of

obsolete communal cleavages, has served as the kind of basic guarantee of inter-

communal representation that theorists believe will facilitate inter-communal

cooperation (Movement Against Communalism 1995, Young 1994, Premdas

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1995). Indeed, complaints about an ‘unnecessary’ best loser system are

themselves evidence of good institutional engineering, as they demonstrate a

belief in the successful de-communalization of politics.

The integrative effects of the Mauritian electoral system become clearer in

contrast to the disastrous consequences associated with proportional

representation in Guyana. Proportional representation tends to “accentuate the

divisions already existing” in plural societies because groups do not need to

compromise to secure parliamentary representation. Under systems of

proportional representation, sizable ethnic groups can gain by focusing their

efforts on mobilizing as many as possible of their supporters prior to elections,

yielding intense ethnic politics, not coalition politics. In Guyana, where divisions

were already severe, proportional representation welded ethnic loyalty to party

identification as each group zealously exploited co-ethnic relationships to ensure

maximal representation (Mathur 1991, Premdas 1995). The politics of apanjaht

yielded election campaigns so “saturated by ethnic hatred” that election days

routinely produced violence, intimidation and virtual civil war (Premdas 1995).

Though the electoral system certainly cannot bear all the blame for apanjaht, it

exacerbated rather than mitigated extant ethnic political divisions.

Political accommodation has also been important in the informal

negotiation of consequential decisions. Mauritian economic policymaking, for

example, is notable for its dependence on highly consultative and inclusive

procedures. The state involves itself extensively in economic affairs and uses its

influence to elicit participation from the affected interest groups, including

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sectoral and ethnic organizations (Wellisz and Lam Shin Saw 1993, Brautigam

1997). Regular interaction between the private and the public sectors occurs

formally at the level of the Joint Economic Council, which brings together

representatives from the tightly organized Mauritian private sector (Jhumka

interview, Summer 2001). Private sector representatives note that they have been

pleasantly surprised by the pragmatism and cooperative attitude of government

policymakers. In some respects, inclusive informal negotiations between private

and public sector leaders are a type of consociational arrangement intended to

broker elite compromises (Lijphart 1977). As one corporate executive stated:

“Mauritius is so small that the private sector and public sector leaders allknow each other. They have cocktails together, exchange ideas, worktogether at the JEC. Each knows what the other is thinking, and that helpsgood policy develop” (Interview in Mauritius, Summer 2001).

Though this arrangement seems susceptible to Barry’s (1975) critique that

consociational arrangements produce unresponsive “elite cartels,” the Mauritian

government often engages broader segments of the population in consultations,

including mandatory annual tripartite negotiations responsible for establishing

industry-wide minimum wages (N. Nababsing interview, Summer 2001). The

government does not hesitate to involve non-governmental organizations and

other representatives of civil society in informal consultations, which ultimately

serve an important legitimating function by providing broad access to

policymaking. Though many of these negotiations involve civil society in the

context of sectoral rather than sectional engagement, the perceived

correspondence between ethnicity and economic position renders these

distinctions politically interchangeable.

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Ultimately, a stable majoritarian system provides clear benefits for

members of an ethnic majority, but political stability requires practices of

accommodation that guarantee baseline levels of participation and input from all

communities. The careful construction of formally inclusive and informally

consociational institutional arrangements has given the Hindu-dominated

Mauritian government symbolic legitimacy and the stability important to political

and economic development.

Economic Accommodation

In the Vision 2020 economic development strategy report, the Mauritian

government described the basic philosophy behind its social policy:

“We have achieved economic success partly because of the strength of ourwelfare system. For it is the free education, social security and health andwelfare services which have given us the high education levels, highhealth standards and, above all, the exceptional social cohesion whichhave underpinned our past economic development” (MEDRC 1997).

In a highly divided, plural society, politics can quickly become bitterly divisive.

When ethnic groups are highly mobilized and polarized, the battle for control of

the state takes on both symbolic and material importance, since ethnically intense

politics turn into a winner-take-all game where one ethnic coalition will

appropriate the coercive apparatus of the state. The Mauritian government has

managed to lower the stakes of ethnic competition by creating a universal

economic baseline guaranteed to all Mauritians on the basis of citizenship, not

ethnicity. Like the best-loser system, which creates a symbolically important

lower bound of representation, the welfare state guarantees members of all ethnic

groups a basic standard of living, lowering the stakes of inter-ethnic political

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competition (Brautigam 1997). The welfare state and the inclusive norms it

embodies have been a powerfully integrative force for encouraging national

loyalty, a fact enshrined in the name of the Ministry of Social Security and

National Solidarity, which oversees social welfare programs in Mauritius.

The Mauritian welfare state provides several types of social safety nets

that make national development personally relevant. A National Pension Fund

provides universal non-contributory benefits, additional contributory benefits, and

compensation for injured workers (Government of Mauritius 1998). A National

Savings Fund provides financial resources for retirees, and a means-tested Social

Aid scheme provides food subsidies, certain kinds of health care, and housing

assistance. While many benefits provided under the welfare state are means-

tested, a substantial number of social programs provide benefits to all Mauritians

on the basis of citizenship.

Some observers have argued that better targeting is necessary to reach

truly needy groups (Mauritius Research Council 1999). Indeed, the universal

welfare state may not be the most efficient model for a state with extremely

limited resources. At the same time, the symbolic value of a universal system

cannot be underestimated in a society composed of segments obsessively focused

upon their share in the national pie. The Mauritian welfare state is part of an

attempt to minimize distributional conflicts between deeply divided social groups,

and it has undoubtedly contributed to improvements in income equality and

public health indicators. More bluntly, the welfare state can be seen as a massive

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structural side payment to minority and/or disenfranchised groups for cooperating

with the nation-building project.

Furthermore, the Mauritian welfare state has redistributed the gains from

development without coercively redistributing the island’s productive assets. The

government has allowed the Franco-Mauritian minority to retain control of the

private sector, and has taxed its economic activities to build a broadly inclusive

welfare system. Whereas nationalizations and destructively extractive policies

have tainted public-private relations in ethnically heterogeneous states like Ghana,

Fiji and Guyana (Easterly 2001a, Carroll 1994, Premdas 1995). Mauritian elites

have established secure private property rights, negotiated favorable trading

conditions, and steadily taxed and redistributed economic gains to all Mauritians.

This pragmatic and moderate social compromise has helped build national

cohesion (MEDRC 1997).

The norms of accommodation and universal distribution are also apparent

in the Export Processing Zone (EPZ) Act of 1970. Unlike many developing

countries, which used export processing zones to aggregate scarce capital and

infrastructure in a single, geographically restricted enclave, the Mauritian EPZ

extended benefits to export processing firms that could be located anywhere in the

island (Woldekidan 1994). Even though no area of Mauritius is ethnically

homogeneous, ethnic ratios differ between regions. The dispersion of the EPZ

meant that employment could be generated all over the island, neatly obviating

the inevitably politicized choice of a single geographic location.

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In general, Mauritian industrial policy has attempted to create economic

opportunities that are not specific to ethnic groups. One government minister I

interviewed noted that the current attempt to build a “cyber-island” around

information and computer technologies was partially motivated by a desire to

erode the ethnic division of labor in Mauritius, since these intensively skill-based

industries will provide less room for ethnic discrimination (Interview in

Mauritius, Summer 2001). Economic and social policies have extensively

employed universal incentives and transfer payments designed to build consensus

around the country’s basic development model. By sharing the benefits of

national development with members from all ethnic communities, these

integrative practices have contributed to national integration.

Cultural Accommodation

Because ethnic identification is closely related to the propagation and

communication of symbolic differences, cultural policy is an important dimension

of the institutional management of ethnic diversity. Three possible cultural

strategies exist for the government of a plural society. A government can promote

a biased cultural agenda by emphasizing one cultural tradition (normally its own)

above other traditions. Alternatively, it can adopt a negative cultural agenda by

refusing to endorse any cultural tradition. Finally, the state can promulgate a

positive cultural agenda by according equal promotional treatment to all cultural

traditions. While the first stance tends to intensify conflict by demonstrating

ethnic favoritism, either of the latter two qualifies as an accommodative

equilibrium. The negative position, representative of the American model, treats

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cultures equally by relegating cultural differences to the private sphere. In

Mauritius, however, the state is perceived to over-represent one ethnic

community, so such a stance would be interpreted as a substantive bias in favor of

Indo-Mauritian culture. Instead, Mauritius has managed to accommodate diversity

through a heterodox approach. In arenas where state resources are involved, the

government has embraced positive institutional norms supportive of all

communities. In private arenas, the state has encouraged the elimination of

communal identification. Cultural policy in Mauritius, then, selectively switches

between positive and negative cultural agendas. This approach acknowledges the

value of cultural resources without involving the state in an ethnically biased

political agenda.

The most obvious area of positive agenda-setting is the government

subsidy to religious organizations in Mauritius. Religious groups receive a per-

head subsidy to fund their activities, and they also qualify for certain exemptions

from taxes and tariffs on utility usage. Religions are also an important source of

national holidays; at independence, Mauritius held the world record for national

holidays (32 each year) because each religious sect wanted its sacred dates to be

enshrined as a public event (Dommen and Dommen 1999). Though Prime

Minister Ramgoolam eventually reduced the number of holidays to 10 each year,

70% of the remaining celebrations are sectarian in nature. Table 4.1 lists the

holidays that remain:

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Table 4.1: National Holidays in Mauritius

New Year (2 days)Id-El-Fitr

Chinese Spring FestivalLabour Day

Thaiposam CavadeeGanesh Chaturti

Maha ShivratreeAll Saints DayNational Day

DivaliOugadi

Christmas

Source: Dommen and Dommen 1999

Close examination reveals that even drastic reductions in the number of officially

sanctioned holidays left each of the island’s major ethnic groups represented on

the public calendar. Compromises like this one are indicative of the Mauritian

government’s pragmatism and sensitivity to the distributive implications of

cultural policies.

The positive approach to cultural policy, however, can be expensive. It is

cheaper and easier to avoid cultural involvement than it is to furnish public

support to every extant cultural tradition. Where possible, the Mauritian

government has attempted to avoid entanglement in politically sensitive cultural

issues. For example, the government has, with notable exceptions, avoided the

controversial issue of language. Mauritius has no official language because each

language is associated with an ethnic group, and official adoption of one would

provoke intense communal agitation. French is the language of the historically

dominant Franco-Mauritian community; Bhojpuri is the language of the Hindu

majority; Arabic and Urdu correspond to the Muslim community, and the Sino-

Mauritian community speaks various Chinese dialects. English is the language

most often used by government precisely because it is “foreign and ostensibly

neutral” (Miles 2000). Though English is distastefully linked to colonial

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oppression, it has two key advantages from a political perspective. The English

language is useful in international transactions, and it symbolically unites

communities in the common memory of nationalist mobilization (Eriksen 1998).

The Mauritian government has even attempted to reduce the salience of

ethnic divisions in the private sphere. Until the late 1970s, sports teams in

Mauritius were organized along communal lines. Teams with names like the

Hindu Cadets attracted support from co-ethnic fanatics, and football matches

became mimetic contests between communal segments of the population. An

editorial in Le Mauricien warned that conflicts in the microcosm of sports could

fan the flames of communalism in the society at large:

“We have very often seen the degree of communal tension generatedduring a football match between two communal teams. One of these days,the tension may degenerate into communal fighting, the consequences ofwhich would doubtlessly be very grave” (10 July 1979).

Recognizing these dangers, the Ministry of Youth and Sports decommunalized

team sports, noting that:

“There was a time where you could say by the name of a Mauritian he wasthe fan of which team. People used to associate the prestige of acommunity to that of a football team. It was through dialogue that webrought this decommunalization, and to-day in the sports federations, anyteam bearing a communal name is not allowed to become a member”(Sessional Papers, 1984).

By intervening to remove ethnic affiliations from the realm of private athletic

competition, the Mauritian government demonstrated a normative commitment to

the elimination of organized inter-communal competition. Indeed, successive

governments have initiated innovative campaigns designed to encourage inter-

communal harmony in citizens’ private lives, including a National Courtesy

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Campaign that distributed anti- communalist pamphlets and literature at major

hypermarkets and public spaces around the island (MACOSS 2000).

Regime legitimacy depends crucially on the state’s ability to appear non-

partisan, so pursuing neutral policy equilibria and adopting anti- communalist

rhetoric are strategies central to the management of cultural diversity. Because it

is demographically associated with the Hindu majority, the Mauritian government

has to adopt certain positive cultural policies to demonstrate a commitment to

equal treatment. When it can, however, the government avoids addressing cultural

affairs, except when it intervenes to make inclusive statements about building

national community and resisting communalism. This idiosyncratic combination

of intervention and disengagement has contributed to inter-ethnic cooperation and

the political legitimacy of the Mauritian state.

The Construction of the Rainbow Society

Though the referendum on independence ethnically mobilized the

Mauritian population, the victorious nation-building elite had powerful incentives

and resources to build a stable society. The political, economic and cultural

policies developed in the post-colonial era built a cooperative institutional

environment that attempted to reconcile the project of the nation-state with the

existence of durable sub-national ethnic identities. The institutional arrangements

described above form what World Bank observers called the “typical Mauritian

compromise: a socially acceptable and economically satisfactory, although not an

optimal, solution” (Wellisz and Lam Shin Saw 1993). Indeed, it is the

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institutionalization of compromise that has greatly facilitated the inscription of

national identities upon ethnic bodies.

Commitment to a stable national polity has not eliminated ethnicity in

Mauritius, but it has successfully re-framed the institutional matrix of incentives

that guide intersubjective encounters. If ethnic identification and inter-group

competition are responsible for the perverse economic effects of ethnic diversity,

strategies that reduce the salience of exclusive identities can help plural societies

manage social conflict. Integrative social bargains have modified the institutional

context for inter-ethnic interactions in Mauritius, and they are largely responsible

for preventing the pathologies traditionally associated with strong sub-national

ethnic identification. Ethnic diversity persists in Mauritius, but the rainbow

society is blending at the edges, not tearing at the seams.