As explained in the Rationale section, our Index focuses on a specific set of “multiculturalism” policies, which we have defined as those policies that involve some form of recognition and accommodation of minorities, above and beyond the non-discriminatory protection of basic individual civil and political rights. While multiculturalism policies in this sense are an important domain of public policy and political contestation, they are of course not the only sort of policy that impacts on the status and treatment of minorities, or on the state of inter-group relations. Minorities are also affected by how societies organize the labour market and the welfare state, for example, or by how political parties and political representation are structured, or by policies around border control. A number of other research projects have attempted to catalogue and measure some of these other institutional and policy choices that affect the legal, political and economic status and security (or precarity) of minorities, including:
- Citizenship Observatory
- Ethnic Power Relations Dataset
- Index of Linguistic Justice
- Indicators of Citizenship Rights for Immigrants
- Immigrant Exclusion from Social Programs Index (IESPI)
- Institutionalization of Ethnocultural Diversity (IED) Index
- Minorities at Risk
- Minorities Institutions Database
- Minority Rights Group
- Minority Rights Index
- MIPEX
- The Representation Index
- Societal Culture Index to Compare Minority Nations