We investigate to what extent local political parties have attention for ethnic minority interests. We are interested in whether party-related or context-related variables lead to higher levels of attention to ethnic minority interests. Our analysis is based on a broad scale survey among local party chairs in Belgium. The results show that mainly party-related variables explain variance in attention for ethnic minority interests: leftist parties and active parties are more likely to defend these interests. The presence of ethnic minority people in a party does not have a significant effect once we control for factors at the municipality level.

Left, right, left. The influence of party ideology on the political representation of ethnic minorities in Belgium Floor Eelbode a , Bram Wauters b , Karen Celis c & Carl Devos a a Department of Political Sciences , Ghent University , Ghent , Belgium b Business Administration and Public Management , University College Ghent , Ghent , Belgium c Department of Political Sciences , Vrije Universiteit Brussel , Brussels , Belgium Published online: 23 Jul 2013.

The scholarly literature on ethnic minority representation often points to the "political opportunity structure" - particularly that of political parties - to explain the prevalence of ethnic minorities in elected politics. Informed by the literature on women in politics, this article examines how the ideology of political parties affects the representation of ethnic minorities. This article is based on a qualitative case study of 2 major Belgian cities and includes 33 semi-structured interviews with ethnic minority councillors, candidates, members of ethnic communities, and party representatives. Interviews were analyzed using the grounded theory approach. We found party ideology to affect the support parties received from ethnic minority voters and candidates; party ideology does not, however, influence party strategies to enhance ethnic minority representation. Overall, political parties do not seem to invest in their ethnic minority candidates and councillors.

The central concern of this article is the extent of political party commitments to the inclusion of ethnic minorities. The study of two Belgian cities and four parties shows a marked discrepancy between the efforts to include ethnic minority candidates and their level of inclusion in the local party structures as individual members, as party officials or as a party subdivision. A possible explanation is that political parties only promote the representation of ethnic minorities out of concern for their own electoral competitiveness, and not based on an unconditional commitment to the full political integration of ethnic minorities.