Anecdotal evidence in Chapter Six suggests that ethnic politics is closely tied to representation of the group in Bulgaria, Romania, Spain, and even Sri Lanka. When ethnic groups in these countries have had access to governing coalitions, they have demonstrated political flexibility in programmatic demands and willingness to work with a variety of political partners, including old foes. At the same time, political representatives of these ethnic groups all responded inflexibly to augmented intransigence of nonethnic political parties.

According to the implications of Ethnic Attractors, the electoral corollary of successful representation of ethnic issues in government is continued support for the ethnic political partyor a nonethnic party that represents the group, while failure to represent the group is punished with decreasing support for the party. Consequently, there is great stability in electoral support for the successful Hungarian party in Romania, as discussed in Chapters Four and Six. Furthermore, as shown in Table 7.1, with respect to the total votes of each group, there is on average greater stability in electoral support for Catalan parties over time than in support for Basque parties. Moreover, the Turkish party in Bulgaria has enjoyed growing vote stability despite the fact that overall volatility in the country has increased steadily since democratization.