Abstract
This paper demonstrates how the principle of proportionality is used and understood within political science on the example of political representation of ethnic minorities at local level. Few theoretical concepts related to the principle of proportionality are introduced in the beginning of this study.
This includes Arendt Lijphart's theory of consensual and majoritarian democracy as well as some main presumptions about the functionality of electoral systems. Further on, the level of proportionality of political representation of ethnic minorities expressed by the simple proportionality index is discussed on the data from empirical comparative case study.
Level of representation is examined as a main dependent variable and the influence of three other independent variables is further analyzed. These variables are electoral system, special measures for minority representation and electoral rights as all these variables could have possibly effect on the level of political representation of ethnic minorities.
The selected cases are city of Leicester in United Kingdom, Finnish city of Espoo, Romanian Cluj-Napoca and Frankfurt am Main in Germany. All these cases have substantial amount of citizens from different ethnic groups.
Main key for the case selection was John Stuart Mill's method of most different cases, where the only variable which was same for all the cases was existence of ethnic minority in the selected municipality.