Since (re-)democratisation many Latin American states opened their constitutions towards legal multiculturalism (e.g. Colombia 1991, prominently Bolivia 2009). These attempts for a political inclusion of ethnic minority groups are commonly rated as decisive steps towards democratic consolidation. However, proper solutions on how to strengthen the implementation of multicultural rights and conditions for an effective usage by target groups remain to be investigated.
The paper briefly presents an analytical framework for analyzing ethnic interest representation developed in course of a PhD project that analyzes two prominent types of multicultural rights in Latin America: consultation and territorial autonomy arrangements. The focus is on a type of policy-making that particularly affects ethnic groups in the region: politics on land-use.
It is assumed that besides the design of multicultural rights, one needs to account for additional intervening variables when assessing an impact of ethnic groups on policies: (I) organizational forms on a meso-level and (II) macro-structural features of politics that determine if groups can seize access to relevant decision-making areas.
The paper focuses on methodological issues on how to assess the second intervening variable best. Conceptually, a network perspective is chosen for capturing relations between ethnic and public actors. Network patterns can be modeled as exchange relations of resources such as legitimacy, information and expertise relevant for influencing policies (Rhodes/Marsh 1992, Atkinson/Coleman 1989). Multicultural rights may work as exogenous triggers entailing incremental changes of network structures, thus, improving the position of ethnic groups.
Social network analysis complements this approach as an empirical method for tracing network relations (Knoke/Yang 2008). A small-N cross-case comparison (Bolivia, Colombia, Panama) aims at delivering insights on patterns of contemporary ethnic interest representation in Latin America. A set of methodological challenges shall be discussed, e.g. regarding the specification of actor constellations and data collection on part of all involved actors.
