The authors draw on a natural experiment to demonstrate that states can reconstruct conflictual interethnic relationships into cooperative relationships in relatively short periods of time. The article examines differences in how the gentile population in each of two neighboring territories in Romania treated its Jewish population during the Holocaust. These territories had been part of tsarist Russia and subject to state-sponsored anti-Semitism until 1917. During the interwar period one territory became part of Romania, which continued anti-Semitic policies, and the other became part of the Soviet Union, which pursued an inclusive nationality policy, fighting against inherited anti-Semitism and working to integrate its Jews. Both territories were then reunited under Romanian administration during World War II, when Romania began to destroy its Jewish population. The authors demonstrate that, despite a uniform Romanian state presence during the Holocaust that encouraged gentiles to victimize Jews, the civilian population in the area that had been part of the Soviet Union was less likely to harm and more likely to aid Jews as compared with the region that had been part of Romania. Their evidence suggests that the state construction of interethnic relationships can become internalized by civilians and outlive the life of the state itself.

Some scholars have proposed partition as a way to solve ethnic civil wars. Partition theorists advocate the demographic separation of ethnic groups into different states, arguing that this is the best chance for an enduring peace. Opponents argue that partition is costly in terms of its human toll and that its advocates have yet to demonstrate its effectiveness beyond a limited number of self-selected case studies. This analysis systematically examines the outcome of partition, highlighting the centrality of demography by introducing an index that measures the degree to which a partition separates ethnic groups. This index is applied to all civil wars ending in partition from 1945 to 2004. Partitions that completely separated the warring groups did not experience a recurrence of war and low-level violence for at least five years, outperforming both partitions that did not separate ethnic groups and other ethnic war outcomes. These results challenge other studies that examine partition as a war outcome. The results also have direct implications for Iraq's civil war, postindependence Kosovo, and other ethnic civil wars.

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