Irredentism and secessionism have been important causes of international conflict in the 1990s, yet few have considered why ethnic groups desire union with kin elsewhere or want to become independent. Why do groups desire independence rather than union with kin, or vice versa? We consider five distinct explanations: the nature of the group itself; characteristics of the group's kin; contagion processes; ethnic security dilemmas; and the end of the cold war. Using logit, we analyze data from the Minorities at Risk data set. Our findings support elements of the conventional wisdom: Ethnic kin influence irredentism, and violence between a group and its host state increases secessionism. Contrary to current debates, groups that are more concentrated are more likely to be secessionist. Further, some factors are less important than usually argued: relative size, a group's ethnic distinctiveness, economic and political differences, regime type, and economic growth.

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Recent events around the world have convinced political scientists and policymakers that nationalist conflicts are an important feature of the post-Cold War world. Conflicts in Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosovo, and Kurdistan have all been prominent in headlines in recent years; but such conflicts are not just a post-Cold War phenomenon, and many have been going on for decades. This article outlines the scope of this phenomenon - violent conflicts between nationalist groups within states - in the post-war period. It presents a dataset of violent nationalist conflicts within states from 1945 to 1996, measuring cases in terms of initiation, duration, and intensity of conflict, and comparing this effort to other intrastate conflict data collections. The characteristics of these conflicts before and after the Cold War are examined, to test the popular notion that the end of the Cold War has `unleashed' a new era of nationalist strife. This survey concludes that these conflicts are not simply a post-Cold War phenomenon, nor has the end of the Cold War brought an unprecedented wave of new nationalist conflicts to the world. On the contrary, many such conflicts do get resolved, and more have been resolved in the past ten years - particularly by peaceful methods - than in any comparable period in recent history.

A basic assumption of much literature on international conflict, mediation, and social psychology is that the process of mediation can break down stereotypes or images which conflicting parties hold of each other; this breakdown is argued to facilitate settlement. The article proposes a method for the systematic testing of this assumption. This approach is then explored with a `plausibility probe' consisting of three case studies: the Israeli-Egyptian conflict from 1973 to 1979; the conflict between Greek and Turkish Cypriots from 1979 to 1983; and the Iran-Iraq war from 1980 to 1985. In all three cases, the predictions of hypothesized relationship were upheld. In the one case (Egypt-Israel) where resolution was reached, images did change, correlated with mediation efforts over time. In cases (Cyprus, Iran-Iraq) where no resolution was obtained, no image change occurred despite mediation efforts. These results suggest that the previously untested hypothesis of mediation theory regarding the importance of image change is a plausible one, and should be pursued with further research in the form of more case studies and large-N analyses.

This article considers the impact of international organizations on foreign policy, by focusing on two of the most powerful international organizations on the policy choices of countries seeking membership. Scholars have argued that applicants to North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU) have altered their policies, foreign and domestic, so that they can become members. We argue that conditions imposed on potential applicants have less of an impact than frequently argued as neither the applicants nor the existing members care as much about the formal criteria as is often asserted. Instead, we argue that domestic politics, particularly constituents’ preferences, is both logically and empirically prior to external conditions. Indeed, in some sense, NATO and the EU were quite lucky, as domestic conditions in most, but not all, Central and East European countries converged towards “European” expectations. We focus here on minority rights and border negotiations as these were not only highly visible, but of great import for political stability. We focus on some of the key episodes cited by conditionality theorists, and conclude by considering the implications for theory and policy.