The Dilemma of Recognition: Administrative Categories and Cultural DiversityAuthor(s): Frank de ZwartSource: Theory and Society, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Apr., 2005), pp. 137-169Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4501719Accessed: 26/05/2009 09:36

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Theory and Society (2005) 34: 137-169 @ Springer 2005

The dilemma of recognition: Administrative categories and cultural diversity

FRANK DE ZWART Leiden University

Abstract. Governments around the world combat inequality by means of group- specific redistribution. Some pursue redistribution that benefits groups, but also wish to avoid accentuating or even recognizing group distinctions. This poses a dilemma that they try to resolve by adjusting the category system used to target redistribution. There are three types of adjustment: accommodation (the multicultural approach), denial (the ideal-typical liberal solution), and replacement (a compromise). In replacement the targets of redistributive policies are constructed to avoid accentuation or recogni- tion of inconvenient group distinctions, but still allow redistribution that benefits these groups. Replacement is increasingly in demand around the world because the disad- vantages of multiculturalism are becoming apparent while denial is hard to sustain in the face of group inequality. The actual effect of replacement is little researched and less understood, however. Does it resolve the dilemma of recognition? Two examples- India and Nigeria-where replacement has been tried ever since the 1950s cast doubt on its viability.

This article explores government responses to a policy dilemma in so- cially or culturally diverse societies. Ethnic, caste, and racial diversity often implies durable inequality between groups, and many govern- ments pursue redistributive policies to reduce it. Unlike pensions or health and insurance plans, targeted redistribution policies require def- inition, recognition, and even mobilization of the groups concerned, which accentuates caste, ethnic, and racial distinctions. Some gov- ernments fear this side effect: targeted redistributive policies, though considered necessary to reduce group inequality, may also promote ethnic conflict,' create vested interests in group distinctions,2 diminish public support for redistribution,3 and thus defeat their own purpose. Hence the "dilemma of recognition."

The Government of India struggled with this dilemma when, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, it set a national affirmative action policy. The purpose of this policy was to combat economic, educational, and

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political inequality between castes, but the government was acutely aware that designating castes as beneficiaries of affirmative action en- tailed recognition and accentuation of the very social distinctions it considered to be the root cause of the inequality to be combated. This dilemma was (and still is) acute in India because caste divisions are so closely tied to group inequality. It is not unique to India, however. Inequality between ethnic groups can pose the same dilemma: gov- ernment might wish to reduce inequality between ethnic groups by redistributing economic, political, or cultural rights among them. It might also anticipate that doing so would promote group inequality and social fragmentation. Makers of the independent Federation of Nigeria, in the late 1950s, had to deal with this dilemma. On one hand, the appeal of a federal design was that it would enable the Central Government to share out political rights over the main ethnic groups. Many contemporary observers considered such redistribution an abso- lute necessity if Nigeria was to survive as a state at all, but many also argued that federation on an ethno-linguistic basis would multiply and entrench ethnic divisions, stimulate inequality and ethnic conflict, and thus be an even greater threat to the nation. Studies on redistributive policies in the United States show that the government struggles with the same dilemma. The conditions of life for many blacks have wors- ened in the last few decades, and are still getting worse. There is, as Paul Sniderman et al. put it, "widespread agreement on the magnitude of the problem," but nevertheless "no genuine large-scale initiatives to improve the life chances of the worst-off blacks have been launched in over a decade." The reason is a political stalemate between advocates and opponents of racially targeted policies,4 or, in terms of this article, the unsolved dilemma of recognition.

Three coping strategies

How can governments cope with the dilemma of recognition? There are three policy options: accommodation, denial, and replacement. The first policy option, accommodation, alias multiculturalism or "the politics of recognition,"' is to designate beneficiaries of redistributive policies according to membership in groups that state and society take for granted. Affirmative action in the United States is an example. The beneficiaries are racial and ethnic minorities whose identities and num- bers are established in the census by "self-identification,"6 which means that people choose their "identity" from a list of racial and ethnic cate- gories made up by government officials whose view of social reality it reflects.7 Policy makers treat the social categories as real groups, and

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the representatives of ethnic groups and castes who demand accom- modation do likewise. Subtleties of constructivist social theory like suspicion of essentialist group definition are lost on them.8 Minority policy in the Netherlands until the early 1990s also illustrates the ac- commodative approach: it was informed by the popular doctrine that integration is best served by encouraging immigrants to "maintain their own culture."9 The Dutch government facilitated "maintenance" with an array of redistributive policies like special education and affirma- tive action, targeting a range of recognized "cultural minorities." In the 1990s, these policies were criticized for failing to promote integration and equality, and the Dutch government turned to replacement.

The second policy option, denial, is to insist that, despite inequality between social or cultural groups, redistribution policies do not ben- efit any particular group. Denial fits the ideal-typical liberal state that stresses individual rights and "does not recognize any preexisting, or- ganic, or transcendent structure to society."'0 A textbook example of denial is the philosophy of republican citizenship that officially informs integration policy in France.

France does not collect data - in the census or otherwise - on citizens' race or ethnicity, and French officials often deny all relevance of groups or communities to policy. A French government report to the Human Rights Committee acclaims that "France is a country in which there are no minorities."'' A Director of the Social Action Fund for Immigrants and Their Family says integration in France is an individual matter and "the concept of community has no relevance in the French system."'2 The Haut Conseil a l'Integration, set up by President Mitterand to ad- vise the government on integration policy, depicts the "French model" as follows:

The French conception of integration should obey a logic of equality and not a logic of minorities. The principles of identity and equality which go back to the Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen... [entail] the equality of individuals before the law, whatever their origin, race or religion... to the exclusion of an institutional recognition of minorities.'3

These statements represent a civic assimilationist tradition of discourse on nationhood among the French political and cultural elite.14 This tradition promotes denial as a policy option by raising the politi- cal costs of accommodation,'" but it is not uncontested in France, and studies show that it does not really determine policy making. Denial fits the ideal-typical liberal state, but in France, as in most

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other liberal states, ethnic and racial categories affect redistributive policy.16

One reason is "administrative pragmatism." The origins of affirmative action in the U.S. are indicative. Skrentny notes that individualistic, color-blind policy was slow in producing any visible reduction in racial inequality after 1964.17 Race riots in many American cities in 1965- 1968 increased political pressure on government agencies charged with enforcing the Civil Rights Act to get quick results, and their pragmatic solution was to introduce race-conscious, accommodative affirmative action that, "it was said time and again, was effective, it was techni- cally necessary, it worked."'8 Administrative pragmatism "may super- sede other cultural rules-even the moral boundaries of the color-blind model," it being "less risky to advocate affirmative action than to pre- side over a demonstrably failing agency."'9 Administrative pragmatism need not lead to accommodation; however, it may also enjoin the third policy option.

This third policy option, replacement, is a compromise between denial and accommodation: a government pursues redistribution that benefits caste, ethnic, or racial groups, but constructs its own social categories, different in name and usually more inclusive than the folk categories they replace. The purpose of these constructs is to avoid official recog- nition of social divisions thought to cause the problem, yet permit redistribution that benefits disadvantaged groups.

William Wilson's case for universal (as opposed to targeted) policies as the best way to help the "truly disadvantaged" black "underclass" in American cities is illustrative.2o He argues that "targeted policies" should be avoided because they stigmatize blacks, benefit primarily the black middle class, and cannot generate sustained political support. Ef- fective redistribution to the "truly disadvantaged," requires universal policies that serve the "hidden agenda... to improve the life chances of. .. the ghetto underclass by emphasizing programs... [to] which the more advantaged groups of all races can positively relate."21 Immi- gration policies in France had a similar hidden agenda before the rise of Le Pen's Front National gave new impetus to universalistic Repub- lican discourse.22 Favell argues that despite the dominant discourse of republican citizenship and the policy of intigration (assimilation) officially sanctioned by this discourse, French practice-at least un- til the 1980s-was pragmatic. Immigration policy centered on socio- economic insertion, an "unprincipled... loose collection of narrowly

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targeted practices" that addressed socioeconomic factors, not culture or ethnicity, in an attempt to avoid big symbolic political questions like republican citizenship versus communitaurisme, as the French call multiculturalism. Socioeconomic insertion policies operated in loca- tions with a high concentration of new immigrants.23 Favell wants to dethrone Republican discourse and expose its "hidden agenda." What he calls "a nakedly instrumental strategy of the state for dealing with a social issue it did not wish to see explode,"24 I call "replacement," a compromise between accommodation and denial meant to solve the dilemma of recognition.

Replacement: Does it work?

Most governments feel the need to reduce group inequality. Denial is hard to sustain even when it fits the dominant political philosophy as in France and the United States. Denial is unpopular with politically organized minorities, inefficient in delivering benefits to the needy, and therefore expensive for governments.25 In most countries and in most international political institutions, moreover, the dominant po- litical philosophy favors accommodation. Many studies from various academic fields argue that accommodating group diversity is more just, economical, and effective than denying or replacing it, and many gov- ernments pursue accommodative policies. Advocates of accommoda- tion ignore the danger that it may exacerbate ethnic and caste divisions and thus entrench inequality. This danger is real and (as argued be- low) accommodation does not solve the dilemma of recognition but exacerbates it.

Governments that acknowledge the problem are inclined to experiment with replacement. The question is whether it works. This article ex- plores two exemplary cases where governments faced the dilemma of recognition and opted for replacement instead of denial or accommo- dation to solve it. India's affirmative action and Nigeria's federal state creation policies have used replacement categories for about fifty years. Their evolution is highly instructive. Replacement is an exercise in so- cial construction-governments attempt to institute social categories of their own making by aiming redistributive policies at them, but this en- gineered social construction is hard to control. Extant categories like castes in India and ethnicities in Nigeria are not so easily replaced. Be they primordial groups or colonial constructions, they are established social facts today.26

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Diversity and inequality

The current popularity in national and international policy of accom- modation makes replacement categories look obsolete. India and Nige- ria opted for replacement. India evaded recognition of castes by desig- nating so-called "backward classes" as eligible for affirmative action; Nigeria avoided emphasis on ethnic divisions by using regional cate- gories in federal state creation. But these examples date from the 1950s, when unity and individual equality rather than diversity and group rights were overwhelming government concerns. Today the main trend in redistributive policies is not to replace but to accommodate social and cultural cleavages.27

The accommodative trend is informed by ideas about justice in current political philosophy, but also serves more mundane purposes like con- flict management and organizational efficiency. Kymlica and Norman say advocates of minority rights - as opposed to defenders of tradi- tional liberal individualism - in political philosophy have made their point so effectively that today "few thoughtful people continue to think that justice can simply be defined in terms of difference-blind rules or institutions."28 To the extent that this claim concerns politics and ad- ministration, there is some truth to it. Policy makers all over the world subscribe to the idea that justice entails group rights. Multiculturalism as a policy doctrine has been remarkably successful in many countries. Yet many thoughtful people, including political philosophers, oppose group rights and multiculturalism, but have not made their point effec- tively. In fact, most have not made their point at all because, as Barry says, scholars who do not take a multiculturalist position tend to "con- sider the literature of multiculturalism not worth wasting powder and shot on," and work on other subjects.29

Ideas about justice and equality are only one reason for the popularity of accommodation. There are also pragmatic reasons like conflict preven- tion. It is conventional wisdom among policy makers, journalists, and academics that ethnically or culturally diverse societies are especially conflict prone. Conflicts are thought to be more likely where different cultural practices co-exist. Moreover, if, as often, discrimination and inequality follow cultural boundaries, they may constitute grievances that inspire rebellion.30 Although, as Fearon and Laitin show, there is little evidence to support this theory,31 many governments believe it, and act upon it by "preventing" or managing ethnic conflict through the redistribution of political, cultural, or economic group rights. Gurr

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documents this increasing trend all over the world since the early 1990s. It is motivated, he argues, by the need to "manage" violent ethnic con- flict, and facilitated by the emergence, in international politics, of a series of conflict-mitigating doctrines that stress the need to protect the collective rights of national minorities.32 "Managed ethnic hetero-

geneity, as Gurr calls it, stimulates national governments to recognize cultural pluralism, pursue affirmative action, and experiment with au- tonomy for disadvantaged minorities.33

Another pragmatic reason for accommodation is organizational sur- vival. Organizations that are congruent with their social and institu- tional environment gain legitimacy and more easily obtain the resources they need to survive.34 Moreover, accommodation is cheap. Organiza- tional designs based on unfamiliar categories are costly: They have to be invented, communicated, and sometimes enforced. To avoid these transaction costs,35 organizations tend to incorporate established social distinctions rather than replace them,36 and so may official policy, as "self-identification" in the United States illustrates. The Census Bureau lists ethnic and racial groups and asks people to assign themselves to one of them. The government began self-identification in the 1960s for reasons of economy and legitimacy - to save on fieldworkers going door to door and to avoid forced classification by government agents.37 Incorporating established distinctions can also be an unintended conse- quence of non-accommodative schemes, as the cases to follow illustrate in detail: officially Nigeria and India avoid naming castes and ethnic groups as beneficiaries of redistributive policy, but administrators of- ten lack the means or will to circumvent existing organizations and interest groups based on caste and ethnicity and to the seek or create alternative targets.38

It thus seems that justice, effective conflict management, and adminis- trative economy all profit by accommodating diversity in policy design. But what about the dilemma of recognition? Was it unnecessary for the rulers of India and Nigeria to fear promoting or prolonging inequality as a byproduct of recognizing caste or ethnic groups for sake of redis- tribution? Not according to some theorists. Constructivist theory, for instance, gives substance to this fear. It teaches us to question what it is, exactly, that is being accommodated. It may be, in Gellner's phrase, that governments in their urge to define, register, and target social categories with policies "make the worlds which they claim tofind."39 Indeed, the government schemes that according to constructivist studies made In- dia's castes and Africa's tribes more salient and rigid identities than

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they were before40 were "accommodative policies." Accommodation is instrumental to the social construction of identities and groups, and thus accentuates the dilemma of recognition.41

Another theory that highlights the dilemma of recognition is Tilly's explanation of durable inequality.42 Tilly argues that categorical social distinctions facilitate exploitation and opportunity hoarding and thus contribute to making and sustaining inequality.43 There are two steps in the argument. The first is organizational requirements of exploitation and opportunity hoarding. People who engage in these activities need to maintain distinctions between insiders and outsiders; ensure solidarity, loyalty, control, and succession; and monopolize profitable knowledge. These are organizational problems, and "the installation of explicitly categorical boundaries" helps solve them." The second step in the argument is how to install categorical boundaries. As noted, it is un- economical for organizations to make new categories because they re- quire design, communication, and enforcement. Organizations can save these costs by incorporating instituted categories - especially if these categories "incorporate forms of inequality that are already well estab- lished in the surrounding world."45 Tilly calls this emulation - social distinctions are copied and become relevant in other than their original settings - and stresses its crucial role in the spread and entrenchment of categorical boundaries. Moreover, emulation leads to adaptation: once categorical distinctions find their way into an organization, "all parties build multiple routines around the categorical boundary and thus acquire interests in its maintenance."46 Adaptation tends to raise the "costs of moving to theoretically available alternatives,"47 and thus further entrenches categorical distinctions.

There are different mechanisms by which accommodative policies can generate inequality instead of reducing it. Incorporating estab- lished social categories into a policy design inscribes names, mean- ings, and relational routines attached to these categories that facilitate unequal treatment.48 Moreover, how much groups can profit from ac- commodative policies depends on their mobilization capacity.49 That capacity is not equally spread over all groups, so some profit more from a given policy than others as the cases below illustrate.50 Fi- nally, writing existing social categories into law and redistributive pol- icy designs benefits political leaders or other representatives of recog- nized categories and creates vested interests in maintaining categorical boundaries.51 Emulation activates these mechanisms, and Tilly con- cludes that greater equality requires that "[a]uthoritative intervention

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(democratically sanctioned or otherwise) inhibit the matching of inte- rior with exterior categories in reward distributing organizations."52

Emulation in Tilly's sense is increasingly at issue in debates over multiculturalism in European countries.53 A recent evaluation of ac- commodative integration policy in the Netherlands is indicative. The Dutch government has long pursued an extreme multicultural integra- tion policy, providing generous subsidies to facilitate cultural plural- ism and granting group rights in education and employment.54 The official aim is to combat inequality, but, as Ruud Koopmans points out, the policy is self-defeating. The Netherlands scores worse than most European countries on job discrimination against minorities.55 It also scores badly on key indicators of inequality: dependence on social wel- fare, unemployment, and high school drop out rates among immigrants are twice as high in Holland as in Germany.56 Ethnic and religious groups enjoy formal equality, but group traits that entail inequality are reinforced.57

All Dutch cities subsidize minority projects like "training for co- management," "multimedia information for education and child care," "political participation," "education in native (non-Dutch) languages," "education for radio and television broadcasting," "activities to pro- mote cultural identity," "photography," "counseling," "moving on mu- sic," and even sewing.58 These projects target specific ethnic and subethnic categories: For example, Kosbe is a subsidized welfare or- ganization that promotes the integration of immigrants from Suriname (a former Dutch colony) in and around Rotterdam. It supports a range of smaller organizations (all subsidized in turn) that implement inte- gration projects: Wi Masanga serves Afro-Surinamese, Setasan serves Javanese Surinamese, and Aona Bhavan serves Surinamese Hindus. There is also a sociocultural center for Surinamese Indians (native South Americans) as well as centers for women that target various eth- nic groups separately. Ditto all immigrant communities in large and middle-sized cities in the Netherlands.59

Policy doctrines have changed radically in the Netherlands since the early 1990s; accommodation is no longer the norm.60 Like Wilson's "hidden agenda," national and municipal policy documents from the early 1990s onward replace "categorical policy" that targets ethnic or cultural groups with "general policy" aimed at "the neighborhood," and "people in disadvantaged positions." These replacement categories pose a problem in the implementation phase, however. Their evasive

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definition of targets makes officials depend on "bottom-up input" in deciding where and how to "land" policy initiatives. Hence officials have stimulated and subsidized the involvement of so-called "self- organizations" in policy implementation. Since self-organizations have a narrow ethnic base they helped channel "general policy" back into accommodation.61

The dilemma of recognition is high on the agenda of most other Eu- ropean policy circles: emulation and proliferation of social categories encouraged by government policies are at issue now. In India and Nige- ria, they have long been at issue. Governments there anticipated that accommodation would mobilize social groups and generate inequality instead of reducing it. To prevent that, they started right after inde- pendence in the 1940s and 1960s to base redistributive policies on replacement categories, and still do so. Has replacement solved the dilemma of recognition?

Making replacement categories in India and Nigeria

The Government of India designated Socially and Educationally Back- ward Classes and made them eligible for affirmative action.62 Today over 40 percent of India's population falls in this category. The cen- tral government reserves 27 percent of government jobs and places in institutions of higher education exclusively for them. Most state governments do the same; some maintain even higher quotas. There are other categories eligible for preferential treatment as well. Sched- uled Castes and Tribes, for instance, have their own quotas. Scheduled Castes and Tribes is an administrative label (some say euphemism) for established and commonly recognized social groups. Scheduled Castes are the Untouchables; Scheduled Tribes are India's original indigenous population. Preferential treatment for these groups is written into the Constitution of India, which has a list appended that names all the communities that qualify under these labels. Backward Classes are a different case; they are not merely an administrative label but also a replacement category. The Constitution guarantees affirmative action for Backward Classes, but attaches no list that names the groups that qualify. In fact, when the Constitution was framed, nobody knew who the Backward Classes were. The category was a purely administrative construct made up to solve the dilemma of recognition.

Framers of the Indian Constitution aimed to reduce caste inequality and avoided constitutional recognition of castes and caste distinctions. The

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Constitution stresses individual equality as a fundamental principle, and its preamble envisages a "casteless society." Moreover, various ar- ticles prohibit discrimination on the basis of caste. To prevent bringing caste distinctions back in with affirmative action, framers of the Con- stitution devised the replacement category Socially and Educationally Backward Classes.63 In Constitutional debates of the early 1950s, many parliamentarians asked questions about the identity of the Backward Classes. But these questions could not be answered; identity of the Backward Classes was left to be established later by special Backward Classes Commissions still to be appointed. This does not mean that par- ticipants in the debates had no idea who the Backward Classes were: Law Minister B.R. Ambedkar - himself one of the principal drafters of the Constitution - bluntly replied that "[w]hat are called the backward classes are... nothing else but a collection of certain castes."64 Other participants probably shared this expectation - it is "abundantly clear from the debate that Ambedkar only said what the others expected: the backward classes would be a list of castes and communities"65 - but most of them, not least Prime Minister Nehru himself, were careful not to mention it. Nehru described the backward classes as "groups, classes, individuals, communities, if you like, who are backward."66 Other speakers struggled with similarly vague descriptions, avoiding all reference to caste.67 Thus the Socially and Educationally Back- ward Classes would enable the government to distribute group quotas without having to recognize castes.

A comparable attempt to solve the dilemma of recognition by means of replacement categories occurred in Nigeria when, still under British rule, the government designed a federal state. Federation can serve as the functional equivalent of affirmative action: it can further re- distribution of political, educational, and economic opportunities to the advantage of government designated social categories.68 The ques- tion for a federal Nigeria was whether to accommodate ethnic claims in the creation of states. Nigeria contains a multitude of ethnicities, alias tribes, and many leaders or representatives of these groups used federation to claim a state of their own. Fear of deepening ethnic cleav- ages and stimulating the proliferation of claims made the government decide against accommodation. When the Federation of Nigeria was founded in 1951, it recognized three regional governments: the North- ern, Western, and Eastern region. The constitutional revision of 1954 curbed the powers of the center and made these three regions vir- tually autonomous.69 This three-state federal structure, based on ge- ographic rather than ethnic criteria, was carried over into the 1960

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Independence Constitution, serving "administrative rather than ethnic needs."70

Ethnic needs were not entirely neglected, however. Some groups were accommodated in the three-state structure. Each of the states, for in- stance, had an ethnic majority - 55 percent Hausa-Fulani in the North- ern region, 64 percent Igbo in the Eastern region, and 76 percent Yoruba in the Western region. But these groups represented a small portion of the many claimants. All three regions had numerous minorities who feared that the three-state structure would exclude them from posi- tions of power and who therefore organized to demand states of their own.71 Many contemporary political leaders wanted a much more ac- commodative design of the Constitution. Azikewe and Awolowo,72 for instance, argued that territorial organization of Nigeria should be de- termined by the "cultural factor."73 Awolowo wrote in 1947 that "our ultimate goal [is] a true federal constitution [whereby] each group, however small, is entitled to the same treatment as any other group, however large.... Each group must be autonomous in regard to its in- ternal affairs. Each must have its own Regional House of Assembly."74

At the Nigeria constitutional conference held in London in 1957, fif- teen proposals for separate states were submitted.75 To cope with these, the British Government instituted the Willink Commission to research minority fears, and if necessary propose measures to allay those fears. In its report a year later, however, the commission defended the three- state status quo.76 It argued that making new states would only create new minorities77 and "accentuate and underline tribal divisions which a wiser statesmanship would seek gradually to obliterate."78 Replace- ment with the geographically based three-state structure served this "wiser statesmanship."

Replacement and fragmentation

Affirmative action for the Backward Classes in India and federalism on a non-ethnic basis in Nigeria are still pursued. The replacement cate- gories on which these policies were founded have failed their purpose, however. The governments could not maintain the boundaries they set with these categories. India's Backward Classes - invented to replace castes - turned into an ever expanding list of separate castes, and the three-state structure based on regions in Nigeria - made to replace eth- nic claims - turned into a structure of 36 more or less ethnically based

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states today, with demands for more states still coming in. What went wrong?

Affirmative action in India

India reserves 27 percent of government jobs and places in higher education for the Backward Classes. But since the latter comprise over 40 percent of the population, their quota leaves a great discrepancy between available benefits and the number of potential beneficiaries. Moreover, as often with affirmative action, the actual beneficiaries are not a random sample of the eligibles. People from more powerful and relatively better-off segments among the eligibles benefit most, and the actual beneficiaries are viewed by the others as categories: in casu as certain castes or subcastes. This situation stimulates group formation because for people who are eligible for preferential treatment but have not yet profited, the best option is to define themselves as another subcategory and claim their share. The official criteria for eligibility are rarely precise enough to inhibit subcategorization, especially if these criteria are made to replace established social categories.

In India, this logic defeated the purpose of replacement because the sub- categories that emerged and claimed their share were based on caste. Caste categories make more sense to most people than the replacement category "class." Therefore, as Tilly's theory of "emulation" would pre- dict, "caste" is more efficient and economical than "backward class" as a basis for the organization and mobilization required to make effective claims for quotas. As a result, successive Governments in India have found it impossible to keep affirmative action within the limits of the replacement category Backward Classes.

The first national Backward Classes Commission to research "back- wardness" and identify the Backward Classes began its work in 1953. After almost two years of research - traveling all over the country, re- ceiving over 3, 000 memoranda, and holding almost 6, 000 interviews - it came up with a list of 2, 399 eligible castes. Its report expressed doubt and regret and stressed that the Commission had tried but failed to avoid recognizing castes because it could give no other meaning to the category Backward Classes.79 "We would like to make clear," it said, "that we are... anxious to eradicate the evils of the caste system [and not] desirous of perpetuating a system which is operating to the detriment of common nationhood. We tried to avoid caste but we found it difficult to ignore caste in the present prevailing conditions."'8 Even

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Muslims and Christians claimed to be divided into castes. Chairman Kalelkar complained:

[P]rivileges accorded to Hindu castes acted as a bait and a bribe inciting Muslim and Christian society to revert to caste and caste prejudices.... We discovered to our pain and sorrow that... Indian Christians were prepared in many places to assert that they were still guided by caste... in social hierarchy of high and low.8'

The efflorescence of caste distinctions that this Commission stimulated persists today. A second national Backward Classes Commission was installed in 1979, aiming to improve on its predecessor and proceeding to travel, research, and receive delegations in order to establish who the backward classes are. Like the first commission, however, it failed to find anything but castes. "We did not seek caste, caste pursued us," the commission's secretary wrote.82 The second national list of Backward Classes comprised the same percentage of the total population of India as the first - almost 50 percent - but the number of separately named

eligible castes was nearly twice as high - 3,734 to be exact.

Many similar commissions addressed the same problem - to establish who the backward classes are - at the state level. But their lists of Back- ward Classes also comprise ever more castes and subcastes. Vanniyars in Tamil Nadu, for instance, a large agricultural caste cluster, formed a militant movement in the 1980s that mobilized people around the grievance that nothing was being done for the "really" backward.83 Now the Vanniyars constitute 53 percent of the "most backward classes," for whom 20 percent of government jobs and places in educational institu- tions are reserved.84 In Karnataka, one caste cluster, the Vokkalingas, constitutes a large portion of the Backward Classes. Lower subcastes from within their ranks claim that Gangadikar and Morasu, both higher- ranking Vokkalinga subcastes, have monopolized all the benefits. The Lingayats, another large cluster of backward castes in Karnataka, face similar claims from within their own ranks. The Sadar Lingayats are said by other subcastes to have cornered all the Lingayat benefits.85

Fission of the backward classes into castes and subcastes in South India has been especially well documented.86 For the North there are fewer details despite a similar trend.87 Bihar in the early 1990s evinces fission as well. Under Chief Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav, a division emerged between the various caste clusters supporting the ruling Janata Dal, a Backward Classes party strongly in favor of affirmative action. In reaction to what they call "Yadavisation" and the cornering of benefits

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by Yadavs, a large and relatively well-off backward caste cluster, Kur- mis and Koeries (subcastes that claim to be even more backward than the Yadavs) split off to form the Samata party. In 1992, the Atyant Pichhra Varg Mahasang (Most Backward Classes Association) in Bi- har claimed a 15 percent share of the 27 percent quota recommended by the second Backward Classes Commission.88

State creation in Nigeria

Recognition as state in Nigeria entitles whoever is thus recognized to an administrative apparatus, infrastructure like buildings and roads, and a share of the federal revenue equal to the share received by any other state in the Federation.89 Moreover, Nigeria since 1979 has had the "federal character" principle - previously a norm for federation - inscribed in the Constitution. In a supplement to the Constitution, the federal character means the "distinctive desire of the peoples of Nigeria to promote national unity, foster national loyalty, and give every citizen of Nigeria a sense of belonging to the Nation."9o To accomplish this, the constitution provides rules and regulations governing the distribu- tion of political positions and job quotas in the federal bureaucracy and armed forces. These arrangements were modified by successive gov- ernments later, but the basic idea remained intact: federation entails the distribution of power positions in the central government among the country's federal units. Access to these positions is an important resource for elites in the several states because the states are dependent on the center that controls and redistributes oil income. Moreover, the number of economically unviable states is rising, and fiscal autonomy at the state level is lacking.91

This situational logic makes Nigeria's state creation a "generalized struggle by diverse sectional constituencies for an ostensibly more eq- uitable distribution of national developmental patronage, rather than the quest by distinct cultural communities per se for political autonomy."92 The question is what sectional constituencies emerged in this strug- gle and how the official category system - made for replacement - influenced the outcome.

Between the three-state structure created in the 1950s and the current 36 states, there was a short interval of federal state creation on the basis of ethnic criteria so as to protect minorities. As noted, the three- state structure also distributed political influence over ethnic groups - each of the three states had an ethnic majority - but largely ignored

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ethnic diversity. The three-state structure was revised in 1967 when Colonel Yakubu Gowon accommodated more ethnic groups in order to reduce ethnic conflict. The Biafra civil war convinced him that to restore peace and stability, ethnic minorities had to be separated from the majorities.93 Nigeria became a federation of 12 states.

In 1976, General Murtala Mohammed revived replacement in state creation. The year before he had appointed a commission chaired by Supreme Court Justice Ayo Irifeke to see whether additional states should be created. In its report the Irifeke panel noted popular pressure to create more federal states, citing the intensity of "ethnic loyalty, mu- tual suspicion and even hatred among the diverse peoples which make up Nigeria."94 Under these circumstances political stability would re- quire the creation of more states. "Denial" was no option. But despite its stress on ethnic strife - or because of it - the commission advised against using ethnic criteria for state creation. Like the Willink commis- sion two decades earlier, it argued that ethnicity was the least important criterion on which to base state creation.95 Replacement categories had to be made.

The Indian solution was to replace castes with "backward classes," but the Irifeke panel advised against economic criteria, acknowledging the weak economic base of almost all Nigerian states, yet arguing that the federation is one economic system and that the federal government ensures the economic viability of states through redistribution. Hence the Irifeke panel proposed to base state creation on "demographic" and "spatial" criteria.96

Murtala Mohammed followed these recommendations and changed the rationale of federal state creation from protecting ethnic minorities to demographic and geographic criteria, which meant "the complete downgrading of the ethno-linguistic principle... for state creation in Nigeria."97 He also followed the commission's recommendation to add seven new states, and thus established a nineteen-state structure (he deviated from some borders recommended by the Irifeke panel). But this decision hardly relieved popular pressure for more states. It left many more ethnic and subethnic groups dissatisfied than it had accom- modated, and claimants quickly adapted motivation of their claims to the new criteria. "State agitation" continued under Mohammed and intensified under the civilian government that succeeded him in 1979. The "federal character" principle, inscribed in the 1979 Constitution, entitled all states to a comparable share of the federal budget, which

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triggered further fragmentation since larger ethnic groups could com- mand more than one state and increase their share of the national wealth. Consequently numerous subethnic claims for new states were made.98

State creation came to a temporary halt under the Second Republic,99 but state agitation has been successful despite attempts by successive governments to stop it. Babangida added two states in 1987, announcing that they were the only additions his administration would make.100 He added nine more in 1991, however, arguing that social justice, even development, and interethnic balance required it.101 In 1996, General Abacha added six more bringing the total number of states to 36. The reason, he declared, was to ensure balancing within geopolitical zones, and the criteria used were "population and land mass, among others."l02 In the national broadcast announcing this last expansion, he said the government had acknowledged six requests for states, but received 72. The trouble is that "[federal] reorganizations are likely to succeed only in producing new ethnic or subethnic minorities, fresh political animosities, and renewed distributive pressures, leading to continued agitations for more and more units of state and local government."103

Claimants for subquotas in India's Backward Class category organize by caste; claimants for new states in Nigeria do so by ethnicity.104 In both cases, replacement gave way to the politics of recognition and accommodation, and the failure of replacement categories was de- plored in government reports. India's first Backward Classes Commis- sion complained that it was pursued by caste leaders who demanded inclusion of their group on the list of eligibles. "Although Shri Jawa- harlal Nehru has been advocating the eradication of casteism, it said, "unfortunately the commission did not find the same fervor motivating the actions of many political leaders." The Chairman remarked that the "result of our inquiry is that caste consciousness, caste loyalties and caste aspirations, have increased throughout the country."'05 Again, even Muslims and Christians argued that caste persisted in their ranks, and successive "backward class commissions" in New Delhi and the states witnessed the mobilization of ever smaller subcastes and sub- subcastes claiming a share of backward class quotas.

In Nigeria, the Irikefe Panel noted in its report that "in some areas his- tory was distorted by people who were widely recognized as belonging to the same linguistic stock or ethnic group to convince us that they are not ethnically the same in a bid to get a state of their own."'106 State cre- ation in Nigeria promotes new evaluations of"communal fusions" that

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took place under colonial rule.107 Current ethnicities like the Yoruba, Hausa-Fulani, and Igbo result from the fusion of groups that previously had different names and identities. The name Yoruba, for instance, was originally used for the Oyo only while the Ekiti, Ijesja, Akoko, and Ife - all "Yoruba" today - went by those names. The point is that past inde-

pendence substantiates subethnic claims on resource allocation through state creation in the present.'08 And, as in India, by conceding to such claims successive governments in Nigeria have turned replacement into extreme accommodation.

A categorical explanation

A common explanation for the involution'09 described above is that the governments concerned used replacement categories symbolically and never really meant to act on them. Replacement categories signify modem national aspirations and help power holders to counter accu- sations of "casteism" in India or "tribalism" in Nigeria - well-known repertory items of political opposition."00 But in fact the governments and courts in both countries repeatedly tried to uphold the principle that beneficiary categories should be defined on noncaste and noneth- nic criteria."' Even today, India officially sticks to the doctrine that there is no affirmative action for castes, and Nigeria does not recognize ethnic criteria as the official basis for state creation.112

These governments were willing but unable to stick to replacement categories. Political realism led them to appease violent caste protest in India and "state agitations" in Nigeria by allocating new group rights while leaving vested rights untouched."3 Replacement categories did not prevent numerous claims for inclusion, forcefully brought for- ward by well-organized caste and ethnic groups from surfacing. On the contrary, they invited it. Replacement categories require evasive definition-they allude to group differences, but cannot name the groups concerned. Caste inequalities are subsumed under social, educational, and economic indicators; ethnic divisions under geographic, demo- graphic, and development criteria. Replacement categories thus allow all sorts of people to claim benefits on economic, demographic, or de- velopment grounds and use prospective rewards of success to mobilize a following."14 Moreover, replacement categories leave administrators ill equipped: evasive definition of targets increases the operators' de- pendence on "bottom-up" input to implement policies. "We did not seek caste, caste pursued us," as the secretary of India's second Backward Classes Commission described what happened when the commission

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tried to define and contact the backward classes. In a recent interview, the Mayor of Amsterdam tried to explain why subsidized ethnic and subethnic "self-organizations" proliferated despite the noncategorical integration policy that the city adopted in the 1990s: To implement in- tegration policy, "we needed to contact society and in the process we as government... created the self-organizations ourselves, as it were."115 The collectivities that emerged are precisely those that replacement was meant to supersede.

The last point contrasts with other research on relations between offi- cial categorization and group formation. Anthony Marx, for instance, argues that official categories used in apartheid and Jim Crow legis- lation determined the identities of the groups that mobilized against these regimes.116 Making and implementing laws that excluded cer- tain categories from full citizenship forced the government of South Africa and state governments in the American south to provide defi- nitions of the categories excluded. They wrote clear racial categories into legal and policy documents, and in time these categories formed the basis for subordinate identities that were mobilized in the struggle against these governments.117 Ironically, "categorical exclusion pun- ishes the excluded in the short term, but provides them with the basis for mobilization pressing for redress in the long run.""18

Contrary to the castes and ethnic groups that defeated government- imposed categories in India and Nigeria, the racial identities empha- sized in the anti-apartheid and civil rights movements were in fact constructed by the very governments they opposed. How to explain this difference? Note that official categories constructed in apartheid and Jim Crow legislation were meant to exclude from full citizenship, whereas replacement categories in India and Nigeria were meant to in- clude people who are already full citizens. Marx fudges this distinction when he writes, for instance, that "states often construct identities... through explicit policies of exclusion and also inclusion, and in doing so set the boundaries and incentives for collective action."'19 India and Nigeria indeed confirm that "inclusion categories" are incentives for collective action; but they also suggest that such categories are much less effective than "exclusion categories" in "setting the boundaries."

Interestingly, racial categories now function as replacement categories in post-apartheid South Africa. Article 9, Section 2 of South Africa's 1996 Constitutional Bill of Rights allows "legislative and other mea- sures designed to protect or advance persons or categories of persons

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disadvantaged by unfair discrimination." The White Paper on Affirma- tive Action in the Public Service (1998) designates "black people," that is "African, Colored, and Indian people," as eligibles."'20 The purpose of this policy is to achieve, in the public services, "full demographic representation within a specified time period." Note that there is no official recognition - in affirmative action at least121 - of any social di- visions within the largest subcategory "African people." Ethnic groups like Ndebele, Sotho, Tswana, Xhosa, and Zulu are purposely made ir- relevant to the official aim of promoting demographic representation in the public services. "African people" is a replacement category.

South Africa's interest in replacement is not surprising since accommo- dation of ethnicities was a pillar of apartheid. Indeed many argue that current ethnic groups were created by apartheid,122 and all descrip- tion of current South Africa as an ethnically divided society is highly contentious.123 Most political and scholarly commentators view South African society in accordance with the official line - reflected in the category system used for affirmative action - as divided into racial categories.124 Indeed, there is no evidence yet that the replacement cat- egory "African People" used in affirmative action is being subverted as class and state were in India and Nigeria. One reason may be the recent origin of affirmative action for "black people" in South Africa. Pressure on the government to accommodate more subcategories could build up slowly, though in India and Nigeria it was there from the start.125 An- other reason may be the nature of the categories: compared with South Africa, India and Nigeria aim at a much more radical social recon- struction where economic and geographic criteria replace ascriptive ones. In South Africa one ascriptive category replaces another - race replaces ethnicity. Given the history of the struggle against apartheid, moreover, racial criteria make sense to people. Or, to put that differ- ently, construction of racial categories into a social fact had already been done, in decades before, by the apartheid regime and the anti apartheid movement. Hence, unlike the more radical constructs used in India and Nigeria, racial categories provide a focal point for mo- bilization and claim making.126 Even so, times change; and with the emergence of a modem democracy in the 1990s, the racial categories prominent in the anti-apartheid struggle have become less salient. Already, "political entrepreneurs have increasingly relied on 'ethnic' identities as the basis of mobilization .... As the glue of official racial domination has dissolved, so has the salience of racial identity and mo- bilization begun to fade, with reconfigured 'earlier' forms of identity reemerging."'27

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Defeating a government that excludes part of the population from full citizenship requires a united front, which helps explain why official racial categories became real and consequential identities in the anti- apartheid and civil rights movements. If a united front succeeds and becomes eligible for redistributive measures, however, a different situ- ational logic sets in: eligibles for redistribution schemes tend to define who's who more precisely than official categories - especially replace- ment categories - allow for.128

In South Africa the latter process has only recently begun. The Govern- ment in India undertook affirmative action (in the southern provinces under British rule in the 1920s, and on a national scale after indepen- dence) to appease the Non-Brahmin movement. This was a success- ful social movement, with a political wing in the Justice Party, that united a wide range of castes against the virtual monopoly of pub- lic offices by Brahmins.129 The British had allowed this monopoly to emerge, but in the 1920s the Non-Brahmin movement forced them to implement affirmative action for all except Brahmins and thus com- pensate for previous exclusion. The same problem - the Brahmin monopoly of public office - motivated pressure on the independent government to accommodate other social groups and informed the constitutional category "Backward Classes."'13 Fragmentation along caste and subcaste lines started after categorical exclusion was abol- ished and inclusion through affirmative action for Non-Brahmins or Backward Classes was introduced. The reason is that group inequal- ity is commonly perceived as a caste problem to which replacement categories like Non-Brahmins or Backward Classes can hardly do justice.'31

The same is true for Nigeria with its hundreds of tribal divisions. The regional and demographic criteria that inform replacement categories are too imprecise to satisfy people's notions of group inequality and re- distribution and therefore hard to implement. The colonial government in Nigeria faced this problem ever since it started making administrative divisions. Agitations, petitions, and boycotts befell the British govern- ment between 1900 and 1954 from tribal communities demanding that administrative borders be redrawn in accord with "community inter- est." They considered taxation a form of tribute and thus an outward sign of political subordination. This was especially problematic when the administrative headquarters where payment was made was located outside the tribal homeland. A 1935 memorandum by the Resident of Ilorin says: "The Olobo had refused to allow the Ilorin tax mallams

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to enter his village to take annual tax census, and declares that in no circumstance will he pay taxes to the Emir of Ilorin."'32

Once inclusive policies are implemented, established social categories like caste and ethnicity are the most effective bases for mobilization and claim making. These categories do not have to be designed, com- municated, maintained, or enforced because they are already signifi- cant categories in people's perception of group inequality and group redistribution. This does not mean that established categories cannot themselves be social constructions, only that they are successful con- structions that political entrepreneurs can use to mobilize a following and defeat replacement.133

Conclusion: Categorization and social engineering

Redistributive policies in India and Nigeria pose two serious prob- lems: First, they create new inequalities and therefore become self- perpetuating: groups with the best mobilization capacity are first in line for the benefits.134 New inequalities emerge that motivate more groups to organize and claim their share. Second, the social categories that emerge are exactly those that replacement aims to suppress - and not "despite" the use of replacement categories, but because of it. Re- placement categories require vague definitions - they cannot name the social categories they address and thus target evasive administrative constructs. This impedes control over the implementation of policies and provides ample opportunity for political entrepreneurs to mobilize collectivities and pressure the government to recognize their claims. In effect, replacement lets the category system used in redistribution policy be made by caste, tribe, and other leaders who come up with more elaborate diversity than the most multicultural government could devise. They mobilize people along established social boundaries, not along a government's constructions,135 and reinvigorate what was to be replaced.

India and Nigeria resist the proliferation of inconvenient categories and in consequence witness violent protests, caste and ethnic conflicts, and general political turbulence. And in reaction, they (especially India) produce endless legislation, constitutional revisions, research commissions, administrative adjustments, and budget reallocations. Had they accommodated caste and ethnicity from the start - as they ended up doing anyway - these costs might have been saved. Accommodation would also have helped prevent extreme categorical

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proliferation. It is often argued that official, formalized social cate- gories simplify real social life'36 and that multiculturalist governments provide incentives for group formation along cultural lines and thereby construct what they claim to reflect. Replacement does the same, but leaves even more room for caste or ethnic leaders to influence the official category system. As the latter mobilize groups along the informal boundaries that make sense to people, a less simple and proliferating category system emerges.

To conclude, the viability of replacement categories varies with their cognitive resonance. Race in South Africa makes sense to people and has replaced ethnic divisions with some success in a crucial redis- tributive scheme. But South Africa is an exceptional case. Elsewhere replacement categories like class in India and demographic and spatial criteria in Nigeria make little sense to people and are overthrown by prior caste and ethnic categories. Replacement is not a workable com- promise. Accommodation does not resolve the dilemma of recognition in socially or culturally diverse societies, but replacement exacerbates it. The dilemma of recognition is best solved by denial, but if denial is not an option it is better to accommodate than to replace.

Acknowledgments

Research for this article was partly supported by a grant from the International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden and Amsterdam. I wish to thank Rosanne Rutten, Charles Tilly, and Theory and Society reviewers and Editors for very helpful comments on earlier drafts. Special thanks are for Rod Aya and Odile Verhaar for their lasting support and constructive criticism.

Notes

1. See, for instance, Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985), 676-680; Thomas Sowell, Preferential Policies: An International Perspective (New York: William Morrow and Company Inc., 1990).

2. See, for instance, Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper, "Beyond Identity" Theory and Society 29 (2000): 1-47; Frank de Zwart, "The Logic of Affirmative Action: Caste, Class and Quotas in India," Acta Sociologica 43/ 3 (2000): 235- 251.

3. See Theda Skocpol, "Targeting within Universalism: Politically Viable Policies to Combat Poverty in the United States," in Christopher Jencks and Paul E. Peterson, editors, The Urban Underclass (Washington D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1991), 411-437; Paul M. Sniderman, Edward G. Carmines, Geoffrey C. Layman,

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and Michael Carter, "Beyond Race: Social Justice as a Race Neutral Ideal," American Journal ofPolitical Science 40/1 (1996): 33-55; William Julius Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, The Underclass, and Public Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).

4. Sniderman et al., "Beyond Race." The quote is from p. 34. See also Skocpol, "Targeting within Universalism," 412-414.

5. Charles Taylor, "The Politics of Recognition," in Amy Gutmann, editor, Mul- ticulturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press, 1994), 25-73. 6. See Peter Skerry, Counting on the Census? Race, Group Identity, and the Evasion

of Politics (Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2000), 43-78. 7. Whether that view is based on serious social research, or simply reflects a dom-

inant discourse, or the influence and skills of social movements and political entrepreneurs, or any combination of these, is an empirical question.

8. See Brubaker and Cooper, "Beyond Identity." See also Brian Barry, Culture and Equality (Cambridge: Polity, 2001), esp. 252-264; Rogers Brubaker, "Ethnicity Without Groups," Archives Europeennes de Sociologie XLIII/2 (2002): 163-189. Advocates of accommodation are often also constructivist theorists. The practice of accommodative politics, however, demands non-constructivist language. There is, as Brubaker and Cooper put it, "tension between the constructivist language that is required by academic correctness and the foundationalist or essentialist message that is required if appeals to "identity" are to be effective in practice" ("Beyond Identity," 6).

9. See, for instance, Leo Lucassen and A.J.E. K6bben, Het Partitiele Gelijk. Contro- verses over het Onderwijs in Eigen Taal en Cultuur en de Rol daarby van Beleid en Wetenschap (Amsterdam: Swets and Zeitlinger, 1992); S. Koenis, "De Secu- larisatie en Politisering van Cultuur," in Leo Lucassen and Ari de Ruijter, editors, Nederland Multicultureel en Pluriform? Een aantal Conceptuele Studies (Ams- terdam: Aksant, 2002), 47-84; Yasemin Soysal, Limits of Citizenship. Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1994); Frank de Zwart and Caelesta Poppelaars, "Ontwijk- ende Administratieve Categorieen en Etnische Fragmentatie: een Internationaal Perspectief," Beleid en Maatschappy 31/1 (2004): 3-14.

10. Paul Starr, "Social Categories and Claims in the Liberal State" in Mary Dou- glas and David Hull, editors, How Classification Works (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992), 171.

11. Quoted in Sebastian Poulter, "Muslim Headscarves in School: Contrasting Legal Approaches in England and France," Oxford Journal ofLegal Studies 17/1 (1997), 53.

12. Soysal, Limits of Citizenship, 59. 13. Quoted in Poulter, "Muslim Headscarves," 51. 14. See Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cam-

bridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1992), 159-164. 15. Ibid., 163-164. 16. Ibid., 169-177, See also Erik Bleich, "The French Model: Color-Blind Integra-

tion," in John David Skrentny, editor, Color Lines: Affirmative Action, Immigra- tion, and CivilRights OptionsforAmerica (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 270-297, especially 275-277. Adrian Favell, Philosophies oflntegration: Immigration and the Idea of Citizenship in France and Britain (Hampshire/New

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York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998), especially pp. 41-91; William Saffran, "The Mitterand Regime and Its Policies of Ethnocultural Accommodation," Compar- ative Politics October (1985): 41-63; Soysal, Limits of Citizenship. For the U.S., see Paul Starr, "Social Categories and Claims in the Liberal State."

17. John David Skrentny, The Ironies of Affirmative Action: Politics, Culture, and Justice in America (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 111-145, esp. 123-124. See also Daniel Sabbagh, L'Egaliti par le Droit: les paradoxes de la discrimination positive aux Etats-Unis (Paris: Economica, 2003), 30-45, 49-59.

18. Skrentny, The Ironies ofAffirmative Action, 111-144. 19. Ibid., 112. 20. Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged. 21. Ibid., 118,120. Sniderman et al. confirm that in the U.S. targeted policies receive

much less support than universalistic policies. Moreover, they show that targeting as such diminishes support - policies aimed at a "particularistic group of whites [are] similarly limited in [their] appeal" as those aimed at blacks. The authors suggest that the dilemma of recognition can be solved if we design policies that target particular groups, but justify these policies in universalistic, race-neutral terms (Sniderman et al., "Beyond Race." The quote is from p. 51).

22. See, for instance, Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood, 138-164; Favell, Philosophies of Integration, 41-91; Soysal, Limits of Citizenship, 104-107.

23. Favell, Philosophies of Integration, 46-47, the quote is from p. 47. See also Soysal, Limits of Citizenship, 59-61; Bleich, "The French Model," 75-76.

24. Favell, Philosophies of Integration, 47. 25. Skocpol, "Targeting within Universalism," 413-414. See also Skrentny, The

Ironies ofAffirmative Action; Sabbagh, L'Egalit6 par le Droit. 26. For classic statements on the colonial construction of "caste," see Bernard S.

Cohn, "The Census, Social Structure and Objectivation in South Asia," in Bernard S. Cohn, editor, An Anthropologist Among the Historians and Other Essays (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987), 224-254; Nicholas B. Dirks, The Hollow Crown: Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); R. Inden, Imagining India (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990). For the con- struction of ethnic groups under colonialism in Africa, see Aiden Southall, "The Illusion of Tribe," in Peter C. W. Gutkind, editor, The Passing of Tribal Man in Africa (Leiden: Bril, 1970), 28-50; Leroy Vail, "Introduction: Ethnicity in South- ern African History," in Leroy Vail, editor, The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989), 1-19. Some strands of constructivist theory go further than these classic statements and argue that colonial government invented caste and tribe. Elsewhere I have argued that for caste this is highly unconvincing (Frank de Zwart, "The Logic of Affir- mative Action." For a critique on overstating the constructivist thesis of tribes in Africa, see Terence Ranger, "The Invention of Tradition Revisited: the Case of Colonial Africa," in Terence Ranger and 0. Vaughan, editors, Legitimacy and the State in Twentieth Century Africa: Essays in Honour ofA.H. M. Kirk-Greene

(London: Macmillan, 1993), 62-111. 27. This trend is documented in Ted Robert Gurr, People Versus States: Minorities

at Risk in the New Century (Washington D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2000), esp. 151-188,275-288. See also Brian Barry, Culture and Equality, esp. 292-305; J.J. Linz and A. Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and

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Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post Communist Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).

28. Will Kymlica and Wayne Norman, "Citizenship in Culturally Diverse Societies, Issues, Contexts, Concepts," in ibid., editors, Citizenship in Diverse Societies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 4.

29. Brian Barry, Culture and Equality, 6. Barry discusses the work of many thought- ful opponents of multiculturalism. Moreover, he also argues that there is massive public disagreement with the principles underlying multiculturalism, and notes that the "curious political success" of multiculturalism owes much to the purpo- sive insulation of these principles from public debate (ibid.), 292-299.

30. See on these "common sense" hypotheses: James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War," American Political Science Review 97/1

(2003): 75-90. 31. Ibid. Fearon and Laitin analyze 127 violent civil conflicts (intra-state conflicts

with at least 1.000 casualties) between 1945 and 1999. Their purpose is to test hypotheses about the relationship between ethnic or religious diversity and the susceptibility of a country to civil war. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the authors find that the crucial factor explaining susceptibility to civil war is country wealth, not ethnic, cultural, or religious diversity. The lower the country income, the higher the risk of civil war (and vice versa), irrespective of ethnic diversity. The explanation is that insurgency - the main form of civil violence - is favored by "state weakness marked by poverty." Richer states are more effective in countering insurgency and therefore less susceptible to civil violence. Ethnic diversity can be an indirect cause of civil war, "if it causes low per capita income or a weak state" (ibid., 78-79, 82-89). The quotations are from pp. 88, 82.

32. Gurr, People Versus States, 277-281. 33. Ibid., 211. Gurr supports the idea that discrimination and inequality run along

cultural boundaries and thus cause grievances that inspire rebellion. He writes that an effect of the accommodative trend (that aims to redress these grievances) has been "a world wide decline of open ethnic conflict in the 1990s" (ibid., 276). Gurr does not control the statistics for country wealth, however. The quotation is from p. 276.

34. See John W. Meyer and Brian Rowan, "Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony," American Journal of Sociology 83 (1977): 340-363; John W. Meyer, "The Changing Cultural Content of the Nation State," in George Steinmetz, editor, State Formation After the Cultural Turn (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999), 123-145; Richard W. Scott, Institutions and Organizations (Thousand Oaks, Cal.: Sage, 2001), 151-168. Skrentny uses this institutional perspective to explain the making of affirmative action in the U.S. See Skrentny, The Ironies ofAffirmative Action, esp. 111-144.

35. Michael Hechter's explanation of the advantages (for colonial government) of indirect over direct rule is illustrative: In the early 1920s, French colonial policy reverted to indirect rule after a period of "direct administration." The reasons for this change were that the policy of "native cultural assimilation, which un- derlay direct administration, stimulated native political demands rather than inhibiting them." Moreover, indirect rule produced "[d]ramatic economies of administration ... that is, it reduced civil and military budgets, as well as ex- penditures for manpower." It is no coincidence that indirect rule was invented by joint-stock companies: the British East India Company and the Dutch Netherlands

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East India Company, Michael Hechter, Containing Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 50-53. The quotations are from pp. 53, 51. Charles Tilly calls this mechanism "emulation." See ibid., Durable Inequality (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998), 9-11.

36. Michael Hechter's explanation of the advantages (for colonial government) of indirect over direct rule is illustrative: In the early 1920s, French colonial policy reverted to indirect rule after a period of "direct administration." The reasons for this change were that the policy of "native cultural assimilation, which underlay direct administration, stimulated native political demands rather than inhibiting them." Moreover, indirect rule produced "[d]ramatic economies of administra- tion... that is, it reduced civil and military budgets, as well as expenditures for manpower." It is no coincidence that indirect rule was invented by joint-stock companies: the British East India Company and the Dutch Netherlands East India Company, Michael Hechter, Containing Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 50-53. The quotations are from pp. 53, 51. Charles Tilly calls this mechanism "emulation." See ibid., Durable Inequality (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998), 9-11.

37. See Skerry, Counting on the Census, 46-47. 38. This problem is especially difficult (and expensive) to solve in big countries with

a large rural population such as Nigeria and India but, as we saw in the Dutch example, it is not confined to such countries.

39. Ernest Gellner, Postmodernism, Reason and Religion (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 42. Gellner considers this thesis, and the related question whether group inequalities are thus linked to the constructive powers of govern- ments, the only "more or less coherent idea" in the "metatwaddle" of postmodern anthropology (ibid.), 40-42.

40. See Cohn, "The Census, Social Structure, and Objectivation in South Asia"; Dirks, The Hollow Crown; Inden, Imagining India; Southall, "The Illusion of Tribe"; Vail, The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa.

41. See Jon Abbink, "Ethnicity and Constitutionalism in Contemporary Ethiopia," Journal ofAfrican Law 41 (1997): 159-174. Abbink analyses the consequences for group inequality of Ethiopia's highly accommodative Constitution of 1994. This Constitution declares ethnic identity as the basis of political organization and administration and, accordingly, makes ethnicity the decisive criterion on which states in the Federation of Ethiopia are based.

42. Charles Tilly, Durable Inequality. 43. Tilly treats the content of social distinctions - for instance "feelings of identity,

and intergroup hostility" - as secondary to their function for exploitation and opportunity hoarding (ibid.), 15.

44. Ibid., 11. See also ibid., 95-96, 116. 45. Ibid., 11. 46. Ibid., 97. 47. Ibid.,10, See also ibid., 97-98, 190-191. 48. Ibid., 53-62. Anthony W. Marx, Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of the

United States, South Africa, and Brazil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) illustrates this process well.

49. Ibid., See also Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

50. Tilly, Durable Inequality, 149-167.

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51. Ibid., 61-62. See also Brubaker, "Ethnicity without Groups," esp. 177-178. 52. Tilly, Durable Inequality, 243. 53. See, for instance, Ruud Koopmans and Paul Statham, editors, Challenging Im-

migration and Ethnic Relations Politics: Comparative European Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

54. Ruud Koopmans, "Zachte Heelmeesters. Een vergelijking van de resultaten van het Nederlandse en Duitse Integratiebeleid en wat de WRR daaruit niet Con- cludeert," Migrantenstudies 2 (2002): 90.

55. See, for instance, Thomas F. Pettigrew, "Reactions toward the New Minorities of Western Europe," Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998): 77-103; Dietrich Thriinhardt, "Conflict, Consensus, and Policy Outcomes: Immigration and Inte- gration in Germany and The Netherlands," in Koopmans and Statham, editors, Challenging Immigration and Ethnic Relations, 162-186.

56. Koopmans, "Zachte Heelmeesters." 57. Ibid., 92. 58. These titles are a selection from projects in Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam,

Utrecht, and Arnhem between 1999 and 2003. See de Zwart and Poppelaars, "Ontwijkende Administratieve Categorieen."

59. Similar processes have been described for the U.S. See, for instance, George R. La Noue and John C. Sullivan, "Deconstructing Affirmative Action Categories," in Skrentny, editor, Color Lines, 71-86. See also Skrentny, The Ironies ofAffirmative Action, 173. For India, see Marc Galanter, Competing Equalities. Law and the Backward Classes in India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 542- 552.

60. Parliamentary Commission Onderzoek Integratiebeleid (eindrapport) Bruggen Bouwen (The Hague: SDU Uitgevers, 2004); de Zwart and Poppelaars, "Ontwijkende Administratieve Categorieen."

61. See de Zwart and Poppelaars, "Ontwijkende Administratieve Categorieen." 62. "Socially and Educationally Backward Classes" is the legal term used in the

Constitution and official documents. In speech and writing most people simply use "backward classes." I do the same below.

63. See A. Beteille, The Backward Classes in Contemporary India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992), 33; Rajeev Dhavan, "The Supreme Court as Problem Solver: The Mandal Controversy," in VA. Pai Panandiker, editor, The Politics ofBackwardness: Reservation Policy in India (Delhi: Konark Publishers, 1997), 262-333; Galanter, Competing Equalities, 208; de Zwart, "The Logic of Affirmative Action."

64. Ambedkar, in Galanter, Competing Equalities, 166. 65. Galanter, Competing Equalities, 166. 66. Ibid. 67. See, for instance, J. Nehru, Selected Works ofJawaharlal Nehru Vol.16/1 (New

Delhi: Teen Murti House, 1994), 185; B. K. Roy Burman, Beyond Mandal and After: Backward Classes in Perspective (New Delhi: Mittal Publications, 1992), esp. 125-130.

68. See Hechter, Containing Nationalism, 139-152. Hechter discusses these func- tions of federalism as means to resolve nationalist conflict.

69. Abioloa Ojo, "The Republican Constitution of 1963," in Peter P. Ekeh, Patrick Dele-Cole, Gabriel O. Olusanya, editors, Nigeria Since Independence: The First 25 Years, Vol. 5 (Lagos: Heineman Educational Books, 1989), 41.

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70. R.T. Akinyele, "States Creation in Nigeria: The Willink Report in Retrospect," African Studies Review 39/2 (1996): 73. See also James S. Coleman, Nigeria: Background to Nationalism (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1958), 324; Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, 656.

71. Akinyele, "States Creation in Nigeria," 75-76; Joshua Lincoln, The Effect of Federalism on Intergroup Relations in Multiethnic States: Evidence from Nigeria and Ethiopia, 1960-1998 (PhD., Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, 2000); Rotimi Suberu "The Struggle for New States in Nigeria, 1976- 1990," African Affairs 90 (1991): 502; Rotimi Suberu, Federalism and Ethnic

Conflict in Nigeria (Washington D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2001), 82-85.

72. Chief Awolowo was one of the principal drafters of the 1949 Constitution. He has persistently argued for accommodating ethnic diversity in designating states. See for instance his Thought on the Nigerian Constitution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966).

73. Coleman, Nigeria. Background to Nationalism, 388. 74. Awolowo in ibid. 75. Akinyele, "States Creation in Nigeria," 75. 76. The Commission's terms of reference were clearly biased toward maintaining

replacement categories: recommendations for creating new states were to be made "if, but only if" no other solution to minority fears could be found (Government of Nigeria [1958], quoted in ibid., 76).

77. This confirmed the idea of the Secretary of State for the Colonies, who, when the Commission was set up, acclaimed: "Though the desire for the creation of new states arises from the fear of minorities, it would be impracticable to meet all the fears by the creation of new states. There are many different ethnic groups and people in Nigeria and however many states were created, minorities would still inevitably remain" (ibid.).

78. Ibid., 79. 79. Government of India. Report of the Backward Classes Commission (New Delhi:

Government of India Press, 1956). 80. Ibid., 41. 81. Kooiman gives detailed evidence of the renewed importance of caste among

Christians (in Travencore) as a consequence of quotas. See D. Kooiman, "Po- litical Rivalry among Religious Communities: A Case-Study of Communal Reservations in India," Economic and Political Weekly (February, 1993): 287- 295.

82. S. S. Gill, "Caste versus Class," India Today (May 31, 1991): 34. Gill responded to an accusation made by the prominent political scientist Veena Das, that the commission "reinforced the colonial construction of caste" (ibid.).

83. P. Radhakrishnan, "Backward Class Movements in Tamil Nadu,"' in M. N. Srini- vas, editor, Caste: Its Twentieth Century Avatar (New Delhi: Viking, 1996), 125.

84. Srinivas, "Introduction," in ibid., xviii. 85. G. Thimmaiah, Power Politics and Social Justice: Backward Castes in Karnataka

(New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1993), 157-158. 86. Radhakrishnan, "Backward Class Movements in Tamil Nadu"; see also ibid.,

"Communal Representation in Tamil Nadu, 1850-1916," Economic and Political Weekly (July 31, 1993): 1585-1597; and ibid., "Backward Classes in Tamil Nadu: 1872-1988," Economic and Political Weekly (March 10, 1990): 509-520.

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87. Srinivas, "Introduction," in Srinivas, editor, Caste: Its Twentieth Century Avatar, xvii-xxii; See also G. Shah, "Strategies of Social Engineering: Reservation and Mobility of Backward Communities of Gujarat," in R. Roy and R. Sisson, editors, Diversity and Dominance in Indian Politics, Vol. 2 (New Delhi: Sage, 1990), 111-145.

88. M. N. Panini, "The Political Economy of Caste," in Srinivas, editor, Caste: Its Twentieth Century Avatar esp. 57-60.

89. See Suberu, Federalism and Ethnic Conflict, 47-77. 90. The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1979, section 272 (1). 91. See, Suberu, Federalism and Ethnic Conflict, 9-17, 26-27, 111-116, 173-

175. See also Larry Diamond, "Issues in the Constitutional Design of a Third Nigerian Republic," African Affairs 86/343 (1987): 209-226, esp. 211- 213.

92. Suberu, Federalism and Ethnic Conflict, 80. 93. Akinyele, "States Creation in Nigeria," 75. 94. Quoted in Suberu, Federalism and Ethnic Conflict, 90. 95. Suberu, Federalism and Ethnic Conflict, 90. 96. Ibid. 97. Suberu, "The Struggle for New States in Nigeria," 502. 98. R.T. Akinyele, "Growth Pole Theory, Marginals, and Minorities: States Creation

in Nigeria in a Period of Military Transition," Asian and African Studies 27 (1993): 293-3 12, esp. 295-300; Lincoln, The Effect ofFederalism on Intergroup Relations, 125-135; Suberu, Federalism and Ethnic Conflict, 95-98. The degree of "groupness" in these mobilized categories varies, however. Suberu calls the state agitation movements in Nigeria "recently imagined" and "structurally weak" compared to Nigeria's estimated 90,000 "basic, primary, or autonomous commu- nities" (ibid., see also ibid., 196-197, 82-110). The process of fragmentation, however, increasingly involves smaller units with more "groupness" to them. In India the first categories to receive benefits were castes, but in time subcastes and sub-subcastes also mobilized and claimed a share. See de Zwart, The Logic of Affirmative Action, 236-237.

99. There are three reasons: party political differences, confusing constitutional pro- visions, and the overwhelming, unsupportable number of proposals for new states. See Suberu, Federalism and Ethnic Conflict, 94.

100. Suberu, "The Struggle for New States in Nigeria," 506. 101. Suberu, Federalism and Ethnic Conflict, 100. 102. Quoted from the Daily Times (Lagos), in ibid., 103. 103. Ibid., 110; See also Diamond, "Issues in the Constitutional Design," 211. 104. Akinyele, "Growth Pole Theory," 307; Suberu, "The Struggle for New States in

Nigeria," 502. 105. Government of India (1956), 101, xiii. 106. Quoted in Akinyele, "Growth Pole Theory," 304. 107. Akinyele refers to R. Melson and H. Wolpe, "Modernization and the Politics of

Communalism: A Theoretical Perspective," in R. Melson and H. Wolpe, editors, Nigeria: Modernization and the Politics of Communalism (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Chicago Press, 1971); See on identity formation and "communal fusion" under colonial rule also, Bruce Berman, "Ethnicity, Patronage and the African State: The Politics of Uncivil Nationalism," African Affairs, 97 (1998): 305-341; Southall, "The Illusion of Tribe," 28-50.

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108. Ibid., 305. See also Lincoln, The Effect of Federalism on Intergroup Relations, 126; Suberu, Federalism and Ethnic Conflict, 110.

109. Goldenweiser introduced the term "involution" to portray artistic development in a context of unchanging customary regulations (he writes about "primitive art"). Patterns of customary regulations in primitive art, he writes, tend to veto other patterns but encourage creative play with the units in the "allowed" pat- tern. The result is involution: continued elaboration within the limits of the cus- tomary pattern "leading ... to seemingly insane complexity." See Alexander A. Goldenweiser, "Loose ends of Theory on the Individual, Pattern, and Involu- tion in Primitive Society," in Essays in Anthropology. Presented to A.L. Kroeber, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1936), 99-104. The quote is from p. 103. The fragmentary process in our cases is a variant of involution: the "pattern" is formed by the steady use of replacement categories in redistributive policies. Other "patterns" (denial and accommodation) are vetoed, and continued devel- opment within the "allowed" pattern indeed produces increasing elaboration and complexity.

110. Awolowo, Thoughts on Nigerian Constitution, 89-96; Peter P. Ekeh, "Social

Anthropology and Two Contrasting Uses of Tribalism in Africa," Comparative Studies in Society and History 32 (1990), 660-700; R. Kothari and R. Maru, "Caste Secularism in India: Case Study of a Caste Federation, " The Journal of Asian Studies 25 (1965): 33-50.

111. Akinyele, "States Creation in Nigeria," 85-87; Dhavan, "The Supreme Court as Problem Solver," 272, 311; Galanter, Competing Equalities, 167-179, 542-544; Government of India (1956); Lincoln, The Effect of Federalism on Intergroup Relations, 137; Suberu, "The Struggle for New States in Nigeria," 506, 517-18, de Zwart, "The Logic of affirmative Action."

112. Rotimi Suberu and Larry Diamond, "Institutional Design, Ethnic Conflict- Management and Democracy in Nigeria," http://www.nd.edu/-kellogg/pdfs/ Suberu.pdf, 1-46.

113. It takes a strong state to uphold a social category system for redistribution. In the former Soviet Union, popular demands for changing geographically based bor- ders of federal states according to "ethno national" criteria were simply "excluded from the universe of legitimate political discourse." Rogers Brubaker, "Nation- hood and the National Question in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Eurasia: An Institutionalist Account," Theory and Society 23 (1994): 47-78. The quotation is from p. 58. Such exclusion, however, was only established after ethnic cleansing and terror campaigns (including "the Great Terror") with a clear ethnic dimen- sion. Before that, in the 1920s, Lenin and Stalin pursued a policy that entailed the granting of territorial, administrative, educational and cultural rights to hundreds of nationalities, and "an openness to nationality-based claims for border revi- sions [which] proved a recipe for ethnic mobilization." The "affirmative action empire," as Terry Martin calls this period, was motivated among other things, by a pacification strategy. Fear of uncontrollable ethnic mobilization lead Stalin to retreat on this highly accommodative policy, however. See Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire. Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1929- 1939 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2001), esp. 1-74, 272-343. The quote is from page 53.

114. See for the Indian case Dhavan, "The Mandal Controversy," 311-313; for Nigeria, see Adejuyigbe, "Creation of States in 1967 and 1976," esp. 229.

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115. Job Cohen, quoted in Zorg + Welzijn, 2/29 (January 2003): 16. 116. Anthony W. Marx, "Contested Citizenship: The Dynamics of Racial Identity

and Social Movements," in Charles Tilly, editor, Citizenship, Identity and So- cial History. International Review of Social History, Supplement 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 159-183.

117. Ibid., 159-165. 118. "Lack of categorical exclusion," he adds, "is beneficial in the short term, but

inhibits mobilization in the long run" (ibid., 165). Brazil never pursued le- gal exclusion of blacks in the past, and (consequently) lacks a "black move- ment" today. Marx stresses that identity formation as an outcome of govern- ment policy, precedes mobilization and determines its form (ibid., 162-163, 170, 183).

119. Ibid., 183. 120. Government of South Africa, "White Paper: Affirmative Action in the Public

Service," Department of Public Service and Administration, General Notice 564 (1998), 19, 14.

121. In other redistributive policies, for instance decentralization and empowerment of local authority, the government does accommodate the alleged traditional so- cial structure. See for instance Barbara Oomen, "'We Must Now Go Back to Our History;' Retraditionalisation in a Northern Province Chieftaincy," African Studies 59/1 (2000): 71-95.

122. See, for instance, Adam Ashfort, The Politics of Oficial Discourse in Twentieth-

Century South-Africa (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990); Ivan Evans, Bureaucracy and Race. Native Administration in South Africa (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997).

123. See Donald L. Horowitz, A Democratic South Africa?: Constitutional Engineer- ing in a Divided Society (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991), 1-2; Rupert Taylor and Mark Orkin, "The Racialisation of Social Scientific Research on South Africa," South African Sociological Review 7/2

(1995): 43-69. 124. See Horowitz, A Democratic South Africa?, 3-9. 125. See Coleman, Nigeria. Background to Nationalism; de Zwart, "The Logic of

affirmative Action." 126. The mobilization potential of a social category does not necessarily depend on

its being a "real" group. Rogers Brubaker makes this point forcefully when he writes that the prominent "ethnoracial" categories in U.S. accommodative poli- cies - African Americans, Asian Americans, Whites, Native Americans and Lati- nos - "are (with the partial exception of African Americans) not groups at all but categories, backed by political entrepreneurs and entrenched in ... organi- zational routines." In fact, these "putative groups" have a "minimal degree of groupness" and an "enormous cultural heterogeneity." See Brubaker, "Ethnicity without Groups." The quotations are from p. 177 and p. 178. The replacement categories used in India and Nigeria have an even smaller "degree ofgroupness." The ethnoracial categories in the U.S. and South Africa still serve the mobiliza- tion and claim making purposes of political entrepreneurs (and thus become real in their consequences); the Backward Classes and regional states in India and Nigeria do not.

127. Marx, "The Dynamics of Racial Identity" 169. 128. de Zwart, "The Logic of Affirmative Action," 242-244.

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129. See E. F Irshick, Politics and Social Conflict in South India: The Non-Brahman Movement and Tamil Separatism, 1916-1929 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Uni-

versity of California Press, 1969). 130. de Zwart, "The Logic of Affirmative Action," 240. 131. This is one reason why, despite many attempts, no political party has managed

to create a lasting electoral majority by appeasing the Backward Classes with quotas (note that the Backward Classes vote automatically gives a majority). Several national parties such as Janata in the late 1970s and Janata Dal in the 1990s have tried to win this vote with affirmative action policies, but once in power they soon split into rival caste-based factions, accusing each other of"casteism."

132. Akinyele, "Strategies of Minority Agitations," 1-8. The quotation is from p. 6. 133. Horowitz makes the same point when he cautions the neglect of ethnic diversity

in the making of post apartheid South Africa: "Awareness of the potentially disintegrative effects of intergroup conflict has been muted by a frequently held belief that group identities are artificial constructs rather than genuine bases of social and political difference" (Horowitz, A Democratic South Africa?), xii.

134. See Tilly, Durable Inequality, 149-167. See also B. Sivaramayya, "The Mandal Judgement," in M. N. Srinivas, editor, Caste: Its Twentieth Century Avatar, 232- 234. The author discusses the Indian Supreme Court's attempts to exclude the so- called "creamy layer" - sections of the eligibles in India's affirmative action policy who are thought to have cornered the benefits meant for all - from affirmative action policy.

135. There is some evidence for the relative ease with which new, even arbitrary categories can be constructed into viable identities and this seems to hold a promise for governments who wish to change a system of social categorization. In Tajfel's laboratory experiments, for instance, individuals who were assigned into categories by the experimenter on the basis of trivial differences quickly formed groups which competed with other groups on the basis of the new group identity. See Henri Tajfel, "Experiments in Intergroup Discrimination," Scientific American 223 (Nov. 1970): 96-102. But outside the laboratory, the Backward Classes and regional identities in India and Nigeria competed with the "putatively ascriptive" categories caste and ethnicity, and lost. See Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, 141-147; see also Hechter, "The Dynamics of Secession," 273.

136. See, for instance, James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State. How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998), 2-8, 76-83.