Group Consciousness, Organizational Membership, and District Choice: Evidence from the Afro-Colombian Reserved Seats

Numerous countries around the globe have undertaken efforts aimed at enhancing political representation. One of these efforts has taken the institutional form of reserved seats or ethnic districts where individuals must choose where to deposit their votes. In this paper, we ask if group consciousness and organizational membership affect the choice to vote on these types of districts. Using a mixed-methods approach by combining semi-structured interviews with elites and a subgroup analysis of a conjoint experiment in a sample of Afro-Colombians, we find evidence that group consciousness affects the preferences for ethnic districts over territorial ones. Contrary to initial expectations, we observe that membership in ethnic organizations does not significantly alter preferences for ethnic districts among surveyed individuals. These findings indicate that individuals with high levels of group consciousness tend to choose to participate more in mechanisms and institutions that can enhance the group’s political representation.