








a country that Practices apartheid.
Swiss indigenous population is highly heterogeneous, consisting of 75 percent German speakers, 20 percent Francophones, 4 percent Italians, and 1 percent
One may add that religion has not been a political factor in Switzerland since a brief civil war in 1847 that pitted the industrialized, liberal, largely urban northwest against the predominantly rural, conservative southeast. But even then, divisions cut across both major linguistic communities.
The same felicitous balance is found in terms of income distribution. Of the ten richest cantons, seven are German and three are French. And among the ten poorest ones there are seven Ger
a compensation for the loss of a dependent territoiy. Its inhabitants never reconciled themselves to this gunpoint marriage. They continued to struggle againsl the imposition until, in a series of referenda conducted in the early 1970s, the Catholic part was allowed to secede anc form a new canton, Jura. Protestant! stayed with Bern.
Does Swiss apartheid work? Appar ently it does. Will it work elsewhere? (Inci dentally, the Swiss model has elicitec much interest in South Africa, whicl
202
8. THE ETHNIC FACTOR: CHALLENGES FOR THE 1990s
I
quite possibly will try to follow the Swiss path, rather than the American, as a road to a multiracial, multiethnic society).
CONSOCIATIONALISM
Consociational or proportional democracy is a last-ditch arrangement when all alternatives are worse than a precarious balance.18,19 Under consociationalism the constituent ethnic groups remain distinct for an indefinite period of time within one political system, but do not form separate administrative units.
Such a system requires stability and cultural pluralism. It also needs a cleavage between constituent groups (to reduce interethnic contact and, therefore, conflict and competition), absence of hegemony by one of the groups, attitudes favorable to all-inclusive coalition governments, and lack of external threat. It also helps if there is a limited interpenetration of the ethnies (this makes partition more difficult), some intermarriage (to prevent extreme polarization), and functional interpenetration at the governmental level (the more they share the less need they would feel to separate).
Actually, there are two kinds of consociationalism: One is political, that is, a situation where several political or spiritual families (e.g., Catholics, liberals and socialists) share power. Political consociationalism is fairly stable, as is evidenced in Austria or the Netherlands. The second kind is ethnic consociationalism, which is extremely unstable. Belgium gradually evolved toward a federalized tripartite system, while Lebanon (it would be more accurate to call it denominational, rather than ethnic, consociationalism) collapsed into chaos and civil war.
AUTONOMY
Among various solutions to ethnic problems the first one that comes to mind is autonomy. Usually, it means territorial au
tonomy, although there is also personal and corporate autonomy as well. In the less-known personal autonomy, the autonomous status applies to the minority individual no matter where he lives, as long
as he is willing to be officially assigned minority status. The status is given to the individual on the basis of a personal declaration, government ordinance, or court decision based on language, origin, or a national characteristic. Ultimately, this form of autonomy is based on a personal decision of the individual.
Historically, corporate autonomy was tried in the Moravian compromise of 190520; it was cut short by the collapse of Austria-Hungary in 1918, but theoretically, this solution is very promising because it combines personal choice with protection of minority rights and does not lead to the creation of rigid territorial units.
Entitlement programs in the United States (e.g., affirmative action, financial assistance to minority students, etc.) come very close to the model of corporate autonomy. In this instance, autonomous status is given to the minority as a whole, no matter where its representatives live, but the personal decision is lacking. An individual is assigned to his/her group on the basis of origin, language, or religion and eqjoys all the advantages or disadvantages of a minority, but only on a corporate basis. This pattern is less flexible from the individual s standpoint, but it gives more organizational muscle to the minority group.
Finally, the best-known type of autonomy is territorial. It can be applied to those ethnic groups that live in compact territory with clearly marked borders. When such borders are lacking, things can get very complicated, as witnessed by German (and now Russian) ethnic enclaves scattered throughout much of eastern Europe.
Territorial autonomy has been tried many times and in many countries, often to satisfy aspirations toward self-determination by a small but strategically located ethnic minority whose complete separation would be detrimental to the interests of the larger state. However, federal autonomy often proved to be a stepping-
stone toward a complete vorce. The Soviet Union anc slavia serve as good exam; has to keep in mind that in tonomy was largely fictitioi were ultimately held toge force.
What is usually overlo the laments about fragmei fact that virtually all tl tablished states aspire to joi rope. Thus, further unificat this time on the basis of volt tion, rather than force, w without the fragmentation pires.
It is a dialectic that Ma ly guessed, although he co that the new freedoms wo end of the proletarian he was the ultimate victory c over its old ally.
NOTES
I. Clifford Gvortz. Old Societies anc don The Erc - Press of Glencoe. 196
2 Arend Lyphart.  Political Theories ant Ethnic Conflict in the Western World: Fais Plausible PoMdirtK'ns." Ethnic Conflict in Millon J Kaman. ed (Ithaca and London Pm*. 1977
3. Karl Kautsky, Neue Zed 11886), 522-6 Nationalism and Socialism, (New York and view presa, I967i, 142. ref. in A. Smith, Nat tieth Century (New York: New York Un 163
4	Hush Seton-Watson. Nations and Statei view Preen. 197 1, 446
5	Cynthia Enloe. Ethnic Conflict and I (Boston Utile. Brown & Co . 19731.67.
6	Paul Johnson, Modem Times (Nevi Y 1983). 117
7	Jahnaon. Modern Times. 62.
8	Joseph Stalin. Marxism and the Nationa
9	Hugh Seton-Watson. .X\i/ionsa^
10	Pierre van den Berghe. The Ethnic Phe
Elaevier. 1981 . 16
11	Anthony Smith. Nationalism in the (Now York Now York Umvenuty Press.
12 Smith. Nationalism m the Twentieth Cer 13 A neologism borrowed from the French, sociologists to denote a group that is ligioualy. or otherwise distinct, so long
15 Pierre van
16 Pierre van
17 Pierre van
den Berghe. The EthnwPhenl den Berghe. The Ethnic den Berghe. The Ethnic Phen.
18 Arend Lyphart. Democracy in
plural So
Yale University Press. 1977).
19 Gerhard Lehmbruch. 'prepondemo^
20 Rob", Kann. The ^Itin^ E^ bis L'nivereity Press. 1950'.	^99.
Relations New York. Elsevier. 19761.9^
Article 45
The walls that have yet to fall
Ulrike Helwerth and Gislinde Schwarz
Ulrike Helwerth, who lives in West Berlin, is a sociologist and journalist. Gislinde Schwarz, who lives in East Berlin, is a journalist. Helwerth and Schwarz have been commissioned by the Berlin Senate for Employment and Women to do research for a project called  Estranged Sisters: Differences Between East and West German Feminists.  This article was translated from the German by Annegret Daiss and Zoran Minderovic.
Picture a regular Lufthansa weekday flight from Berlin to Frankfurt. The four female flight attendants are wearing, on the lapels of their blue jackets, buttons that say,  We re foreigners every day.  It s part of the company s public relations campaign against racism and xenophobia. One of the flight attendants is black. A businessman points at the button she s wearing, calling it  a capital idea.  He then asks her, with a charming smile:  Excuse me, and where are you from? 
Heidelberg,  she replies.
This is an everyday scene that mirrors Germany s great conflict: the inner contortions of a lily-white society determined to show that xenophobia and racism are not pervasive traits of the German national character, a society bent on proving that the images of refugee homes in flames, of screaming Nazi skinheads, represent merely an eddy in the wake of German unification.
Adama Ulrich, who grew up in the former East Germany, acutely feels the polarization.  I didn t use to be aware of the act that I m black. I was born and raised here. Roughly a year ago, however, I started noticing two distinct kinds of reactions tom strangers. Some people now openly show their friendliness through glances and body language; others are standoffish  r aggressive.  Ulrich is the daughter of a German mother and a Nigerian father. She has become fearful.  Nowadays I
carefully think where I go and I hardly ever use public transpor-totion. The circle in which I feel safe is circumscribed by a wall ^aggression and violence that is closing in on me.  Ulrich and . *ends female and male, black and white, Germans and oreigners who formed human chains and organized candle-^t vigils in Munich, Dresden, and elsewhere, have voiced eir opposition to violence, racism, and xenophobia. What they ^ant is a multicultural Germany. Any observer can notice that e majority of the antiracism protesters are women.
Do women feel less resentment toward  foreigners  and anything  un-German?  Is racism the problem of (young) men? According to a 1989 survey to determine the attitudes of West German youth toward authoritarian and nationalistic ideas, girls were less receptive than boys to extreme right-wing slogans such as  Germany for the Germans  or  Out with the foreigners.  Studies conducted after unification showed similar results. Men constitute close to two thirds of the right-wing electorate voting for such parties as the Republicans and the German Popular Union. Among card-carrying party members, women are an even smaller minority. Indeed, it is young men who roam around with chains and baseball bats, ready to  clobber foreigners  and throw Molotov cocktails into their homes.
But none of this can obscure the fact that there are some women behind the young thugs, standing, so to speak, in the second line. These women incite their friends to violent acts and reward them afterward with admiration. They are the ones who applaud those who will  finally create order.  In late 1992 a group of young men attacked a home for asylum-seekers in the eastern German town of Thale. They fired tracer rockets, broke into the building, vandalized the furniture, and attempted to rape three Vietnamese women. There were also two young women who excitedly watched the assault.
Three years ago, 20-year-old Jessica moved from the West German town of Hamburg to East Berlin, where she started hanging out in a known skinhead haven.  I used to participate in the attacks,  she says.  I feel good among the skinheads. I secretly rejoice when the asylum-seekers  home
