Abstract
‘Ethnic outbidding’ captures a type of electoral competition in which parties that champion the interests of ethnic groups contest each other by adopting ever more radical positions on ethnic issues. Yet, despite the fact that many of the world’s plural societies have both, significant ethnic parties and federal institutions, we do not yet know how federalism affects the likelihood of ethnic outbidding. This contribution develops some theoretical expectations about the relationship between federalism and ethnic outbidding, and discusses what kind of evidence we would need in order to test whether they hold true.