Sri Lanka’s ongoing economic crisis has led to mass protests demanding the president’s resignation and will likely end the Rajapaksa political dynasty. But the sociopolitical and economic transformations that protestors clamor for cannot happen unless the country moves away from its extant embedded ethnocracy.
About the Author
Neil DeVotta is professor of politics and international affairs at Wake Forest University. His essay “Sri Lanka: The Return to Ethnocracy” appeared in the January 2021 issue of the Journal of Democracy.
The return to power, via elections, of the Rajapaksa family signals the consolidation of a Sinhalese Buddhist ethnocracy. But there are reasons to hope it will not take a turn…
Having only recently emerged from a prolonged and remarkably bitter civil war, Sri Lanka is now slipping steadily under the hardening authoritarian control of President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his family.
While the people of South Asia, especially those with higher levels of education and exposure to the media, prefer democracy to authoritarianism, they are willing to relax some of the…
