
Measuring Pluralism in Diverse Societies
Why a tool for measuring pluralism?
All societies are living with diversity and engaging with differences. Navigating the challenges that come with diversity is essential to fostering peace and stability. Otherwise, vulnerable groups, such as religious and ethnic minorities, are often subjected to various forms of political, economic and cultural exclusion.
Pluralism is a positive response to diversity that benefits the collective good. To advance more pluralistic societies, policymakers, practitioners and changemakers must be able to identify the gaps in their country’s treatment of diversity, and track trends towards inclusion or exclusion over time. Societies can use this enhanced understanding of trends and gaps to develop solutions that are unique to their context.
While there are tools that capture specific aspects of diversity, such as religious freedom or Indigenous rights, global actors can benefit greatly from a tool that evaluates societies’ treatment of diversity across economic, political and cultural spheres.
What is the Global Pluralism Monitor?
The Centre’s Global Pluralism Monitor is an action-oriented tool that examines the treatment of diversity holistically. The Monitor focuses on the interplay between institutional and cultural responses to diversity to evaluate inclusionary and exclusionary practices across society.
In 2019, the Monitor was successfully piloted in Canada, Germany, and Kenya. This pilots followed a period of intensive methodological review to enhance the rigour of the Monitor, increasing the veracity of its reports and recommendations. The Centre aims to produce country assessment reports for 30 countries by the end of 2022 and is developing the partnerships and infrastructure required to support scaling up at an accelerated pace thereafter.
How does the Monitor support positive responses to diversity?
ANALYZE TRENDS TO UNDERSTAND GAPS
The Monitor tracks a society’s trajectory over time, towards greater inclusion or exclusion, while also observing global trends. This enables policymakers, practitioners and change-makers to consider ways to address gaps and deficits of pluralism in their society.
ENABLE CONFLICT PREVENTION
By identifying early signs of division and exclusion, the Monitor can contribute to upstream prevention efforts to change a country’s trajectory before conflict becomes imminent.
CATALYZE CHANGE
By recognizing unique and constructive responses to diversity globally, the Monitor empowers creative solutions through knowledge sharing and encouraging adaptation.
The Monitor also supports global efforts to realize the Sustainable Development Goals related to reducing inequalities (SDG 10) and building peace, justice and strong institutions (SDG 16).
Background and further reading
The Global Pluralism Monitor results from a multi-year research program that explored potential methods of measuring pluralism. The Monitor continues to be informed by ongoing reflections and revisions as the Centre learns more about the dynamics of pluralism in varied contexts. The following papers were commissioned by the Centre over the course of the Monitor’s development and have shaped the tool as it exists today.
Scenario Planning
Stefan Wolff explores scenario planning as a method of conducting early warning before crisis is imminent.
Values-Based Benchmarks
Argyro Kartsonaki and Stefan Wolff highlight the challenge of translating normative values into usable indicators.
TECHNICAL ADVISORY GROUP
The Monitor’s development and implementation benefit from the experience and knowledge of an international group of experts on qualitative and quantitative methodologies, representing a wide range of thematic and geographic expertise.
Anna-Mária Bíró
Anna-Mária Bíró –
Anna-Mária Bíró is the director of the Tom Lantos Institute since 2013. Anna-Mária Bíró has dedicated her career to bringing awareness to minority populations and promoting human rights. Between 1996 and 2004, she was the head of the Budapest Co-ordination Office of Minority Rights Group International (MRG) and she worked as the Advisor on Minority Affairs of the OSCE Mission in Kosovo. Prior to working at the Tom Lantos Institute, Anna-Mária Bíró was a senior consultant to the Managing Multiethnic Communities Programme, LGI/Open Society Foundations.
In 2015, Anna-Mária Bíró lectured at the Faculty of Education and Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary. She is member of The UK Network on Minority Groups and Human Rights, as well as a delegate in the Academic Working Group of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. Anna-Mária speaks English, French, Romanian and Hungarian.
Allison Harell
Allison Harell –
Allison Harrell is Strategic Chair on the Political Psychology of Social Solidarity at Université du Québec
à Montréal and Associate Director of the Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship. She is an expert in quantitative and survey methodologies, and is currently a co-lead for the Consortium of Electoral Democracy (C-Dem)– a SSHRC-funded research initiative with government, civil society and academic partners (including GCP) that is measuring Canadian political and social attitudes before, during, and after elections.
Niraja Gopal Jayal
Niraja Gopal Jayal –
Niraja Gopal Jayal is currently a professor at Centre for Law and Governance at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India and has held academic and visiting positions at London School of Economics, Princeton University and EHESS Paris, among others. She is an expert on state-building, citizenship and democracy in South Asia and has published numerous books and articles about citizenship and diversity.
She has also served in advisory and leadership position for initiatives like World Governance Survey (2001) and State-building in the Developing World (2009-13).
Will Kymlicka
Will Kymlicka –
Will Kymlicka is the Canada Research Chair in Political Philosophy at Queen’s University. Dr. Kymlicka is a leading expert on multiculturalism and citizenship, whose published work includes Multicultural Citizenship and Multicultural Odysseys: Navigating the New International Politics of Diversity. Along with Dr. Keith Banting, he co-leads the Multiculturalism Policy Index, a monitoring tool that measures policy commitments for accommodating indigenous peoples, immigrants, and national minorities in OECD countries.
Hwok Aun Lee
Hwok Aun Lee –
Hwok Aun Lee is currently a Senior Fellow at Institute of Southeat Asian Studies in Singapore. He is an expert on labour, social policy and education in Malaysia. He has worked extensively on labour policies, macroeconomic reforms and human development in South east Asia. Hwok Aun has researched and published widely on affirmative action in Malaysia and South Africa.
He was previously head of Development Studies, Faculty of Economics at University of Malaya.
Corinne Lennox
Corinne Lennox –
Corinne Lennox is a Senior Lecturer in Human Rights at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. She is an expert on human rights frameworks and rights-based mobilizations by minority groups, and her published work includes Transnational Social Mobilisation and Minority Rights: Identity, Advocacy and Norms and Activist Scholarship in Human Rights.
Edem Selormey
Edem Selormey –
Edem Selormey is Director of Capacity-Building for Afrobarometer network, and formerly served as the Fieldwork Operations Manager for anglophone West Africa, and North and East Africa. She is also Director of Research and Knowledge Management at the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development in Accra.
Ashad Sentogo
Ashad Sentogo –
Ashad Sentogo is the Director, of Africa Programs at the Auschwitz Institute for Prevention of Genocide and Other Mass Atrocities, New York (USA). As a Drucie French Cumbie Fellow, his research work focused on power-sharing and ethnic conflict in Africa. He previously worked with the Genocide Prevention Program at George Mason University as Program Officer on Prevention of Genocide attached to the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) and helped to establish the Regional and National Committees in Member States. Dr. Sentongo’s publications focus on managing ethnic conflicts, conflict transformation, and traditional approaches to conflict resolution in Africa.
Rachel Sieder
Rachel Sieder –
Rachel Sieder is Senior Research Professor at the Center for Research and Graduate Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS) in Mexico City. She is also associate senior researcher at the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway, and associate fellow at the Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of London. She has an MA in Latin American Studies and a PhD in Politics from the University of London. Her research interests include human rights, indigenous rights, social movements, indigenous law, legal anthropology, the state and violence. Her published work includes Demanding Justice and Security: Indigenous Women and Legal Pluralities in Latin America.
Frances Stewart
Frances Stewart –
Frances Stewart is Professor Emeritus in Development Economics at Oxford University and former director of the Centre for Research on Inequality, Human Security, and Ethnicity (also at Oxford). She has previously worked as advisor to UNDP’s Human Development Index and consulted on early Human Development Reports. Dr. Stewart has written extensively on group-based inequalities, including Horizontal Inequalities and Conflict: Understanding Group Violence in Multiethnic Societies and the influential UNICEF study Adjustment with a Human Face.
Stefan Wolff
Stefan Wolff –
Stefan Wolff is Professor of International Security at Birmingham University, and is an expert on the prevention, management and settlement of ethnic conflicts. He frequently advises governments and international organizations and has been involved in various stages of peace negotiations including in Iraq, Sudan, Moldova, Sri Lanka and Kosovo. He has published over 80 articles and book chapters, as well as 17 books, including Ethnic Conflict: A Global Perspective.
Acknowledgements
The Centre would like to thank the following organizations for their services and support in making the Global Pluralism Monitor possible:
- IDRC
- Afrobarometer