Partition as a Solution to Wars of Nationalism: The Importance of Institutions

Abstract

C ivil war settlements create institutional arrangements that in turn shape postsettlement politics among the parties to the previous conflict. Following civil wars that involve competing nationstate projects, partition is more likely than alternative institutional arrangements--specifically, unitarism, de facto separation, and autonomy arrangements--to preserve the peace and facilitate democratization. A theory of domestic political institutions as a constraint on reescalation of conflict explains this unexpected relationship through four intermediate effects--specifically, the likelihood that each institutional arrangement will reinforce incompatible national identities, focus the pursuit of greed and grievance on a single zero-sum conflict over the allocation of decision rights, empower the parties to the previous conflict with multiple escalatory options, and foster incompatible expectations of victory. The theory's predictions stand up under statistical tests that use four alternative datasets.

Ethnic Conflict Regulation Through Territorial Autonomy – A Configurational Analysis of Success and Failure

“…Scholars are basically divided into two camps: One the one hand the proponents, arguing that regional autonomy can be a suitable solution for multi-ethnic societies (Ghai, 2000;Wolff, 2013), and on the other hand the critics, arguing that autonomy fosters separatist tendencies (Meadwell, 2009;Chapman & Roeder, 2007).…”

Recognition Matters!

“…Public opinion matters because public support underlies successful partitions (T. Chapman and Roeder 2007) and emboldens or constrains leaders to make difficult territorial concessions. Leaders in self-determination conflicts are involved in a two-level game in which they must navigate between the demands of their constituency and those of the other side (Shamir and Shikaki 2010).…”

“…However, because leaders of self-determination movements must navigate between the demands of the state they are challenging and their own domestic public (Shamir and Shikaki 2010), public opinion can either embolden leaders to make difficult territorial concessions or constrain them. If leaders accept partition, public buy-in is also critical for its success (T. Chapman and Roeder 2007). In identifying a new variable that affects public support for partition, this study thus also contributes to our understanding of the conditions under which partitions are likely to succeed or fail and explores the effect of an important but underexamined policy tool.…”

“…This finding is consequential because public opinion plays an important role in determining both the acceptance and success of partition. Studies examining the success of partitions and the acceptance of new borders tend to emphasize state-and conflict-level variables, or elite-level interactions, over changes in mass attitudes (see, e.g., T. Chapman and Roeder 2007;Sambanis and Schulhofer-Wohl 2009;Lustick 1993;O'Leary, Lustick, and Callaghy 2001;Shelef 2010Shelef , 2015. However, because leaders of self-determination movements must navigate between the demands of the state they are challenging and their own domestic public (Shamir and Shikaki 2010), public opinion can either embolden leaders to make difficult territorial concessions or constrain them.…”

The (de)Militarization of Humanitarian Aid: A Historical Perspective

“…In his proposal to standardize "military humanitarian" interventions, Robert Pape even suggested a de facto territorial secession to separate the perpetrator and the victims, whether in Kosovo or Iraq Kurdistan [19]. He indeed claimed that partition was likely to solve conflicts and result in peace and democracy if implemented fully through the creation of separate sovereign states [20]. His refashioned R2P could thus promote struggle for independence, at the risk of fostering ethnic cleansing and segregation.…”