History is especially relevant in this respect. When there was, in the past, (for instance, in an old democracy) free adherence of all or a part of a minority to national political parties, irrespective of its ethnic identity, and, therefore its social integration  was  on-going, it might have been preferable to avoid reserving a seat for a political party representing a minority, and to rather assign the seat which is reserved to the minority to the person belonging to this minority and who, as a candidate, obtained a proportionally larger support in a national political party than the other candidates of other national political parties, also belonging to the minority. This could be a means of balancing the requirement of the integration of the minority in the society at large, on the one hand, and the necessity of ensuring the presence of the national minorities in the national decision-making processes, on the other.