The paper provides a niche model for the lack and emergence of ethnic party fragmentation under different demographic conditions. The predictions are tested against the findings of Stroschein (2011) on Hungarian ethnic party success at municipal elections in three Romanian counties.

In populations of human organizations (e.g. firms) that operate in cultural niches (markets), size differences are usually large. As large organizations can in principle out-compete small ones, the actual presence of many small organizations asks for an explanation. In ours, we focus on the...