Reserved Seats in National Legislatures: A Research Note

Abstract

As competitive democracy is crafted in ethnically plural and postconflict nation-states, the question of whether or not to reserve legislative seats for communal groups—ethnic, national, or religious—is increasingly a topic of debate. This research note provides an overview of targeted electoral mechanisms designed to ensure the inclusion in national parliaments of representatives of ethnic, racial, national, or religious communities. The data show that the existence of reserved seats in national legislatures for such groups is much more widespread, and less idiosyncratic, than many scholars previously thought. This finding, along with current discussions in high-profile cases of constitutional design, suggests that the occurrence and impact of reserved seats should be analyzed in greater detail.