Ethnic regional autonomies as complex institutional systems: institutionalizing ethnic peace (original) (raw)
Ethnic Territorial Autonomies as Complex Institutional Systems: Institutionalizing Ethnic Peace
2016
The paper seeks to establish the relations between specific institutional features of ethnic territorial autonomy and its pacifying effects. The heated debate on the political effects of territorial autonomy arrangements and its ability to pacify, contain, and dissolve ethnic conflicts has entered a new phase in the last decade: the proponents of power-sharing approach have argued that allowing ethnic groups to participate in decision-making process and endowing them with limited selfgovernance would change their preferences and behavior. On the opposite side, critiques believe that power-sharing mechanisms reinforce detached ethnic identity, hence, preventing conflict settlement. Grounding on institutional approach, this paper assumes an ethnic territorial autonomy as complex and dynamic institutional arrangements for power-sharing with multiple institutional arenas and policy domains. Since it is crucial to disaggregate autonomies into more observable units of analysis, the origin...
Addressing Ethnic Divisions In Post-Conflict Institution-Building: Lessons From Recent Cases
Security Dialogue, 2005
Where the lines of an armed conflict coincide with ethnic boundaries, the political salience of ethnicity increases. In post-conflict situations that may seem defined by ‘ancient hatreds’, the political salience and character of ethnic identities remain dynamic. Bringing together contributions from the comparative politics literature on power-sharing and the policy-dominated field of post-conflict peacebuilding, this article examines how ethnic divisions have been addressed in recent cases of institution-building directed by international forces following military intervention – in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. It finds that an ‘assumption of intransigence’ has often influenced decisions on institutional design, and that the institutionalization of ethnicity has become an important hindrance to peacebuilding. Against this background, the article argues in favor of institutional designs that do not fixate the accentuation on ethnicity in politics: more flexible ways should be sought to assure inclusivity and representativeness for different ethnic groups. There exists a wide range of institutional-design options that can be combined, on the basis of in-depth assessments of each individual conflict, to de-ethnicize politics and build sustainable peace.
The Palgrave Handbook of Ethnicity, 2019
With interest in social institutions expanding, and the centering of attention on state as an institution that is essentially cultural, a major interest in recent literature on ethnicity studies is on people, communities, and societies-(i) as collective actors in relation with the state as the sovereign authority and (ii) the process of interface between the state and the ethnic groups that constitute the ethno-demographic profile of the state. This, on one hand, has brought a shift in the focus on state and the modern state-system in studies on ethnic conflict, from the conventional perspective that viewed ethnic conflicts as a condition under
The Regional and International Regulation of Ethnic Conflict
It draws on earlier and forthcoming published work, especially Wolff (2003b, 2004) and Cordell and Wolff (2009). 1 There are some exceptions to this rule: successful, voluntary assimilation is rarely based on a formally negotiated agreement, and the same holds true for forced assimilation, forced population transfers and genocide.
Ethnopolitics (March 2014) Ethnic Alliances Deconstructed
This article presents a critique of how the dominant paradigms in international relations (IR)-neo-realism, neo-liberalism and systemic constructivism-approach and explain ethnic conflict. It deconstructs one of the most prominent explanatory frameworks that mainstream IR has contributed to the analysis of the internationalization of ethnic conflicts, the ethnic alliance model, and demonstrates theoretically and empirically, by way of a case study of the Kurdistan Workers' Party sanctuary in Iraqi Kurdistan, the epistemological and ontological deficiencies of this approach. Furthermore, by dissecting the inherent 'groupism' of this model and related frameworks, it problematizes how scholars as co-protagonists of ethnic conflicts substantialize and reify the ethnicized discourse and politics of ethnic division, and thus contribute to the construction of a normativist and essentialist 'reality' of the conflicts that they set out to describe.
The Nation-State: Civic and Ethnic Dimensions
A definitive global survey of the interaction of race, ethnicity, nationalism and politics, this handbook blends theoretically grounded, rigorous analysis with empirical illustrations, to provide a state-of-the art overview of the contemporary debates on one of the most pervasive international security challenges today. The contributors to this volume offer a 360-degree perspective on ethnic conflict: from the theoretical foundations of nationalism and ethnicity, to the causes and consequences of ethnic conflict, and to the various strategies adopted in response to it. Without privileging any specific explanation of why ethnic conflict happens at a specific place and time or why attempts at preventing or settling it might fail or succeed, the Routledge Handbook of Ethnic Conflict enables readers to gain better insights into such defining moments in post-Cold War international history as the disintegrations of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia and their respective consequences and the genocide in Rwanda, as well as the relative success of conflict settlement efforts in Northern Ireland, Macedonia, and Aceh. By contributing to understanding the varied and multiple causes of ethnic conflicts and to learning from the successes and failures of its prevention and settlement, the Handbook makes a powerful case that ethnic conflicts are neither unavoidable nor unresolvable, but rather that they require careful analysis and thoughtful and measured responses.
Linking Ethnic Conflict & Democratization
An Assessment of Four Troubled Regions, 2007
Ethnic divisions have long been linked to civil war and recent history seems full of examples. However, the mechanisms that lead a society down the path of ethnic conflict are not yet fully understood. This working paper presents the results of a series of workshops discussing the link between ethnicity and conflict under the condition of regime change. Based on contributions of area experts for four regions - the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Great Lakes of Africa and the Middle East – this paper tries to answer four guiding questions: Is there a link between ethnicity and conflict? Are there transnational spillover effects? Does democratization contribute to ethnic violence? And are there institutional solutions for divided societies?
Method in the Madness? A Political-Economy Analysis of Ethnic Conflicts in Less Developed Countries
1996
This paper is an attempt, from a political economist's point of view, to look for some clear patterns in the horrendous complexities of the ethnic and sectarian conflicts that are raging in less developed countries. We emphasize the importance of some institutional failures (such as the decline of mediating institutions or of preexisting structures of credible commitment) rather than mere cultural and historical animosities behind the collapse of interethnic understandings and compromises. The rise in ethnic conflicts is not always associated with economic deterioration. sometimes quite the contrary. The effects of market expansion are also ambiguous. In our discussion of policy lessons we have tried to look for various ways. both political and economic, of constructing institutionalized incentives for conciliatory actions. 0 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd