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.
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.
The surprising electoral defeat of President Mahinda Rajapaksa in January 2015 was reinforced by his failed comeback in August parliamentary elections.
With the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in a 26-year civil war, Sri Lanka had a chance for genuine reconciliation, but that chance is being squandered by the government of…
