Whether and how parties reach across ethnic lines matters for the quality of democracy, the state of interethnic relations and substantive minority representation in plural societies. Existing explanations have focused on how politicians facing electoral incentives to seek broader support attempt to either redefine or transcend ethnic identities, but have overlooked the various ways, in which candidates from one ethnic community often directly address the ethno-political interests, concerns and demands of other communities whose votes are being courted. To address this gap, we introduce the concept and develop a typology of cross-ethnic appeals in plural democracies. Drawing on primary research in India and Kenya—two countries with salient ethnic divisions and ethnic party systems—we show that cross-ethnic appeals are common, follow the logic of our typology, and can result in increased resources and representation for some electorally pivotal minorities, even going beyond what coethnic politicians have offered. The article contributes to the emerging academic literature on how parties foster cross-ethnic linkages in plural societies. Our argument has implications for ethnic boundaries, the structure of political cleavages and the substantive representation of minorities in multiethnic states.

中文翻译：

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多元民主国家的跨种族诉求

政党是否以及如何跨越种族界限对民主的质量、种族间关系的状况和多元社会中的实质性少数群体代表性很重要。现有的解释集中在政治家们面临选举激励以寻求更广泛的支持试图重新定义或超越族裔身份时，却忽视了来自一个族裔社区的候选人经常直接解决他们的族裔政治利益、关切和要求的各种方式。正在争取选票的其他社区。为了弥补这一差距，我们引入了多元民主国家中跨种族诉求的概念并开发了一种类型学。借鉴在印度和肯尼亚这两个具有突出民族分裂和民族政党制度的国家的初步研究，我们表明跨民族诉求很常见，遵循我们的类型学逻辑，可以为某些在选举中举足轻重的少数群体增加资源和代表权，甚至超出同族政治家所提供的范围。这篇文章对新兴的学术文献做出了贡献，这些文献是关于政党如何在多元社会中促进跨种族联系的。我们的论点对种族边界、政治分歧的结构和少数民族在多民族国家的实质性代表具有影响。