Footnote 35, Chapter 3, Page 64:

The socioeconomic and geographic diversity of the cases analyzed for this project is described extensively in Chapter 3. However, it should also be noted that one benefit of identifying cases according to Lijphart’s definition of plural societies and Gurr’s list of Minorities at Risk (MARs) is that both categories contain a wide variety of states. Norris emphasizes the importance of examining established, consolidated, and new democracies, as well as states enjoying different socioeconomic levels. She believes that it may not be coincidental that established democracies such as the Netherlands and Belgium appear to have gained more through consociation than developing societies like Lebanon and Malaysia. Norris observes that, [m]uch existing research on consociational democracies is based on the experience of Western political systems that, by virtue of their very persistence, have come to a consensus about many of the basic constitutional rules of the game and a democratic culture. It also seems logical that socioeconomically troubled states also enjoy less political stability so it could be argued that leaving them out of this analysis would introduce significant bias. The cases to be used here are chosen only on the basis of Gurr’s criteria for MARs, and this procedure will prevent bias involving consociation and thus strengthen the validity of the results of this statistical analysis. Inclusion of this wide variety of states in the statistical analysis will be accompanied by the use of independent variables designed to control for several factors such as democracy and states' differing socioeconomic conditions, to ensure that the true effects of consociation are distinguished from these other phenomena.