Abstract
As there exists virtually no country in the world that has achieved complete congruency between the nation and the state, each is to some extent faced with a more or less pronounced desire for national self-assertion or even self-determination among segments of its population. This demand has been addressed through various models meant to settle these conflicts (cf. Chap. 13). However, the further such rights are extended, the stronger becomes the fundamental contradiction that, while minority protections or autonomy arrangements may be able to regulate ethno-territorial conflicts without altering international borders, they are often taken to constitute preliminary phases and carte blanche for secession.
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Notes
- 1.
This result is now questioned once again because, unlike their English counterparts, a clear majority of Scots voted to remain in the EU during the Brexit vote in June 2016. Yet the loss of votes by the Scottish nationalists during the early parliamentary elections in May 2017 once again demonstrates that nationalistic single-issue politics only manage to achieve a limited effect in Scotland.
- 2.
See, e.g., Horowitz (1985); Stedman (1996); Saideman (1998); Sambanis and Schulhofer-Wohl (2009); Hale (2000). Differing viewpoints do not question the domino effect itself rather than its relevance in regards to the emergence of separatist movements (see, e.g., Kaufmann 1996; Johnson 2008; Downes 2004).
- 3.
See Hegre (2003). In this context, Collier has identified an income threshold of USD 2700 and an inverse effect on democratic and authoritarian systems: above this threshold, stable democracies are able to form and authoritarian regimes find themselves under social pressures. Below this threshold, however, the effect of real incomes is opposite (Collier 2009; Collier and Rohner 2008).
- 4.
This constellation illustrates the debate on “greed” and “grievances” as sources of conflict. While Ted Gurr (1993) cites grievances, Collier and Hoeffler (2002) emphasize greed and – keeping with the utility maximization of rebels – refer to the prospect of benefits to be drawn from raw materials as well as the operational possibilities and restrictions held by potential rebels (which they dress in a so-called “feasibility hypothesis”, Collier et al. 2006).
- 5.
The considerable subsidies being provided to Greenland from the EU and, even more so, from Denmark have tempered further secessionist ambitions for the time being.
- 6.
Hegre (2003, p. 33). By contrast, democracies are less repressive and open up possibilities for organized transfers of power, raising the costs of resorting to violence and thereby reducing incentives to do so. Moreover, checks and balances institutionally limit the scope of actions the political elite is able to take and, as such, the use of violence as well. See also Mansfield and Snyder (2008).
- 7.
Beyond this, there are two additional compositions: an ethnic group may be in the minority both within the disputed area as well as within the overall state (Corsica, Abkhazia and the Danish minority in Germany); at the same time, a balanced relation may prevail in the disputed area, such as in the case of Tatarstan. Finally, stark ethnic fragmentation within the population of the conflict area may also exist, as in the autonomous province of Papua, for the Canada Inuit or in the Brčko district.
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
Vgl. Gromes (2012). An analysis of 27 violent ethnic conflicts resolved between 1944 and 1994, found that 16 of the cases, or 59%, ended either in a military victory or in a partition that stemmed from a military victory (Kaufmann 1996). A typical military victory was achieved in Nigeria, where the government crushed the efforts of the Ibo minority to create the separate state of Biafra in the late 1960s; a prominent example of partition occurred in 1971, when the ethnic Bengalis backed by India created the separate state of Bangladesh in a war against (West-) Pakistan.
- 11.
“While external mediators often have long-standing experience in conflict management and can draw on a wide range of settlement mechanisms from other negotiations they were involved with or know of, the ‘lessons’ learned there may not be directly or easily transferable to another conflict situation. Local parties often lack such wide comparative knowledge, but have a better, if at times biased, understanding of the specific local context of their conflict” (Wolff 2011, p. 183).
- 12.
With a rather sarcastic tone, David Chandler (2010, p. 40–41) remarks that by arguing that other societies are simply “not ready for liberal frameworks of governance”, they transform the shortcomings of the former (practices of liberal state-building) to a shortcoming of the recipient of intervention, thus still reproducing those states as the “spoiler” of successful state-building practices.
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Babayev, A., Schoch, B., Spanger, HJ. (2020). Settling Ethno-Territorial Conflict. In: Babayev, A., Schoch, B., Spanger, HJ. (eds) The Nagorno-Karabakh deadlock. Studien des Leibniz-Instituts Hessische Stiftung Friedens- und Konfliktforschung. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-25199-4_3
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