Routledge Handbook of Ethnic Conflict

Routledge Handbook of
Ethnic Conflict
A definitive global survey of the interaction of race, ethnicity, nationalism and politics,
this handbook blends rigorous theoretically grounded 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 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
one 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 a better insight 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, this
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.
Karl Cordell is Professor of Politics at the University of Plymouth. He co-edits the

journals Ethnopolitics and Civil Wars and has an extensive publication record in the
fields of ethnopolitics, German politics and the politics of ethnicity in Central Europe.
Stefan Wolff is Professor of International Security at the University of Birmingham.

Frequently advising governments and international organisations, he specialises in the
management of international security challenges, especially in relation to conflict and
post-conflict reconstruction. Among his publications are more than a dozen books and
over twenty journal articles and book chapters. He is co-editor of the journals
Ethnopolitics and Civil Wars.
Routledge Handbook of Ethnic
Conflict
Edited by Karl Cordell and Stefan Wolff

First published 2011
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon. OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010.
To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.
© 2011 Editorial and selected matter, Karl Cordell and Stefan Wolff; individual chapters, the contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any
electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Routledge handbook of ethnic conflict / Edited by Karl Cordell & Stefan Wolff.
p. cm.
Handbook of ethnic conflict
1. Ethnic conflict--Handbooks, manuals, etc. 2. Culture conflict--Handbooks, manuals, etc. 3. Social
conflict--Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Cordell, Karl, 1956- II. Wolff, Stefan. III. Title: Handbook of ethnic
conflict.
HM1121.R68 2010
305.8--dc22
2010006861
ISBN 0-203-84549-8 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN: 978-0-415-47625-6 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-203-84549-3 (ebk)
For our grandparents
Contents
List of tables xi
Notes on the contributors xiii
Acknowledgements xvii
1 The study of ethnic conflict: an introduction 1

K ARL C ORD E LL A N D STEFA N WO LFF
PART I
2 Origins of ‘nations’: contested beginnings, contested futures 15

J E N N I F E R J AC K SO N - PR EEC E
3 Ideology and nationalism 26

D AN I E L E C ON V ER SI
4 The nation-state: civic and ethnic dimensions 44

C OL I N C L ARK
5 Stateless nations in a world of nation-states 55

E P H RAI M N I M N I
6 Ethnicity and religion 67

J OSE P H RU ANE A N D JEN N I FER TO D D
7 Race and ethnicity 79

C H RI S G I L L I G A N
PART II
8 Ethnicity as a generator of conflict 91

ST U ART J . K A U FMA N
viii Contents
9 Democracy and democratisation 103
J E N N Y E N GSTR Ö M
10 The causes and consequences of ethnic cleansing 112

E RI N K . J E NN E
11 Genocide 122
J AME S H U GH ES
12 Debating partition: evaluating the standard justifications 140

B RE N D AN O’ LEA R Y
13 Irredentas and secessions: adjacent phenomena, neglected connections 158

D ON AL D L . H O R O WI TZ
14 Conflict prevention: a policy in search of a theory or a theory in

search of a policy? 169
D AV I D C ARMEN T A N D MA R TI N FI SC H ER
15 Managing and settling ethnic conflict 187

ASAF SI N I VER
16 Multilateral frameworks for conflict resolution 198

E V A S OB OTK A
17 Post-conflict reconstruction in ethnically divided societies 212

MON I K A H EU PEL
PART III
18 Deepening democracy: the role of civil society 225

I AN O’F L YN N A N D D A V I D R U SSELL
19 Human rights and ethnopolitics 236

J OS E F MAR K O
20 Territorial approaches to ethnic conflict settlement 249

J OH N MC G AR R Y A N D BR EN D A N O ’ LEA R Y
21 Ethnic accommodation in unitary states 266

F RAN S S C H R I JV ER
22 National cultural autonomy 278

D AV I D J . S MI TH
Contents ix
23 Centripetalism 288
B E N J AMI N R EI LLY
24 Power sharing 300

ST E F AN WOLFF A N D K A R L C O R D ELL
25 Playing the ethnic card: liberal democratic and authoritarian practices

compared 311
SAN D RA B ARK H O F
Index 322
Tables
14.1 Regional organizations’ reflection of R2P prevention principles 177

16.1 Selected traditional peacekeeping missions, 1945–1990 200
16.2 Non-UN peacekeeping and interventions, 1990–2005 204
16.3 Functions of multidimensional peacekeeping operations 206
23.1 Consociationalism, centripetalism and communalism compared 296
Notes on the contributors
Sandra Barkhof is Lecturer in History at the Faculty of Arts, University of Plymouth.

She teaches modern European and East Asian history. Her research interests include
European integration and European identity, Chinese and Japanese history, and
German history, with particular focus on imperial German colonialism in China and
the Pacific. She is working on a study of German PoWs in Japan during World War I.
David Carment is a full Professor of International Affairs at the Norman Paterson

School of International Affairs, Carleton University, and Fellow of the Canadian
Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute. He is also a NATO Fellow and listed in Who’s
Who in International Affairs. In addition he serves as the principal investigator for the
Country Indicators for Foreign Policy project. His most recent books are Who
Intervenes? (2006), Security, Development and the Fragile State (2009) and The World in
Canada: Diasporas, Demography and Domestic Politics (2007).
Colin Clark is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Strathclyde. His

primary research interests are in contemporary social divisions/movements and issues
of identity, citizenship, disadvantage and multiculturalism. He has published widely on
these issues, including Here to Stay: The Gypsies and Travellers of Britain (with M.
Greenfields).
Daniele Conversi is Ikerbasque Foundation Research Professor, University of the

Basque Country, Bilbao, Euskadi/Spain. He has worked in various international
institutions, including Cornell University and the Central European University,
Budapest. His key interest is theories of nationalism. He has also published on
globalization and genocide. His first book, The Basques, the Catalans and Spain, is
widely used across disciplines. Daniele is currently covering the cases of Italy,
ex-Yugoslavia and Spain.
Jenny Engström is an independent researcher on Balkan politics, peace and conflict

studies. She is the author of Democratisation and the Prevention of Violent Conflict:
Lessons Learned from Bulgaria and Macedonia (2009) as well as various articles and
book chapters on Macedonia, conflict and democratisation.
Martin Fischer is a doctoral candidate at the Norman Paterson School of International

Affairs, Carleton University, and a research analyst at the Pearson Peacekeeping
Centre. He is the co-author (with David Carment) of ‘R2P and the role of regional
xiv Notes on the contributors
organizations in ethnic conflict management, prevention and resolution: the unfinished
agenda’, Global Responsibility to Protect, and ‘Three’s company? Toward an
understanding of third-party effectiveness’, in Handbook of the Political Economy of
War, ed. Chris Coyne (forthcoming).
Chris Gilligan is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of the West of Scotland.
He previously held lecturing posts at Aston University and the University of Ulster. He
is reviews editor of the journal Ethnopolitics. He has edited (or co-edited) five collections:
three on the peace process in Northern Ireland and two on migration and social division.
His work has been published in a range of academic journals, including the Journal of
Peace Research, Nations and Nationalism, Policy and Politics and Translocations.
Monika Heupel is a Research Associate in the Transnational Conflicts and International

Institutions research unit at the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB). Her
research focuses on the implications of the emergence of transnational security threats
for global governance and, more recently, on the accountability of international
organizations; she has published inter alia in Security Dialogue, Cooperation and
Conflict, International Affairs, the Nonproliferation Review and the Journal of
International Relations and Development.
Donald L. Horowitz is the James B. Duke Professor of Law and Political Science at
Duke University and co-author of, among other works, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (2000)
and The Deadly Ethnic Riot (2001). In 2009 he received the Distinguished Scholar
award of the Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Migration Section of the International Studies
Association.
James Hughes is Professor of Comparative Politics in the Department of Government

at the London School of Economics and is convenor of its Conflict Studies programme.
His most recent book is Chechnya: from Nationalism to Jihad (2008). He is also the
editor of a special issue of the journal Ethnopolitics which has been published in book
form as EU Conflict Management (2010).
Jennifer Jackson-Preece is Senior Lecturer in Nationalism at the London School of

Economics. She is the author of Minority Rights: Between Diversity and Community
(2005) and National Minorities and the European Nation States System (1998) as well as
various articles and book chapters in the general area of ethnic conflict and minority
protection.
Erin K. Jenne is Associate Professor at the International Relations and European

Studies Department at the Central European University, Budapest. Her book Ethnic
Bargaining: The Paradox of Minority Empowerment (2007) won the 2007 Mershon
Center Edgar S. Furniss Book Award for making an exceptional contribution to the
study of national and international security. She has recent or forthcoming articles in
International Studies Quarterly, Security Studies, Regional and Federal Studies and the
Journal of Peace Research.
Stuart J. Kaufman is Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the

University of Delaware. He is author of Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of
Ethnic War (2001) and co-editor of The Balance of Power in World History (2007).
Notes on the contributors xv
Josef Marko is Professor at the Institute of Austrian, European and Comparative
Public Law, Political Science and Administration of the Karl-Franzens University of
Graz and Director of the University Centre for South East European Studies. He served
previously as one of the three international judges at the Constitutional Court of Bosnia
and Herzegovina, and as member of the Council of Europe’s advisory committee,
established under the Framework Convention on the Protection of National Minorities.
He also served as political adviser to the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
He is the author or co-author of six books, and has edited or co-edited a further twenty.
John McGarry is Professor of Political Studies and Canada Research Chair in

Nationalism and Democracy at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. He is the
co-author (with Brendan O’Leary) of Explaining Northern Ireland (1995) and The
Northern Ireland Conflict: Consociational Engagements (2004). In 2008–09 he served as
Senior Adviser on Power Sharing to the United Nations (Mediation Support Unit).
Ephraim Nimni is Reader at the School of Politics, International Studies, at Queen’s

University, Belfast. He has published widely on questions of nationalism,
multiculturalism, cultural autonomy and Israel–Palestine, including National Cultural
Autonomy and its Contemporary Critics (2005) and The Challenge of Post-Zionism
(2003). His new book, Multicultural Nationalism, will be published in 2011.
Ian O’Flynn is Lecturer in Political Theory in the School of Geography, Politics and
Sociology, Newcastle University, UK. He is the author of Deliberative Democracy and
Divided Societies (2006) and co-editor (with David Russell) of Power Sharing: New
Challenges for Divided Societies (2005). His articles on democracy and ethnic conflict
have appeared in scholarly journals such as the British Journal of Political Science,
Ethnicities and Political Studies.
Brendan O’Leary is Lauder Professor of Political Science at the University of

Pennsylvania. In 2009–10 he was the Senior Adviser on Power Sharing for the Standby
Team of the Mediation Support Unit at the United Nations. Recent books include How
to Get Out of Iraq with Integrity (2009), (with M. Heiberg and J. Tirman) Terror,
Insurgency and the State (2007), (with J. McGarry and K. Salih) The Future of Kurdistan
in Iraq (2005) and (with J. McGarry) The Northern Ireland Conflict: Consociational
Engagements (2004).
Benjamin Reilly is Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University.

His latest work includes a study of democratisation and political reform in Asia and the
Pacific, Democracy and Diversity: Political Engineering in the Asia-Pacific (2006) and an
edited volume, Political Parties in Conflict-prone Societies (2008).
Joseph Ruane is Professor in the Department of Sociology, University College Cork.

He has published extensively on the conflict in Northern Ireland and is engaged in
research comparing the Protestant minority in the Republic of Ireland and in France.
Recent publications include ‘Path dependence in settlement processes: explaining
settlement in Northern Ireland’, Political Studies 55: 2 (2007) (with J. Todd) and
‘Majority–minority conflicts and their resolution: Protestant minorities in France and
in Ireland’, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 12: 3–4 (2006).
xvi Notes on the contributors
David Russell is Head of Communications and Education at the Northern Ireland
Human Rights Commission and a board member of the Northern Ireland Community
Relations Council. He has worked formulating the Commission’s advice to the UK
government on a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland as mandated by the Belfast (Good
Friday) Agreement. He holds a PhD from the University of York, Department of
Politics, Post-War Reconstruction and Development Unit. His publications include
‘Power sharing and civic leadership in Lebanon and Northern Ireland’, in Global
Change, Civil Society and the Northern Ireland Peace Process: Implementing the Political
Settlement, edited by C. Farrington (2008) and Power-Sharing: New Challenges for
Divided Societies, co-edited with I. O’Flynn (2005).
Frans Schrijver is a teaching fellow in Political Geography at the University of Sheffield.

He is the author of Regionalism after Regionalisation (2006). His teaching and research
interests include the geographies of nationalism, citizenship and the politics of territorial
identities.
Asaf Siniver is Lecturer in International Security at the Department of Political Science

and International Studies, University of Birmingham. His work focuses on conflict
management and resolution, Middle East politics, contemporary US foreign policy and
international security. He is associate editor of the journal Civil Wars and his recent
publications include Nixon, Kissinger and US Foreign Policy: The Machinery of Crisis
(2008) and the edited volume International Terrorism post 9/11: Comparative Dynamics
and Responses (2010).
David J. Smith is Professor of Baltic History and Politics at the University of Glasgow.
His work has focused on issues of statehood, nationality and minority rights in Central
and Eastern Europe, with particular regard to the Baltic States. He is completing a
monograph on the theory and practice of non-territorial cultural autonomy in the
region, based on AHRC-funded research. Previous publications include Estonia:
Independence and European Integration (2001) and Cultural Autonomy in Contemporary
Europe, co-edited with Karl Cordell (2008).
Eva Sobotka is Human Rights and Networking Co-ordinator at the European Union
Agency for Fundamental Rights in Vienna. She is the author of several articles on
Roma, national minorities and human rights. Her research has focused on EU
enlargement, the influence of international norms on policy making, multilevel
governance of fundamental rights and conflict resolution.
Jennifer Todd is Professor in the School of Politics and International Relations,

University College Dublin and Director of the Institute of British–Irish Studies. She
has published extensively on the Northern Ireland conflict and settlement (including
(with J. Ruane) Dynamics of Conflict in Northern Ireland (1996)), and on issues of
ethnicity, identity and identity change. She is contributing co-editor of the special issue
of Ethnopolitics (9(1), 2010) on ‘Ethnicity and Religion: Intersections and Comparisons’.
Acknowledgements
We wish to thank each of the contributors to this volume for their efforts in helping us
to construct what we feel sure will be a worthy addition to the genre. Your help and
patience has been very much appreciated and we hope that each of you will find the
volume to be a satisfying read. Thanks are also due to Craig Fowlie who afforded us the
opportunity to compile the book and to Nicola Parkin for her constant good humour
and invaluable assistance.
1 The study of ethnic conflict
An introduction
Karl Cordell and Stefan Wolff
Ethnic conflict remains one of the prevailing challenges to international security in our
time. Left unchecked, or managed poorly, it threatens the very fabric of the societies in
which it occurs, endangers the territorial integrity of existing states, wreaks havoc on
their economic development, destabilises entire regions as conflict spills over from one
country into another, creates the conditions in which transnational organised crime can
flourish, and offers safe havens to terrorist organisations with an agenda far beyond,
and often unconnected, to the conflict in question. To be sure, not every conflict has all
of these consequences and not all of them occur in equal scale everywhere. Yet one
feature that most ethnic conflicts above all share is the sheer human misery that they
create: people are killed, tortured, maimed, raped; they suffer from displacement,
starvation, and disease. If for no other reason, social scientists need to study ethnic
conflict in order to understand better what its causes are, how it can be prevented,
managed and resolved. While we may never be able to stop ethnic conflicts from
happening, understanding them better will improve our abilities to respond more
quickly and more effectively, thus reducing the scale of human suffering.
Ethnic conflicts have been a subject of social scientific inquiry for a long time now,
and the subject has become firmly established as a field of study across a range of
disciplines from political science and international relations to sociology, anthropology,
and psychology. It is taught widely at universities across the world, at undergraduate
and postgraduate levels, and numerous doctoral dissertations are written every year on
a wide range of aspects of ethnic conflict. Being the editors of this Handbook of Ethnic
Conflict, we do not propose a new theory of ethnic conflict or conflict resolution, but
rather a comprehensive introduction to the study of this subject, reflecting the state of
the art in this field. Motivated to explore a wide range of different dimensions of ethnic
conflict, we have been very fortunate to be able to assemble a team of scholars all of
whom are experts in their area and can shed light on specific aspects of ethnic conflict,
offering well argued insights, and complementing each other’s views in a way that what
emerges is an overview of the way in which ethnic conflict is being studied today.
The purpose of this introductory chapter is threefold. First, we offer some empirical
backing to our assertion that ethnic conflict is today one of the prevailing challenges to
international security. Second, proceeding from this background, we discuss what the
questions are that need to be asked about ethnic conflict, how we and our contributors
go about answering them with the help of concepts, theories, and methods, and how
this has translated into the structure of our Handbook. Third, we explore whether we
can draw any more general conclusions about ethnic conflict from the contributions to
this handbook – not in the sense of a new theory of ethnic conflict, but rather in the
2 Karl Cordell and Stefan Wolff
sense of what we know and understand today of this particular phenomenon and where
this knowledge and understanding might lead us in the future, both in terms of research
agendas and in terms of practically dealing with ethnic conflicts and their aftermath.
Ethnic conflict as an international security challenge

On 25 December 2009 twenty-three-year-old Nigerian national Umar Farouk
Abdulmutallab tried to trigger an explosion on board Northwest flight 253 from
Amsterdam to Detroit. Fortunately, the attempt failed and Abdulmutallab was
overpowered by crew and passengers and taken into custody. It subsequently emerged
that the would-be terrorist had been trained in a camp run by al-Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen. What is relevant here for our purposes is less the attack
itself, but rather the fact that Abdulmutallab was trained in Yemen by an organisation
intent on overthrowing the Saudi and Yemeni governments and establishing a caliphate
on the Arabian peninsula. AQAP has managed to establish a foothold in the eastern
parts of Yemen, a country where the control of the central government barely extends
beyond the capital and even then is heavily dependent on co-operation from local tribal
leaders. Since the unification of South and North Yemen in 1990 the country has been
riven by conflict. These include border disputes with Saudi Arabia and Eritrea, the
Saada insurgency in the north-west and a secessionist conflict with the South. All of
these conflicts are highly complex in their causes and consequences, and it would be
simplistic to explain them purely in terms of ethnic difference, even if conceived of as
predominantly tribal or religious. Yet neither can we ignore that such differences have
mattered greatly and fuelled today’s conflicts over time, hardening divisions between
combatant factions and increasing mistrust and grievances as both sides committed
atrocities against civilian populations, be it by killing civilians in suicide attacks or by
razing entire villages to the ground. This is further complicated by external ‘meddling’
in these conflicts – Saudi Arabia, a one-time supporter of tribal uprisings in the 1990s,
aimed at weakening the Yemeni government during its border dispute with Riyadh, has
subsequently sided with Sana’a when the threat from al-Qaeda extended to the Saudi
monarchy, while Iran has allegedly indirectly supported the rebels, reflecting the
regional power struggle with Saudi Arabia. Ongoing domestic conflicts, some with
clear ethnic dimensions thus have very obvious implications beyond the locality in
which occur, shaping and being shaped by broader regional and international
developments.
Yemen provides only one among many examples of why we cannot neglect ethnic
conflict as a phenomenon with major international security implications. During the
1990s in South East Asia, another local al-Qaeda offshoot – Jemaah Islamiyah – grafted
itself on to pre-existing ethnic conflicts in southern Thailand, the Aceh province of
Indonesia and Mindanao in the Philippines when Islamic fighters from Afghanistan
returned to their homelands, maintaining the links between them and putting their
experience from anti-Soviet guerrilla warfare to continued use. They exploited the
grievances of Muslim minority groups in overwhelmingly Buddhist Thailand and the
predominantly Catholic Philippines, and of the religiously far more conservative
Acehnese in Indonesia and thus struggles for self-governance and greater rights and
freedoms to their own global jihad. Obtaining operational bases and safe havens, they
most spectacularly targeted Western tourists in the Bali bombings of October 2002. In
the southern Philippines, Jemaah Islamiyah is connected with the Abu Sayyaf, perhaps
The study of ethnic conflict 3
the most well known of Muslim insurgent groups on Mindanao, which gained notoriety
less for its struggle on behalf of aggrieved Muslims but more for its kidnappings and
extortion rackets that have, over time, turned it into an organised crime operation,
despite its notional aim to establish an Islamic province in the southern Philippines.
Similar links, differing in scale and intensity, between ethnic conflict, organised crime
and/or international terrorism can be observed in Iraq and Afghanistan, in the
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Somalia and Nigeria, in Burma, Bangladesh
and north-east India, and in the separatist regions of Chechnya, Ingushetia, South
Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Transnistria. The important point here is this: ethnic conflicts,
if left to fester, over time have the potential to transmorph into an even more deadly
mix of overlapping and converging agendas of different interest groups that are difficult
to disentangle and even more difficult to resolve. Understanding these dynamics is
important: it should motivate the international community to preventive rather than
reactive action, and it should foster a comprehensive approach to conflict analysis and
a context-sensitive approach to conflict settlements.
Not every ethnic conflict, of course, has similar regional and global ramifications.
Nor are there, in fact, that many ethnic conflicts. According to data compiled by the
Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO 2009; Harbom and Wallensteen 2009), between
1946 and 2008 there were 174 internal and internationalised internal conflicts. Of these,
in line with the definition we develop below, ninety would fall into the category of
ethnic conflicts, sixty-five of which were struggles specifically over territorial control.
Likewise, Quinn’s analysis of violent self-determination conflicts – the ‘quest of national
and indigenous peoples for self-governance’ (Quinn 2008: 33) – has found that since the
1950s ‘seventy-nine territorially concentrated ethnic groups have waged armed conflicts
for autonomy or independence’ (ibid.). While this figure excludes ethnic conflicts in
which the overall aim of the combatants is to retain, or attain, control of the state as a
whole (i.e., in PRIO terms, conflicts in which the incompatibility is government), the
same general trend also applies: since the peak of such conflicts in the early 1990s there
have been fewer outbreaks of new conflicts (or re-escalation of previously settled or
contained ones) than settlements so that the total number of violent self-determination
conflicts has declined significantly (see also Hewitt 2010). Yet what is also clear from
these and other analyses is that it is unlikely that we will see a complete disappearance
of ethnic conflicts in the near future. As Duffy Toft and Saideman (2010: 39) observe,
such conflicts ‘remain an important source of violence in the [twenty-first] century’.
Conceptualising the study of ethnic conflict

The fact that ethnic conflicts will remain with us as a significant international
humanitarian and security challenge in itself justifies their in-depth study, because we
cannot deal with them effectively unless we understand them. This means that we have
to clarify the relevant concepts and theories which provide the foundation for any study
of ethnic conflict and allow us to situate this subject within and across disciplinary
boundaries, engage with key methodological issues, and identify the terms of the debate
and the main underlying assumptions. Even more fundamentally, we need to clarify the
actual subject of our inquiry. ‘Ethnic conflict’ is a term loaded with often legitimate
negative associations and entirely unnecessary confusions. The most important
confusion is that ethnic conflicts are about ethnicity – it often forms an important part
of the explanation but rarely offers a comprehensive explanation on its own. Generally
speaking, the term ‘conflict’ describes a situation in which two or more actors pursue
incompatible, yet from their individual perspectives entirely just, goals. Ethnic conflicts
are one particular form of such conflict: that in which the goals of at least one conflict
party are defined in (exclusively) ethnic terms, and in which the primary fault line of
confrontation is one of ethnic distinctions. Whatever the concrete issues over which
conflict erupts, at least one of the conflict parties will explain its dissatisfaction in ethnic
terms. That is, one party to the conflict will claim that its distinct ethnic identity is the
reason why its members cannot realise their interests, why they do not have the same
rights, or why their claims are not satisfied. Thus ethnic conflicts are a form of group
conflict in which at least one of the parties involved interprets the conflict, its causes,
and potential remedies along an actually existing or perceived discriminating ethnic
divide. In other words, the term ‘ethnic conflict’ itself is a misnomer – the conflict is not
‘ethnic’ but at least one of its participants, or to put it differently, an ethnic conflict
involves at least one conflict party that is organised around the ethnic identity of its
members. Hence few would dispute that Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Cyprus, Rwanda,
the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kashmir and Sri Lanka, to name but a few, are
ethnic conflicts. That is so because in each of these cases organised ethnic groups
confront each other and/or the institutions of the states in which they live. All of these
conflicts have been violent, yet violence in each of them was of different degrees of
intensity and duration. In contrast, relationships between Estonians and Russians in
Estonia and the complex dynamics of interaction between the different linguistic groups
in Canada, Belgium and France are also predominantly based on distinct ethnic
identities and (incompatible) interest structures, yet their manifestations are less violent
and are better described in terms of tensions than conflict. Thus the way in which we use
the term ‘ethnic conflict’ in this Handbook is to describe situations in which combatants
take recourse to the systematic use of violence for strategic purposes and in which at
least one combatant defines itself primarily in relation to a distinctive ethnic identity.1
All contributors to this volume share one fundamental assumption: ethnic conflicts,
while complex political phenomena, can be understood. From this conviction of our
ability to understand the dynamics of ethnic conflict also flows our relative optimism
that we can do something about ethnic conflicts in a broad sense: ideally prevent or
settle them, but if this proves impossible at a certain period of time, at the very least
manage them in a way that contains their consequences. In other words, studying ethnic
conflicts means to study their causes and consequences, and the ways in which third
parties respond to them. As we have demonstrated in greater detail elsewhere (Cordell
and Wolff 2009; Wolff 2006), this involves engagement with theories of ethnic conflict
and conflict resolution. These are obviously related to each other and inform one
another, not least because they are built on a range of overlapping concepts and more
general theories, including theories of ethnicity, of inter-ethnic relations, and of political
science, especially comparative politics, and international relations. In order to give the
Handbook a coherent structure that reflects this approach, the part immediately
following this introductory chapter deals with the ‘Theoretical Foundations for the
Study of Ethnic Conflict’ including the conceptual and theoretical tools of the subject
matter, thus establishing the parameters of the dimensions and nature of the debate in
this regard. Thus the Handbook commences with an analysis by Jennifer Jackson-
Preece of the nature and origin of that much contested term: the nation. Jackson-Preece
takes as her point of departure the fact that any discussion of this term is bound to be
controversial, precisely because there is still no consensus, either within or without
academia, as to how to define the nation. Nor is there any wider societal consensus of
the relationship between modern nations and entities from which members of modern
nations claim linear descent. Such claims, more often than not, shape not only people’s
views of themselves but also give rise to demands vis-à-vis people perceived to be
non-members of a particular nation. This is the connection between Jackson-Preece’s
conceptual analysis of the nation and Daniele Conversi’s discussion of nationalism. As
he points out, since 1789, nationalism has been a motivational force for millions of
people and as such, and despite its allegedly inchoate structure, is an ideology and that
the key to our understanding of nationalism is appreciating how it operates as an
ideology. Another connection between nation and nationalism is established by the
question of who actually constitutes the nation, and this issue is discussed by Colin
Clark. He examines the traditional ‘civic’ versus ‘ethnic’ dichotomy and demonstrates
the relationship between intellectual output, historical location and political process.
Examining the work of such noted scholars as Hans Kohn, Liah Greenfeld and Michael
Ignatieff, Clark pays particular attention to notions of choice and context, and
illustrates the complexities of the situation through the judicious employment of case
studies. In so doing, he brings home the point that what at first sight appears to be
clear-cut is, in fact, opaque. The very fact that there is this distinction, however
debatable, between ethnic and civic nations, points to another paradox that students of
ethnic conflict frequently encounter: the nation-state is in a sense a misnomer, in few if
any states people equally identify (themselves and others) as members of the same
nation and citizens of the same state. Rather, there are far more nations than states,
even if not all self-declared nations necessarily make explicit claims to independent
statehood. And thus we confront the issue of ‘Stateless Nations in a World of Nation-
States’. Ephraim Nimni therefore considers the question how in principle we reconcile
the demands of stateless nations with a state system that effectively excludes the bulk of
nations from ever achieving statehood, and introduces some key aspects of the
examination of the causes and consequences of ethnic conflict and the responses to it
that follow in Parts II and III of the Handbook.
Having thus conceptually framed the nation and its ‘derivatives’, we are left with the
challenge of elaborating in more detail another core dimension in the study of ethnic
conflict: the notion of ‘ethnicity’. Two contributions address this issue by exploring the
relationship between ethnicity and religion and between ethnicity and race. First,
Joseph Ruane and Jennifer Todd explore a variety of conceptual, analytical and
theoretical issues that embrace the relationship that sometimes exist between the desire
for national self-determination and the longing for an end to the repression of religion.
Ruane and Todd start from the premise that many apparently ethnically based conflicts
involve a religious element, and argue that we cannot, however, conclude in reverse that
commitment to a given religious belief system will automatically lead to adherence
either to a particular ideology or to a given mode of political action. In other words,
much in the same way in which the mere presence in the same state of different ethnic
groups does not automatically lead to conflict between them, neither is it inevitable that
religious groups have to do so. Part I of the Handbook closes with a second exploration
of ethnicity, by Chris Gilligan, that also deals with fundamental conceptual and
terminological issues of distinguishing this term from that of race, which is a more
complicated task than disentangling the relationship between ethnicity and religion
because of the intellectual discomfort and obfuscation sometimes arising in the context
of scholarly discussions of this link. Yet, as Gilligan points out, there may be only one
human race, but racism exists and as such, the debate over the relationship between
ethnicity and race cannot be ignored, if only because discrimination based on ethnic
difference is more often than not labelled as ‘racist’.
Part II of the Handbook examines the causes and consequences of ethnic conflict.
Linking the discussion here to that of Part I, the first contribution is Stuart J. Kaufman’s
analysis of ethnicity as a generator of conflict. As he points out, ethnic identities are not
new phenomena but can be traced back through history. Importantly, analysis of the
historical record demonstrates that ethnic difference does not in itself generate conflict.
Rather, it only becomes a mobilisational badge toward the instigation of violence under
certain circumstances. Outlining, among others, ‘instrumentalist’ and ‘psychocultural’
theories that seek to explain why and how a shared ethnic identity provides not only the
basis for sociocultural commonalities but also a refuge from which collective violent
action can be launched and rationalised, Kaufman prepares the ground for the
contributions that follow.
Stuart J. Kaufman’s insights are of particular value because of the fact that we are
still living with the consequences of a series of extraordinary events that took place in
the closing years of the twentieth century. The period was, among other things, marked
by a third wave of democratisation. Authoritarian regimes fell in Latin America, South
East Asia, throughout the Eurasian land mass and, most poignantly of all, following
the fall of the Berlin Wall in Central and Eastern Europe. Yet the downfall of ‘really
existing socialism’ did not mark either the end of history or indeed the arrival of
perpetual peace. As new states emerged from the ruins of the old, submerged conflicts
came up for air and drew breath, or indeed emerged seemingly out of nowhere. Many
of these conflicts incorporated an ethnic dimension, and regardless of whether they did
or not, the emergence of such conflicts indicated that, whatever democratisation is, it is
most definitely more akin to a process than it is a symbolic declarative act. The
correlation, especially in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union,
between the beginning of democratisation and the onset of many an ethnic conflict – the
early 1990s marks, according to most datasets on civil and ethnic wars, an all-time high
in these conflicts – warrants more detailed analytical treatment. Hence Jenny Engström
investigates the relationship between democracy and democratisation, our understanding
of these terms, and most importantly the appropriateness of Western strategies of
democratisation in societies that are fragile, vulnerable and prone to instability. As she
points out, democracy is a word that most of us can readily identify with and applaud;
yet simply transposing liberal democratic blueprints to societies that are radically
different from the consolidated Western democracies that serve as their model can have
unforeseen and incalculable consequences. In other words, in a fragile situation,
democratisation strategies can in fact incur more costs than they bring benefits. While
they may not cause ethnic conflict per se, they are among the factors that facilitate it by
creating circumstances, as Engström notes, in which ethnic identity can easily be used
to radicalise people and mobilise them to use violence.
The consequences of ethnic violence are always negative, affecting above all the
civilian population in, and beyond, the areas in which conflict occurs. The most extreme,
in terms of their humanitarian consequences are ethnic cleansing and genocide, which
sometimes prepare the ground for, and on occasion are the result of, two other
phenomena closely associated with negative consequences of – and not solutions to –
ethnic conflicts, namely partitions and secessions and irredentas. The examination of
these phenomena concludes Part II of the Handbook. Erin Jenne analyses ethnic
cleansing, demonstrating that mass expulsions of population are nothing new and that
history is littered with numerous examples of the practice. To this end she pays attention
to definitions of the term and the debate that exists in both international law and the
wider court of public opinion. She also points out that despite history being littered
with numerous examples of human displacement on a mass scale, when the practice
re-emerged in Europe (and elsewhere) in the 1990s, a collective reaction of stunned
horror pervaded the political landscape, creating a situation in which it was easy, if not
politically correct, to conflate ethnic cleansing with genocide. Jenne clearly draws the
necessary distinction between the two, leaving the conceptual space for Jim Hughes to
investigate attempts to eradicate entire population groups. Hughes, like Jenne, starts
out by showing that genocide is not a new phenomenon and was practised long before
the Holocaust was visited upon the European Jewry. In terms of its contemporary
definition, it is a phenomenon that entered the public consciousness, scholarship, and
the realms of international law with the Holocaust. He also points out that the term
‘genocide’ is open to interpretation and that there is considerable debate as to whether
genocide is epiphenomenal or in some way the by-product of the age of nationalism and
the advent of the modern nation-state.
Moving on from policies designed to ‘solve’ problems by means of mass murder, in
his contribution, Brendan O’Leary considers the merits of partition as a solution to
ethnic conflict. He distinguishes partition from ‘adjacent phenomena’ such as secession
or border adjustment, and draws on a number of case studies in order to highlight the
complexities involved in the modalities of partition. In order to provide for a clearer
understanding of the subject matter, O’Leary outlines and discusses the arguments put
forward by various partitionist schools and explains their modalities. His overall
assessment is that partition rarely solves anything, and is just as likely to result in the
creation of a situation in which the pre-existing problems are simply recast. Ultimately,
he argues that in situations where two or more groups are putting forward mutually
irreconcilable claims for territorial exclusivity or dominance the parties should be
encouraged to consider various power-sharing strategies that result in the gradual
erosion of the conviction that politics is a zero-sum game. Donald L. Horowitz’s
exploration of irredentas and secessions also considers ‘adjacent phenomena’ which to
separate is no easy task. Secession is defined as the attempt by one ethnic group claiming
a homeland to withdraw its territory from a larger state of which said territory forms a
part. Irredentism, on the other hand, may be defined as the endeavour of members of
an ethnic group, state-sponsored or otherwise, to retrieve ethnic kin by means of the
annexation of the territory inhabited by their kinfolk. As with partition, neither
secessions nor irredentas offer any genuine resolution to the underlying problems in
most of the conflicts in which they have been applied.
This leaves us with the related question of responses to ethnic conflict. The ideal
solution to ethnic conflict, of course, would be its prevention. Even though, and perhaps
even especially because, it is unlikely that full-scale prevention will ever be possible, it is
necessary to engage with the theory and practice of conflict prevention. Hence the
objective of David Carment and Martin Fischer’s contribution is, through an evaluation
of relevant theory and policy, to enable a better understanding of why achieving conflict
prevention remains such a tricky task, and how it might be performed better in the
future. With prevention still too often failing, managing and (hopefully) settling ethnic
conflicts remain the predominant, if second best, responses. In turn, Asaf Siniver
considers different management and settlement practices, including negotiation,
mediation, arbitration and adjudication, as well as, on occasion, the application of
armed force, while carefully distinguishing between conflict management and conflict
settlement and assessing the efficacy of strategies employed for either purpose.
Complementing the contributions by Fischer and Carment, and Siniver, Eva Sobotka
argues in her chapter on the variety of international actors and their various strategies
of responding to ethnic conflict, that their involvement needs to seen in historical
perspective. The historical track record of international conflict prevention, management
and settlement is illuminating: it has been very much an iterative learning process that
began to take shape after 1945 and has gained from successes and failures alike.
One of the important insights scholars and practitioners have gleaned from their
examination of responses to ethnic conflict is that peace settlements, whatever their
concrete content and circumstances, are not the end point but rather a milestone, albeit
a tremendously important one, in dealing with ethnic conflict. Studying the subject in
as comprehensive a manner as possible, therefore, requires an analysis of post-conflict
reconstruction. Monika Heupel’s contribution offers a discussion of both the state-of-
the-art scholarship and practice, as well as how knowledge and understanding of what
works, and how and why, has evolved. One of the insights derived from the analysis
and practice of post-conflict reconstruction is that it is a multifaceted process and that
in order to succeed, its political institutional, economic, and social dimensions need to
be integrated into a comprehensive strategy and involve more than just the ‘elites’. This
last point is crucial, because without the involvement of people, post-conflict
reconstruction will inevitably fail. This is nowhere more obvious than when it comes to
building democratic states and societies after conflict, because, as Ian O’Flynn and
David Russell argue, democracy consists of more than representative institutions and
the ability of citizens to vote for candidates to such institutions. Rather, in order for a
society to become truly democratic there must be an opportunity structure and culture
that allow citizens to organise autonomously so that they may enter into constructive
dialogue with the state and be able to influence the political process outside of the
confines of conventional liberal democratic structures. To this end they engage in a
thoroughgoing debate on how (liberal) democratic structures need to be embedded
within ethnically divided societies in order that they move away from the politics of
polarisation.
Clearly, the success of building democratic states and societies after ethnic conflict
(or in an effort to prevent it) is crucially dependent on the support that citizens give to
the project. This support, however, depends to a significant degree on whether they see
their interests properly reflected in the core institutions of such a democracy, and this
brings to the next set of contributions, all of which deal with the issue of institutional
design. First, Josef Marko emphasises the significance of an effective system of human
rights standards and enforcement mechanisms. Picking up on the earlier examination
by Colin Clark of the traditional dichotomy that exists between civic and ethnic
understandings of the nation-state, Marko examines human rights conceptually and
practically by focusing on the relationship between the individual to the nation, and the
rights of the individual as citizen, as it is these two dimensions that enable a more
precise definition of human rights and how they are best applied and understood in
situations of ethnic conflict and its aftermath. While human rights are a fundamental
component of democratic structures, they are but one part of the overall set of
institutions. In the context of ethnic conflict, in particular, the impact of institutional
design on the quality and sustainability of democracy also extends to the issues of
representation and participation in decision-making. These essentially political
arrangements are hotly contested not only between the conflict parties but also within
the academic community. Here they have given rise to a range of theories of ‘conflict
resolution’ which all share a degree of optimism about the possibility of settling ethnic
conflict via the creation of institutions that accommodate as widely as possible otherwise
incompatible claims of the parties to the conflict. However, this is where the consensus
ends, and the prescriptions various scholars make about how to settle ethnic conflicts
vary widely (but are perhaps not always as mutually exclusive as their proponents
claim).
The contributions that follow Marko’s (none of which rejects the importance of
human rights in their own analysis and recommendations) examine specific themes:
territorial pluralism, the accommodation of ethnic diversity in unitary states,
non-territorial autonomy, and power sharing. In their contribution, John McGarry
and Brendan O’Leary investigate territorially based solutions to ethnically driven
conflicts: pluralist federation, decentralisation, federacy, and cross-border territorial
arrangements. This delineation is as important as it is precise, whilst also making it
clear that it is not always feasible, or indeed viable, to seek the accommodation of
ethnic diversity qua different forms of territorial self-governance. Ethnically diverse
unitary states exist and are, as Frans Schrijver explains, able to accommodate diversity.
However, this is not unproblematic as accommodation strategies are often rejected by
ethnic majorities because they contradict foundational claims that the state is either
ethnically homogenous or that minority nations contained within a given nation-state
are either too small or widely dispersed for territorial solutions to be of any real value.
The fact of territorial dispersion is one that has long been recognised in political science.
One of the most imaginative responses to it is the Austro-Marxist idea of cultural (or
non-territorial) autonomy. David Smith elaborates this notion of national cultural
autonomy by exploring its origins and highlighting the originality of its solutions,
precisely because it seeks to decouple the demand for autonomy from that of territorially
based self-determination. Ideally suited to states where minorities are territorially
dispersed, he assesses its contemporary application in theory and in the political
institutional practice of countries as diverse as Hungary, Latvia and Russia.
Territorial, non-territorial, and unitary strategies of conflict settlement often, but not
inevitably, go hand in hand with the practice of power sharing. Two chapters examine
two distinct approaches – centripetalism is the topic Benjamin Reilly elaborates;
consociational power sharing that examined by Stefan Wolff and Karl Cordell. Reilly
begins his contribution by pointing out that the ‘third wave’ of democracy witnessed
during the closing years of the twentieth century generated a substantial increase in the
number of states claiming adherence to liberal democratic principles. He also observes
that this wave of democratisation coincided with an increased incidence of internal
violence, in which ethnicity seemed to be a key component. Reilly’s recommendation is
to deal with such ethnic conflicts through centripetalism, an approach designed to pull
political actors toward compromise and thereby to reinforce the political centre, and
thus enabling ethnically divided societies to move beyond the entrenchment and
institutionalisation of ethnic difference. This is in some contrast to Wolff and Cordell’s
contribution on consociational power sharing, which takes as its starting point John
Stuart Mill’s observation on the difficulty of establishing democracy in countries
composed of many different nationalities, and seek to counter Mill’s pessimism.
Exploring the origins, nature and dynamics of consociational power sharing, they
outline its major features and illustrate why it is an appropriate model to be considered
by those who wish to heal societal divisions that have led to the outbreak of conflict, or
indeed apply consociational mechanisms before rifts have led to a breakdown in inter-
group relations. Cordell and Wolff are not blind to the limitations of consociational
solutions, and therefore pay attention to the way in which cleavages operate in such
societies. They also demonstrate how consociationalism is not limited to one continent
or geopolitical area and can operate in either unitary or federal states and is therefore
can operate as a useful adjunct to either system of state-wide government.
Part III of our Handbook has so far concentrated on conflict resolution strategies
implemented within an overarching (liberal) democratic framework. We are only too
well aware that such frameworks are by no means ubiquitous, and that authoritarian
states, too, have to face up to the challenges of ethnic conflict. While some contributors
to Part II have already examined the consequences of some classically authoritarian
‘solutions’ to ethnic differences – ethnic cleansing and genocide – not every authoritarian
state is equally ruthless. As Sandra Barkhof shows in the closing contribution,
authoritarian regimes have a wider range of policy options at their disposal which they
employ in their efforts to achieve homogeneity and dampen down or extinguish ethnic
conflict, and often do so with lasting success, albeit at a considerable cost to those at the
receiving end of such policies. She does so by highlighting the means at the disposal of
authoritarian regimes through comparative analysis with liberal democratic states and
practices and elaborates analysis of the role that ethnic movements have in recent years
played in effecting the transition from authoritarian to liberal democratic modes of
governance.
Ethnic conflict: what we know (and can do) about it

The Handbook we have compiled does not claim to provide any definitive answers on
its subject. Being, as it is, a highly dynamic phenomenon, subject to a variety of factors
none of which is static either, the nature and impact of ethnic conflict have changed
over time and will most likely continue to do so in the foreseeable future. As our
contributors have demonstrated in their chapters, some of the factors that cause people
to engage in violence rather than to seek peaceful accommodation of their disputes
might be more enduring, but the scale, frequency, intensity and consequences of such
violence has been subject to great variation, as have the timeliness and effectiveness of
responses to it. While it may not be definitive in its scope, the Handbook does, however,
offer a fairly comprehensive account of its subject, incorporating essays on its theoretical
foundations and a range of different viewpoints on what its causes and consequences
are and how we can best respond to it and the broader security threats that emanate
from it. Even though there are no definitive answers here and even though we, as
editors, do not take sides in some of the lasting debates that the study of ethnic conflict
has given rise to, the Handbook as a whole does help our understanding of the subject
matter in a number of respects where there is implicit and explicit consensus among
editors and contributors.
The first of these is that ethnic conflict is not a natural or inevitable phenomenon. It
has its causes in human choices and actions predicated upon individually and collectively
subjective perceptions of reality, the (presumed) mismatch between this perceived and
a desired reality, and the course of action adopted to bring the two into congruence.
Regardless of the precise nature of individual motivations (greed or grievance, inequality
of insecurity), it also takes means and opportunities to embark on a strategy of violence
in attempts to resolve such incompatibilities.
Second, this approach to the causes of ethnic conflict enables a clearer perspective on
its consequences, too. There is always a human and humanitarian side to this as violence
is more often than not directed against people. Yet the consequences of ethnic conflict
have a wider impact beyond the locale in which it takes place. Through various actors
and through the formal and informal structures of their interaction, ethnic conflicts are
no longer, if they ever were, merely unhappy local affairs. Insecurity and instability are
contagious and they have a tendency to spread across borders and affect people and
places far beyond their physical origin.
Third, herein lies an obvious threat to international security, but also an opportunity
for the effective prevention, management and settlement of ethnic conflicts. Some of the
threats are clear from the preceding paragraph, an additional challenge is that the
persisting international significance of ethnic conflicts makes them, and the people
affected by them, pawns in regional and global power plays. Yet being aware of the
potentially significant international consequences of ethnic conflicts can equally also
spur international action, give it more weight and resources, and increase its effectiveness.
This does not mean that every attempt at preventing, managing or settling ethnic
conflict will succeed, but there is clearly a track record that demonstrates that such
conflicts are not immune to constructive responses.
A final point worth making concerns the ‘academic’ study of ethnic conflict. Without
a doubt, ethnic conflict is a complex and dynamic phenomenon. However, as this
Handbook has demonstrated, over time scholars have developed the conceptual and
analytical tools and appropriate methods for its study so that we can gain significant
and relevant insights into its causes and consequences which in turn can inform and
shape context-sensitive policy responses to individual, real-world cases of ethnic
conflict.
Note
1 This also means that violent riots or protest demonstrations do not in themselves ‘qualify’ as
ethnic conflicts. They may be part of an ongoing ethnic conflict, but they can also occur in
situations of ethnic tensions or disputes, e.g. where a situation may occasionally escalate into
violence but where its use is not part of the normal repertoire of interaction among ethnic
groups and/or between them and state institutions.
References
Cordell, K., and Wolff, S. 2009. Ethnic Conflict: Causes – Consequences – Responses. Cambridge:
Polity Press.
Duffy Toft, M., and Saideman, S. 2010. ‘Self-determination movements and their outcomes’, in
Peace and Conflict 2010, ed. J. J. Hewitt, J. Wilkenfeld and T. R. Gurr. Boulder CO and
London: Paradigm Publishers, 39–50.
Harbom, L., and Wallensteen, P. 2009. ‘Armed conflicts, 1946–2008’, Journal of Peace Research,
46 (4): 577–87.
Hewitt, J. J. 2010. ‘Trends in global conflict’, in Peace and Conflict 2010, ed. J. J. Hewitt, J.
Wilkenfeld and T. R. Gurr. Boulder CO and London: Paradigm Publishers, 27–32.
PRIO (Peace Research Institute Oslo). 2009. UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset v. 4–2009.
Available on line: http://www.prio.no/CSCW/Datasets/Armed-Conflict/UCDP-PRIO/
(accessed 14 January 2010).
Quinn, D. 2008. ‘Self-determination movements and their outcomes’, in Peace and Conflict 2008,
ed. J. J. Hewitt, J. Wilkenfeld and T. R. Gurr. Boulder CO and London: Paradigm Publishers,
33–38.
Wolff, S. 2006. Ethnic Conflict: A Global Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Part I
2 Origins of ‘nations’
Contested beginnings, contested futures
Jennifer Jackson-Preece
Any discussion of ‘nations’ and nationalism is immediately confronted by the continued

controversy that surrounds the main terms of the debate. The ‘nation’ is a fundamentally
contested concept. Although academics, policy-makers, and nationalist leaders make
recourse to the language of nationalism on a daily basis, the precise meaning of the
term defies an easy explanation.
Is the ‘nation’ simply a byword for political communities that have acquired
recognition as independent sovereign states? Or should it also extend to sub-state
cultural communities variously described in the literature as ‘stateless nations’ or
‘national minorities’? A universally agreed definition of the concept ‘nation’ does not
exist in large part because the politics of nationalism is one of inclusion and exclusion.
Thus, whosoever sets the terms of the debate also sets the criteria for national
membership and belonging – a power few nationalists are prepared to relinquish. And
while the various academic definitions of ‘nation’ on offer may share certain key
characteristics having to do with a shared identity, territory, and history the precise
emphasis given to these core ‘national’ ingredients shifts, often considerably, from one
commentator to another. Indeed, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in
Europe’s first High Commissioner for National Minorities, Max van der Stoel, when
asked to define the communities falling under his remit, famously resorted to the
expedient view that ‘I know one when I see one!’ (Stoel 1994).
Underscoring this semantic confusion is a further and in many respects even more
significant debate on the origins of ‘nations’. Not only are we not sure precisely what a
‘nation’ is, we are equally unsure of where and when it came from. Are ‘nations’ an
invention of modernity? Or are they primordial communities that extend deep into the
pre-modern period? And what, if any, bearing does this debate on origin have on
current political controversies surrounding ‘nations’ and nationalism? It is precisely
these issues that this chapter seeks to explore.
‘Nations’ and modernity

Theorists such as Ernest Gellner, Benedict Anderson and Elie Kedourie who espouse a
modernist position on the origins of ‘nations’, irrespective of their many other
disagreements, view the ‘nation’ as a relatively recent invention intended to answer that
most vexing of modern political conundrums ‘where does sovereignty lie?’ (Hinsley
1966: 157). For modernists, the emergence of ‘nations’ is fundamentally linked to the
transformation of social, economic and especially political life that first began in Europe
during the eighteenth century and especially the nineteenth and eventually spread
16 Jennifer Jackson-Preece
around the globe through European overseas empires and subsequent decolonisation.
What is often referred to as the ‘great transformation’ (Polanyi 1957) ultimately gave
rise to consolidated territories with capitalist economies, a linguistically unified public,
and a popularly sovereign government. It is at this point in the history of political ideas
that the concept of the ‘nation’ achieves political salience. Who are the people in whom
sovereignty ultimately resides? The people are the nation and the state exists as the
expression of the national will. As Article 3 of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of
Man and of the Citizen so eloquently put it:
The principle of all sovereignty rests essentially in the nation. No body and no
individual may exercise authority which does not emanate from the nation expressly.
From this point onwards, the discourse of modernity was infused with a national
rhetoric: ‘national economies’, the ‘national interest’, ‘national self-determination’ and,
above all, the ‘nation-state’ thus became the ultimate expressions of modern political
life, so much so in fact that even one of the most highly regarded critics of the modernist
position, Anthony Smith, conceded that ‘the basic features of the modern world require
nations and nationalism’ (Smith 1995).
The pervasiveness of ‘nations’ and ‘nationalism’ in the modern world is nowhere
more readily apparent than in the modern political map. Whereas the pre-modern map
of Europe was a complicated and confusing intermingling and overlapping of many
juridical territories – empires, dynasties, principalities, ecclesiastical feudatories, etc. –
the modern map discloses a clearly defined juridical patchwork of equally sovereign
nation-states (Jackson 2000: 157). But this juridical uniformity and territorial neatness
did not come without a price, the modern world of nation-states was also accompanied
by an unprecedented attempt to limit the number of claimants for independent
statehood (Mayall 1990: 35). The initial redistribution of territory from empires to
nation-states was viewed as a ‘one-off affair’ despite the fact that many putative nation-
states were anything but homogeneous national communities, and numerous
territorially ‘trapped’ sub-state national communities continued to aspire towards
sovereignty (Jackson-Preece, 1998). Out of this fundamental discrepancy in the modern
landscape emerges the problem of ethno-national conflict.
Obviously, the ‘great transformation’ was a complex historical process involving a
wide array of interrelated changes in society, economy and polity. For this reason, it is
only to be expected that the causal interpretation of these factors varies significantly
from one ‘modernist’ nationalism theorist to another. A brief comparison of the
explanations put forward by three of the most widely cited modernist thinkers on
nationalism illustrates both the commonalties and differences which characterise
modernist perspectives on the origin of ‘nations’.
Elie Kedourie saw the ‘great transformation’ as a fundamentally top-down intellectual
revolution. In his account, it was a new way of thinking about political life as disclosed in
German idealist philosophy and the European Romantic movement that is ultimately
responsible for this transformation. Thus, Kedourie famously characterised nationalism
as a ‘doctrine invented in Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century’ which
purports to:
Origins of ‘nations’ 17
supply a criterion for the determination of the unit of population proper to enjoy a
government exclusively its own, for the legitimate exercise of power in the state,
and for the right organisation of a society of states.
(Kedourie 1960: 9)
Few nationalism thinkers would dispute the content of Kedourie’s definition of

nationalism, although many would reject his prioritising of ideas.
In contrast to Kedourie, Ernest Gellner adopted a materialist view of the origin of
‘nations’ (Gellner 1983). For Gellner, the transition from agrarian to industrial society
was the key to explaining the emergence of ‘nations’ and its concomitant ideology of
nationalism. Industrial society is crucially dependent upon the effective organisation of
the mass population which in turn creates a mass, literate society. As people left their
traditional rural communities for work in the big industrial cities, they increasingly
needed to speak and ultimately also to read and to write in a common language. In
Gellner’s view, this bottom-up transformation was reinforced by a top-down imperative:
employers, generals and ultimately the political rulers needed to be able to communicate
with the newly industrialised masses in order to effectively control them. According to
Gellner, these material changes set the crucial historical context for the political salience
of ‘nations’ and the ideology of nationalism.
Finally, Benedict Anderson in his constructivist account offers a middle way between
the materialist Gellner and the idealist Kedourie. Anderson credits the rise of a mass
vernacular print media and its effect on the emergence of a unified ‘national’ identity as
the key component of the ‘great transformation’ (Anderson 1983). According to
Anderson, the role of a vernacular media was crucial to the rise of nations because it
created the context through which individuals imagined themselves members of mass,
national communities beyond their immediate locale. The ‘great transformation’ was
often a painful process of dislocation for the individuals caught up in it. Those peasants
who became industrial workers lost their traditional way of life with its close association
to village, church, extended family and inherited custom. Relocated to the more
anonymous landscape of the large industrial city they became expendable ‘cogs in the
wheel’ of the industrial machine. A new sentimental attachment to the ‘nation’ provided
a communal association to replace the familiar agrarian life left behind. Hence where
once the seasons and the divine were glorified in song and celebrated in communal
festival now the ‘nation’ became the focal point of music, artistic representation and
public commemoration. Without this public reimagining the ‘nation’ could not have
achieved its role as the basic organising idea of modernity.
‘Nations’ before modernity

Those nationalism theorists such as Adrian Hastings, Walker Connor and Anthony
Smith who are sympathetic to what is often referred to as the ‘primordial position’ see
the ‘nation’ as a social category of a much longer durée. They reject the core modernist
assumption that nations emerge from the ‘great transformation’. As Anthony Smith
made clear in his famous ‘Warwick debate’ with Ernest Gellner:
Modern political nationalisms cannot be understood without reference to these

earlier ethnic ties and memories, and, in some cases, to pre-modern ethnic identities
and communities. I do not wish to assert that every modern nation must be founded
on some antecedent ethnic ties, let alone a definite ethnic community; but many
such nations have been and are based on these ties, including the first nations in the
West – France, England, Castile, Holland, Sweden – and they acted as models and
Pioneers of the idea of the ‘nation’ for others. And when we dig deeper, we shall
find an ethnic component in many national communities since – whether the nation
was formed slowly or was the outcome of a more concerted project of
‘nation-building’.
(Smith 1995)
The ‘primordialist position’ on the origin of ‘nations’ may be traced back to those same
German Romantic philosophers such as Fichte and Herder that Elie Kedourie cited as
‘inventors’ of the modern discourse on nationalism. In their writings the emphasis is
not on modernity as the necessary precursor for an ‘invented’ national community but
instead on ancient and inherited social practices, above all language, as the source of
authentic ‘national’ community.
These primordialist arguments give a whole new dimension to the modern ideology
of nationalism. If the only genuine communities were associations of original language
speakers, then linguistic affinity and vernacular speech were not simply a means to an
end (the proper functioning of industrial economy, society, and politics) but an end in
itself (the basis of popular sovereignty). Similarly, whereas modernists theories of
nationalism postulate a decisive break between the pre-modern agrarian past and the
modern, industrial present, primordialist theories emphasise the importance of
continuity over change. Indeed, the political project of nationalism becomes as much a
rejuvenation of past customs and practices as a creation of new motifs and usages. As
Kedourie explains in his analysis of German Romantic thought:
it is incumbent on a nation worthy of the name to revive, develop and extend what
is taken to be its original speech, even though it might be found only in remote
villages, or had not been used for centuries, even though its resources are inadequate
and its literature poor – for only such an original language will allow a nation to
realise itself and attain its freedom.
(Kedourie 1960: 67)
In this way, the nationalist discourse is said to emerge from the pre-modern past –
primordialists thus subscribe to variations of what James Mayall refers to as a ‘Sleeping
Beauty thesis’ according to which ‘nations’ have always existed but need to be
reawakened into modern political consciousness (Mayall 1996: 10). Contemporary
scholars who are sympathetic to the primordialist position accept that the ideology of
nationalism as an adjunct to the doctrine of popular sovereignty is a modern
development, but they challenge the modernist claim that the emergence of the ideology
precedes the formation of the ‘nation’ qua identity and community.
For example, Adrian Hastings (1997) disputes the common modernist assumption
that the social category of the ‘nation’ may be traced back only so far as the American
and French revolutions of the late eighteenth century.
If nationalism became theoretically central to Western political thinking in the

nineteenth century, it existed as a powerful reality in some places long before that.
(Hastings 1997: 2)
Indeed, Hastings claims that England, which he identifies as a prototype of both the
‘nation’ and the ‘nation-state’, clearly manifests itself long before the ‘great
transformation’.
an English nation-state survived [the Norman Conquest of] 1066, grew fairly
steadily in the strength of its national consciousness through the later twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, but emerged still more vociferously with its vernacular literary
renaissance and the pressures of the Hundred Years War [1337–1453] by the end of
the fourteenth.
(Hastings 1997: 5)
What, then, in Hastings’s view gives rise to a ‘nation’ if not modernisation? He believes
a ‘nation’ arises where a particular ethnic group perceives itself existentially threatened
either by an external attack or by the state system of which it has hitherto formed a part
(Hastings 1997).
Perhaps even more intriguingly, Walker Connor rejects the whole idea of dating
‘nations’ and the origins debate which follows on from it.
Failure to appreciate that national identity is predicated upon sentient history

undergirds a current vogue in the literature on national identity to bifurcate
contributors in terms of (1) ‘primordialists’ and (2) ‘social constructivists’/‘instrum
entalists’/‘modernists’.
(Connor 2004: 11)
Connor claims that when a ‘nation’ came into being is irrelevant because it fails to
appreciate the emotive essence of the idea itself. While he accepts that in strictly factual
or chronological terms a ‘nation’ may indeed be a ‘modernist’ invention, he believes
that in the minds of its members the ‘nation’ nevertheless remains ‘eternal’, ‘beyond
time’ and ‘timeless’, and‚ ultimately, it is not facts but perceptions of facts that shape
attitudes and behavior’ (Connor 2004: 11).
But even if we accept the primordialist contention that nations do indeed have a
much longer durée than modernist accounts suggest, we are still left with the need to
explain the much more recent advent of national ideologies. The ethno-symbolism
approach favoured by Anthony Smith (1991, 1998, 2004) purports to offer a solution
to this intriguing puzzle. According to Smith, the enduring features of national identities
are myths and memories. Writers and artists are the bridge between the ‘primordial’
and ‘modern’ ‘nations’ precisely because they are able to refashion these ancient and
inherited ethnic traditions into a contemporary national identity. This explains why
national politics and policies often have symbolic goals such as access to education and
broadcasting in the national language, the preservation of ancient and sacred sights
such as the (Serbian Orthodox) Decani monastery in (majority Moslem) Kosovo, the
right to wear religious symbols like headscarves and turbans in public places and so on.
According to Smith:
materialist, rationalist and modernist theories tend to have little to say about these
issues, especially the vital component of collective memories.
(Smith 1995)
Contested beginnings, contested futures
The debate on origins may at first glance appear to be of only theoretical interest – a
subject for academic debate perhaps but one lacking in contemporary political
significance. Such an impression is deeply misleading, for the way in which one defines
a ‘nation’, be it modernist or primordialist, has a direct consequence on political
controversies surrounding the basis for independent political community and
membership within it – which communities may claim sovereignty, how territories and
peoples may be transferred or acquired, how succession is regulated when larger
communities break up into smaller communities or when several communities combine
into one (Wight 1977: 153).
If the ‘nation’ is an invented social category linked to the process of modernisation,
then nationalism is fundamentally concerned with economic transition and
democratisation. Which group of people become incorporated into an emergent
‘nation’ is determined by contemporary economic and political circumstances and not
by cultural or linguistic ties emanating from the distant past. Accordingly, modernising
nationalists are concerned not so much with redrawing the political map as with
infusing new meaning into existing juridical territories.
Alternatively, however, if the ‘nation’ is a primordial community defined by ancient
and inherited cultural traitism, then nationalism is fundamentally concerned with a
cultural politics of authenticity. Only bona fide members of the same pre-existing cultural
community are capable of forming a genuine, primordial ‘nation’. Primordial nationalists
are thus intent upon identifying ‘historic nations’ and bringing about a congruence
between the organic cultural landscape and the contemporary political map.
The fundamental programmatic differences between modernising and primordial
nationalists is clearly revealed in their divergent responses to lingusitic and ethnic
diversity. For modernising nationalists, both language and ethnicity is a means to an
end (the modern nation-state); for primordialists language and ethnicity are ends in
themselves because they disclose an intrinsic organic national community.
Modernising nationalists view vernacular language policy as a key component of the
creation and consolidation of capitalist economies and democratic institutions. From
this perspective, language policy is utilitarian – which vernacular language becomes the
national language of economy and politics is determined by expediency, usually because
it has the largest number of speakers or is the already established language of law and
commerce.
The central importance of a common, public language as a precondition for
democratic government is a recurring theme in modernist thought from the late
eighteenth century onwards. The best known proponent of this view is John Stuart Mill
whose oft quoted essay On Representative Government contends that
among a people without fellow feeling, especially if they read and speak different
languages, the united public opinion necessary to the working of representative
government cannot exist.
(Mill 1973: 361)
Political stability in a democratic system of governance is thus often equated – indeed,

considered dependent upon – linguistic homogeneity. The obvious implication of this
perspective is that linguistic minorities ought properly to be assimilated into the official,
public language to ensure equal and effective political participation and the proper
working of representative institutions. Linguistic diversity may, at best, be confined to
the home but it should have no place in the public life of a democracy.
A similar emphasis on linguistic assimilation as a key component of the creation and
consolidation of civic institutions is a recurring theme in the state-building discourse
from the mid-nineteenth century onwards (Jackson Preece 2005: 107–10). We see
evidence of this rationale in the administration of mandated and trust territories, in the
new or enlarged states of Central and Eastern Europe between the two world wars, in
the decolonised states of Asia and Africa after 1945, and in the post-communist states
of Central and Eastern Europe after 1989. In all of these cases, the logic underscoring
policies of linguistic assimilation directed at minorities is strikingly similar to that
outlined by Mill and Durham. The 1995 State Language Law of Slovakia is a typical
example. It identifies the Slovak language as the
expression of sovereignty of the Slovak Republic and the general means of

communication for its citizens, which guarantees them freedom and equality in
dignity and rights in the territory of the Slovak Republic.
(Daftary and Gal 2003: 47)
In sum, according to the modernists’ perspective, the ‘nation’ is presumed to be one and
the public language of the state and its civic representative institutions is intended to
embody this unity of political purpose.
Primordial nationalists look upon language as a marker of intrinsic national
community. Here the stress is not on the utility of a common language for the proper
functioning of economic and political institutions as in Mill, but rather on the cultural
significance of language as the natural and indeed essential medium through which
each individual and, by extension, each community understand the world and their
place in it. From this perspective, every language is a particular way of thinking. What
is understood in one language can never be perceived in exactly the same way in another
language; the essence of genuine, culturally specific meaning simply cannot be translated.
Following on from this, true community is only possible amongst native speakers of the
same original language since it is only in such linguistic circumstances that complete
understanding and mutual sympathy can exist.
These linguistic arguments – which like Kedourie we can trace back to German
romantic writers such as Herder and Fichte – gave a new dimension to the idea of
popular sovereignty (Jackson Preece 2005: 110–12). If the only genuine communities
were associations of original language speakers, than linguistic affinity was not simply
a means to an end (the proper functioning of representative government) but an end in
itself (the basis of popular sovereignty). Instead of being an expression of representative
government, language was the basis of statehood. The nineteenth-century quest for
statehood thus became as much a philiological as a political endeavour. Throughout
the Hapsburg and Ottoman Empires in Central and Eastern Europe a nascent
nationalism was expressed and developed through literary efforts: Adamantios Korais
(1748–1833) helped invent modern Greek through his translation of the classics; Josef
Jungmann (1773–1847) wrote a Czech grammar and history of Czech literature; Stephen
Katona (1732–1811) wrote a history of Hungary; Dositej Obradovic (1740–1811)
published in contemporary Serbian as distinct from old Slavonic; to name only a few
examples (Kohn 1960: 527–76). As Kedourie explains:
it is incumbent on a nation worthy of the name to revive, develop and extend what
is taken to be its original speech, even though it might be found only in remote
villages, or had not been used for centuries, even though its resources are inadequate
and its literature poor – for only such an original language will allow a nation to
realise itself and attain its freedom.
(Kedourie 1960: 67)
Consequently, linguistic diversity is problematic not in terms of institutional

accountability or stability (as in the discourse of civic language) but because it confuses
and potentially corrupts original language communities. Foreign accretions and
borrowings obscure original meanings and in so doing threaten to weaken the mutual
understanding and sympathy which is the special preserve of genuine community;
accordingly such foreign intrusions must be ‘cleansed’ to preserve the purity of thought
and concomitant identity. By the same token, in circumstances where one original
speech community is assimilated into another, the former can have no experience of
genuine individuality or community. In Fichte’s words, such an assimilated language
community is merely the ‘echo of a voice already silent … they are, considered as a
people, outside the original people, and to the latter they are strangers and foreigners’
(Kedourie 1960: 68).
From this perspective, the only appropriate response to linguistic diversity is the
creation of separate and indeed homogeneous political communities on the basis of
linguistic affinity. Secession or irredentism thus become the obvious political objective
of linguistic minorities. Meanwhile, the majority language community can tolerate or
assimilate such minorities only at their own peril since either programme could
potentially dilute the purity of their own linguistic usage. Such a conclusion, of course,
unavoidably leaves those minorities who are incapable of forming their own independent
language communities vulnerable to policies of assimilation or segregation or expulsion
or worse.
A similarly contrasting approach may be discerned in modernist and primordialist
approaches to ethnicity (Jackson Preece 2005: 149–57). For modernising nationalists,
national identity is primarily defined through a shared political and economic
experience. Thus cultural programmes are generally understood in terms of civic virtues
and not the defence of ethnic purity per se. Modernising nationalists tend to relegate
ethnicity to the private sphere. Minority ethnic identities may be tolerated within the
home where distinct languages, traditions, myths and memories may be preserved
provided these do not conflict with nor in any way undermine the prevailing civic
culture. Obviously, such private identities do not receive public recognition from the
civic nation-state. Instead, public institutions actively support the civic national culture
and language within public life to the exclusion of all others. And where necessary in
defence of this civic culture, assimilationist or paternal policies may be directed towards
nonconformist ethnic groups.
In contrast, primordial nationalists are much more overtly concerned with ethnic
politics. In this perspective, you will recall that national membership is determined by
purportedly ‘natural’ and thus innate characteristics which by definition cannot be
changed by assimilation or tutelage. The individual no longer determines his or her
nation: instead, the nation determines the individual. Thus although the freedom of
minorities to express and develop their distinct ethnic identities may be limited in either
civic or ethnic nation-states, the later are arguably far more hostile towards ethnic
minorities and thus potentially more destructive not only of ethnic minority identities
but in extreme circumstances even their physical survival.
Once the ethnic bond is accepted as the raison d’être of the state, ethnic diversity
becomes a threat to popular sovereignty. When the right to rule is justified on the basis
of an ethnic affinity between the population of a state and its government then the
existence of ethnic minorities challenges the authority of those in power. In order to
preserve its territorial integrity and domestic stability, the ethnic nation-state tends to
act as if it is a homogeneous ethnic community. If (as is often the case) such a state is
not in fact ethnically homogeneous, than it must ‘endeavour to make the facts
correspond to the ideal’, regardless of the rights and liberties of those among its citizens
who do not belong to the majority ethnic group (Cobban 1970: 109). At the same time,
the reverse is also true: every ethnic nation or fraction thereof which is not an
independent state must strive to become one. National survival is thus dependent upon
the survival of the ethnie within its historic homeland.
Already in the 1848 movement for German unification one can discern the various
dilemmas which arise in the context of building states on the basis of ethnic criteria.
German unification was meaningless without a clear understanding as to which
territories ought to be included in it. The answer adopted at the Frankfurt Assembly
revealed an ethnic imperative: territories with predominantly German populations or
German rulers would be included. This might at first glance seem a perfectly reasonable
basis for admission – until, that is, one begins to ponder the anomalies. Switzerland had
a significant German-speaking population and historic ties to the German-ruled Holy
Roman Empire but was nevertheless excluded from the list. Schleswig and Holstein had
a significant Danish population, and war over these provinces was only averted in 1848
by British and Russian intervention; such a war did eventually occur in 1864 and
resulted in the loss of Danish territory to Prussia. Alsace could not be included without
a war with France in 1870–71. Bohemia was a part of the German-ruled Hapsburg
Empire, but the majority of its population spoke Czech, and a Czech nationalism as
distinct from the German was already developing there (indeed, the Czech intellectuals
led by the historian Palacky famously turned down an invitation to send a representative
to the Frankfurt Assembly) (Seton-Watson 1977: 95). Ultimately, of course, the status
of the German-speaking minority in the Sudetenland was used to justify the transfer of
Czechoslovakian territory to Germany in 1938, and in 1939 Bohemia and Moravia were
occupied by the Nazis and an independent, pro-Axis Slovak puppet state was created.
The assumption underlying all of these responses is that political stability in an ethnic
nation-state cannot tolerate ethnic diversity as such divisions will undermine the
integrity of the overarching political order by calling into question the myth of common
descent upon which it rests. In other words, this perspective views ethnicity in zero-sum
terms such that coexistence between ethnic groups within the same jurisdiction is not an
option. Although bleak, such an outlook nevertheless reflects a normative position: the
well-being of individuals and their respective political communities is herein understood
as dependent upon the fulfilment of ethnicity, which in turn is seen to embody the
‘natural order’ in its purest form.
Those who were unsuccessful in the great race to capture their own nation-state in
which their culture and language would reign supreme were then confronted with the
unenviable choice of either assimilating into the majority (assuming this choice existed,
which was not always the case) or accepting a permanent position as minority with the
attendant risk of discrimination and persecution. Barring these alternatives, the only
other option available was to engage in a politics of secession or irredentism intended
to overcome, once and for all, the unpalatable minority position. But such revolutionary
nationalists must then overcome the opposition of the international society which
remains fundamentally biased in favour of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of
existing states.
Conclusion
The national discourse is a core component of contemporary political life, so much so
in fact that ours is a world of ‘nation-states’, ‘national sovereignty’ and ‘national
identities’. Yet, despite the clearly defined lines on the modern political map, ours is
also a world of ethno-cultural diversity, within as well as between states. ‘National’
identities are malleable rather than fixed and they can and do conflict. Thus, perhaps, it
is only to be expected that the ‘nation’ is a fundamentally contested concept that defies
easy definition or explanation. We may think we ‘know one when we see one’ but others
are likely to disagree with our perceptions not only for academic but crucially also for
political reasons.
This chapter has sought to demonstrate that academic controversies on the origin of
‘nations’ are intricately entangled in current political controversies on the future of
‘nations’. To ask the question ‘What is a nation?’ unavoidably also requires reflection
on the underlying issue ‘When is a nation?’ and when we locate and define a ‘nation’s
origins’ we are, in effect, also mapping, often literally, its current political claims and
aspirations. What is the ‘Serbian nation’? Was it born at the battle of Kosovo Polje in
1389 or in Slobodan Milošević’s speech at Kosovo Polje in 1989? A primordialist origin
potentially presages a political claim for a ‘Greater Serbia ‘including all or part of the
territory of a now ambiguously independent Kosovo. A modernist origin links the rise
of Serbian nationalism to the end of Yugoslav communism and may be more compatible
with existing international norms on sovereignty, self-determination and the recognition
of states. Either way, however, past and present controversies become inextricably
intertwined. If Milan Kundera is right, and the ‘struggle of man against power is the
struggle of memory against forgetting’ (Kundera 1996: 4), then what nationalist leaders
are fighting for is ‘access to the laboratories where photographs are retouched, and
biographies and histories rewritten’ (Kundera 1996: 21–22).
Further reading
Anderson, B. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism.
London: Verso
Connor, W. 2004. ‘The timelessness of nations’, Nations and Nationalism 10, 1–2: 35–47
Gellner, E. 1995. ‘Do nations have navels?’ Warwick Debate on Nationalism, available online at
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/gellner/Warwick.html
Seton-Watson, H. 1977. Nations and States: An Inquiry into the Origins of Nations and the Politics
of Nationalism. London: Methuen
Smith, A. 1995. ‘Nations and their pasts’, Warwick Debate on Nationalism, available online at
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/gellner/Warwick.html
Smith, A., and Hutchinson, J., eds. 1994. Oxford Readers: Nationalism. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
References
Anderson, B. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism.
London: Verso.
Cobban, A. 1970. The Nation State and National Self-determination. New York: Crowell.
Connor, W. 2004. ‘The timelessness of nations’, Nations and Nationalism 10, 1–2: 35–47.
Daftary, F., and Gal, K. 2003. ‘The 1999 Slovak minority language law: internal or external
politics?’ in F. Daftary and F. Grin (eds), Nation-building, Ethnicity and Language: Politics in
Transition Countries. Budapest: Open Society Institute.
Gellner, E. 1983. Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell.
Hastings, A. 1997. The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hinsley, F. 1966. Sovereignty. London: Watts.
Jackson, R. 2000. The Global Covenant: Human Conduct in a World of States. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Jackson Preece, J. 1998. National Minorities and the European Nation-states System. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
—2005. Minority Rights: Between Diversity and Community. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Kedourie, E. 1960. Nationalism. London: Hutchinson.
Kohn, H. 1960. The Idea of Nationalism. New York: Macmillan.
Kundera, M. 1996. Book of Laughter and Forgetting. New York: Harper.
Mayall, J. 1990. Nationalism and International Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
—1996. Nationalism and International Relations. London: University of London External
Programmes.
Mill, J. S. 1973. Utilitarianism, On Liberty, and Considerations on Representative Government.
London: Dent.
Polanyi, K. 1957. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of our Times.
Boston MA: Beacon Press.
Seton-Watson, H. 1977. Nations and States: An Inquiry into the Origins of Nations and the Politics
of Nationalism. London: Methuen.
Smith, A. 1991. National Identity. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
— 1995. ‘Nations and their pasts’, Warwick Debate on Nationalism, available online at http://
www.lse.ac.uk/collections/gellner/Warwick.html (accessed 6 May 2009).
— 1998. Nationalism and Modernism. London: Routledge.
— 2004. Antiquity of Nations. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Stoel, M. 1994. ‘Keynote address at the opening of the Organization for Security and Co-operation
in Europe Minorities Seminar in Warsaw’, available online at http://www.osce.org/
hcnm/13022.html (accessed 6 May 2009).
Wight, M. 1977. Systems of States. Leicester: Leicester University Press.
3 Ideology and nationalism
Daniele Conversi
All official institutions of language are repeating machines: school, sports, advertising,
popular songs, news, all continually repeat the same structure, the same meaning, often
the same words: the stereotype is a political fact, the major figure of ideology.
(Roland Barthes)
Great ideology creates great times.

(Kim Jong Il)
As with other sociopolitical terms, there is no universally agreed definition of ideology

in social theory and political science and the concept remains a broadly contested one.
This destiny is only partly shared by the second partner of the couple here described,
nationalism. Its main pillar, the term ‘nation’, is probably too slippery and so
self-referential as to defy any attempt at an ‘objective’ definition (Conversi 1995, see
also Jackson Preece in this book). However, there is some agreement that nationalism
is an ideological movement speaking in the name of a self-defined nation and aiming at
controlling political institutions (most often the state) within a specific territory. Being
an ideological movement, ideology plays a central role in nationalism. Furthermore,
ideology and nationalism are coeval terms since their origins equally lie in the French
revolution: whereas the genesis of the term ‘nationalism’ is an issue of relative contention
(Hroch and Malecková 2000), the term ‘ideology’ is usually located in Destutt de
Tracy’s definition of it as the ‘science of ideas’ and Napoleon’s disparaging use of it to
describe his adversaries (‘the ideologues’). It was the Napoleonic usage which really
defined the term.
While the meaning of nationalism remained broadly unchanged, the concept of
ideology shifted meaning a few times after its inception. The Oxford English Dictionary
gives several definitions of ideology, beginning with ‘a system of ideas or ideals,
especially one that forms the basis of economic or political theory or policy’ (OED
1997: 908). Therefore, a relationship between ideology and political action needs to be
established. The next paragraphs will focus on how the study of ideology can shed light
on the issue of congruence between state and nation.
This chapter describes generally ideology as a set of ideas articulated around a
sociopolitical programme devised by specific individuals, whom we may recognise
occasionally as the ‘ideologues’ and, until recently, could be identified as ‘intellectuals’.
Today, they appear to us most often as media pundits.
What is ideology and what is not? The reply mostly depends on the replier. Protean
concepts like modernity, progress, development and, the latest arrival, globalisation are
Ideology and nationalism 27
imbued with ideology, yet not all scholars and social commentators promptly recognise
this status. Although the way these terms are used imply adherence to ideological
constructs and platforms, presentism prevents identifying them as ideologies. From the
promontory of the present time, we can look backward and discern ideology where our
predecessors simply saw the natural order of things, but in our day it may be more
tricky to see the wood for the trees.
The term ideology can be used in two possible ways: one neutral, the other critical or
pejorative (Thompson 1990: 56). While the critical use is implicit in any analytical study
of ideology, is a neutral approach at all possible? Indeed, it may be difficult to ‘stand by’
and see ideology in purely objective terms, since scholarly endeavours are also informed
by ideology. This goes beyond Weber’s classic statement about value-neutrality in his
1918 address at Munich University. Most often, ideology is enriched by passion and, as
the poet Pier Paolo Pasolini could synthesise knowingly, it stems directly from passion:
‘Passion, analytical in itself, gives way to ideology, synthetic in its nature’ (La passione,
per sua natura analitica, lascia il posto all’ideologia, per sua natura sintetica) (Pasolini
1960: 493).
Most scholars of nationalism agree that ideology is paramount to the creation and
reproduction of nationalism, although they accord different degrees to its centrality.
An illustrious exception was Ernest Gellner, who disagreed with the importance of
ideology. Gellner argued that nationalism needs neither intellectuals nor an ideology,
since nationalism was a semi-spontaneous response generated ex-machina by a
fragmented social system disrupted by the uneven impact of industrialisation – although
he recognised that nationalism developed first in the West. More commonly, Elie
Kedourie (1993) regarded nationalism as a fully fledged ideology spreading across the
world via aping and imitation.
Ideology is a component of Anthony Smith’s definition of nationalism as well (Smith
2001: ch. 2). The latter is ‘an ideological movement for attaining and maintaining
autonomy, unity and identity for a population which some of its members deem to
constitute an actual or potential “nation”’ (Smith 1999: 256, 2001: 9). Its core doctrine
or belief system is composed of at least six crucial interconnected ideas or ‘basic
propositions’, namely that: (1) the world is divided into nations, each with its own
character, history and destiny; (2) the nation is the sole source of political power; (3)
loyalty to the nation overrides all other loyalties; (4) to be free, every individual must
belong to a nation; (5) every nation requires full self-expression and autonomy; (6)
global peace and justice require a world of autonomous nations (Smith 2001: 22).
Elsewhere, Smith reiterates that ideology is a key element in the success of nationalism,
as ‘it serves to unify and focus the many grievances and aspirations of different social
groups within a particular community or state, and to explain to and activate “the
people”’ (Smith 1998: 116). Kedourie, Gellner and Smith are representative of various
‘schools’ of thought concerned with the origins of nations and the nature of nationalism.
While Kedourie’s explanation is entirely centered on ideology, Gellner radically
excludes its importance, whereas Smith adopts a more nuanced position seeing the role
of nationalist ideology as shaped by pre-existing myths and symbols.
Before considering the relationship between nationalism and ideology, we should
understand what is broadly meant by ideology, what is not, and why not. Beside
liberalism and conservatism, communism, socialism and fascism have been named as
emblematic twentieth-century ideologies. Capitalism is more often seen as a
sociopolitical system founded on the adoption of market economy principles. It is less
28 Daniele Conversi
generally accepted as an ideology and is thus often subsumed as a practice of liberalism
– jointly with its ideological sub-varieties: laissez-faire capitalism, radical capitalism
and corporate capitalism. Yet the very belief in capitalism as the ideal, standard
sociopolitical system, as well as the panacea for all sorts of social problems, rests on
firm ideological grounds. Many have idealised capitalism as the most perfect and
unmatchable socioeconomic model, indeed as the only possible one. Susan Sontag
acutely observed that ‘the ideology of capitalism makes us all into connoisseurs of
liberty – of the indefinite expansion of possibility’ (Sontag, cited by Sanders 1998: 62;
see Seligman 2005: 67).
Other unsuspected candidates for the category of ideology proliferate. Civil society
has recently been added as a candidate for ideology status, while its meaning has
become politically transversal, that is, shared by both right and left with different goals
and purposes (Chambers and Kymlicka 2002; Ruzza 2010). In particular, the ‘concepts
such as “civicness” or “civility” in relation to civil society and the public sphere … are
recurrent in the idealisation of civil society by all political actors’ (Ruzza 2010). For
Hannah Arendt, even the ‘Third World’ was ‘not a reality but an ideology’ (1970: 21).
The US-led ‘war on terror’, justifying ends and means, was also shaped as an ideology
of a good and virtuous (American) society fighting against the ‘bad society’ (Conversi
2010c).
However, the most important ideology accompanying all the above visions is less
often described as an ideology. In fact, these visions were formulated within, and as
responses to, the crises brought about in different stages and periods by the end of an
era, variously labeled as agricultural society, the Ancien Régime, the Dark Ages,
pre-modernity or in other ways: by opposition to the latter, the term modernism
encompasses all those world visions which fully embraced modernity and its
consequences, trying to conceive new scenarios of ‘togetherness’ and competing political
projects based on the full acceptance and endorsement of modernity. Modernism has
thus been articulated through a set of often incompatible ideas whose sociopolitical
programme was predicated on a (Western-centred) vision of modernity as the supreme
good, and hence on the rejection of elements which, according to its competing
ideological foundations, could be perceived as ‘anti-modern’. The cult of modernity,
progress and development became the idée fixe of the industrial and post-industrial age.
In short, modernism has permeated not only all other ideologies, including nationalism,
liberalism, fascism and communism, but also every major aspect of modern social life.
In a nutshell, modernists predicate that all that is modern is positive, while all that is
‘anti-modern’ needs to be rejected. Given that both Nazism and Stalinism viewed
themselves as modernising ideologies, we can work out what might be the consequences
on finding oneself on the wrong side of the ‘modern/anti-modern’ divide.
The modernist ideology is often encapsulated in the popular myth of the ‘mad
scientist’, who, blinded by absolute faith in progress, crafts Frankenstein-like monsters
in his secluded laboratory. The ‘mad scientist’ paradigm operates within a set of beliefs
which are often a radical and gross interpretation of prevailing visions of modernity.
The mad scientist’s stance is often erroneously interpreted as personal ambition verging
on pathology and emanating from individual attitudes. However, similar attitudes did
not emerge casually as aspects of a post-religious, particularly post-Christian, world.
They were part and parcel of the prevailing Zeitgeist unleashed by the advent of
Western-style modernity and the ‘Westernisation of the world’ (la Branche 2005;
Latouche 1996). In the process, non-Western ideologies and world visions were
discarded and destroyed, in short labelled ‘anti-modern’. ‘Development’ itself became
an ideology or, even more, a ‘global faith’ imposed by the West on an often recalcitrant
world (Rist 2002). For Christopher Lasch (1991), with its belief in a linear, steady,
indefinite rise in living standards as the inevitable destiny of mankind, ‘faith in progress’
assumes the eschatological trappings of established religions.
Here I intend to point out that there is an apparent link between the notions of
modernity, progress and nationalism. In fact, modernism as the ideology of progress is
deeply related to nationalism. For Liah Greenfeld (1992) it is impossible to conceive of
modernity outside nationalism, since the latter provided the ideological forge and
mould to shape the former. Modernity is simply unthinkable outside a non-nationalist
world, so that nationalism ‘represents the cultural foundation of modern social
structure, economics, politics, international relations, education, art, science, family
relation, and so on and so forth’ (Greenfeld 2006: 162). However, the opposite can also
be said in that modernism is seen as the structural foundation of all of the above. The
totalising nature of nationalism thus overlaps and interpenetrates with the doubly
totalising nature of modernity. For this reason, one can legitimately suspect that
Greenfeld is speaking about the ideology of modernity, rather than the ideology of
nationalism – even though she seems to reject a clear-cut distinction between the two.
Modernity, nationalism and ideology

One of the problems in nationalism studies is the peculiar use of the term ‘modernism’
to refer to a group of scholars stressing the modern origins of nations and nationalism
– a usage largely derived from Anthony D. Smith’s classification proposal (Smith 1998).
The problem with both the classification and the debate is that most studies tend to
treat ‘modernity’ as a ‘fact’ or a world vision rather than as an idea. The term
‘modernism’ has different meanings in other fields, notably among art historians, where
it is more often used to describe an artistic movement that emerged in late nineteenth
and early twentieth-century Europe. In this chapter, ‘modernism’ refers to a wider
ideological category, which sees modernity as the founding parameter of a new era
implicitly defined by the belief in unlimited progress. This has remained the dominant
ideology and paradigm at least up to the beginning of the twenty-first century and it is
probably the most popular ideology across the world. Modernism thoroughly
accompanied the growth of nationalism and, in most cases, preceded it – although
Greenfeld asserts that nationalism preceded modernity and indeed acted as its midwife.
For most scholars of nationalism and modernity, the incipit of both remains the
French Revolution, which is also when the term ideology was first coined. The doctrine
of nationalism was officially formulated in the Declaration of the Rights of Man, its
public display of symbols touched off with the Fête de la Fédération in the summer of
1790 and its definitive test occurred in the battlefield at Valmy (1792). Before the French
revolution, the propaganda apparatus of absolute monarchs was largely confined to the
upper elites and exercised via the courts, as loci of aggregation and public display of
royal paraphernalia aiming to ‘seduce’ or co-opt provincial elites. Absolute sovereigns
increasingly appropriated religious symbolism to prop up their legitimacy via appeals
to their subjects, particularly under Louis XIV, the Roi Soleil. At those times, ideology
was still largely overlapping with religion. Although the primary movers and motives
have not been clearly identified, the St Bartholomew’s Eve massacres against Huguenots
(Protestants) in Paris (1572) indicated an obsession by ruling elites with the power of
30 Daniele Conversi
socioreligious ideas. The targets were not cultural or religious differences per se but
‘ideological’ opposition and dissent, as heterodox communities were considered
dangerous by ruling elites (Conversi 2010a).
With modernity, secular ideology seized the state in ‘absolute’ terms. The targets
were no longer framed in purely religious terms, but in terms of their entropy or
anti-entropy (Gellner 2006), that is, cultural compatibility or incompatibility with an
increasingly centralised, expanding and controlling state. To the most radical of
Jacobins, cultural difference became anathema.
Under the French revolution, the physical extermination of ideological-cultural
opponents was pursued within a new ‘national’ framework, which slowly evolved into
a broader drive to ‘nationalise’ the masses (Conversi 2007, 2008b). The Jacobin media
played a key role: from July 1791 to July 1794, 7 million copies of various journals were
purchased for distribution in the army, even though most conscripts could not read or
write (Lynn 1996: 127). We have scant documentation of local resistance to Parisian
directives, although we do have sketchy records of the harsh condition of army life in
post-revolutionary France (see Bell 2008: 121–23). During the ensuing years of
ideological emphasis on the sacred nature of La Patrie (the Fatherland), the average
French citizen began slowly to identify with the soldier as the supreme expression of
collective will, viewing war as the finest of national virtues (Lynn 1996: 121). Before the
levée en masse, volunteers were recruited through an array of visual effects and media
grandeur, often surrounded by a festival atmosphere punctuated by martial music
(Ozouf 1991).
On the other hand, ideology alone was not enough. After France was invaded (1792),
a deeper cycle of conflicts began, so that revolutionary violence became the main
unitary catalyst among the Jacobins. The victory at Valmy (20 September 1792) was the
first one in human history of an army inspired by nationalism as throngs of soldiers
immolated themselves to shouts of ‘Vive la Nation!’ (Bell 2008: 130–35). Although
victory was made possible by casual events such as bad weather, Valmy was fully seized
by Jacobin propaganda as a foundational myth unleashing waves of enthusiasm and
the belief that fighting in the name of freedom would grant soldiers a sort of immortality
and even invincibility. Also for this reason, the first ‘total war’ in modern history was
conceived and put into practice by French revolutionary elites (Bell 2008), so that
ideology became essential in the way wars were to be fought over the next two centuries.
The ‘first total war’ was also the first ideological war and the first nationalist war in
human history. This is the foundational myth of the first explicitly modern nation-state
and represents the triumph (even if no one realised it at the time), of a new ideology
linked to (positivistic) ideas of modernity and progress.
The French revolutionaries were divided into multiple ideological currents. But
nationalism provided the unifying ideology and was constantly mobilised by all factions
without exception. As competing ideologies vied for mass following, they mobilised
their own media by seizing, creating and disseminating propaganda through local
venues, from public speeches at mass rallies to manifestoes, slogans, patriotic songs,
bulletins and newsletters. Competition among ideologies became fierce, peaking under
the Reign of Terror. Robespierre made it clear that this was a struggle for personal
survival and those politicians who could not control the mob or posed a threat to his
power risked falling under the guillotine. Initially adverse to war (Scurr 2006),
Robespierre became in the end one of its main beneficiaries. By continuously mobilising
people in preparation for war, Parisian elites could achieve unified support in what had
become one of the most fragmented, ideologically splintered and identity-fractured
countries in Europe. The traditional gap between Paris and the provinces was to be
overcome through coercion and consensus, and via the simultaneous use of terror, war
and ideology. The systematic mass killing by government troops also led some historians
to identify the Vendée uprising (1793–96) as the first modern genocide (see Conversi
2010a). In the 1990s, egalitarian Jacobin slogans and directives permeated the discourse
of genocidal leaders in Rwanda, such as ‘to ban, once and for all, the spirit of intrigue
and feudal mentality’ and to extol ‘the valuation of labour’ (Verwimp 2000).
Most historians recognise the use of ideology and nationalism as drivers of mass
engagement since the French revolution. The destructive nature of European state-
building was palpable to many citizens, yet patriotic-nationalist intoxication made
opposition impossible. Thus, few intellectuals found the courage to oppose state-
building, let alone denounce it. The ‘thinner’ ideology of anarchism developed largely
in contrast to the practice of étatisme, whose ideological glue was provided by
nationalism (see Ostergaard 1981). Intensively mobilised during periods of inter-state
conflict, patriotism allowed the state to gain a foothold in society and penetrate areas
from which it was initially excluded. Opposing the nation-state as an institution and
patriotism as its legitimating belief, Leo Tolstoy linked both to organised violence
(Christoyannopoulos 2009).
Dominant nations, dominant ideologies and class analysis

The rapid demise of Marxism after 1989 has involved the abandonment of some
important concepts, which can still be useful to sociopolitical analysis. In Marx’s
analysis, ideology is part of the superstructure, merly an accessory of the economic
structure made of class relations. Yet, beyond this apparent blunder, Marxist scholars
have refined the concept through the years, while still holding that ideology is forged by
the bourgeoisie as a tool to convince members of other classes that the bourgeoisie’s
interests are the interests of all. For Antonio Gramsci, the dominant classes establish
cultural hegemony through patterns of consumptions, values, norms, habits, and so on.
Cultural hegemony explains why the bourgeoisie can so easily enforce its models of
‘false consciousness’ amongst the working class, whose interests should be rationally at
odds with those of the bourgeoisie, but are sidelined in the name of inter-class allegiances,
notably through consumerism and nationalism. In fact, nationalism shares the status of
‘false consciousness’ with other non-class-related ideologies and practices, in primis the
‘fetishism of commodities’, so vital to maintain the system of ‘class supremacy’.
More recently, ideology has been defined as the way ‘in which meaning serves to
sustain relations of domination’ (Thompson 1990: 58), specifically the domination of
some classes over others. This ‘meaning’ needs to be synthesised and diffused through
the articulation of ideas into a cohesive and viable ideology. In fact, once firmly
established and enshrined in power relations, ideology is spread by means of mass
manipulation. If seized by the state and the mainstream media, nationalism/patriotism
can certainly become an ideology most suitable for the concentration of power into the
hands of a few.
Most ideologies are embedded into political power and the crucible of power in the
modern era is the nation-state. The more controlling and authoritative the state is, the
more pervasive its founding ideology, and vice versa. Althusser identifies a plurality of
ideological state apparatuses (ISA), those ‘realities’ which ‘present themselves to the
32 Daniele Conversi
immediate observer in the form of distinct and specialised institutions’ and which
function both via violence and ideology (Althusser 1971: 143). These are distinct from
the unchallenged “(repressive) state apparatus” holding sway alone over the public
domain, yet the distinction between public and private ‘is a distinction internal to
bourgeois law’, while ‘the State [controlled by the ruling class] … is ‘above the law’. …,
[it] is neither public nor private; on the contrary, it is the precondition for any distinction
between public and private’ (144).1 The essential distinction is in fact that ‘the Repressive
State Apparatus functions “by violence”, whereas the Ideological State Apparatuses
function “by ideology”’ (145). This is important for what we have described so far, in
that violence is opposed to ideology, yet there is an obvious complementarity between
them.2 An ideal model of supremely repressive state functioning purely by repressive
measures is clearly impossible, so that violence and repression always need to be
supplemented by ideology. Althusser brings forward the example of the army and the
police which ‘also function by ideology both to ensure their own cohesion and
reproduction, and in the “values” they propound externally’ (145). On the other hand,
a ‘pure’ ideological state apparatus cannot exist, as ideology also needs to be
supplemented by violence, even though this may be ‘very attenuated and concealed,
even symbolic’. As various forms of nationalism always underpin the functioning of the
modern state, its performance has been historically rooted in both violence and
ideology. However, before seizing the state, nationalism is also expressed in a plurality
of ‘ideological state apparatuses’, including trade unions, lawyers, physicians, lower
and higher education, and the very family, where notions of common descent are
actuated since early childhood. For Althusser, these apparatuses serve their purpose of
reproducing the power of the bourgeoisie and reinforcing the capitalist system. He then
relates nationalism explicitly to the communications apparatus ruled by the mass
media, together with chauvinism, liberalism, moralism and economism (154–55).
In terms much cruder than Gramsci, the Orwellian word ‘brainwashing’ as a strategy
of mind control was coined to define a method of coercive persuasion widely used under
communism. The original Chinese term was adopted in English during the Korean War
and its popularisation is credited to the anti-communist intelligence agent Edward
Hunter (1902–78) (Seed 2004: 27–31; Taylor 2004: 3–6). Beyond its obsession with the
spectre of ‘communist world domination’, Hunter’s Brainwashing in Red China (1951)
became a classical crude description of how ideology-driven manipulation can radically
alter the very identity of the individual and destroy her/his sense of the past.3 Such a
form of all pervasive control has been absorbed into daily routine and assumed as
habitus by most citizens. To resume, China’s ideological state apparatus was used in
full strength to instil the official ideology into the minds of most citizens to the point of
terminating previously existing sentiments, attitudes and world visions. Although
during the Cold War only communist brainwashing became ‘worth’ considering, both
Mao and Stalin operated through patriotic/nationalist mobilisation, speaking in the
name of the very subjects to be oppressed, which can be even harder to oppose.
Is nationalism an ideology?
In the modern era, ideologies have become mass phenomena that moved millions of
people: as such they have permeated most forms of thought, including scholarly
thought. They have been often embraced with such an ardour and naive enthusiasm as
to become avenues of fanaticism, self-immolation and mass suicide. After the end of
World War II, the word ‘ideology’ was unsurprisingly discredited. Many observers at
the time considered that competing ideologies had led to some of the worst human
excesses in human history. Nationalism came in for particularly heavy criticism, as it
was claimed by some to be the direct ancestor of fascism in its various guises.
After World War II (later on, outside Europe), political ideologies were thus seen as
drivers of mass engagement unleashing major human dislocations. Amongst them, it is
customary to consider nationalism as a particularly powerful ideology destined to
mobilise massive crowds. Unlike other ideologies, nationalism was rarely formulated
through a coherent system of thought and a precise programme. It lacked recognised
foundational thinkers and its protean nature meant that it remained often parasitic on
other ideologies by simply adapting to them, while, of course, shaping them. Therefore,
there are authors who consider nationalism as a dependent, weak form of ideology (see
San Martín 2008). Postulating a distinction between fully fledged and ‘thin’ ideologies,
Freeden argues that nationalism ‘severs itself’ from a broader ideological agenda, while
being incorporated into various ‘host’ ideologies. Like green thought and feminism,
nationalism deliberately replaces and removes central concepts, thus being structurally
unable ‘to offer complex ranges of argument, because many chains of ideas one would
normally expect to find … are simply absent’ (Freeden 1998: 750). As its operational
incapacity leads to a shrinking of the political dimension, nationalism is defined as a
‘thin-centred ideology’. Yet, it is still recognised as an ideology.
If nationalism is an ideology, either ‘thin’ or ‘fat’, is it plausible to see it, not merely
as an ideology among others, but as the dominant ideology of the modern age? Indeed
there is strong scope/reason for arguing so and for affirming that nationalism is ‘the
dominant operative ideology of modernity’ since ‘nearly all contemporary sociopolitical
orders … tend to legitimise their existence in nationalist terms’ (Malesevic 2006: 317).
This is in line with Smith’s assertion that in every continent ‘nationalism has become
the main legitimating belief system’ (Smith 1998: 116) and Connor’s recognition of the
centrality of nationalist ideology in legitimating power (Connor 2004). If nationalism is
the ideology that underpins the nation-states system, then nationalism can be described
as ‘the most successful ideology in human history’ (Billig 1995: 22). It is a convincing
argument, but this chapter reformulates it by incorporating the wider ideological
context within which nationalism first emerged and then thrived. This is the all-pervasive
context of expanding modernity and the ideology of technocratic materialism and
corporatism which accompanied it.
To the extremes: nationalism, modernism and developmentalism

Modernism assumed various forms: from a ‘right’ to which all citizens are entitled, to a
‘must’ for state leaders to impose upon often reluctant populations. In its extreme
forms, it became the ideology of development for development’s sake at whatever the
costs. At such extremes, modernism can be redefined as ‘developmentalism’. Far from
being a secondary ideology, the latter has indeed accompanied nationalism and
socialism well into the twentieth century, moving at centre-stage with the advent of
totalitarianism and its obsession with mass industrialisation and the development
of tightly controlled communication networks. This can be exemplified by Fritz
Todt’s (1891–1942) ideology of road-building as key to German economic strength
and Gottfried Feder’s (1883–1941) Taylorist vision of technocracy as the ‘perfect’
society ruled by engineers. Turning citizens and peasants into pliable ‘masses’
34 Daniele Conversi
through overwhelming state machines, totalitarian and post-totalitarian regimes
justified destruction in the name of ‘progress’ and economic development. Extreme
developmentalism, or the obsession with ‘catching up’ with the core countries of the
wealthy West irrespective of its human costs, was already visible in the ‘desperately
modernising’ drive of the Russian military before the Bolshevik revolution (Mann
2005: 99) or in the obsessive Westernising trends emerging within the Ottoman Empire
just before its collapse (Mann 2005: 114–19). More recently, the ideology of development
allied with security concerns has been central in carrying out most contemporary
genocides, notably in Rwanda (Uvin 1998; Verwimp 2000).
Later on in the twentieth century, Taylorism became an influential method of
maximising industrial efficiency and serialising mass production. The Soviet Union’s
New Economic Policy (NEP) before 1928 belonged to a broader developmentalist
crusade and Lenin’s embrace of Taylorism’s ‘scientific’ method was more than:
a means of discipline that could remould the worker and society along more
controllable and regularized lines … Lenin encouraged the cult of Taylor and of
another great American industrialist, Henry Ford, inventor of the egalitarian
Model T, which flourished throughout Russia at this time: even remote villagers
knew the name of Henry Ford (some of them believed he was a sort of god who
organized the work of Lenin and Trotsky).
(Figes 2002: 463)
From a scientific method, Taylorism had become an ideology, indeed a faith, which was
host of a broader ideology of progress. The ‘natural’ unit of reference for the ideology
of progress was the nation, indeed the nation-state, remarkably so in the Soviet Union,
where Wilsonian-Leninist principles of self-determination and popular sovereignty
became the norm (Connor 2004: 34–37). The cult for discipline and work became part
of a wider militarisation of society which reached its peak later on under Stalin, as
totalitarianism reinforced and extended its grip. Some radical Taylorists envisaged
indeed ‘the mechanization of virtually every aspect of life … from methods of production
to the thinking patterns of the common man’ (Figes 2002: 463).
Taylorism’s weight upon Hitler’s plans was even more substantial: by 1938, the
German Autobahn network of over 2,000km began to surpass in extent the United
States’ highway system. The ideology of a highly interconnected and powerful nation,
envisioned as a unified living body, aimed at seducing every single citizen. Hitler’s idea
of a Volkswagen (people’s car) dated back as early as 1933, owing much to Ford’s
Model T. This is well beyond what elsewhere has been narrowly defined as ‘the paradox
of reactionary modernist reconciliation’ (Herf 1986).4 In Italy, the avant-garde ideology
of futurism (1909–45), with its idolatry for the machine, its cult of mass violence and its
contempt for ordinary lives, produced the first artistic synthesis of all these trends
(Conversi 2009). In general, as I have argued, the stress on mass emotions and
irrationality (including the rejection of Enlightenment rationalism) and the full embrace
of modern technology were coeval and belong to the same world vision. They date back
to the battle of Valmy and the birth of state-making nationalism with its radical,
exclusive and unrivalled appropriation of ‘Vive la Nation!’ cries and easily stirred
cheering crowds.
The concept of developmental dictatorship has been applied to the cases of Italy’s
Fascism (Gregor 1979) and Spain’s Francoism (Saz 2004). A national developmentalist
ideology underpins nearly all totalitarian systems, whose regimes attempted to shape a
new man as the ideal citizen ready to inhabit the promised land of a new industrialist
utopia. Soviet and Maoist propaganda posters depicted the advent of mass
industrialisation in superbly idealised terms, as the gateway to a new millennium.
Nazi-fascist regimes shared with socialist-communist ones variants of a Western-
centred ideology of development while paying lip service to ‘tradition’ and honouring
the ‘fathers’ of the nation. Totalitarian systems married nationalism and ideologies of
progress in quasi-religious, mythopoietic terms (Griffin 2007). An extreme, rather than
moderate, modernist ideology was the main common denominator amongst all these
regimes and surpassed by a long way the already commanding prominence of
nationalism and patriotism.
Progress, modernisation, development are social concepts associated with power and
thus conceal the traits of ideology. Indeed, being more pervasive and ‘material’ than
other ideologies, modernism can be described as the dominant ideology of modern
times. As progress and related concepts became intrinsic attributes of the nation, they
were fully appropriated by nationalism. A step further, Greenfeld (1992) suggests that
they cannot even be conceived in a world without nations and outside nationalism.
I have defended the general view that nationalism cannot be conceived outside
modernity, but only to identify modernity itself as embedded in its own ideology,
modernism. Let us now relate the above to what nationalism studies have so far
produced on this relationship. Although for most scholars nationalism is indissociable
from modernity, others argue that modernity provided only a catalyst for pre-existing
groups to seize power or negotiate power-sharing arrangements through representative
leaders. For some authors, nationalism was no mere chaperon of modernity, but it
provided a congenial tool to impose modernisation and spread the ideology of progress
among the masses: in the footsteps of Hans Kohn, Liah Greenfeld (1992, 2006) argues
that ideas were central to the birth and spread of nationalism. This is a view shared by
political philosophers, like Kenneth Minogue, and historians of ideas, like Elie
Kedourie. Greenfeld (2006) also argues that nationalism was essential to the propagation
of the ‘spirit of capitalism’.
Intellectuals and the media: from ideology to imagology

Intellectuals play a different role at different times and in different countries. A clue to
their importance can be found in the way their freedom of speech is restrained by
incumbent regimes. How do governments react to the activity and writing of intellectuals
able to articulate some form of uncomfortable political opposition? The murder of Anna
Politkovskaia (2006), Sergei Protazanov (2009), Natalia Estimirova (2009) and other
Russian activists points to the central role of the writer in articulating ideas about
freedom in Russian politics and society. It also underlines the government’s fear of losing
control of the official discourse and the ruthless way the citizen is supervised by exercising
absolute jurisdiction over the public sphere. Similarly in Tajikistan fifty to eighty
journalists have been killed from 1990 to 2000, a period in which Glasnost and Perestroika
were just beginning to enable a liberal press (Allison 2006; see also Atkin 1995).
Situated in between the media pundit and the fully fledged intellectual, the figure of
the journalist has a specific impact in early stages of democratisation, when the written
word may still enjoy a greater influence than the unmediated image. The stance
articulated by the murdered Russian writers was powerful enough to warrant their
36 Daniele Conversi
elimination, also because it was framed in highly non-nationalist terms and advocated
universal human rights transcending nationhood. Quite the opposite can be said of the
nationalist raison d’état of the murderers, since Putin’s exploit of state patriotism has
affected minorities, non-nationalists, universalists, human rights activists and rival
Russian nationalists as well.
The intellectuals have often played a central role in nationalism studies, beginning
with the work of Carlton Hayes and, to a lesser extent, Hans Kohn. As we have seen,
Elie Kedourie places intellectuals at the core of his explanation of the spread of
nationalism. From an original emphasis on the role of intellectuals, Anthony D. Smith
has subsequently nuanced their centrality, because nationalist ideologies are ‘not simply
the product of intellectuals, nor are most intellectuals … free-floating and disoriented,
nor are most of them able to exercise the kind of influence that Kedourie attributes to
them. The same is true of their ideas, which are effective in society to the extent that
they mesh with pre-existing popular notions and collective memories. Only then can
they mobilise large numbers of people’ (Smith 1988: 116). However, ethnosymbolism
dismisses elites’ manipulation outright, so that the dynamics of power are not laid bare
or critically discussed. On the other hand, intellectuals played a key role in the passage
from ethnie to nation (Conversi 1995).
But what does the word ‘intellectual’ mean? Which are its contours? How sophisticated
does a nationalist intellectual need to be? How refined and deep are the ideas to be
propagated? The founder of Basque nationalism, Sabino Arana y Goiri (1865–1903),
was not a champion of finesse and could scarcely articulate his thoughts in a coherent,
let alone pleasant, way. Reading his Obras Completas (Complete Work) is a daunting
task, as its works are replete with vehement interjections, caustic tirades and ranting
sermons interspersed with slang and xenophobic epithets. Yet, Arana’s work was central
to the success of Basque nationalism, with long-term repercussions on its subsequent
evolution (Conversi 1997). What matters is the founding intellectual(s)’ organisational
capacity. In spite of his limited vocabulary and incapacity to enunciate in-depth
observations, Arana was certainly an excellent agitprop, an orator and haranguer
perfectly capable of perorating the Basque cause amongst a small coterie in which he
emerged as the charismatic catalyst. Such managerial ability also derived from his ability
to communicate in the language of the people and from his ability to mobilise the
founding myths of Basque nationalism (Douglass 2004). Basque nationalism owed most
of its visual symbols and values to Arana. Considering that he died at the young age of
thirty-eight, Arana’s achievement was immense: single-handed he formulated the first
Basque nationalist programme, coined the country’s name (Euskadi), defined its
geographical extension, founded its first political organisation, wrote its anthem and
designed its flag (Conversi 1997: 53). All these required impeccable organisational skills
and a total dedication to the cause. Thus, in spite of his hidebound and paltry educational
qualifications, Arana could be described as an ‘intellectual’ because he was able to
articulate and marshal the national aspirations of his followers. This can be visualised as
a boundary-building enterprise: Arana’s goal was to create, recreate, and reinforce the
boundary between Basques and non-Basques, that is, to define a modern Basque identity.
Nowadays, the surrogate ‘intelligentsia’ is centred around media operatives – those
who need more appearance than brain, and those whose subliminal passages have direct
impact on human thought and actions. Does this mean that nationalism can today
subsist without intellectuals? Is ideology possible or even thinkable without intellectuals?
A passage from Milan Kundera’s novel Immortality can shed light on this question:
… we can rightfully talk of a gradual, general, planetary transformation of ideology
into imagology … All ideologies have been defeated: in the end their dogmas were
unmasked as illusions and people stopped taking them seriously … Reality was
stronger than ideology. And it is in this sense that imagology surpassed it: imagology
is stronger than reality, which has anyway long ceased to be what it was for my
grandmother, who lived in a Moravian village and still knew everything through
her own experience: how bread is baked, how a house is built, how a pig is
slaughtered and the meat smoked, what quilts are made of, what the priest and the
schoolteacher think about the world … she had, so to speak, personal control over
reality.
(1991: 126–27)
In their triumphant path towards the conquest of hearts and minds, dominant ideas
have regularly been accompanied by powerful images. Images serve to convey rational,
irrational and non-rational messages by using emotional styles and instinctive methods.
In an era dominated by one-way, or unidirectional, media, most notably the radio and
television, these images have become increasingly simple. (The internet is not necessarily
unidirectional, allowing the user a margin of self-determination and sometime the
possibility to interact and respond.) In the passage from ideology to imagology, forms
of banal nationalism have rapidly spread without the mediation of intellectuals and
without soliciting critical thought. This has led to a global impoverishment of politics
and the rise of ‘banal’ forms of mass mobilisation though artificial simulation (Simons
2000). In practice, the reign of image belongs to a ‘hyperreality’ which merges reality
with fantasy (Baudrillard 1994: 1–42), as well as to a generalised ideology which is no
longer mediated by intellectuals. Thus the answer to the opening question is that in
technologically advanced postmodern societies intellectuals may indeed become
redundant, despite the fact that ideology permeates society at all levels. In various
ways, the totalitarian dream of a homogeneous world order deprived of critical thought,
yet firmly grounded on ideology, has become a potential reality with globalisation.
Where the iron fist of totalitarianism failed, the velvet glove of globalisation seems on
the verge of succeeding. Yet nationalism and ethnic conflict seem to expand with global
homogenisation, either as a reaction to it or as their inevitable companion.
Why have intellectuals become redundant in a media-dominated, ‘post-critical’
world? Part of the answer lies in the raise of banal nationalism. As we have seen, a
purely mentalist definition of ideology is no longer commonly accepted. Ideology is
rather seen as encompassing a variety of current pre-reflexive manifestations, including
behaviour, attitudes and patterns of consumption. For Michael Billig (1995) even the
prettiest manifestations of nationhood are based on nationalist ideology: We are deeply
steeped in a nationalised world vision, thus becoming unconscious carriers and
replicators of nationalist ideology, whether we accept or reject nationalism in principle.
Typical examples are those who ‘restrict the term “nationalism” to the ideology of
“others”’ (Billig 1995). By sin of omission, the very fact of nationalising/ethnicising (i.e.
attributing blame of nationalism to) others, particularly stateless nations, implies a
certain degree of nationalist performance. As with other ideologies, its proponents can
easily detect its shadow elsewhere, but not at home. ‘Subconscious’ nationalism is also
common in mainstream academia: when scholars quote approvingly Ernest Renan’s
famous defence of the ‘nation de volonté’ (nation of will) smuggling it into their argument
as an example of ‘civic’, or even ‘civilised’, nationalism, they are not simply espousing
38 Daniele Conversi
an ideological stand, but also tacitly endorsing a nationalist-inspired vision, which is
ultimately directed towards exclusion.
Whereas Billig focuses on the daily ideology of banal nationalism, Althusser focuses
on the untold, which he calls lacunar discourse; things are merely suggested rather than
openly enunciated. Indeed, ideology-supporting discourse does often work by changing
the meanings of terms. The revolutionary triad liberté–egalité–fraternité served to
underpin its opposite: servility, inequality and conflict. The most nationalist of the
triad, fraternité, was the last one to be added, with its emotional and communitarian
stress on kin-related moral obligations (Ozouf 1997: 4353–89). Nationalism seems to
advocate strong egalitarian values proclaiming the equality of all citizens or, rather, all
the members of the nation. However, this ‘equality’ is largely fictitious and, once seized
by the state, the concept is usually usurped to promote more demanding forms of
surreptitious inequality (Conversi 2008a). In times of war and under mass conscription,
‘equality’ is to be paid by ordinary citizens with their own lives: war demands that
ultimate sacrifice is made on the basis of citizens’ equality, although informed citizens
may know that the richest usually buy or arrange their way out of the front line.
Finally, a whole set of irreflexive habits can be thought as expression of ideology. As
externally induced behaviour, consumerism may not be perceived as an ideology in itself,
but as part of a collective inclination to equate personal satisfaction with the incessant
pursuit of material possessions. Already in 1899, the US sociologist Thorstein Veblen
(1857–1929) identified patterns of ‘conspicuous consumption’, that is, the act of spending
money for the sake of appearance and for attaining or maintaining social status –
although the phenomenon was much less pronounced at that time than it is today. With
the expansion of global consumerism since at least the 1970s, the ideological aspects of
the process seem to have passed unnoticed. Yet, systematic attempts to oppose
consumerism and other behavioural ‘-isms’ are likely to be perceived in terms of ideology.
For instance, enoughism, a set of recently proposed practices and lifestyles based on ideas
for a better world, is clearly dedicated to defeat consumerism in both ideology and
practice (Naish 2008). Enoughism, not inevitably a branch of Green thought, is a
quintessential cosmopolitan ideology, where the concern for the nation is wholly
subordinated to that for the ecumene. In this sense, it belongs to a large group of
universalist ideologies which aim to provide an alternative to nationalism, as well as to
consumerism.
Globalism, nationalism and ideology

In the 1960s the ‘end of ideology’ was prematurely announced, anticipating a new era
liberated from the dogmas of socialism, liberalism and conservatism (Bell 1960). Over a
quarter of a century on, some of these conjectures have seemingly materialised, finding
a suitable symbolism in the fall of the Berlin Wall. But, whether or not an end of all
ideologies really took place during the age of ‘reflux’, those vast sociopolitical changes
are still firmly set within a greater ideological narrative: modernity. Moreover,
nationalism remained with us and, as we all know, its appeal has done nothing but grow.
The ostensibly ‘paradoxical’ relationship between globalisation and nationalism has
been stated and restated countless times. Likewise, various reasons have been indicated
as the main culprits for this ‘unexpected’ outcome. One of them is the demise of cultural
certainties and traditions accompanying the process of global homogenisation. It is still
highly debatable whether globalisation has actually bolstered cultural exchanges and
métissage, or has rather limited inter-ethnic relations to superficial domains by filtering
inter-cultural contacts through the lenses of Westernisation – or indeed Americanisation
(Conversi 2010b).
The copious and repetitive literature in globalisation studies has so far failed to
produce any groundbreaking text, even in the form of a journal article. The very term
‘globalisation’ appears increasingly undefined, hard to grasp and shrouded in conceptual
mystery, with some authors pushing its meaning back to Portugal’s imperial expansion
or even to Roman times, thus making it scholarly inoperative. Historically, the concept’s
current usage emerged in the wake of an extreme variant of liberalism, neo-liberalism,
sometimes defined as ‘the ideology of the Washington consensus’ (Callinicos 2003:
149).
There is an ongoing debate as to whether globalisation is part of an ideology, an
ideology in itself, or rather a mere economic/cultural fact. For William Greider (2000),
globalisation is not ideology, but naked power: ‘The great, unreported story in
globalisation is about power, not ideology. It’s about how finance and business regularly
continuously insert their own self-interested deals and exceptions into rules and
agreements that are then announced to the public as “free trade”’ (Greider 2000). For
others, globalisation is a new phase of particularly harmful and penetrating imperialism
and some see it as deeply related to war (Barkawi 2005). Finally, others see its hidden
agenda as implying a total restructuring of power relations throughout the world with
the dramatic potential of unleashing an unpredictable blowback effect: thus, for Dennis
Smith, globalisation has stirred up ‘a tide of global resentment’ which can only be ‘held
back by fear of American military power’ (Smith, D. 2006).
However, in line with what we have said, globalisation was also accompanied by the
all-pervasive ideology of globalism: In other words, globalisation, the actual practice,
should be distinguished from globalism, its accompanying ideology – which is tacitly
assumed by many scholars working in the area of globalisation. For Manfred B. Steger
(2002), globalism not only is ‘a new ideology, but also constitutes the dominant ideology
of our time against which all of its challengers must define themselves’.
If globalism is an ideology, is it a variant, indeed a deepening, of the ideology of
modernism? Given the latter’s relationship with nationalism, we should not be surprised
to see patriotic and ethnic conflict accompanying both. Ultimately, the answer depends
on whether we choose to consider globalisation as a new, and more radical, phase of
modernisation, or as an entirely new departure from it, as argued by post-modernists.
Some of the scholars who years before had anticipated and celebrated the end of
ideology found nothing to rejoice about in the new era as they discovered that corruption
had largely replaced ideology on a global scale (Bell 1993). After the Cold War,
unconstrained American rule over world politics, economy, law and culture became the
norm and its consequences upon daily practices, attitudes and lifestyles will permeate
contemporary ideology for generations to an extent which still needs to be fully weighed
up.
Conclusion
Although ideologies are central to the study of nationalism, there has been disagreement
about whether or not nationalism is truly an ideology. However, it is undeniable fact
that nationalism is associated with modernity and, as I have argued, modernity in itself
is based on the ideology of modernism.
40 Daniele Conversi
We have seen how nationalism can be either described as the dominant ideology of
modernity, or as one among many modern ideologies. If nationalism is freeloading on
other ideologies, which is then the core ideology around which it gravitates? Whereas
most scholars agree that nationalism developed in tandem with modernity, few have
considered modernity as conveyed by its own specific ideology. None of the leading
nationalism scholars identifies the possibility that nationalism can indeed be the host of
the wider ideology of modernism, since the latter is rarely identified as such.
By articulating specific projects for action, ideologies can become modern tools for
mass domination, particularly when seized by incumbent regimes. They are distinguished
from other forms of manipulation by their reliance on political thought and action,
obedience to a set of principles, and the embodiment of related ideas in symbols, myths
and rituals. As we have seen, this implies that our daily lives are unconsciously
permeated by ideological content, including many routine habits that we may perceive
as ‘facts’.
This chapter has asserted the following points: a definition of ideology cannot be
conceived in purely mentalist terms and needs to incorporate more general dispositions,
particularly the dimension of habitus and unreflective behaviour. At any rate,
nationalism is an ideology, either ‘thin’ or ‘banal’. Indeed, it is the most powerful
ideology of the modern age and it may even be its defining ideology. However, modernity
itself needs to be reconceived and redefined as an ideology and for this scope the term
modernism has been used here. The root of all the above phenomena (nationalism,
ideology and modernity) is firmly placed in the French revolutionary wars.
Notes
1 As for the state ideological apparatuses, ‘it is unimportant whether the institutions in which
they are realised are “public” or “private.” What matters is how they function’ (144).
2 ‘No class can hold State power over a long period of time without at the same time exercising
its[cultural] hegemony over, and in, the State Ideological Apparatuses’ (Althusser 1971: 146,
original in italics, 340–42).
3 Recently the brainwashing metaphor has been extended to ‘deep capitalism’ and cultural
Americanisation. Conveyed through films and fictions, brainwashing has slowly mutated
‘from an external threat to American values to an internal threat against individual American
liberties by the US government’ (Seed 2004: 1).
4 Indeed, its roots go back to Weimar and earlier: Germany’s ‘three mandarin thinkers’,
Heidegger, Schmitt and Freyer, all devoted numberless pages to the issue of technological
supremacy. Before handing in his resignation as rector of the University of Freiburg, Martin
Heidegger had advocated Germany’s urgent need to combine Technik and Kultur (Herf 1986:
109).
Further reading
Baudrillard, Jean 1994 Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor MI: University of Michigan Press
Billig, Michael 1991 Ideology and Opinions: Studies in Rhetorical Psychology. London and
Thousand Oaks CA: Sage
Brown, David 1998 Contemporary Nationalism. London: Routledge
la Branche, Stêphane 2005 ‘Abuse and Westernization: Reflections on Strategies of Power’,
Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 42, No. 2, pp. 219–35
Smith, Anthony D. 1996 Nations and Nationalism in a Global Era. Oxford: Polity
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4 The nation-state
Civic and ethnic dimensions
Colin Clark
Nationalism is not a single beast. There are different varieties of nationalism. It can
be well argued that some of the speeches by Conservative members – particularly
those who regard themselves as Eurosceptic – are nationalistic. It seems that British
nationalism is fine, but any other nationalism – Scottish, Welsh or Irish – is bad.
That is not an acceptable distinction. If I were to draw such a distinction, it would
be between ethnic nationalism, which is bad and should be rejected wherever it
raises its ugly head, and civic nationalism, which is a good and progressive force
that can be found all over the world spreading democracy and increasing the rights
of ordinary people whatever their ethnic background. It is civic nationalism which
is wound up in the Bill – a nationalism that gives the people who live in Scotland,
no matter who they are, the same democratic rights as can be expected by people
living in any other democratic society.
(John McAllion, Hansard, 23 February 1998: column 134)
On 23 February 1998, during a debate in the House of Commons on the intricacies of

the Scotland Bill, the Labour MP for Dundee East, Mr John McAllion, offered the
above contribution in response to a suggestion by the Conservative MP for Woodspring,
Dr Liam Fox, that certain devolutionary aspects within the Bill could trigger negative
forms of ‘residual English nationalism’ and damage the nature of the Union holding
Great Britain together. Of course, Fox’s undue concerns were placed to the side and the
Scotland Bill soon became an Act. In May 1999 the Scottish Parliament, located in
Edinburgh, started up again for business, having last met in March 1707. The Scotland
Act (1998) devolved all powers to the Edinburgh Parliament except those issues referred
to as ‘reserved matters’ – and, indeed, it was a lengthy list, including constitutional
affairs, foreign policy and immigration, and as such the Union was not about to crumble
any time soon. In relation to this chapter on the civic and ethnic dimensions to the
nation-state, McAllion’s statement at Westminster gives us some indication of the
lively, dichotomous debates that can occur when examining the many philosophical,
geographical and political territories that nationalism can cover. It is also emblematic
of the rather broad and sweeping statements that have been made in the respective
names of both civic and ethnic forms of nationalism. We shall see that the reality of this
apparent distinction to which McAllion refers – ‘good’ civic nationalism and ‘bad’
ethnic nationalism – is much more contested and complex than would first appear. The
dichotomy itself needs to be explained and problematised as well as asking questions
about whether or not different forms of civic nationalism can in fact be reactionary
and, similarly, whether some forms of ethnic nationalism can actually be progressive.
The nation-state 45
In this chapter we will examine this apparent divide and offer some thoughts, analysis
and examples to illustrate that the ethnic–civic distinction is indeed less stable and more
fragile than appears from a brief examination of the literature within nationalism
studies, as well as looking at different views from civil society and other agencies. To
begin with we need to set out the parameters of the debate and look closely at what the
civic and ethnic dimensions to the nation-state are.
‘Civic nationalism maintains that the nation should be composed of all those –
regardless of race, colour, creed, gender, language or ethnicity – who subscribe to
the nation’s political creed. This nationalism is called civic because it envisages the
nation as a community of equal, rights bearing citizens, united in patriotic
attachment to a shared set of political practices and values.
(Ignatieff, 1994: 3–4)
There is considerable evidence that modern nations are connected with earlier
ethnic categories and communities and are created out of pre-existing origin myths,
ethnic cultures and shared memories; and that those nations with a vivid, widespread
sense of an ethnic past, are likely to be more unified and distinctive than those
which lack that sense.
(Smith, 1996: 385)
Debates rage on the topic of the ‘ethnic’ and the ‘civic’ in nationalist discourses. For
Ignatieff (1994) the appeal of civic nationalism is obvious, rejecting as it does any
appeal to the ‘who and what’ of the citizens found within its territory – more important
is a common belief in agreed political practices and values. For Smith (1996) this is
somewhat illusionary because you cannot escape the fact that the ‘ethnic past’ is a vital
element for even the most ‘modern’ of nations and indeed those without, or denying,
this past will ultimately become undone in denial. But where do these discussions begin?
A common starting point for discussing the ethnic-linguistic and civic-political
distinction is the work of historians such as Friedrich Meinecke (1907) and Hans Kohn
(1944). In his influential work, Meinecke made an important distinction between what
he termed ‘cultural nations’ and ‘political nations’ – the former having common
‘cultural heritage’ and the latter having a shared ‘political history and constitution’.
For Kohn (1944), a useful distinction was to be drawn between ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’
nationalisms with the dividing line being the river Rhine. To the West of this river was
a kind of nationalism that displayed qualities of being both rationalistic and voluntaristic
in nature, whilst to the east was a nationalism that was much more deterministic and
organic. Such early work set the tone for more recent debates, many of which still tend
to offer generalised caricatures rather than substance and specifics: it is regularly, and
lazily, asserted that ethnic nationalism is associated with xenophobic attitudes and
exclusionary policies, as well as violence when required, and civic nationalism is
associated with highly liberal states who actively encourage the integration of new
members with appeals to humanistic and universal values. Is it really this simple?
The distinction is clearly not as straight forward as convention dictates. And whilst
accepting this, it is still useful to spend time looking at Kohn’s 1944 book The Idea of
Nationalism. This text has attracted much attention, largely because some of its content
still resonates today. Kohn, writing in the context of Nazism and the war, was focused
46 Colin Clark
on looking at the origins of national identities and he clearly regards nations as modern
entities that emerged around the mid-late eighteenth century. However, in arguing this,
he acknowledges that modern nations are a ‘product’ of historical forces and do come
from ‘somewhere’ and this past needs to be recognised and paid attention to. In many
ways, the work of Kohn has been pivotal in shaping the thinking and direction of many
scholars in the field of nationalism studies offering a variety of perspectives, such as
Anthony Smith, Ernest Gellner and Benedict Anderson. For example, the place and
role of history and the past is important in Smith’s ‘ethnosymbolist’ work whilst Kohn’s
ideas of nationalism being ingrained within populations via ‘high culture’ and mass
education systems is familiar to Gellner’s body of work. Similarly, Kohn also notes the
role of print capitalism in such ‘nationalising’ campaigns and also speaks of nationalism
being a ‘state of mind’; this somewhat akin to Anderson’s later claims to the ‘imagined
communities’ that we all, by necessity, inhabit. In Kohn’s framework, nations are
something different from the other group identities we all share, such as those governed
by family, community, town or religion. Kohn appreciates the ever-changing, non-static
nature of nations and the political and socioeconomic forces that can often drive such
changes and redrawing of maps, borders and boundaries. However, despite this ebb
and flow, Kohn offers some foundations that are usually required to assist in the
development of nations, including language, traditions, descent and religion.
In considering the place and direction of German nationalism, Prague-born Kohn
established the dichotomy between what could be termed ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’
nationalisms. He looked around Europe at the time of writing and concluded that
rather more progressive and favourable forms of nationalism could be identified in the
West, when compared to the more reactionary and hostile types witnessed in the East.
Drawing on contemporary examples, Kohn suggested that those nationalisms evident
in the West were forms that were influenced by ideas of the nation as a grouping or
‘association of citizens’ who were governed by common laws within a shared, bordered
territory. Within its borders, and on its own soil, the civic nation promotes the principle
of jus soli (‘law of ground’) and membership is theoretically open to all, or at least not
closed off in any definitive and absolute way. Across in the East, Kohn argued, it
appeared that different examples of nationalisms were formed and established on a
foundation that much preferred a strong belief in similar ethnic origins and common
culture. On this basis, members of the nation were part of something larger than
themselves and were part of the nation for life, even if moving across shores and residing
in other territories. In the case of the East then, it was argued that citizenship was given
by birth, through descent and blood, and fixed via the principle of jus sanguinis (‘right
of blood’) rather than jus soli. It has been argued by Smith (2001), that the source of this
contrast is largely concerned with class dynamics – that is, in the East, due to the rule
of autocrats and landowners, organic and authoritarian forms of nationalism developed
whilst in the West, due to an assertive (some would say ruthless) bourgeoisie class, civic
enterprise and mass citizen-nations were promoted.
It goes without saying that, like much work in the social sciences, Kohn’s framework
is rather static and one-dimensional in character. The rigid dichotomy between East
and West does present somewhat essentialised and reified ideas of nationalism, identity
and culture and as such has been subject to criticism, especially when considering the
nature and extent of any such distinction between East and West as well as specific
examples that challenge the divide (such as the Czech lands and Ireland, to name but
two cases in point). Indeed, Smith (1991: 11) informs us that it is ‘historic territory,
The nation-state 47
legal-political community, legal-political equality of members, and common civic
culture and ideology’ that give us the building blocks of the ‘Western’ model of the
nation but are such aspects, to some degree, not also evident in certain ‘Eastern’
realities? If nothing else, we can see here the issue in comparing and contrasting ‘models’
with ‘real life’: clear boundaries and borders tend to collapse when shifting between the
two worlds, depending on the examples being drawn upon and the time period being
consulted. Indeed, with the time/place context very much placed in the foreground,
Shulman (2002) sought to show the inherent weaknesses in those common arguments
that suggest that civic nationalism is dominant in Western Europe and North America
whilst ethnic nationalism is somehow the preserve of Central and Eastern Europe.
Shulman argues that state policies, in practice, tend to flow from a combination of
civic, ethnic and cultural conceptions of national identity and he gives us various
explanations for finding strong cultural national identities in the West as well as strong
civic national identities in the East. To support his contention, Shulman analyses a
range of survey data from some fifteen countries to get a sense of what such measurements
can tell us about ‘common’ thinking and practices with regard to national identity. This
is done by assessing attitudes on issues such as state policies towards assimilation and
immigration as well as the various criteria adopted for granting national membership.
Shulman, in presenting and analysing the survey data, argues that on the basis of this
data the ‘civic as West’ and ‘ethnic as East’ dichotomy on many measures is false and
on other measures is only ‘weakly true’.
However, before consigning Kohn’s classic work to a dusty shelf we should note that
some (normative) elements of Kohn hold good and are worthy of retaining, not least
the notion (at least in theory) of ‘choice’ – that is, within the civic engagement, we can
choose, to some degree, where we belong, whereas in the ethnic model we are born into
a nation and even though we may decide to leave (to begin a new life on another
continent) we are for ever attached to our place of birth. And Kohn is not alone,
obviously, in attempting to draw up such typologies and you can find in other work
notions of what might be termed ‘continuous’ (Seton-Watson, 1965) and ‘created’
(Tilly, 1995) nations as well as broader separations between nationalisms based on
ethnicity and those based on territory. However, what is important to bear in mind here
is that these typologies and models are exactly that – typologies and models. The truth
of the (practical, geographical) matter is that nationalisms change shape and identity
over time and place and, indeed, in most cases, will incorporate aspects of both the civic
and ethnic. So the question remains: is the distinction between the two types of
nationalism worth anything more than a theoretical exercise on paper or can it have
analytical purchase as Kohn hoped it would?
This is a question that hangs and has many answers. It is unfortunate that crude
distinctions still abound, where civic nationalism – especially when combined with
hearty doses of liberalism – is regarded as being (almost) a step in the right direction
and deserving of space whilst varieties of ethnic nationalism – especially in the context
of events in the Balkans and other territories in the 1990s and 2000s – are widely
regarded as being outside mainstream democratic discourse and consideration. Indeed,
if we look to the work of political philosopher David Miller (1995) we can see that his
concept of the nation revolves around a set of preferences that specifically and
intentionally avoid mention of genealogies and ethno-linguistic heritage and practices.
Instead, public culture, residence and history come to the foreground, excluding any
‘dangerous’ aspects that rely on ‘blood and belonging’ – ideas of descent. Even so, as
48 Colin Clark
Orwell (1945) powerfully argued, it does seem that nationalism, whatever its key
ingredients, must always have the potential to produce exclusionary policies that are
driven by latent xenophobic sentiments and tendencies. One of the most obvious
examples of this has been the plight of minority groups such as Jews and Roma, whose
treatment over many years, across different areas of Europe and beyond, has shown in
explicit detail that even those nations with strongly developed civic nationalist states –
such as France or England – can spectacularly fail to support minority group rights and
offer appropriate protection (Smith, 1994). It is evident then that although ethnic
nationalism is characterised as exclusionary, reactionary, ‘bad’, it is also the case that
examples of civic nationalism can also struggle and fail when it comes to hearing the
claims of different cultures within its borders. A genuine and meaningful
multiculturalism, if nothing else, demands for a ‘plural nation’ that is not content to
stop at merely ‘celebrating diversity’ but goes further than this to specifically include
the many cultures that are represented within its borders: to weave and embed myriad
cultures into the fabric of the nation-state and the governing bodies and institutions
that claim to speak in its name (Parekh, 2005). As an example of this, but not without
its controversy, is the United States. Built up via historical processes of conquest,
slavery, civil war, migration and immigration, America has become, when compared to
other nations, a relatively plural and polyethnic nation and yet it is also a nation that is
bound together by common laws, languages and allegiances, not to mention the
everyday celebrations of flag and constitution. This does not change the fact, however,
that the (very relative) unity we see today is the product of earlier brutality and
oppression – a point made famous by Renan in his essay Qu’est-ce qu’une nation? back
in 1882 (Renan 1882/1994: 17–18). Indeed, America is often upheld in the literature as
something of an ‘ideal’ civic nation and yet like many other countries, such as France
and England, it consciously, for many years, withheld civic status from various groups
of people, not least women, Native Americans and Black slaves.
A key idea then is that civic nationalism offers the possibility to all people that they
can be citizens of the nation. If we look at the examples of France and England at
different time periods this idea seems problematic. For example, at the time of the
French revolution – often viewed as the dramatic and bloody beginnings of civic
nationalism – we can see that conditions were attached to who could, or might, be a
citizen, especially when gender entered the equation. Certainly, it is noteworthy that
women gained the right to vote in France only in 1945, so it took a long time to
reformulate the notion of ‘universal citizenship’ to ensure this wasn’t just about male
citizens. Similarly, if we turn to England, and draw on the work of Liah Greenfeld
(1992), we can see that for Greenfeld the civic–ethnic contrast or dichotomy is
fundamentally related to the differences between individualism and collectivism and
she goes on to argue that during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, due to major
socioeconomic structural changes, the word ‘nation’ in England adopted new meanings.
However, despite the promises and possibilities within the civic–individualist framework
for all to be members of the nation, the reality in England meant that many sections of
the population, for historical and contemporary reasons, were routinely ignored from
the benefits and rights of civic membership, such as women, Catholics and the poor.
The issue here, in a sense, is to illustrate the fact that the ‘rules’ of the civic conception
of nationhood have been ‘broken’ from almost the very beginning and the exception
soon becomes the norm. We need to acknowledge, of course, the dangers of applying
present day standards to the past, but the concern is that such exclusions are not just
The nation-state 49
confined to the vaults of history: we continue to witness the operation of exclusionary
politics in both East and West that seeks to deny citizenship to those considered to be
on the ‘outside’ (of the civic nation) looking in. You only need to think of the problems
faced by refugees, migrants and asylum-seekers in trying to gain entry to many different
nations to get a perspective on the seriousness of this issue. Indeed, the recent work of
Vicki Squire confirms this point by critically examining the debates over asylum in
recent years and she shows us how far asylum has been characterised as a matter of
asylum seekers (‘them’) being a socioeconomic and political ‘problem’ and a ‘threat’ to
‘host’ states (‘us’). Looking across the United Kingdom and the European Union in
particular, Squire argues that various neo-liberal responses to the asylum process have
been chiefly driven by concerns over securitisation, criminalisation and economics
rather than any adherence to international conventions or laws. When examined in
their historical and political context, this is not a surprise and asylum seekers are
routinely rendered as scapegoats for the dislocations that are produced as a result of
broader shifts in globalised thinking on the nation-state. To escape this manner of
exclusionary politics, Squire argues for a radical change of direction in how states
conceive and respond to asylum as well as identity and citizenship more broadly (Squire,
2009).
In all of this, it does seem to be the case that despite the apparent contrasts and
differences between the ethnic-linguistic and civic-political nationalisms on display,
there is a particular ‘closeness’ between the actual policies that emerge out of such
manifestations. In a sense, for analytical precision and depth, it is perhaps better to
think of nationalism as a whole rather than trying to create ‘civic–ethnic’, ‘political–
cultural’ or ‘good–bad’ distinctions that might be helpful at a general hypothetical level
but are rendered problematic when applied to ‘real world’ examples and situations.
Indeed, it is important to remember that this distinction is merely a normative and
analytical one: it cannot account for specific nationalisms and it cannot account for
potential trajectories of any ‘nationalism at large’. It seems clear, whether reading the
work of Anthony Smith (1998) or Eric Hobsbawm (1992), that even those nationalisms
claiming to be ‘the most’ civic and political (‘Western’) are, in reality, very often guided,
forged and influenced in their development via the ethnic and linguistic. The example
of France alone illustrates this point, both during and after the revolution. The same is
true for those nationalisms that seem, at first glance, to be virulent strains of the ‘ethnic’:
for example, John Breuilly (1993) has shown that in the case of German nationalism
around the 1850s, many speeches and debates in Parliament illustrated both civic and
territorial aspects in addition to the ‘ethnic’ ones on display (and Germany is often
presented in the literature as an atypical model of the ‘ethnic’). You can see today, all
around Europe, examples of the relatively harmonious fusion and merging of the ethnic
and civic, whether in Scotland, Switzerland or the Czech and Slovak lands. Of course,
we can also witness the opposite, especially if we extend our gaze to Israel or India. In
essence, tracing a clear pattern of historical development using such dichotomous
concepts is inherently problematic.
It is worth looking at the critiques of the ethnic–civic distinction a little more to fully
understand these discourses. Indeed, as has been noted by Spencer and Wollman (2002),
the distinction between ethnic and civic forms of nationalism is problematic in many
ways. At a ‘deep’ philosophical level, the actual separation of the two is not without
concern. Is it not the case, for example, that all nations are, at a fundamental level,
‘ethnic’ nations? Each nation will claim their uniqueness and their borders and
50 Colin Clark
boundaries and in so doing will be excluding of those who are not considered members
of that particular nation (‘aliens’ or ‘others’). If we follow the work of Brubaker (1998),
for example, we can see how it often depends on how narrow or broad we stitch ‘culture’
onto the distinction that is suggested operates between the ethnic and the civic. Ethnic
nationalism can place emphasis on the importance on descent and heritage, and by
doing so, can be restrictive. This narrowness of interpretation can mean that there are
few examples of ethnic nationalism in existence as such a framework means that any
emphasis on ‘common culture’ has to be defined as an example of civic nationalism.
From the other side, if ethnic nationalism is classified in a broader ethnocultural sense,
and conversely civic nationalism is interpreted narrowly as displaying acultural notions
of citizenship, then the problem is reversed – all nationalisms would be defined as
ethnic/cultural and the civic conception would be rendered almost meaningless. You
can see here the power of questioning the intellectual distinction between ethnic-
linguistic and civic-political and, further, Kohn’s (1944) Western and Eastern division
is challenged. In this kind of framework, even the prime examples of civic nationalism
– America, England, France, etc. – would be reclassified as they obviously contain
ethnic/cultural aspects to their nationalisms (Özkirimli, 2005).
Is the civic ‘model’ the one to aspire to then? If we look to the work of Gans (2003) it
can be observed that the idea of civic nationalism, as a political entity that is voluntary
and is ethnically ‘colour-blind’ (both literally and metaphorically), is in fact a fallacy
that does not hold true. Gans argues that adherence to shared ideas cannot be seen as
any kind of nationalism, unless drawing upon vague and abstract notions of ‘common
culture’. That is, civic nationalism in any kind of ‘pure’ form does not actually exist,
given historical developments and philosophical definitions of what constitutes nations.
Similarly, Brown (2000) argues that the ethnic–civic question is, for most people, a
mute one – given that the majority of the population in so-called civic nations have no
choice in their national identity as the acquire citizenship by birth. Further, gaining
entry to other ‘civic’ nations may be as limited as in the case of ‘ethnic’ nations (for
example, witness the visa/legal problems faced by someone trying to move permanently
from France to the United States, especially for reasons other than work or marriage).
So, civic nations, like ethnic nations, can be equally demanding in terms of allegiances
to ‘blood and soil’ and can also take measures to resist voluntary renunciations of
national identity and citizenship. This point is made very well by Muro and Quiroga
(2005), who look at the example of Spanish nationalism, a geography that provides
fertile ground for examining the interplay between the ethnic and civic. They argue that
when considered historically, Spanish nationalism has had at least two recognisable
‘versions’ – a ‘liberal’ incarnation and a ‘conservative traditionalist’ project. This was
especially the case during the nineteenth century. However, in turning to the twentieth
century, Muro and Quiroga suggest that although these two ideological projects
cemented themselves into party politics, the Basque and Catalan nationalist movements
caused a shift in thinking and helped, to an extent, unify Spanish nationalists to defend
‘Renio de España’ (‘the Kingdom of Spain’) against these new regional sources of
separatist identity politics. In the present context, they suggest, Spanish nationalism is
a struggle between centre and periphery with appeals to ‘civic’ status and nationhood
used to compete with regionalist forces.
Another criticism of the ethnic and civic distinction is the ‘normative project’ (Smith,
1996) that can shadow and follow the debate, leading to the airing of moral favouritism,
prejudice and bias. For example, McCrone (1998: 7) discusses the ‘great fault lines’ of
The nation-state 51
Eastern and Western thinking on nationalism and notes that, even going back to
Kohn’s work, we can recognise the thinly disguised idea that Western (political) forms
of nationalism – the kinds that produced ‘citizens’ – are somehow superior or ‘better’
than Eastern (ethnic and cultural) forms of nationalism which simply produce ‘the
folk’. McCrone (1998: 9) concedes that whilst commentators such as Gellner (1994), in
his work on the time zones of Europe, and Brubaker (1992), in his work on French and
German models of nationalism, have put the civic–ethnic distinction to good academic
use he still suggests that ultimately the distinction ‘…does lend itself to Eurocentric
caricature – why can’t they be more like us?’. This is certainly a theme that is apparent
in some of the literature on the ethnic/civic distinction and moral judgments do not
seem to be too far from the surface. Consider the work of Plamenatz (1976) who as
recently as the mid-1970s spoke of an Eastern kind of (ethnic) nationalism as being
‘backward’, ‘imitative’ and ‘illiberal’ whilst the Western (civic) variety is upheld as one
that is ‘culturally better equipped’ for ensuring ‘success and excellence’. Challenging
such static and reified ideas is the more recent work of Stefan Auer (2004). In an
interview for Radio Prague (Vaughan, 2005) about his book Liberal Nationalism in
Central Europe, Auer (2004) captures this theme vividly and his last sentence is especially
important I would suggest:
… the book is partly a response to a number of scholarly studies that were written
immediately after the collapse of communism, that argued or suggested that the
process of post-communist transition will be hampered or undermined by the
forces of nationalism. So what happened in Yugoslavia was seen as epitomising the
problems of Eastern Europe. It was argued that the nations of Eastern Europe
were more inclined to adopt this kind of xenophobic form of nationalism … There
is a vast body of literature that differentiates between ‘civic nationalism’ and ‘ethnic
nationalism’. Civic nationalism is seen as a kind of progressive force that fits into
the project of liberal democracy and is characteristic of Western nations like Britain
and France. Opposed to it is usually a concept of ethnic nationalism that, so it was
argued, was characteristic of Eastern Europe. I thought that that sort of schematic
division of Europe was unhelpful in understanding what was going on in Central
and Eastern Europe. In fact, it’s quite unhelpful in understanding what’s going on
in Western Europe.
So what are we left with here? Has the ethnic/civic distinction – such a ‘keeper’ within
the field of nationalism studies – lost all of its contemporary analytical purchase? In an
increasingly global world is it now somehow less important, given that nation-states
have, it is argued, given way to cosmopolitan cities and new transnational realities? As
has been suggested above, there is perhaps some scope for continuing to employ the
distinction as a Weberian ‘ideal type’ model and focus more on the advantages this
approach can give us and focus less on using the dichotomy when it comes to ‘real
world’ scenarios. Or, perhaps, a better approach is to recognise that the distinction
between civic and ethnic is now redundant and actually creates more problems than it
could ever solve – and in its place alternatives should be fostered and employed. This is
where we can return to Brubaker (1998) who has helpfully suggested a ‘state-formed’
and ‘counter-state’ dichotomy for (better?) understanding different types of nationalism.
In using the term ‘state-formed’, Brubaker is arguing that the terms ‘nation’ and ‘state’
are in accordance, both in terms of territory and institutions. By ‘counter-state’, he is
52 Colin Clark
talking about the exact opposite – where ‘nation’ is opposed to the territorial and
institutional framing of the currently positioned state. As Brubaker argues (1998:
300–01) in explaining each new distinction, there is nothing necessarily ‘civic’ about
state-formed nationalism and likewise counter-state nationalism need not be ‘ethnic’.
What is important here is that the state is the frame of reference, not the nation. These
conceptions of nationalism can incorporate ethnic and cultural aspects of nationhood
as well as paying heed to the importance of territory and individual political histories.
So, counter-state nationalisms can have ‘civic’ qualities whilst ‘state-formed’
nationalisms can have ‘ethnic’ components and roots. However, is this distinction any
more relevant and useful than the ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ options presented by Kohn
back in 1944?
It is worth noting, in closing this brief chapter, that even though the distinction between
civic and ethnic nationalisms has been largely agreed as problematic, and of limited
value beyond a kind of ‘ideal type’ model-making, it continues to be a source of much
scholarly angst and debate. Indeed, if commentators are not arguing about the origins
and/or endings of nationalism, then it is usually the civic–ethnic distinction – and other
such dichotomies – that spills forth and holds attention. An example of this was the
eighteenth annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism
at the London School of Economics, London, during April 2008. Including speakers
such as Oliver Zimmer, Paul Gilroy and Bhikhu Parekh, the conference was concerned
with the topic of ethnic and civic conceptions of nationhood and the conference
promotional material suggested that:
‘It has long been standard in the field of nationalism studies to classify nations
according to which principle serves to unify the nation. The distinction between the
Western, political type of nationalism, and Eastern, genealogical nationalism as
systematised by Hans Kohn in 1945 has been used, extended and adjusted by
scholars of nationalism to conceptualise a framework of ‘inclusive’ nationalism
based on citizenship and territory and ‘exclusive’ nationalism based on common
ethnic ties and descent. This conference seeks to assess the continuing relevance of
this dichotomy in its various forms: its contribution to theoretical work on
nationalism, its usefulness for historical interpretation and its value for
contemporary policy-making.
Although clearly written to attract papers and general interest, the framing of the
conference is nonetheless interesting and reflects the continued ‘hardness’ and rigidity
of thinking on this dichotomy. It has been shown in this chapter, by drawing on some
of the thinking of key scholars in the field, that the civic–ethnic distinction is an
extension or a new way of thinking about the political–cultural distinction and in the
field of nationalism studies such dichotomies are going to be around, just like nation-
states, for a long time yet.
Acknowledgement
This chapter could not have been written without the assistance of Elizabeth R.
Lambert, who has taught me all I know about the fluidity of transatlantic borders and
the enduring nature of nation-states.
The nation-state 53
Further reading
Brubaker, R. (2004) Ethnicity without Groups, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Greenfeld, L. (2002) Nationalism: five roads to modernity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kohn, H. (1944) The Idea of Nationalism: a study of its origins and background, New York:
Macmillan.
Miller, D. (1995) On Nationality, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Smith, A. (1998) Nationalism and Modernism, London: Routledge.
References
Auer, S. (2004) Liberal Nationalism in Central Europe, London: Routledge.
ASEN (2008) Nationalism, East and West: civic and ethnic conceptions of nationhood, annual
conference announcement and call for papers, London School of Economics, available on
line: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/ASEN/conference_08.html (accessed 18 June 2009).
Breuilly, J. (1993) Nationalism and the State, 2nd edn, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Brubaker, R. (1992) Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany, Cambridge MA:
Harvard University Press.
—(1998) ‘Myths and misconceptions in the study of nationalism’, in John Hall (ed.) The State of
the Nation: Ernest Gellner and the theory of nationalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Brown, D. (2000) Contemporary Nationalism: civic, ethnocultural and multicultural politics,
London: Routledge.
Gans, C. (2003) The Limits of Nationalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gellner, E. (1994) Encounters with Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell.
Greenfeld, L. (1992) Nationalism: five roads to modernity, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Hobsbawm, E. (1992) Nations and Nationalism since 1780: programme, myth, reality, 2nd edn,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ignatieff, M. (1994) Blood and Belonging: journeys into the new nationalism, London: Vintage.
Kohn, H. (1944) The Idea of Nationalism: a study of its origins and background, New York:
Macmillan.
McAllion, J. (1998) Speech in the House of Commons on the Scotland Bill, 23 February,
Hansard, col. 134, available on line at: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199798/
cmhansrd/vo980223/debtext/80223–39.htm#80223–39_spnew2 (accessed 11 July 2009).
McCrone, D. (1998) The Sociology of Nationalism, London: Routledge.
Meinecke, F. (1970/1907) Cosmopolitanism and the National State, Princeton NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Miller, D. (1995) On Nationality, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Muro, D., and Quiroga, A. (2005) ‘Spanish nationalism: ethnic or civic?’Ethnicities 5 (1): 9–29.
Orwell, G. (1953/1945) ‘Notes on nationalism’, in England, your England, and other Essays,
London: Secker & Warburg.
Özkirimli, U. (2005) Contemporary Debates on Nationalism: a critical engagement, Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Parekh, B. (2005) Rethinking Multiculturalism: cultural diversity and political theory, 2nd edn,
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Plamenatz, J. (1976) ‘Two types of nationalism’, in E. Kamenka (ed.) Nationalism: the nature and
evolution of an idea, Canberra: Australian National University Press.
Renan, E. (1994/1882) ‘Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?’ in J. Hutchinson and A. D. Smith (eds)
Nationalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Seton-Watson, H. (1965) Nationalism Old and New, London: Methuen.
54 Colin Clark
Shulman, S. (2002) ‘Challenging the civic/ethnic and west/east dichotomies in the study of
nationalism’, Comparative and Political Studies, 35 (5): 554–85.
Spencer, P., and Wollman, H. (2002) Nationalism: a critical introduction, London: Sage.
Smith, A. (1991) National Identity, London: Penguin.
—(1994) ‘Ethnic nationalism and the plight of minorities’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 7 (2–3):
186–98.
—(1996) ‘Opening statement: nations and their past’, Nations and Nationalism 2 (3): 358–65.
—(1998) Nationalism and Modernism, London: Routledge.
—(2001) Nationalism: Theory, Ideology, History, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Squire, V. (2009) The Exclusionary Politics of Asylum, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Tilly, C. (1995) European Revolutions, 1492–1992. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.
Vaughan, D. (2005) ‘Can nationalism in Central Europe be a force for good? An interview with
Dr Stefan Auer’, Radio Prague 23 October, http://www.radio.cz/en/print/article/71970
(accessed 12 August 2009).
5 Stateless nations in a world of nation-states
Ephraim Nimni
Nations and states: a terminology in trouble

We are accustomed to understand nations as connected with states, and in many cases,
particularly in everyday speech, we use the term nation as transposable with the term
state. This assumption is prevalent around the world but it is based on an error. A state
is an apparatus of governance and a nation is a cultural community; these are two very
different kinds of human groupings. The symbiotic relation between nation and state (a
nation-state) is an historical creation of early modern Western Europe, and it became
in more than one way, one of its most successful exports. The Western European heirs
of the architects of the nation-state, however, are paradoxically relinquishing some of
the old sovereign powers of the nation-state with the expansion of the European Union.
However, many of those outside Western Europe who copied the idea of the nation-
state or inherited it from colonial masters are among its most zealous defenders. The
nation-state model is not particularly well suited to govern states with culturally mixed
populations who demand political recognition to their cultural identity. The problem is
unfortunately common and solutions are hard to find, let alone implement.
There are more nations than states. States require a delimited territorial space to
exercise sovereignty. In this regard, the match between nation and state is often
problematic, as it is common to find that territorial spaces occupied by states that are
home to more than one nation. A cautious estimate puts the number of nations in this
world to well above 3,000, while, with the admission of Montenegro in 2006, there are
192 states represented in the United Nations. Fewer than twenty UN member states are
ethnically homogeneous in the sense that cultural minorities account for less than 5 per
cent of the population (Brown 1993: 6). Others consider that the number of nations is
much larger. Minahan (2002: xx) argues that only 3 per cent of the world’s 6,000
national groups have achieved statehood. Moreover, it is only from the eighteenth
century onwards that one can speak of nation-states in the way we understand the term
today, a type of state that derives its legitimacy from being a sovereign entity for a
nation (Jáuregui 1994: 3).
Whatever the numbers one might wish to use, nations that have states are only a
small fraction of all nations, but we insist in associating nations with states and in
regarding the majority of nations that are stateless as problematic or lacking something.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the term ‘nation-state’ – understood as one (cultural)
nation in one state – is a misnomer (Govier 1997: 269). Stateless nations are the
overwhelming majority of nations and only a small number of states represented in the
UN are technically nation-states. The configuration of the political institutions of most
56 Ephraim Nimni
states, democratic or otherwise, often gives the impression that they are culturally
homogeneous, trapping cultural minorities that have different national cultures into at
best, ambiguity and, at worst, alienation, subordination and, in the worst case scenario,
ethnic cleansing. In an influential and thought-provoking work, Michael Mann argues
that murderous ethnic cleansing is the dark side of democracy because it carries the
possibility that majorities might tyrannise minorities and pervert the ideal of rule by the
people. This process converts demos into ethnos in some extreme cases, generating an
organic nationalism that leads to the cleansing of minorities (Mann 2005: 2). In a larger
number of less extreme cases, the standardisation and centralisation that is the hallmark
of the modern nation-state, puts national and ethnic minorities in a difficult predicament
and results in a complicated process of accommodation of stateless nations (Jáuregui
1994: 128).
However, change is on the way. The nation-state is just but one possible way among
many on how to organise the political system, and changes in the relationship between
territorial spaces, national identity, political institutions, may open up new possibilities
(Keating 2001: 2), particularly by developing multination-states, with shared sovereignty
and overlapping jurisdictions between two or more nations. In the last three decades we
are experiencing a slow but relentless change in the idea that nations must match states.
This change takes the form of a devaluation of the nation-state as a model for national
emancipation – not only because democratic nation-states are internally and externally
devolving power to regional forms of organisation – but crucially because many
democratic nation-states have begun transferring jurisdictions to devolved regional
governments that in many cases embody minority nations. Here, multi-level governance,
understood as the exercise of authority across and within different jurisdictions, is
changing the way democratic governance is understood, and this is particularly so in
regions inhabited by stateless nations.
Consider the following few examples. Nunavut is the most recent and federal territory
of Canada, and was created to allow for the autonomy of its indigenous populations,
mainly the Inuit people. Quebec is a province of Canada, but one that has a special
identity as the homeland of the Québécois nation. In a historic ruling, the Canadian
parliament approved by acclamation in 2006 a motion submitted in French by Stephen
Harper, the then Conservative Prime Minister of Canada, ‘que cette Chambre
reconnaisse que les Québécoises et les Québécois forment une nation au sein d’un
Canada uni’ (this House recognises that Quebeckers form a nation within a united
Canada).1 Catalonia is an autonomous region in the Spanish state, and the parliament
of Catalonia has defined Catalonia as a nation, and this is specified in the Statute of
Autonomy of Catalonia. Euzkadi is an autonomous region composed of three provinces
in the Spanish state and whose peoples consider themselves a distinct nation, a part of
the Basque Homeland (Euskal Herria). In the United Kingdom, devolved assemblies
operate in the territories of the Scottish and Welsh nations. In settler liberal democracies,
agreements between settler societies and indigenous peoples are transforming the way
in which national self-determination is understood. Consider among many La Paix des
Braves (the Peace of the Brave), an agreement between the government of Quebec and
the Grand Council of the Cree Nation in Canada, to share governance, land and
resources. In Northern Ireland a consociational arrangement is in place to allow for the
representation of two national communities. This is only a small sample; there are
many other similar cases in different parts of the world.
Stateless nations in a world of nation-states 57
Stateless nations and demands for cultural recognition
One of the salient characteristics of the turn of the twenty-first century is that we are
witnessing an extraordinary expansion of a variety of demands for cultural recognition.
These increased demands come in many forms and shapes, including indigenous
emancipatory movements, minority nationalisms and the politics of recognition for
ethnic minorities. This extraordinary expansion in the politicisation of cultural
communities signals, in Will Kymlicka’s words, ‘a veritable revolution’ (2007: 1) in the
relation between states and ethnonational communities. The reasons for this are clearly
explained by Tony Judt:
Most of the readers of this essay live in pluralist states which have long since
become multiethnic and multicultural. ‘Christian Europe,’ pace M. Valéry Giscard
d’Estaing, is a dead letter; Western civilisation today is a patchwork of colours and
religions and languages, of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Arabs, Indians, and many
others – as any visitor to London or Paris or Geneva will know.
(Judt 2003)
From the perspective of the study of nations, the most mystifying dimension of this
expansion is that it is taking place mostly among cultural communities that have no
possibilities or indeed the desire to build separate nation-states. We can still identify a
diminishing number of nationalist movements that steadfastly persist in the aim to
build separate states. In these cases, intractable bloody conflicts fester without the
prospect of resolution. Chief among these is the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. But in
other increasing number of cases, ethnonational communities exercise self-determination
without constituting separate states, using instead mechanisms of devolution or
national accommodation. In such cases, conflicts are defused, become institutionalised
and manageable because they are represented in the democratic interplay of political
forces, or they simply disappear. Consider the case of Northern Ireland after the Good
Friday Agreement. In sharp distinction with the Israeli–Palestinian case, and following
the slow process of institution-building in Northern Ireland, the conflict has not
disappeared. It was rather transformed through the mechanisms of power sharing into
a manageable difference that finds its expression in democratic institutions.
The perplexing impasse of theories of nationalism

In whatever way we look at it, the relationship between nationalism, ethnicity and
self-determination has changed significantly in the last three decades. But enigmatically,
these changes have not been adequately reflected in the paradigms that dominate the
study of nationalism. These paradigms continue to see that the goal of nations is to
create nation-states because they are considered to be the best shell for the protection
of nations. The tone is set by what is one of the most influential contemporary books
for the study of nationalism, Ernest Gellner’s Nations and Nationalism. Here Gellner in
the opening sentences of the book argues that ‘Nationalism is primarily a political
principle, which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent’
(2006: 1).
Anthony Smith, a prolific and influential scholar in the study of nationalism, similarly
argues that the aim of nationalism is to make the nation the mould and measure of the
58 Ephraim Nimni
state, to make the state bend to and express the will of the nation. ‘In and of itself, the
state is nothing but an instrument for executing the will of the nation,’ and furthermore,
‘the state that nationalism aims to create is a culturally defined and suffused polity; it
derives its raison d’être as well as its character from the historic culture of the dominant
ethnie’ (Smith 1995: 112–13).
However, these assertions are not only becoming conceptually dubious, but as we
enter the twenty-first century they are empirically incorrect. Consider the case of Puerto
Rico, a nation with a vibrant national culture by any prevailing criteria. Its members
have decided in plebiscites and elections not only not to become an independent state
but, to the contrary, the electorate wishes to remain part of the United States.
Notwithstanding the impassioned pleas of a tiny minority of nationalists demanding
independence, the majority wish to remain as a commonwealth associated to the United
States, while a large minority wish to join the United States as the fifty-first state of the
Union. Only a mere 3 per cent of the electorate voted in a referendum for independence.
An even larger majority, however, consider that Puerto Rican national culture is not
negotiable, yet they emphatically reject independent statehood (Oquendo 2004: 299).
Consider also the increasing numbers of multicultural nationalisms, such as the Catalan,
Basques or Quebecois among others, who accept an accommodation within a
multination-state, and are therefore left outside the domain of Gellner’s mistaken
generalisations. The large numbers of indigenous peoples in postcolonial settler societies
as well as in Europe are also left outside Gellner’s generalisations. Indigenous peoples
use the terms ‘nation’ and ‘self-determination’ in cultural ways that show no interest in
separate statehood (Keating 2001: 7).
But Gellner was not the only voice expressing the idea that nation-states should be
monocultural (Tambini 1996). The argument has a long history associated with liberal
thinkers at the onset of modernity. For a very long time the dominant conception of
nation building was that stable democracies could not be maintained in the face of
cultural diversity (Gagnon and Tully 2001: 319). The best known and most influential
example was John Stuart Mill’s assertion that:
Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different

nationalities. … Among people without fellow-feeling, especially if they speak
different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of
representative government cannot exist.
(Mill 1976: 361)
Walker Connor, in a prophetic article over thirty years ago, argued that what
developmental scholars called ‘nation building’ was in fact a process of nation
destroying, because these nation-building scholars ignored the question of stateless
nations or they treated ethnic diversity superficially as merely a minor impediment for
state integration (Connor 1972: 319). In conceptual and comparative perspectives, the
juridical concept of the state made sense in conjunction with a sanitised idea of the
nation that emanated from the pre-eminence of a hegemonic fascination with the
sovereign state model. The absence of ethnic minorities and stateless nations in
theoretical and comparative literature on nationalism resulted from a conceptual
myopia that reflected the low salience of cultural pluralism and a high salience of
Western ethnocentrism (Young 1983: 655). Nowadays a decisive break with this
fruitless tradition appears to be under way. A paradigm change since 1980 is giving
birth to a different, more plural and multidimensional understanding of the relationship
between stateless nations and democratic governance, particularly in settings that
encourage multiple jurisdictions. A common element across the various versions of
the new paradigm is that the dispersal of governance across multiple jurisdictions
is both more efficient than and normatively superior to a central state sovereign
monopoly (Bache and Flinders 2005: 5). These new theoretical insights first emerged
in the area of conflict resolution and multiculturalism. They advocate, in a vast array
of empirical and comparative cases, a system of governance based on the
participation of several democratically organised ethnonational communities
operating in multiple jurisdictions. Here the governmental process is not of discrete,
centralised, homogeneous units, as in the old nation-state model, but one in which
governance is understood as a multilayered and multicultural mechanism, with regional
and minority devolution, one that will allow stateless nations the possibility of
self-determination without constituting a separate state and without dismembering an
existing one.2
These new forms of democratic administration emerged precisely because they come
to terms with a problem that paralysed old versions of nation-state sovereignty
and centralised government. This problem is at the centre of the move for a paradigm
change in relation to stateless nations in a world of nation-states. The shift responds
to the crying need to break with the oppressive governance of stateless nations and
end centuries of bickering about minority nation representation. Here forms of
post-sovereign citizenship that retain the political and territorial dimension
of citizenship, while experimenting with alternative forms of representation for
national and ethnic minorities (non-territorial autonomy and concurrent or shared
sovereignty) appear as influential tools of compromise and accommodation (Murphy
and Harty 2003: 185). The need for a compromise with stateless nations is urgent and
important because these stateless nations can be disempowered by a nation-state
without violating the civil and political rights of their individual members. Consider
settlement/migration policies, the gerrymandering of boundaries and, in official
language, policies. While on the surface these policies appear not to violate individual
rights, their effect is to alienate, demoralise and destroy the cultural identity of minority
stateless nations (Kymlicka 2001: 23; Nimni 2008: 98–99). To avoid the pain and
wanton destruction that minorities and majorities experience as a result of bitter
struggles for secession, we urgently need to find ways to provide stateless nations with
cultural recognition, equal rights, governance and political participation – without
dismembering existing states.
The opposing solution to multinational integration, partition, has proved to be
disastrous for the predicament of stateless nations. The examples of Palestine, Cyprus,
Kashmir, Sri Lanka and more recently Kosovo, among many others, show that rather
than resolving ethnic security dilemmas endemic to ethnic civil wars, partitions have the
effect of institutionalising ethnic conflicts in the post-war period because they result in
segregated communities that leave confrontational mechanisms intact (Jenne 2009:
274–75). Moreover, partitions are often the result of instigations by outside parties with
ulterior interests rather than forms of ethnic conflict resolution. When minority
nationalist leaders are confident of external support, their leaders will radicalise and
reject attempts to compromise (Jenne 2007: 53). The tragic and senseless prolongation
of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict results from this cruel equation.
60 Ephraim Nimni
Models for the self-determination of stateless nations
Fortunately, some models are available to alleviate the predicament of stateless nations.
The first is more radical and it is normally applied in extreme cases of ethnic conflict. It
involves the reorganisation of nation-states into multination-states with collective
rights for all participant national communities. The national cultural autonomy (NCA)
model and consociationalism use this organisational logic in societies deeply divided by
ethnic and national conflict, when the residence of contending stateless nations overlaps
and when there are marked and long-standing disagreements that cause the political
system to be paralysed by violent struggles.
The NCA model has its origins in the late Habsburg Empire and the attempt of
Austrian socialists to convert the decaying empire from a conglomerate of squabbling
cultural communities into a democratic federation of nationalities (Nimni 2000: xxii–
xxiii). In sharp contrast to most other forms of national autonomy, the NCA model
rests on the idea that autonomous cultural communities could be organised as
autonomous collectivities whatever their residential location within a multinational
state. NCA is model for national self-determination without partitioning existing states
and without infringing on the rights of overlapping national communities. As in the
millet system in the Ottoman Empire, peoples of different cultural identities can coexist
in a single polity without straining the principle of national autonomy, but, in sharp
distinction from the millet system, these communities are organised in accordance with
the principles of the rule of law and democratic representation of nations.3 The model
is very well designed to resolve demands of self-determination of nations that share the
same territory with other nations. This is, unfortunately, not an uncommon situation
and one that cannot be resolved by internationally sectioned models of territorial
self-determination that prescribe the creation of a separate state for the aggrieved
nation. A much watered down version of the NCA model was approved by the Duma
of the Russian Federation in the Federal Law on the National-Cultural Autonomy in
May 1996 (Bowring 2005: 164).
Consociationalism is a better known form of governance encompassing collective
(group) representation. It presents an alternative to the principles of majoritarian
democracy and for that reason it is normally used to manage conflict in deeply divided
societies. The term was popularised by Arend Lijphart (1997) and was further developed
by John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary in a series of seminal works on conflict
resolution and on Northern Ireland (O’Leary 2005; McGarry and O’Leary 2006); for a
debate and discussion of the model see Taylor (2009). It is more elite-based than the
NCA model, and it is based on the principles of a grand coalition across cultural divides,
mutual veto on matters vital for the continuity of the minority communities,
proportionality in representation and the segmental autonomy of each community. As
with NCA, the aim is to make government more responsive to the concerns of minorities
and offer alternative outcomes to territorial nationalism and secession. In this way,
secessionist groups are neutralised and cultural minorities are encouraged to feel
confident of representation and protection for their vital concerns (Lustick et al. 2004:
210–11).
A second, less radical route is available to nation-states that have unresolved
problems of representation of stateless nations. This model is the preferred option in
societies that are not deeply divided, meaning that the inter-ethnic tension does not lead
to paralysis or a breakdown of the political system. In these situations, it might seem
impractical to endorse tout court the model of a multination-state advocated by
consociationalism or NCA. For one, nation-states are unlikely to concede willingly to
wide-ranging demands for the restructuring of their state sovereignty, unless of course,
the alternative is institutional breakdown. Even if the power of the nation-state as an
institution has diminished in the contemporary world, states still remain the principal
focus of institutional organisation. In these circumstances, when states are not paralysed
by conflicts, these states are invited to recognise the representational problems of
stateless nations, and implement internationally accepted standards and instruments,
such as the Lund Recommendations on the Effective Participation of National
Minorities in Public Life (1999). This important international document argues that the
effective participation of stateless nations in the governance of the state requires specific
arrangements to facilitate their inclusion within the system of governance, one that
allows these stateless nations to maintain their identity and characteristics, and in that
way promote the good governance and participation of all, not only individual citizens
but also national or ethnic collectivities (Palermo and Woelk 2003: 225).
The Lund international standards have also the important function of ensuring
coherent implementation. They provide a far-reaching set of specific recommendations
that are designed to encourage and facilitate the adoption by states of concrete and
specific measures designed to overcome the alienation of minority communities and
alleviate the tensions inherent in situations of territorial cohabitation (Packer 2000:
41–42). They set standards to provide for representation of stateless nations without
creating new states.
The world of nation-states poses limitations to the enforcement of real equality for
stateless nations and, moreover, courtesy of its own example, the nation-state model
provides solutions that exacerbate rather than alleviate the problem of secession and
partition. Superficially, secession of stateless nations and their ‘normalisation’ into
nation-states appears to some as a seductive remedy. However, the secessionist route is
clouded with difficulties, for it almost always incurs the veto of the dominant nation
(exceptions are Singapore and Slovakia), and the problem is further exacerbated when
the residence of different cultural-national communities overlaps. When cultural
grievances become entangled with territorial disputes they become bitter, protracted,
bloody and extremely difficult to resolve. Cultural-territorial conflicts are classic
zero-sum situations: the gain of one is by definition a loss for the other. The problem is
aggravated by the sheer impossibility of finding in the contemporary world sufficient
‘portions of real estate’ to allow each and every national community to have a territorial
state of its own. For the insurmountable problems that result from minority secession,
see Dion (1996). The UN Charter offers contradictory advice here: on the one hand it
sees the right of self-determination as the right to constitute separate states, but on the
other it opposes the dismemberment of its members (Musgrave 2000: 69–77). The
problem can be resolved only by a redefinition of national self-determination into
something other than separate nation-states, and the principled application of
asymmetrical modes of autonomous governance for stateless national communities.
Stateless nations and asymmetrical modes of governance

The egalitarian ethos of liberalism required until recently that each unit of a system of
governance receive the same symmetrical rights and competences. The assumption is
that each unit has the same needs and obeys the same organisational or cultural
62 Ephraim Nimni
arrangements, and therefore the egalitarian ethos makes sure that no one receives
privileges or disadvantages. This system assumes equal needs, uniformity and equal
distribution of resources, and is thus unreceptive to the diversity and flexibility required
for the accommodation of cultural and national minorities with different needs.
Asymmetrical governance, in contrast, is more appropriate for the accommodation of
stateless nations because it caters for units that experience different circumstances and
needs, such as different cultural, linguistic or administrative arrangements. In culturally
diverse multination-states, equality of rights paradoxically requires that competences
be distributed unevenly. Stateless nations and minority cultures require asymmetrical
forms of autonomy to cater for their cultural and linguistic distinctiveness and their
initial alienation from the dominant culture. For this reason, asymmetrical
decentralisation along territorial or cultural lines (or both simultaneously), is an
increasingly common form of territorial autonomy in cases of alienated stateless nations
that experience protracted conflicts. This model requires constitutional rights that give
special protection to the stateless nations. This usually takes the form of special rights
to administer the own affairs of the stateless nations independently of other forms of
state authority, but in a manner that is integrated within an existing overall legal order.
In this way asymmetrical governance can address the stateless nations desire for more
autonomy, while simultaneously allowing the continuity of the central administrative
functions of the multination-state (Adeney 2007: 117–18). Slowly but surely, this model
is understood as a form of national self-determination, but one that is markedly
different from the international legal understanding of self-determination as state
independence. This particular form of self-determination is often demanded by
indigenous groups in settler societies. Faced with an invasion of settlers that made them
to be minorities in their ancestral lands, indigenous peoples demand forms of
self-governance that allow them to be governed and live in accordance with their
millenarian customs and ways of life (Shaw 2008: 140). This does not entail building
separate nation-states, but the asymmetrical recognition of the culture, traditions and
ways of life of indigenous people. This model empowers them with self-governance
jurisdictions that do not challenge the territorial unity of the state.
The model of sovereignty as total and indivisible power is part of the key ingredients
that led to the formation of nation-states. This model, however, has been significantly
eroded by the modalities of asymmetrical governance described above, as borders are
no longer seen as dividing lines between states and societies (Henders 1997: 521). The
new modalities of asymmetrical governance also erode traditional constitutional
arrangements, and these require new forms of flexible constitutionalism for an age of
cultural diversity. This modality of recognition of cultural diversity does not fossilise
the majority or minority cultures, but on the contrary, it creates a constitutional
association that accommodates cultural diversity in a manner that provides the social
basis for critical reflection and dissent from one’s own cultural institutions (Tully 1995:
207), regardless as to whether these cultural institutions are part of the minority or
majority cultures.
In sharp contrast, symmetrical governance fails to correctly understand that
characteristics of most contemporary nation-states, in that their constituencies are
different cultural communities (Keating 2001: 102–33). This kind of cultural blindness
entrenches cultural divisions, for aggrieved minorities take a defensive stance and
majority communities misunderstand and resent minorities with insistent demands.
Without asymmetrical arrangements plurinational states will simply fail to function or
will fall into a protracted bickering about competences. Asymmetrical autonomy has
merit not only wherever a state’s different communities seek different levels of
self-government (McGarry 2007: 133), but also in circumstances in which the cultural
needs of different communities vary.
From a world of nation-states to a world of multination-states

The modern state as a political institution is the most important form of political
organisation in the contemporary world, and it is likely to remain so for the foreseeable
future. It has been weakened by erosions to its sovereignty caused by the process of
globalisation, and in the European case, states have devolved large parts of their
sovereignty to the European Union, yet, even in its weaker form, it remains the most
powerful form of societal organisation. The question however, is not the disappearance
of the state as an institution of governance, but its slow transformation from a nation-
state into a multination-state. While there is a long way to go yet to achieve this, in
sharp distinction to the prediction of the most influential theories of nationalism, we
are experiencing a slow but clear bifurcation between the attributes of the state and the
attributes of the nation. This does not mean that nationalism will disappear as some
advocates of post-nationalism appear to suggest. Post-national authors argue instead
that citizenship in the nation-state is eroded by globalising tendencies and a post-national
mode of citizenship emerges with transnational institutions as their main referent
(Soysal 1994: 3). For a refutation of the post-national argument see Koopmans and
Statham (1999: 652–96). The idea of the nation is not nowadays weaker but, to the
contrary, indicates a renewed vibrancy in demands for cultural and national
accommodation. The politics of recognition in its different forms and modalities is
reinvigorating nationalist claims, but this time, crucially, in ways that converge with
multicultural demands. Quebec’s Consultation Commission on Accommodation
Practices related to Cultural Differences (Commission de consultation sur les pratiques
d’accommodement reliées aux différences culturelles),4 best known as the Bouchard–
Taylor Commission, is one of the prominent examples of this convergence. Here a
stateless nationalism after its reconciliation with the dominant nation, takes stock of its
relationship with its own minorities. In the same vein, in Scotland and Catalonia, the
stateless nationalism seeks accommodation with its own migrant communities.
The relation between nation and state is changing in ways that are friendlier to
stateless nations. Prevailing theories of nationalism have fail understand this, and
cannot therefore conceptualise the new modalities for self-determination of nations.
The members of the United Nations are slowly moving to accommodate their minority
nationalisms, while in contrast, a dwindling minority of UN members zealously holds
to the old model of the nation-state, alienating even further stateless nations. But all
indications are that the twenty-first century will be a century of accommodation for
minority nationalisms. Indigenous peoples are showing the way in a concerted effort to
find a modus vivendi with the settler state. Multiculturalism and nationalism are
converging, and in that, they are both growing stronger.
64 Ephraim Nimni
Notes
1 Parliament of Canada, Order Paper and Notice Paper No. 86, Government Business No 11,
26 November 2006. See the historical speech at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v =
I2URJuVtRAE.
2 The proliferation of seminal ideas and works in this area is astonishing. Examples include
Kymlicka (1995, 2007), Parekh (2000), Gagnon and Tully (2001), Tully (1995), Nootens
(2004), Taylor (1994), Keating (2001), Keating and McGarry (1994) – but there are many
others. See also the debate on O’Leary and McGarry’s seminal work in Taylor (2009).
3 On the contemporary validity of the model see Smith and Cordell (2008), Roach (2005) and
Nimni (1999, 2005).
4 See the English site of the Commission, http://www.accommodements.qc.ca/index-en.html
(accessed 20 February 2009).
Further reading
Cordell, Karl, and Smith, David (eds), 2008, Cultural Autonomy in Contemporary Europe, London:
Routledge.
Keating, Michael and McGarry, John (eds), 2001, Minority Nationalism and the Changing World
Order, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Minahan, James, 2002, Encyclopaedia of the Stateless Nations: S–Z, Westport CT and London:
Greenwood Press.
Mann, Michael, 2005, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Nimni, Ephraim, 2005, National Cultural Autonomy and its Contemporary Critics, London:
Routledge.
—2010, Multicultural Nationalism, London: Routledge.
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Bargès, Anne, 2008, ‘Culture, territories, and confidence in food: an anthropological view on
health in the context of environmental pollution and socio-political tension’, Appetite 51 (1),
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Bowring, Bill, 2005, ‘Burial and resurrection: Karl Renner’s controversial influence on the
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Bouchard, Gérard, and Taylor, Charles, 2008, Building the Future: a Time for Reconciliation,
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—2000, ‘Introduction to the English reading audience’, in Otto Bauer, The Question of
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Young, Crawford, 1983, ‘The temple of ethnicity’, World Politics 35 (4), July, pp. 652–62.
6 Ethnicity and religion
Joseph Ruane and Jennifer Todd
Religiously informed conflicts have become increasingly prominent throughout the

world – conflicts surrounding immigration in Europe, conflict at religious interfaces,
the Islamicisation of ethnonational movements from Palestine to Malaysia. Steve Bruce
(2003, p. 2) estimates that three quarters of the conflicts since 1960 have a religious
component, where many of those involved ‘explain or justify their causes by reference
to their religion’. This opens a whole terrain for inquiry. Is religiously informed conflict
distinctive in form and dynamics? Do specific religions incline towards specific forms of
group identity and conflict? Are religiously defined groups-in-conflict different from
ethnic groups-in-conflict? How far does the historic sequencing of state-building,
nation-building and confessionalisation affect the ways ethnicity and religion intersect?
What specific resources are associated with ethnic and with religious solidarity? What
happens where ethnic and religious boundaries coincide? In such cases, how are
ethnicity and religion distinguished or merged in interaction and everyday
understanding? Does religion provide specific resources for conflict resolution?
One approach posits a new phase of ‘religious’ or ‘civilisational’ conflicts (Huntington,
2002). Much of the recent ‘terrorism’ literature sits within this paradigm, detailing the
ways religious belief is used to legitimate terrorist activity and suicide bombing (for
critical analysis, see Stewart, 2009). However, the multiplicity of theological positions
and religious practices within each of the world religions means that we cannot read off
political views from religious commitment: Norris and Inglehart (2004, pp. 133–55)
demonstrate multiple differences in political culture within each of the world religions
and many overlaps between them. Quantitative study shows no significant difference
between nominally religious and nominally secular conflicts in degrees or forms of
violence (Stewart, 2009). Before attempting to generalise about ‘religious’ conflicts, we
need more nuanced and detailed comparisons of the forms of religious and ethnic
identification, group formation and conflict.
This task is hindered by the relative isolation of scholarship on ethnicity from
scholarship on religion. The sociology of religion, for example, is a rich mine of analyses
and models relevant to the study of ethnicity: models of culture change (secularisation),
identity change (conversion), the emergence of new religious movements, and the
impact of religious groups and ideas on political culture and political organisation
(Davie, 2007; Demerath, 2001; Snow and Machelek, 1984). The historical-sociological
tradition traces interlinkages of religious practices, elites and values, on the one hand,
and sociopolitical development on the other, showing how religious movements – early
Calvinism and its impact on the values and habitus of the elite – came to inform
European capitalist development (Weber, 1930) and early modern state formation
68 Joseph Ruane and Jennifer Todd
(Gorski, 2003); others have traced the role of religions in nation formation (Greenfeld,
1992; Hastings, 1997; Van der Leer and Lehmann, 1999; Marx, 2003; Ihalainen, 2005).
An important strand of recent research focuses on popular attitudes, tracing key periods
when political elites use religious values to mobilise or control populations, to broker
new ethnopolitical alliances, to frame concepts of nationhood, or to compensate groups
for their increasing distantiation from the state (see variously Gal, 2007; Brown, 2010;
Shenhav, 2006, pp. 46–76; Kinnvall, 2002; Bruce, 1994, pp. 22–31).
The classic studies of ethnicity, ethnonationalism and ethnic conflict did not pay
particular attention to religion, with one exception: the ethnosymbolist perspective
associated with the work of Anthony D. Smith. Smith (2003) emphasises the
self-conceptions of some ethnic groups as ‘chosen peoples’. He distinguishes the
expansive ‘missionary peoples’ with a sacred mission of proselytism or exemplary
profession of faith, and the bounded ‘covenantal peoples’, whose religiously informed
obligations and expectations intensify their will to ethnic solidarity and survival (see
also Cauthen, 2004). Correlatively, as D. H. Akenson (1992) has shown in his
comparative study of three ‘covenantal’ settler peoples, Ulster Protestants, Afrikaaners,
and Israelis, the political context and the interests it generates also affect the forms of
religion that become dominant.
Contemporary scholarly interest in ‘everyday life’ and the everyday manifestations
of ethnicity (Brubaker et al., 2006; Jenkins, 2008) opens a wide field for research into
the intertwining of ethnicity and religion at the everyday level. Some studies show the
complexities of the intersection in peaceful, multi-ethnic societies (for example, Levitt’s
(2008) study of religion as a source of everyday activism among immigrants in the
United States). There are also studies of the interrelation of ethnicity and religion in
conflict situations, for example Kakar’s (1996) study of Hindu and Muslim rioters in
Hyderabad, Brewer’s (1998) study of anti-Catholicism in Northern Ireland. Such
research can help answer important theoretical and explanatory questions. Where
ethnicity and religion are intertwined, is religion a legitimatory tool for other interests,
constantly trumped by ethnicity? Or does religion – in Walter Benjamin’s terms – act as
the puppet master pulling the strings of seemingly secular groups (1969, pp. 253–55)?
When religious and ethnic motivations cross-cut, in what circumstances is one or other
distinction highlighted? What theories and approaches can help us to synthesise the
increasing numbers of case studies? As we show below, attempts to answer these
questions have required some reframing of concepts and theories of ethnicity.
Concepts of religion and ethnicity

Classical scholarship on ethnicity and ethnonationalism carefully distinguished religion
from ethnicity. Anthony D. Smith defined ethnicity as involving each of the following
six features: a common name; a myth of common ancestry; shared historical memories;
elements of common culture; a link with a homeland; a sense of solidarity (Smith, 1986,
pp. 21–31). Definitions are contested in the wider literature, but there is some consensus
that central to ethnicity is perceived territorially based descent, which in turn tends to
generate quasi-kin feelings of solidarity (Conversi, 2002). Religion may be defined
substantively as beliefs and practices concerned with the sacred, with particular religions
identified in terms of institutionally based and bounded sets of such beliefs and practices,
and religious (confessional) groups those who participate in them. On Smith’s definition
of ethnicity, religion may form the common culture that partially constitutes the ethnie,
Ethnicity and religion 69
but ethnicity requires also a territorial and descent-related emphasis. On other accounts,
ethnic solidarity is a function of (perceived) descent (Connor, 1994), or even simply of
group boundaries, rather than of any particular cultural or religious content.
The conceptual distinction is clear, but its usefulness in analysing actual movements
and conflicts is less obvious. When we ask which groups or conflicts are ‘ethnic’ and
which ‘religious’ we find that elements of the ideal types of religion and ethnicity are
mixed in practice. Smith (2003) has shown how religion informs and on occasion defines
particular ethnic groups. Jews, Copts and Sikhs are, for example, at one and the same
time ethnic and religious groupings, and religions like Hinduism, Judaism and Shintoism
are sometimes categorised as ‘ethnic religions’ as contrasted to ‘universalistic religions’
(Coakley, 2002). In other cases, religious and ethnic distinctions coincide in the conflict
region. So, for example, in Northern Ireland the conflicting groups are distinct in ethnic
origin (seventeenth-century incomers from Scotland and England versus Gaelic Irish
and ‘old English’ twelfth-century incomers), in religion (Protestant versus Catholic), in
nationality (British versus Irish) and in state loyalty (unionist versus nationalist). While
the religious distinction does not totally coincide with the ethnic, national or political
distinctions, the overlaps are extremely significant (Whyte, 1991, pp. 65–93). Religiously
derived concepts inform political views, although the precise nature of religious beliefs
and the relative emphasis on religion or ethnicity as a basis of communal identification
vary from subgroup to subgroup, and even from individual to individual (Mitchell,
2006, pp. 91–132).
Similar overlaps of religion and ethnicity occur in many conflict regions, with varying
degrees of strength and salience of the religious and ethnic components (see Bruce,
2003, pp. 43–57). In Macedonia the Albanians are Muslim and the Macedonians
Orthodox; in Sri Lanka the Tamils are Hindu and the Sinhalese Buddhist; in Cyprus
Greeks are Orthodox and Turks Muslim; in Israel-Palestine there are Israeli Jews and
Palestinian Arabs (mostly but not exclusively Muslim); in Lebanon the different
‘ethnies’ are distinguished in part by religion (Sunni, Shia, Druze, Christian Maronites
and Orthodox) and organised and administered by religious authorities; in
ex-Yugoslavia, Bosnian Muslims were pitted against Croatian Catholics and Serbian
Orthodox; in Malaysia, Malays are Muslim while Indians are Hindu and Chinese a
range of religions; in Canada the Catholicism of francophones, as distinct from the
Protestantism of the traditional anglophone community, was an important element in
the historical construction of a French Canadian identity (Bouchard, 2004); in Iraq,
internal conflict has a religious dimension in the Sunni versus Shiite distinction; one
dimension of the Sudanese conflict is religious, between Muslim Northerners and the
rest. In other cases, religion is officially nationalised so that the Greek Orthodox Church
is distinct from the Macedonian Orthodox Church, Tibetans have a distinct form of
Buddhism, and the Church of England was and is a national Church.
Even where religion appears to be irrelevant to ethnonational conflict, there may be
religious resonances to that conflict. So, for example, the Basque conflict with the
Spanish centre took its most acute form in the mid-twentieh century with the conflict of
(anticlerical) Basque socialists against clericalist Francoists, and this memory persists
in the one-time Francoist stronghold of Navarra. In Nigeria, Biafran mobilisation was
coloured by the conflict between Hausa Muslims and Ibo Christians, and religion is
becoming more important in contestations over the nation in contemporary Nigeria
(Igwarra, 2007; Stewart, 2009). Indeed, ethnic divisions shorn of all religious resonance
are much less common than may be imagined: in Europe, most of the internal French
national conflicts (Basques, Corsicans and more problematically Bretons versus the
French centre) and some residual northern European conflicts lack a religious
dimension; in Africa, conflicts in Rwanda, Burundi, the Congo, Angola and
Mozambique do not have a religious dimension.
In the many cases where religion and ethnicity appear to coincide, there is much
variation in the way religion informs ethnic division. Fox (2002) argues that religion is
no more than a ‘marker’ of a primarily ethnic identity and set of interests, and this is
certainly true in some cases: in ex-Yugoslavia, for example, weak religious identities
took on salience as markers of group identification in the course of ethnonational
mobilisation (Bruce, 2003, pp. 47–50). In other cases, religion helps form the identity in
question. Zionism used religious symbolism to identify Jewishness with an Israeliness
sharply distinguished from more general Arab belonging, despite the strong Arab
culture and historical belonging of many ‘Arab Jews’ (Shenhav, 2006, pp. 77–109).
Indeed in some cases, an identification that begins as primarily ethno-territorial
(Palestinians) can take on stronger constitutive religious content (Lybarger, 2007).
Much of the recent literature on ethnicity, conflict and violence bypasses these
questions by definitional fiat, including in the category of ethnic group those groups
defined by religion.1 If the benefit of this approach is to extend the range of comparative
quantitative analysis, the cost is to preclude comparison of religion and ethnicity as
contrasting sources of identity, community and conflict. The ‘inclusive conception of
ethnicity’ implicitly allows our understanding of ethnicity (with its strongly territorialised
and descent-based resonances) to impose an ethnicising vision on highly complex social
realities. By including all ways of constructing ‘peoplehood’ (populations with a sense
of historic community and solidarity (see Lie, 2004)) under the heading of ‘ethnic’, we
lose the conceptual capacity to see the variety of meanings and solidarities that religion
may bring to the sense of peoplehood.
An alternative strategy is to investigate empirically the different ways that ‘peoples’
construct themselves, exploring how religious beliefs, practices and memories, or ethnic
histories, myths and associated values, affect group formation. Where religion and
ethnicity coincide, this lets us investigate the relations between the factors. Are the
effects of religion and ethnicity additive, with ethnic and religious distinctions each
reinforcing the other? Are they complementary, with each contributing a distinct set of
attributes and functions to group belonging? Do they coexist in tension, and if so,
which is the stronger? Or are there interactive effects with dynamic and emergent
properties producing a much more complex field of relationships where the ethnic and
the religious cannot easily be separated out? When are the effects additive, when
complementary, when conflicting, when interactive?
In exploring these issues, we focus on three areas of current research on ethnicity and
religion:
• Geopolitical and geohistorical research maps the formation of different types

of historic communities through processes of ethnogenesis/nation-building,
confessionalisation, state formation and territorial formation. It explores how the
sequencing of these processes affects the ways peoplehood is defined and the ways in
which religious and ethnic factors intersect.
• Ethnographic and sociological analysis of group solidarities and resources. What
specific resources (institutional, ideological, personal, political) are associated with
ethnic and with religious solidarity and how do these vary in combination?
• Cultural and symbolic research into everyday meanings, motives and identities. How
are ethnic and religious divisions merged or distinguished in interaction and everyday
understanding?
Geohistorical sequences and the creation (and change) of peoples

The roots of many of today’s ‘ethno-religious’ conflicts lie in large-scale historical
processes: the formation and collapse of states, empires and civilisations, the growth of
world religions and their diffusions and internal splinterings, the voluntary and
involuntary movement of populations, the intersection of culture and religion with
class and caste, and in the more recent period the emergence of modern concepts of
state, nationhood and ethnicity. One possible outcome of these processes is a nation-
state in which religion and national identity are fused (Bruce, 2003, p. 43). Much more
common are state and territorially based conjunctures of conflicting cultural and
religious identities.
The process has been mapped for Europe by Stein Rokkan (Flora, 1999). Successive
waves of conquest and occupation, penetration and retrenchment produced a complex
distribution of ethnic-linguistic groupings across Western Europe. On this were
superimposed the divisions of the Reformation, setting the scene for more than a
century of religious war and for a still longer period of religious persecution. Three
major zones of confessional relations emerged: a majority Catholic/minority Protestant
crescent, from Poland through southern Europe to Ireland; a majority Protestant/
minority Catholic region, largely in northern Europe; and mixed interface regions
between these (Martin, 1978). Religious understandings were embedded in state
institutions and practices, became part of elite and everyday understandings of how the
state functioned (Gorski, 2003) and were imposed, to the extent possible, on the wider
population. In the first two zones, nation (in the pre-modern sense) and confession
became tightly intertwined, leaving religious minorities such as the Huguenots of
France, the Protestants of Bohemia, the Catholics of England, struggling to affirm their
claim on full membership of the nation. The third zone was one of confessional rivalry
that later extended to the definition of the nation and the form and boundaries of the
state (see Wolff, 2003). In all three zones minority religions could take on some of the
attributes of ethnicity, including a sense of grievance/superiority, a particular world
view, a sense of solidarity (Smith, 2003).
English and British state-building exemplifies many of these processes. It was greatly
eased by the success of Protestantism throughout Great Britain. This allowed political-
territorial and religious-constitutional compromises to be put in place in the late
seventeenth century (Pocock, 1989) and led to the centrality of Protestantism to British
national identity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Colley, 1992; Hastings
1997). Correlatively, English Catholics were marginalised in Great Britain well into the
nineteenth century (Duffy, 1982) and Irish Catholics politically marginalised in Ireland
under the Union and in Northern Ireland until the end of the twentieth century.
Religiously informed ethnonational tensions characterised the British–Irish relationship
until the latter part of the twentieth century.
The settlement colonies of North America and the southern hemisphere that all but
destroyed the pre-existing social order tended to reproduce European intersections
between ethnicity and religion: they did so with a different dynamic determined by an
immigration-based state and society. Much more complex patterns emerged where
imperial rule formed an overlay on an older social and cultural world that it profoundly
modified but did not replace. There the ethnic and religious mix was reshaped in
successive phases of colonial settlement, missionary activity and free or directed
population movement. Colonialism introduced new groups that were religiously as well
as ethnically distinct, who came as settlers (South Africa, Zimbabwe) or as workers or
slaves brought in by the colonial power (Malaysia, Kenya and the Caribbean countries).
Missionary activity went hand in hand with the process of colonisation, though with
limited success in the areas of the old world religions. Ethnicity and religion provided
colonial states with alternative or complementary resources for strategic management.
In parts of sub-Saharan Africa, state emphasis was on ethnic rather than religious
distinction. Still today, religious distinction continues to be personally salient, often
more so than ethnic; but it is ethnic distinction that is seen as crucial in public life, in
party politics and in the distribution of public offices (Langer, 2010; Stewart, 2009). A
different historical and contemporary distribution of resources in South Asia led states
to give higher public salience to religion and religio-caste distinction (Van der Leer and
Lehmann, 1999; Kaviraj, 2007; for internal variation in India see Varshney, 2003).
Religion and ethnicity as sources of group solidarity and as political resources

Some groups are distinguished from their ‘other’ solely by their ethnicity, others solely
by religion. But very often religion and ethnicity are co-present and the practices and
resources associated with each sometimes complement and reinforce each other,
sometimes conflict with and counteract each other. The scholarly literature contrasts
the resources associated with each domain. Benedict Anderson (1991, p. 6) has
contrasted the difference in concepts of time and space developed with the rise of
nationalism from earlier religio-political world views: while the latter take a messianic
notion of time, where radical shifts are possible, and an unbounded notion of space, the
former thinks in terms of homogeneous clock time with very clear territorial boundaries.
There may also be dramatic differences in degree of formalisation and organisation.
Pre-politicised ethnicity tends to be inchoate and immediate, associated with
neighbourhoods and family ties, open to radically diverse modes of articulation (see for
example Chong, 2007). It may coexist with a highly organised and institutionalised
religion, with an elaborated and universalistic ideological (theological) perspective,
developed conceptions and practices of authority, and established repertoires of
mobilisation and contestation. Tensions may arise between the universalistic,
transterritorial and sacred aspect of many world religions and the particularist, bounded
character of ethnicity (Coakley, 2002, pp. 212–13). There may also be a sharp conflict
of priorities. Rokkan has argued that the supranational outlook of Roman Catholicism
in early modern Europe set it in opposition to the development of state-centred
nationalisms in the Catholic states of that period (Flora, 1999, pp. 163–65). Sometimes
such tensions may be exploited to provide a politically radical role for religion (for one
example, see Ganiel, 2008, pp. 139–55). On the other hand, in many cases ethnicity and
religion comfortably coexist, reinforcing each other’s identity, with national origin
myths, values and ideologies informed by religious ideas (Smith, 1986; 2003, pp.
166–217) and sustained by religious organisations and institutions. In this sense,
Protestantism and Britishness were historically mutually reinforcing (Colley, 1992).
Although it is tempting to seek ‘essential’ characteristics of each domain, this
insufficiently recognises the variability of each. Bruce (2003, pp. 4–9) argues that the
functions played by religion in distinction-making, group formation and politics are
highly varied and given as much by historical context as by any essential characteristics
of religion. Exactly the same can be argued for ethnicity (Wimmer, 2008). Nations, like
ethnies, are living traditions of practice and distinction, which mutate with new needs.
Religions also mutate (see Casanova, 1994). So too do the relations between them. Islam,
for example, has sometimes been portrayed as antithetical to ethnonationalism because
of its focus on the transnational community of believers. Yet Gerber (2007) and Lybarger
(2007) show how Islam is used and transformed by believers to make it consistent with
national aims, thereby in turn changing the dominant conception of the nation.
Where both religion and ethnicity are co-present in collective identity, their roles can
be fused. Smith (1986, pp. 34–37; 2003, pp. 166–217) has noted that nations often take
on some of the sacred character and temporality usually associated with religions.
Equally, at times religious minorities take on the sense of history, of origin myth and
even of territorial base usually identified as ethnic (Ruane, 2010).
In cases of overlap, a simple 2 × 2 diagram (see Figure 6.1) distinguishing the possible
variations in strength of identity, degree of group solidarity and extent of
institutionalisation of ethnicity and religion allows an initial mapping of the data.
This allows us to show the trajectories of group development, so that a group (for
example, Palestinians), move from segment 4 to segment 2 in the initial process of
nationalist politicisation, with later movement towards segment 1, as they invest their
nationality with religious meaning. The diagram of course is overly simple: actual
analysis has to distinguish the unevenness in degree and type of identity, solidarity and
institutionalisation. Very strong identifications may also be thin (relatively empty of
content and narrative) with solidarity limited to small groups and with limited
institutionalisation as contemporary secular working-class loyalism in Northern
Ireland illustrates. Meanwhile, highly institutionalised religions and nationalisms may
also be shallow in terms of public identification (as was Spanish nationalism in Catalonia
in the Franco period) and may quickly change once the opportunity arises.
Religion (identity, solidarity,

institutionalisation)
High Low
High 1 2
Ethnicity (identity, solidarity,

institutionalisation)
Low 3 4
Figure 6.1
In short, the ways ordinary people construct and understand their sense of peoplehood
are at once subtle, powerful and complex. Contemporary analysis has begun to
deconstruct the sharp distinction between ethnicity and religion, but it remains to
reconstruct more adequate and nuanced typologies and theories of the role of religious
and ethnic distinction in group formation.
Everyday ethnicity and religion

Does it matter how groups define themselves? If we simply want to explain outbreaks
of violence, it appears not (Laitin, 2007, pp. 13–22). However the study of ethnicity is
equally concerned to understand the form of social divisions, tendencies towards social
inclusion or exclusion, co-operation or conflict, and to identify dispositions for action
whose actual manifestations depend on political opportunities and incentives. Even
here, a long tradition has it that it is the boundaries of ethnic groups that matter, not
the ‘stuff’ within them.2 From this perspective, it might seem of little intellectual or
practical value to pursue research into the ways ordinary people interrelate their senses
of ethnic and religious identity.
However, contemporary research is moving towards a recognition of the importance
of content as well as, and as partially constitutive of, boundaries (Jenkins, 2008, pp. 79,
111–12; Ashmore et al., 2004). The cultural content of identity – whether and which
religious values or ethnic origins are emphasised in everyday distinction-making – is
important in orienting action, framing felt grievances, limiting the forms of likely
mobilisation, and acknowledging and accepting settlement opportunities. A whole
range of qualitative studies have explored how the highlighting of religious or ethnic
distinction and particular interpretations of that distinction may have major social
consequences in drawing boundaries and making them more or less permeable, in
brokering new alliances and in opening the way for actors to grasp new opportunities
(McAdam et al., 2001, pp. 124–59). Research on the increasing politicisation of religious
cleavages in Nigeria and Palestine, for example, shows how populations disappointed
with ‘national’ leadership use religious resources to further their aims (Stewart, 2009,
Igwarra, 2007, Lybarger, 2007).
Here, too, the study of religion provides interesting comparisons and models for the
study of everyday ethnic and ethno-religious identification. The extensive research on
different dimensions of secularisation and sacralisation (for discussion, see Davie, 2007,
pp. 46–66) shows a thinning out of religious identity, movement away from traditional
‘set packages’ of belief, and a ‘vicarious’ identification whereby non-believers support
believers in their belief and practice (Davie, 2007, pp. 126–28, 140–43). The parallels
with processes noted in the field of ethnicity are striking: the lack of salience of ‘everyday
ethnicity’ together with a (vicarious) unwillingness to give up on ‘nationalist’ politicians
and movements, a ‘pluralisation’ of concepts of national identity, and related processes
of boundary blurring and ethnic change (Brubaker et al., 2006; Keating, 2001). Research
on religion as a source of values, expressed in ‘civil religion’ and religious ideology
(Demerath, 2001, pp. 234–40) shows how state institutions and secular political
movements may be permeated by assumptions deriving from religion. In such cases,
communal mobilisation may be opposed as much to religio-cultural as to ethnoterritorial
dominance (for the Irish and Northern Irish cases, see Ruane and Todd, 1996). How
such religiously informed values become locked into nationally and ethnically specific
judgements and solidarities, and how these change, is an important area for
contemporary research. Contrasting the successful histories of integration of religious
minorities in some states (France and Czechoslovakia) and the relative failure of
integration in others (Ireland) shows the importance of minority participation in
constitution-building from a religious just as much as from an ethnic perspective
(Ruane and Todd, 2009).
Some recent research, finally, suggests that religious commitment can aid conflict
resolution precisely because it gives resources and legitimations for radical change (for
the Northern Ireland case, see Ganiel, 2008). Reverend Dr Ian Paisley – First Minister
of the reconstituted 2007 Northern Ireland Executive in partnership with Deputy First
Minister Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin – may be taken as an example. A long-time
critic of all political compromise, he commented on their respective political about-
turns: ‘We were turned towards the darkness, now we are turned towards the light.’ For
him, as for at least some ordinary people in Northern Ireland, religious beliefs and
values allowed a reorientation of values and identities in a new political order.
Notes
1 For example, Horowitz (2000, pp. 17–18) includes in his category of ethnic groups those
groups ‘defined by ascriptive differences, whether the indicium of group identity is color,
appearance, language, religion, some other indicator of common origin, or some combination
thereof’. He refers to this as the ‘inclusive conception of ethnicity’.
2 A view often attributed to Barth (1969), who himself qualified this position.
Further reading
Bruce, Steve (2003) Politics and Religion (Cambridge: Polity Press).
Demerath, N. J., III (2001) Crossing the Gods: World Religions and Worldly Politics (New
Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press).
Hastings, A. (1997) The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Smith, A. D. (2003) Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity (Oxford: Oxford
University Press).
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Ashmore, R. D., K. Deaux and T. McLaughlin-Volpe (2004) ‘An organizing framework for
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Barth, F. (1969) Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (Boston MA: Little Brown).
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7 Race and ethnicity
Chris Gilligan
The distinction, or commonality, between race and ethnicity is a recurring problem in

ethnic and racial studies. Attempts to try and separate the two and treat them as distinct
categories continually run into theoretical and practical difficulties, but using the terms
interchangeably is also unsatisfactory. Confusion over the use of the terms is
compounded by the different, sometimes inconsistent, meanings given to them. The
term race is also a morally and politically charged one. Given these difficulties it is
perhaps understandable that scholars who study ethnic conflict, for the most part,
avoid using the term ‘race’ at all. There is, however, something lost when this approach
is taken. In terms of intellectual resources, for example, there is a rich and extensive
literature on race and racism which scholars of ethnic conflict rarely, or only superficially,
engage with. Using the term ethnic instead of race might appear to be more enlightened,
but it can easily be used to evade the difficult moral and political issues associated with
the use of the term race or, worse, to pretend that they have no relevance to the study
of ethnic conflict. In this chapter I aim to help students of ethnic conflict to engage with
the broader literature on race and ethnicity, by providing some guidance to help grapple
with the slippery concepts of race and ethnicity.
Pinning down slippery concepts

In the social sciences, in political discourse and in everyday conversation the English
language meaning of the term ethnicity is closely related to the terms race, nation, a
people, clan and tribe (Connor, 1978; Eriksen, 2002; Fenton, 2003; Hughey, 1998;
Jenkins, 2008). The terms are sometimes used as synonyms for each other, but there is
also slippage between the uses of the terms. Krishnamurthy, commenting on the
alternating use of the terms ‘ethnic’ and ‘tribal’ in a newspaper article, asks: ‘If the two
terms are genuinely synonymous, is “tribe” ever used of the people of former Yugoslavia?
… Is “ethnic” the superordinate term, with “tribal” available only for subsets of the
human population such as Africans?’ (1996: 132). Krishnamurthy’s rhetorical questions
point to an inconsistency in use of the terms. The use of the term tribal in the African
context, but not the former Yugoslavia, indicates that there are underlying assumptions
which inform the use of the terms. Tribal, he suggests, is being used pejoratively to
convey primitiveness and lack of industrial development as explanations for ethnic
conflict in African countries. This kind of usage is intimately bound up with a deeply
ingrained world view which assumes that people in the West are white, modern,
civilised, industrialised and affluent and people in Africa are black, traditional, primitive
and impoverished (a view which also assumes that blackness is non-Western).
80 Chris Gilligan
One approach which social scientists take to avoid this kind of slippage in use, and to
try to make their assumptions evident, is to attempt to specify the meanings of the key
terms which they employ. Fenton, for example, explains that the terms ‘ethnic group’,
‘race’ and ‘nation’ share ‘a single centre – or “core” … Common to all three is an idea of
descent or ancestry and very closely implicated in all three we find ideas about culture …
[which] typically include myths about the past, beliefs about the “kind of people we are”,
and the idea that “culture” defines a group’ (2003: 13). He also points out some of the
divergences between the three terms. Nation, unlike the other two, is assumed to be
‘associated with a state or state-like political form’ (ibid.: 23). Race contains two ideas
that make it distinctive: ‘that ‘local’ groups are instances of abstractly conceived divisions
of humankind, and…that race makes explicit reference to physical or ‘visible’ difference
as the primary marker of difference and inequality’ (ibid.: 23). And there are three specific
features of the term ‘ethnic group’: ‘1. that the group is a kind of sub-set within a nation-
state, 2. that the point of reference of difference is typically culture rather than physical
appearance, and 3. often that the group referred to is “other” (foreign, exotic, minority)
to some majority who are presumed not to be “ethnic”’ (ibid.: 23). Fenton’s distinction
between a common core and distinctive ideas provides a way of understanding why the
terms race and ethnicity sometimes appear to be synonyms for each other (due to their
common core) and sometimes appear to be distinct terms (due to the distinctive ideas
encapsulated in them). Part of the reason for the slippage is that in some contexts the
terms are synonyms for each other, while in other contexts they are not. Fenton provides
orientation points for our reading of his text. This is useful, but only up to a point.
These orientation points help us to follow many of the contemporary academic texts
on race and ethnicity, but they will not help us navigate them all. If we assume that
there are correct and precise definitions of the terms, and Fenton has provided these, we
will soon become confused again. We can illustrate this through looking at the idea that
race refers to the use of physical features as markers of difference while ethnicity
refers to cultural ones. This idea is disputed by a number of authors who, since
the 1980s in Europe and more recently in the United States, have pointed to the
development of a ‘new racism’ (or ‘cultural racism’) which tries to promote negative
measures against non-whites on the grounds that they are culturally incompatible with
‘white’ society (Barker, 1981; Giroux, 1993; Lentin, 2004: 85–96). Some authors even
argue against the distinction between culture and physical features as markers of
difference. Van den Berghe, the leading proponent of a sociobiological perspective on
race and ethnicity, argues that ‘All organisms are programmed to be nepotistic, i.e. to
behave favourably (or “altruistically”) to others in proportion to their real or perceived
degree of common ancestry’ (1995: 360). He argues that biology and culture are
interrelated, rather than being distinct domains. That, for example, ‘human culture is
necessarily “carried” by biological organisms who reproduce … culture itself is
non-genetically transmitted, but it cannot be transmitted except through flesh and
blood individuals who, if they fail to reproduce, generally stop passing on their culture’
(1988: 255). This approach suggests that people procreate with others who share the
same cultural background and consequently, in practice, there is a major overlap
between biological and cultural reproduction, and physical and cultural markers of
difference. This approach elides the distinction between race and ethnicity made by
Fenton. The examples of sociobiology and analyses of ‘new racism’ indicate that the
way in which the terms race and ethnicity are defined can vary significantly according
to the theoretical perspective employed by the author.1
Race and ethnicity 81
Pinning down concepts, through defining them, helps us to get a clearer picture of the
phenomena we are studying. In the case of race and ethnicity, however, slipperiness is
not a distraction which prevents us from understanding the phenomena. Slipperiness is
inherent to phenomena which are categorised as ethnic and racial. Attempts to pin
down the terms run the risk of turning historically and social fluid, contingent and
highly contextual phenomena into eternal, fixed, static and universal ones. To
understand the phenomena we study in ethnic and racial studies we also need to
understand why the terms are slippery. Defining them does not help us to do that.
Race and ethnicity in context

One problem with attempting to define the terms race and ethnicity is that in order to
do so we are forced to generalise. Generalisation requires us to remove the terms race
and ethnicity from any particular social or historical context, and consequently it can
appear as though the definitions are universal and eternal. Fenton, however, is well
aware that the terms ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ do not have fixed meanings, and that ‘how
ethnicity is discussed is very much contextual’ (Fenton 2003: 25). The terms race and
ethnicity only come to life and have meaning in particular social and historical contexts.
Take, for example, the categories Malay, Black, Irish, Jewish and Ethiopian. Each of
these has, at one time or another, been referred to as a racial group, or as an ethnic
group, or as a nation. The terms themselves do not help us to determine whether the
people being referred to are considered to be a nation, a race or an ethnic group. To
determine this we need to look at the geographical context in which people are being
categorised; the social milieux in which the categories are being employed; and the
historical period in which the process of categorisation takes place.
Different milieux
One of the reasons for the slippage in usage, which Krishnamurthy identifies, is that the
terms ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ (nation, tribe, clan…) are being employed in newspaper
articles. In newspapers there is not usually the same requirement for precision that is
demanded from academic texts. Journalists generally make less demands on their
audience. Journalists usually attempt to address their readers in terms that are
immediately explicable. They tend to draw on widely held tacit understandings to
convey the stories they want to tell. In many instances the difference between academic
and journalistic writing is not a particular problem, they serve different purposes and
address different, but overlapping, audiences. The difference is also often unproblematic
because different milieux not only have their own way of talking, their own idiom, but
they also have their own technical language. Terms such as acculturation, ethnie,
primordialism, and racialisation, for example, are rarely found outside of academic
texts on race and ethnicity. The terms race and ethnicity – and subcategories such as
Malaysian, Black, Irish, Jewish or Ethiopian – are, however, categories employed in
both academic analyses and everyday discourse.
Banton draws our attention to this problem when he says that in everyday talk about
race and ethnicity a person ‘rarely employs any concept of ethnicity. He or she uses a
practical language embodying proper names, such as Malay, Chinese, and Indian’
(Banton, 1994: 6). These terms are employed within what he calls an actor’s model of
the social structure, and they are used ‘to navigate a course through daily life, helping
82 Chris Gilligan
to identify the shallow water, the best channels, and the likely reactions of other vessels’
(ibid.: 6). These categories help people to orientate themselves in the real world which
they inhabit. In this context, Banton suggests, a certain looseness is useful. In real-world
contexts people often recognise that there are different degrees of ethnicity. As Banton
puts it, ‘[a]nyone who speaks this [practical] language knows that persons assigned to
these categories vary in their cultural distinctiveness. In the languages they use, the
costumes they wear … some are more culturally distinctive, and in this sense, more
“ethnic”’ (ibid.: 6). Put simply, one Chinese neighbour might be more Chinese than
another and all Chinese neighbours might be more Chinese at particular times of the
year. This actor’s model differs from what he calls an observer’s model, which looks
‘for regularities of which the actors are unaware or about which actors have insufficient
information’ (ibid.: 6). An observer’s model seeks to penetrate surface appearances and
understand the social processes which give rise to phenomena such as ethnic
identification, or racial discrimination. Actor’s models rely on tacit everyday
understandings which come from being embedded in that particular social context. The
observer attempts to generalise from these particular embedded contexts. They attempt
to discern patterns, to infer underlying dynamics or to make explicit the tacit
understandings which people hold.
Brubaker makes a similar distinction between ‘categories of practice’ and ‘categories
of analysis’ (2004). Categories of practice are ‘“native” or “folk” or “lay” categories …
of everyday social experience, developed and deployed by ordinary social actors’ (ibid.:
31). They are used by lay actors in ‘everyday settings to make sense of themselves, of
their activity, of what they share with, and how they differ from, others’ (ibid.: 31). But
they are also used ‘by political entrepreneurs to persuade people to understand
themselves and their predicaments’ in ways that serve the interests, or objectives, of
those political actors (ibid.: 32). Social analysis, he points out, ‘requires relatively
unambiguous analytical categories’ (ibid.: 29). At first sight the use of categories by
administrators – ethnic categories used in censuses, ethnic monitoring forms and racial
and ethnic terms in legislation are good examples – might appear to be relatively
unambiguous, and certainly less slippery than everyday use. The terms are fixed in ink
by the people who draw up the forms, or the legislation. Fixing the terms in ink, however,
does not fix their meaning. This meaning is, at least in part, given by the person filling
in the form, or the judge interpreting the law. When you fill in the form you decide if you
are ‘black’ or ‘white’, ‘Asian-American’ or ‘Chinese’. The person who inserted the terms
into the form cannot be certain that the person who filled it in has the same idea in mind
when they do so (although that does not usually stop administrators from acting as if
they can be certain of the intended meaning). The purpose of these forms is not to
understand the meaning of the categories but to allocate people to categories for some
purpose, or to enable the judiciary to adjudicate on disputes which are brought before
them. In this sense they are what Brubaker calls categories of practice.
There are several different ways of talking race and ethnicity, and these vary by
setting. The way that terms are used depends on the ideas that are being conveyed and
ideas are in part shaped in relation to the audience they are being conveyed to and the
purpose they are being conveyed for. The fact that the actual terms used in these milieux
are often the same should not blind us to the fact that they are sometimes being used
with different meanings.
Spatial contexts
Discourses of race and ethnicity are also different in different countries, and often differ
in different parts of the same country. They are, for example, different in the United
States compared with the United Kingdom. This is partly due to the different histories
of the countries. Fenton draws attention to the significance of the different contexts
when he says that in the United States a discourse of race dominates and ‘ethnic groups
and ethnic differences often have a “white” connotation. By contrast, in Britain, where
the public discourse focuses more on ethnicity, the term “ethnic groups” retains its
meaning of minority status and foreign origins; ethnic groups in the United Kingdom
are not white’ (ibid.: 39). (The term ‘white’ is also relational, contextual and conflates
myriad differences: Garner, 2007.) Discourse of race and ethnicity also differ in different
regions within a country, between the southern and northern United States, for example.
Even within a particular city discourses around race and ethnicity can vary. One study
of London in the 1980s, for example, found that in one district the ‘decline in the
housing and economic circumstances of these residents was “explained” by correlating
these changes with the presence of variously defined “problem families”, black people
and Vietnamese refugees’ (Back, 1996: 239). The other district, by contrast, was viewed
by its inhabitants ‘as a place where harmonious [race or ethnic] relations existed’ (ibid.:
239).
The way that different national contexts shape discourse can be seen by looking at an
example of one particular category. If we take the category Irish, for example, we find
different discourses around Irishness in Ireland than in other national contexts. In
recent years significant immigration into the Republic of Ireland has led to considerable
debate about who can be considered Irish. In 2004 the Constitution was changed to
racialise, or ethnicise, citizenship by making descent rather than residence the principle
criteria by which citizenship was determined (Mulally, 2007). In the context of Northern
Ireland Irishness is usually a reference to the section of the population who identify
themselves politically and culturally as Irish nationalists, in contrast to those who
identify themselves politically and culturally as British or Ulster unionists (Gilligan,
2007). To make matters more confusing Irishness and Britishness are often conflated
with the religious categories Catholic and Protestant (see Ruane and Todd, this
volume). In the rest of the United Kingdom Irishness is usually employed in discussions
of immigration from Ireland, and the second and third generation descendents of
immigrants from Ireland. In the United States the discourse around Irishness is also
usually focused on immigrants from Ireland, and their descendents (Garner, 2003).
Historical context
At the beginning of the twentieth century the superiority of the White race was an
important component of the world view of political elites on both sides of the North
Atlantic. The idea of White superiority was used to justify the colonial domination of
large parts of the ‘non-White’ world by European powers, and a range of racially
discriminatory measures in the United States. A wide range of factors have been
identified as playing a role in the discrediting of racial thinking since then. Prominent
amongst these have been: the growing influence of egalitarian ideas; political agitation
for civil rights for Black people; horror at the consequences of the racial exterminationist
policies of the Nazis; the rise of Japan as a non-White international power; the rise of
84 Chris Gilligan
anti-colonial movements; the discrediting of the science behind ideas of biological
superiority; and ambivalences about the promotion of White solidarity (Barkan, 1993;
Bonnett, 2003; Furedi, 1998; Grant, 1968: 175–214; Lauren, 1988; Malik, 1996; Wolton,
2000). The marginalisation of assertions of racial superiority is indicated by the
inclusion of clauses on ‘respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination
of peoples’ and ‘promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for
fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion’
in the Charter of the United Nations (UN), ratified in 1945 (UN, 1945: ch. 1).
The discrediting of the idea of racial superiority did not, however, mean that practices
based on this idea ceased. Policies of racial segregation continued in the United States,
and Britain actually expanded its empire, after 1945. After the Second World War,
however, ideas of racial superiority could not be used as justification, and instead there
was a shift to a welfarist discourse of development and a race relations discourse of the
protection of minority peoples. This new language helped provide ‘justification enough
for the European powers to re-establish their empires’ (Wolton, 2000: 154). After 1945
racial language became increasingly coded, as it became increasingly politically and
socially unacceptable to speak openly about race. As Furedi puts it, ‘in the new
egalitarian climate the assumptions of racial superiority did not disappear, they merely
became less explicit’ (1994: 55). This can present difficulties for social scientists because
it is more difficult to assess the extent to which racial thinking has an influence on the
phenomena that we investigate in the post-war period. The end of the Cold War has
shifted the discourse again. Furedi suggests that a ‘new moral equation between a
superior North and an inferior South helps legitimise a two-tiered international system
… Race no longer has a formal role to play since the new global hierarchy is represented
through a two-tier moral system. Gradually the old silent race war has been replaced by
moral crusades and by “clashes of civilisations”’ (1998: 240). The development of ethnic
conflict studies, as a clearly identifiable sub-discipline, dates from the post-Cold War
period. And the rationale for Western intervention in situations of ethnic conflict is
often motivated in moral terms. This raises a range of uncomfortable questions for
scholars of ethnic conflict, one of these is the extent to which the use of the term ethnic
may involve an implicit reworking of older racial thinking.
The historically changing nature of discourses around race and ethnicity can be seen
in the shift away from the term race and the coining and subsequent rise in use of the
term ‘ethnicity’. The story of how the term ‘ethnicity’ came to eclipse ‘race’ is still a
major gap in the literature on ethnic and racial studies.2 If the shift is mentioned at all
it is usually treated as a pragmatic choice on the part of social scientists. As one
introductory textbook puts it, because ‘of its confusing usage and its questionable
scientific validity, many sociologists and anthropologists have dispensed with the term
race and instead use ethnic group to describe those groups commonly defined as racial’
(Marger, 2000: 25: italics in the original). Changing the terms, however, does not end
the confusion. At best it allows the researcher to investigate the social dynamics
involved, without getting too hung up on tortuous discussions of terminology. At worst
it is used to evade the history of race as something which is no longer relevant.
In this section I have suggested that race and ethnicity are slippery concepts for good
reason, and that attempts to ignore, avoid or downplay the slipperiness of the terms can
lead the student of ethnic politics to misunderstand, or only gain a partial understanding,
of the phenomena which they are studying.
Race and ethnicity as constructs
In this final section I will explore the idea that the terms race and ethnicity are elusive
terms because the phenomena which they refer to – races and ethnic groups – do not
actually exist. This might seem like an odd point. How, you might be asking yourself,
can anyone study ethnic politics or ethnic conflict if ethnic groups do not exist? Indeed,
how can there be ethnic conflict if ethnic groups do not exist? Hopefully I can explain,
but before I do let’s have a look at race. Banton warns that in attempting to make
generalisations ‘the observer often comes to mistaken conclusions which take a long
time to clear up. One such confusion was that of race’ (1994: 6). The mistake was to
take the observation that people from different parts of the world look physically
different in some ways and conclude that humanity must therefore be divided up into
different, biologically distinct, races. The consensus view in modern science rejects that
conclusion. Scientists point out that there is greater genetic variation within any given
human population than between two different populations, they argue that the lines
drawn to demarcate different races are arbitrary and the fact that skin colour has acted
as an identifier of different races is a result of historical processes, not something which
is determined by nature (Malik, 2008).
So races do not exist in any biological sense; they are social constructs. Races are
created and reproduced in human minds, not through biological processes. The idea of
race is sustained by people who hold racist views, but the word race also provides ‘part
of the rationale for all the legislation, international and national, which has been
designed to combat discrimination based on ideas of race’ (Banton, 1994: 7). Here we
can see another reason why the term race is slippery, because it is simultaneously
rejected and upheld in contemporary public policy, often by the same people. Social
scientists who take a social constructionist perspective on the world suggest that we can
deal with the slipperiness of race as a term by focusing on ‘the construction and
reproduction of the idea of “race”’ (Miles and Brown, 2003: 91). Miles and Brown
criticise those who set out to explain race relations, saying that in taking ‘race relations’
as one of their analytical categories they are participating in the process of reproducing
the idea of race. Rather than examine interactions between entities that do not exist
(races), they suggest, the task for social scientists is the ‘generation of concepts with
which one can grasp and portray the historical processes by which notions of “race”
become accepted and/or used in a plurality of discourses’ (ibid.: 92). They employ the
analytical concept of racialisation to examine the processes through which group
boundaries marked by biological differences are generated, and people are allocated to
those groups (ibid.: 99–103).
Miles and Brown extend their argument when they say ‘ethnic groups are no more
objective or real than “races”’ (ibid.: 96). This claim is more contentious than the claim
that races do not exist. Miles, however, is not the only proponent of this idea. Students
of ethnic politics may be familiar with the idea from the work of Brubaker, who suggests
that one of the most problematic conceptual errors in the study of ethnicity, race and
nationhood is ‘“groupism” … the tendency to take discrete, bounded groups as basic
constituents of social life, chief protagonists of social conflicts, and fundamental units
of social analysis’ (2004: 8). Participants in ethnic politics, he observes, do present
ethnic groups as bounded entities, in fact it is crucial to their practice as ethnopolitical
entrepreneurs. Social scientists, however, should avoid adopting ‘categories of
ethnopolitical practice as our categories of social analysis’ (ibid.: 10, italics in the
86 Chris Gilligan
original). This does not mean that we should avoid or ignore phenomena which are
described as ethnic. We should, in fact, acknowledge that the process of ethnicisation
can generate ‘phases of extraordinary cohesion and moments of intensely felt collective
solidarity’, but we should also remind ourselves that groupness is ‘variable and
contingent rather than fixed and given’ (ibid.: 12). Phases of extraordinary cohesion
rarely endure for very long, and ‘high levels of groupness may be more the result of
conflict (especially violent conflict) than its underlying cause’ (ibid.: 19: see also
Kaufman, this volume). One straightforward way in which we can stay sensitive to the
fact that ethnic conflict is not conflict between ethnic groups is to remind ourselves that
‘the chief protagonists of most ethnic conflict … are not ethnic groups as such but
various kinds of organizations … [including] states … terrorist groups … political
parties, ethnic associations … churches … television stations, and so on’ (ibid.: 14–15).
These organisations may claim to represent ethnic groups, but we should not accept
these claims at face value.
A useful strategy to avoid slipping into groupism, Brubaker suggests, is to distinguish
‘consistently between categories and groups … rather than presume – the relation between
them’ (ibid.: 12). Ethnopolitical actors work to collapse the distinction between the
category ethnic and the group. Social scientists should not assist them in this endeavour,
but instead should step back and draw attention to the attempts to do so. Continually
keeping in mind the distinction between categories of practice (e.g. ethnic, ethnicity) and
categories of analysis (e.g. ethnicisation) should help us to maintain the critical distance
necessary for analysis. We should be careful, for example, not to talk about ethnic violence
because in doing so we ‘do not simply interpret the violence … [we] constitute it as ethnic’
(ibid.: 16: emphasis in the original). In situations of ‘ethnic conflict’, he suggests, violence
‘may have as much or more to do with thuggery, warlordship, opportunistic looting, and
black-market profiteering than with ethnicity’ (ibid.: 19). If we are attentive to the social
construction of ethnicity we can better discern the range of dynamics and processes which
are at play in situations which are characterised as ethnic.
In this section I have suggested that race and ethnicity are slippery concepts because
the things which they refer to – races and ethnic groups – do not exist, but in practice
many political actors and domestic and international institutions act as if they do exist
(whether because they assume that ethnic groups exist, or because they want to make
ethnicity an important dimension of political identification). A key way to handle this
slippage is to keep in mind the distinction between categories and groups, to remember
that groupness is variable and contingent and to focus on processes which construct
phenomena as ethnic or racial. In short, to think in terms of ethnicisation and racialisation.
Conclusion
At this point you might think the concepts race and ethnicity are just as slippery as they
always seemed, or they may seem even slipperier. If so you have grasped at least part of
what I was trying to do. Race and ethnicity are slippery terms for several reasons. In
everyday situations and in social analysis the two terms are often collapsed into each
other by the people who use the terms. At the same time there are persistent attempts to
distinguish between the terms. They are also slippery because they are employed as
categories of practice as well as categories of analysis, but as categories of analysis they
do not usually succeed in escaping the embrace of practice. And they are slippery
because ethnopolitical actors attempt to collapse the distinction between groups and
categories, while many social scientists strive to maintain the distinction. The point of
this chapter was not to reassure you that the terms can be pinned down or tamed. The
slipperiness is symptomatic of the lack of clarity which the concepts express. If we keep
these points in mind when we carry out our research then we will be better equipped to
get behind the surface appearances and the commonsense understandings of the
phenomena which we seek to analyse.
Notes
1 There is insufficient space in this short chapter to outline or analyse the range of perspectives.
For useful texts which do analyse a range of perspectives see Malešević (2004) and Rex and
Mason (1988). All analyses, including this one, inevitably involve some kind of theoretical
underpinnings. This chapter is written from a constructivist perspective.
2 Some of the elements are known. These include the discrediting of race as a concept, the shift
from biological to cultural conceptions of group difference and inequality, the coining of the
term ‘ethnicity’ to explain the persistence of group identification among third and fourth-
generation descendants of immigrants in the United States, the application of the term ‘ethnic’
to inter-group conflict in postcolonial societies and to secessionist movements in Europe in the
1970s. For some useful texts which provide some of the pieces of the picture see Banks (1995),
Barkan (1993), Glazer and Moynihan (1970), Malik (1996).
3 Many introductory student texts which cover the topics of race and ethnicity fumble over, or
evade, the conceptual problems outlined in this chapter. Fenton (2003) is a notable exception,
and I would recommend it to the beginner. My favourite texts which grapple with the issues
in this chapter are: Malik (1996), which takes a long historical sweep from the Atlantic slave
trade to postmodernism; and Brubaker (2004), which contains a collection of some of his
most thoughtful articles on methodological issues relevant to the study of racialisation and
ethnicisation. As a collection it lacks the narrative cohesion of Malik’s study, but the contents
of its chapters will seem more immediately relevant to students of ethnic politics. For excellent
historical accounts of the discrediting of racial thinking, a major gap in the study of ethnic
politics, read: Barkan (1993), Furedi (1998), Lauren (1988) and Wolton (2000).
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Carol Marley, Steve Fenton, Karl Cordell and Stefan Wolff for useful
comments on a draft of this article.
Further reading3
Barkan, Elazar (1993), The Retreat of Scientific Racism, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
Brubaker, Rogers (2004), Ethnicity without Groups, Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press
Fenton, Steve (2003), Ethnicity, Cambridge, Polity Press
Furedi, Frank (1998), The Silent War, London, Pluto
Lauren, Paul Gordon (1988), Power and Prejudice, Boulder CO, Westview Press
Malik, Kenan (1996), The Meaning of Race, Basingstoke, Macmillan
Wolton, Suke (2000), Lord Hailey, the Colonial Office and the Politics of Race and Empire in the
Second World War, Basingstoke, Macmillan
References
Back, Les (1996), New Ethnicities and Urban Culture, Abingdon, Routledge
88 Chris Gilligan
Banks, Marcus (1996), Ethnicity, London, Routledge
Banton, Michael (1994), ‘Modelling ethnic and national relations’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 17
(1), 1–18
Barkan, Elazar (1993), The Retreat of Scientific Racism, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
Barker, Martin (1981), The New Racism, London, Junction Books
Bonnett, Alastair (2003), ‘From White to Western: “racial decline” and the idea of the West in
Britain, 1890–1930’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 16 (3): 320–48
Brubaker, Rogers (2004), Ethnicity without Groups, Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press
Connor, Walker (1978), ‘A nation is a nation, is a state, is an ethnic group, is a…’, Ethnic and
Racial Studies, 1 (4): 379–88
Eriksen, Thomas Hylland (2002), Ethnicity and Nationalism, 2nd edn, London, Pluto Press
Fenton, Steve (2003), Ethnicity, Cambridge, Polity Press
Furedi, Frank (1998), The Silent War, London, Pluto
—(1994), The New Ideology of Imperialism, London, Pluto
Garner, Steve (2007), Whiteness: an Introduction, London, Routledge
—(2003), Racism in the Irish Experience, London, Pluto
Gilligan, Chris (2007), ‘The Irish question and the concept “identity” in the 1980s’, Nations and
Nationalism, 13 (4): 599–617
Giroux, Henry A. (1993), ‘Living dangerously: identity politics and the new cultural racism’,
Cultural Studies, 7 (1): 1–27
Glazer, Nathan and Daniel P. Moynihan (1970) Beyond the Melting Pot, 2nd edn (first published
1963), Cambridge MA, MIT Press
Grant, Joanne (1968), Black Protest: History, Documents, and Analysis, New York, Fawcett
Premier
Hughey, Michael W. (ed.) (1998), New Tribalisms: The Resurgence of Race and Ethnicity, New
York, New York University Press
Jenkins, Richard (2008), Rethinking Ethnicity, 2nd edn, London, Sage
Krishnamurthy, Ramesh (1996), ‘Ethnic, racial and tribal: the language of racism?’ in Carmen
Rosa Caldas-Coulthard and Malcolm Coulthard (eds) Texts and Practices: Readings in
Critical Discourse Analysis, London, Routledge
Lauren, Paul Gordon (1988), Power and Prejudice, Boulder CO, Westview Press
Lentin, Allana (2004), Racism and Anti-racism in Europe, London, Pluto Press
Malešević, Siniša (2004), The Sociology of Ethnicity, London, Sage
Malik, Kenan (2008), Strange Fruit, Oxford, Oneworld
—(1996), The Meaning of Race, Basingstoke, Macmillan
Marger, Martin N. (2000), Race and Ethnic Relations, 5th edn, Stamford MA, Wadsworth
Miles, Robert (1993), Racism after ‘Race Relations’, London, Routledge
Miles, Robert and Brown, Malcolm (2003), Racism, 2nd edn, London, Routledge
Mulally, Siobhan (2007), ‘Children, citizenship and constitutional change’, in Bryan Fanning
(ed.) Immigration and Social Change in the Republic of Ireland, Manchester, Manchester
University Press
Rex, John and Mason, David (eds) (1988), Theories of Race and Ethnic Relations, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press
United Nations (1945), Charter of the United Nations, available on line at http://www.un.org/
aboutun/charter (last accessed: 5 May 2009)
van den Berghe, Pierre L. (1988), ‘Ethnicity and the sociobiology debate’, in John Rex and David
Mason (eds) Theories of Race and Ethnic Relations, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
—(1995), ‘Does race matter?’ Nations and Nationalism, 1 (3): 357–68
Wolton, Suke (2000), Lord Hailey, the Colonial Office and the Politics of Race and Empire in the
Second World War, Basingstoke, Macmillan
Part II
8 Ethnicity as a generator of conflict
Stuart J. Kaufman
Ethnic identities have existed throughout recorded history. Even in ancient times,
ethnic groups such as the Hebrews, Babylonians and Egyptians were important political
actors (Smith 1986), just as contemporary Serbs and Kurds are. These different groups
typically have interests or goals that are competing in some way, and these differences
often lead to political or social conflicts. Most of these conflicts involve little or no
violence, instead being expressed through religious expression, economic competition,
social segregation, competition among ethnically based political parties, or other
peaceful means. Still, especially when the issue at stake is the political dominance of one
group over another, violent ethnic clashes do sometimes occur, leading sometimes to
riots, and in the worst cases to civil wars, mass expulsions of populations, and even
genocide.
Experts disagree about the extent to which ethnicity causes or generates conflict. One
group, the “instrumentalist” school of thought, sees ethnic identity as little more than a
tool used by elites to pursue competition over tangible goods such economic opportunity.
From this perspective, there is no such thing as “ethnic conflict” at all, and ethnicity
does not cause or generate conflict; it merely provides a framework or a label in which
other sorts of competition occur. Other scholars, in the “psychocultural” school of
thought (Ross 2007), argue that ethnic conflict is very real, and that conflicts – over the
status of the holy sites in Jerusalem, for example – often stem directly from the way
people define their ethnic identities, and are not primarily about the participants’ desire
for material goods. Thus ethnicity can be – though it does not necessarily have to be – a
generator of conflict.
What is ethnic conflict?

Discussions of ethnicity and ethnic conflict are notoriously imprecise, because people
disagree about what counts as an ethnic conflict. Are race relations between blacks and
whites in the United States an example of low-violence ethnic conflict, or is racial
conflict a different category altogether? If race is different, does the distinction extend
to Rwanda, where Hutus and Tutsis – both black – referred to their difference as one of
race? Are relations between Muslims and Hindus in India, or between Sunni and Shi’a
Arabs in Iraq, cases of ethnic conflict, or do they belong in different categories as
“religious,” “communal,” or “sectarian” conflicts?
For an anthropologist, what these cases all have in common is that the groups
involved are primarily ascriptive – that is, membership in the groups is typically assigned
at birth and is difficult to change. In theory, Indian Muslims can convert and become
92 Stuart J. Kaufman
Hindu, and Iraqi Sunnis can become Shi’a, but in practice few do, and the conversion
of those few is not always accepted by their new co-ethnics. Identities of this kind, then,
are “sticky,” hard to change even if they are not marked by the kind of obvious physical
differences that distinguish African-Americans from white Americans. Based on this
commonality, I will use the broader definition of ethnicity that encompasses all of these
kinds of ascriptive groups. According to Anthony Smith (1986), a group is an ethnic
group if its members share the following traits: a common name, a believed common
descent, elements of a shared culture (most often language or religion), common
historical memories, and attachment to a particular territory.
In the past, experts disagreed widely about where ethnicity comes from. Some,
focusing on the evidence that many ethnic identities seem to go back hundreds or
thousands of years, asserted that ethnicity was a “primordial” identity, and implied
that it was essentially unchangeable. They emphasized that groups often worked hard
to make their identity unchangeable, sometimes carving that identity onto their bodies
through tattoos or circumcision (Isaacs 1975). Even when they do not go that far,
however, people tend to stick to the identities – especially the language and religion –
they learn first from their parents. This view of ethnicity implies that ethnic conflict is
based on “ancient hatreds” that are impossible to eradicate and nearly impossible to
manage.
There is another, more complicated side to ethnic identity, however. Most people
have multiple identities that are either “nested” (as subgroups within larger groups) or
overlapping. The average Cuban-American is at the same time also an American
Hispanic or Latino, an American Catholic, an American, and a member of the
worldwide Catholic Church. Which identity is more important to her is likely to depend
on the situation: when listening to the Pope, she is likely to respond as a Catholic; when
watching the U.S. President, as an American; and when thinking about U.S. policy
toward Cuba, as a Cuban-American.
Furthermore, identities do sometimes change, with new ones emerging and old ones
disappearing, especially in times of crisis. For example, when the Soviet Union was
breaking apart in the early 1990s, Ukrainians and Russians in the Transnistria region
of Moldova came together as “russophones” – people who preferred to speak Russian
rather than Moldovan – to resist the assertiveness of the ethnic Moldovans (Kaufman
2001). On the other hand, the “Yugoslav” identity disappeared when the country of
Yugoslavia died in 1991, so people who formerly called themselves Yugoslavs had to
shift to another identity as Serbs, Croats, or members of some other group.
Noticing that people shift their identity – or at least the identity they use politically
– based on the situation, a second group of scholars emerged to argue that ethnic
identity is not “primordial” at all, but merely “instrumental” (Hardin 1995). From this
perspective, people follow “ethnic” leaders when it is in their interests to do so, and
leaders try to create ethnic solidarity when it works for them. This view of ethnic
identity implies that ethnic conflict can be blamed primarily on selfish leaders who
mislead their followers in pursuit of their own power. The conflicts themselves, these
scholars argue, are typically not really “ethnic” at all – in many cases, clashes are
motivated by economic or criminal disputes, but are later reinterpreted as having been
ethnically motivated for political purposes (Brass 1997).
A third point of view about ethnic identity mixes the other two views by emphasizing
the degree to which people create their identities. Expressed in book titles such as The
Invention of Tradition (Ranger 1992), this view points out that ethnic identities are
Ethnicity as a generator of conflict 93
“socially constructed.” They are not “natural” in the sense that a simple primordialist
view would assume; even racial distinctions are just a matter of custom. For example,
most African Americans accept the label “black,” but in South Africa, most of them
would be classified as “colored” – of mixed race – rather than as the darker, purely
African “blacks.” Most Americans would not notice the difference, but in Apartheid-
era South Africa the difference would have shaped every aspect of people’s lives.
Furthermore, constructivists pointed out, the source of these customs was “invented
traditions”: writers or scholars who created what Anthony Smith calls a “myth-symbol
complex.” This myth-symbol complex establishes the “accepted” history of the group
and the criteria for distinguishing who is a member; identifies heroes and enemies; and
glorifies symbols of the group’s identity. In most cases, these mythologies “mythicize”
real history, taking real events but redefining them as the morally defining experiences
of their people. In many cases, these events are what Vamik Volkan (1997) has called
“chosen traumas,” such as the Holocaust for Jews or the 1389 battle of Kosovo Field
for Serbs. In some cases, however, histories and myths are invented from whole cloth to
create new identities.
These constructivist insights can be viewed as a way to settle the argument between
primordialists and instrumentalists, because constructivist ideas explain both the
insights and the problems of the other two views. For example, most Serbs honestly
believe that their identity is primordial, forged in the fires of battle against the Turks at
Kosovo in 1389, so their perception is that their conflicts with Muslims are the result of
primordial “ancient hatreds.” In fact, though, that view of history was the result of late
nineteenth-century Serbian politics and educational policy (Snyder 2000); before then,
most Serbs did not think of themselves as Serbs at all. Similarly, Serbian politicians like
Slobodan Milosevic did indeed use Serbian ethnic identity instrumentally to pursue
their own power in the 1990s, but that identity “worked” politically only because it had
been socially constructed before. Any old identity will not do.
Another question is how to tell whether a particular conflict is an ethnic conflict.
Most African countries are multiethnic, for example, but African civil wars often
involve warlords competing for control over resources such as diamond mines, so
ethnicity has little to do with who is on which side. A conflict is ethnic only if the sides
involved are distinguished primarily on the basis of ethnicity. Often one or both sides
in an ethnic conflict will be a coalition of ethnic groups, rather than a single one, but the
conflict is still ethnic because the people involved choose sides on the basis of their
ethnic group membership, rather than other considerations such as economic interests.
An overview of ethnic conflicts

Ethnic groups and ethnic conflicts are everywhere. One comprehensive survey found a
total of 275 ethnic or communal groups in 116 countries around the world that were
socially disadvantaged in some way – “minorities at risk.” Put together, the groups
included more than 1 billion people, or about 17.4 per cent of the world’s population
(Gurr 2000, pp. 9–10). Of the fifty biggest countries in the world by population, only
four – Poland, Tanzania, Nepal, and North Korea – did not have at least one “minority
at risk” (and Tanzania has many ethnic groups: they were merely judged not to be “at
risk”). Some of these groups are very small, in mostly homogeneous countries:
Australia’s lone “minority at risk,” the Aborigines, are only about 1 per cent of the
country’s population; while Japan’s only minority, the Koreans, are only one-half of
one per cent. Some of the groups are very large and important, however: Malaysia’s
Chinese minority is 27 per cent of the population, and India’s oft mistreated Muslims
are 11 per cent of India’s population. Overall, it is accurate to say that most countries
in the world are ethnically diverse, and ethnic relations yield some degree of conflict in
most of them.
Most of the time, the existence of minority groups does not lead to violence or even
to serious conflict. In 1995, most of the “minorities at risk” (58 per cent) were either
politically inactive or mobilized only for routine politics. Another 15 per cent were a bit
more volatile, engaging in demonstrations, rioting, or both. Still, violent ethnic conflicts
were unfortunately plentiful: forty-nine (18 per cent) of ethnic groups were engaged in
“small-scale rebellion” in 1995, and another twenty-two (8 per cent) were fighting a
“large-scale rebellion” (Gurr 2000, p. 28). These numbers, however, were just about the
worst ever: the long-term trend is that the number of violent ethnic conflicts increased
fairly steadily from the end of World War II until the mid-1990s, but then it started to
drop. A separate survey for 2003 lists only ten “intermediate armed conflicts” or “wars”
that were more or less ethnic conflicts. Those conflicts were: the Karen insurgency in
Burma, Hutu-Tutsi conflict in Burundi, the Kashmir insurgency in India, Palestinian
resistance against Israel, the Muslim rebellion in the southern Philippines, the Chechnya
conflict in Russia, the Tamil separatist conflict in Sri Lanka, two separate wars in Sudan
(one against southern Christians, another in Darfur), and the Kurdish insurgency in
Turkey (Wallensteen 2004).
What are these violent conflicts about? The simplest answer is political power in a
disputed territory. Most of the conflicts involve a regional minority that wants to
separate and form its own state, or at least its own autonomous region. The conflicts in
Burma (Karens), India (Kashmir), Palestine (versus Israel), Philippines (Muslims),
Russia (Chechnya), Sri Lanka (Tamils), and Turkey (Kurds) are more or less of this
type. In other cases, the insurgent ethnic group wants to take over government of the
whole country: thus Burundi’s majority Hutus wish to take power from the minority
Tutsi government. Often the goals and stakes are unclear, as rebels may disagree with
each other. For example, some Palestinians want to establish their own state alongside
Israel but others are fighting to replace Israel with a Palestinian state.
The role of ethnicity itself in generating these conflicts – both the violent and the
non-violent ones – remains the subject of dispute. The remainder of this chapter
explores these issues.
Ethnicity as generator of non-violent conflict

It is misleading to say that ethnicity itself is the cause of any conflict, violent or not. It
is never true that two individuals or groups come into conflict merely because A. has
one ethnic identity and B. has another. Ethnically defined street gangs, for example,
may claim that they attack individuals of other groups merely because of ethnic
difference, but this is not true. Most often, gang members attack because they are
“defending their turf” – because they are gang members fighting turf wars, not merely
because they are members of different ethnic groups.
That said, ethnic identities can generate conflict by associating different groups with
different interests. Thus many ethnic groups are distinguished from each other because
their native languages are different, so they tend to disagree over language policy. If one
group’s mother tongue is the official language of their country, members of that group
will probably find it easier than nonnative speakers to get certain benefits – for example,
they are more likely to do well on university entrance exams or civil service tests. In one
longstanding example of such a dispute, members of Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese majority
have long championed a “Sinhala only” language policy that disadvantages the Tamil-
speaking minority. Similarly, a group that includes substantial numbers of relatively
recent immigrants (such as American Latinos) is likely to benefit from liberal
immigration policies while native groups may feel disadvantaged by such policies. One
way of thinking about this process (Hale 2008) suggests that the role of ethnic identity
is to reduce people’s uncertainty by clarifying who is the “us” whose interests (in this
case, language interests) will be pursued.
When ethnic groups are distinguished by religion or sect, several other types of
problems can occur. Those who deeply believe that theirs is the one true faith are likely
to desire laws that restrict the practice or spread of rival faiths, discriminating against
the adherents of those rival faiths. They may restrict the availability of ritually banned
foods, offending those who wish to eat those foods. They may give their faith official
government status, devaluing the status of believers in other religions. They may also
push for religiously motivated laws offensive to practitioners of other faiths. Finally,
there may be conflict on all of these issues within religious groups between hard-liners
who wish to entrench their faith in law and moderates who are more concerned with
accommodating minority groups and their own less pious coreligionists. Such issues are
especially common in Muslim-majority countries, many of which designate Islam as the
official religion (Fox 2007), but there are exceptions. In Muslim-majority Uzbekistan,
the government discriminates against the Muslim faithful, associating religious piety
with support for the terrorist Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Russia under Putin, on
the other hand, sparked disputes by banning certain religious organizations and
restricting others’ growth while supporting the Russian Orthodox church.
Most common of all is probably conflict between ethnic groups over economic goods.
Sometimes these conflicts are interpreted as being “merely” economic disputes and not
ethnic at all, but this view is misleading. In ethnically diverse societies, economic issues
are almost always at the same time ethnic issues. People tend to have more contacts
with people within their ethnic group than outside it, and people tend to use the resulting
intra-ethnic networks of personal ties when making economic decisions – whom to buy
goods from, whom to hire, where to go to look for work, and so on. In the United
States, the resulting dynamics may create “institutional racism” – the tendency for
white employers to favor white job applicants not because of animosity toward minority
groups, but merely because their personal contacts are mostly white. Another way
economic and ethnic interests may align is when particular ethnic groups come to
specialize in particular lines of work, resulting in the emergence of “middleman
minorities” who are prominent in retail trade in some areas (Horowitz 1985). Finally,
when ethnic groups are concentrated in particular regions, economic competition
between regions comes to be defined in ethnic terms.
When the group cleavage involves racial difference, it almost always also involves a
history of racial discrimination, inevitably yielding tensions and a wide range of
approaches to dealing with them. Rwanda, after the 1994 genocide, has tried to ban any
official consideration or even mention of the formerly central Hutu–Tutsi divide as a
way of managing that dispute – and of obscuring the fact that most government leaders
after the 1990–94 civil war have been members of the Tutsi minority. South Africa
focused on a transition to political democracy as the group that had been most
discriminated against, the blacks, formed the majority of the population. The United
States, to overcome the legacy of its centuries of racial discrimination, created a policy
of “affirmative action” giving special benefits to members of previously repressed
groups, especially African-Americans – and sparking continuing controversy and
resistance by some who are disfavored by those policies.
What makes these different kinds of groups – and group conflicts – similar is that the
ethnicity comes to define people’s identity, generating conflict over issues that go
beyond the specific cleavages that separate the groups. In Northern Ireland, for
example, the main line of cleavage is between Catholics and Protestants, but the issues
are not religious per se. Rather, the issue is one of national loyalty – Catholics
(“nationalists”) wish Northern Ireland to become part of the Republic of Ireland, while
Protestants (“unionists”) wish to maintain its union with Great Britain. Even after the
1998 Good Friday Agreement settled the violent conflict between these groups, tensions
continue over issues like the right of Protestant “Orange Order” groups to conduct
marches through Catholic neighborhoods (see Ross 2007).
The example of Orange Order parades illustrates another key fact about ethnic
conflict: sometimes the issues at stake are not tangible interests at all, but purely
symbolic ones. In 1950s Warri, Nigeria, ethnic Itsekiri and Urhobo clashed violently
over the issue of whether the traditional Itsekiri ruler should be given a title implying he
“was paramount ruler over the entire Province” (Horowitz 1985). Other symbolic
ethnic disputes involve the rules governing the wearing of Islamic head scarves in
France and Turkey, and rules governing archeological digs in Jerusalem (Ross 2007).
In Bendery, Moldova, in 1990, clashes were sparked by ethnic Moldovan efforts to
raise their flag in that ethnically Russian, and soon to be separatist, city (Kaufman
2001, p. 141).
Why are symbolic issues like these often contested so fiercely? Psychocultural
theorists point out that in psychological experiments, people randomly assigned to
groups tend to evaluate their own group more highly than other groups, even when
they are told they are not competing; and they tend to prefer to maximize the difference
between their group’s profits and those of another group even if there is an alternative
that would give their group a bigger profit. Donald Horowitz (1985) – in explaining the
riot over the Itsekiri chief’s title and other similar events – argues that these findings
explain ethnic conflict well: what is at stake is not just absolute benefits but group
self-esteem, or, in his terms, group worth and legitimacy.
Symbolic politics theory (Kaufman 2001) provides a similar explanation of such
events. Symbolic politics theory begins with the fact, noted above, that an ethnic
identity is defined by a “myth-symbol complex” that sets out not only who is in the
group, but also who the group’s heroes and villains are, what its history is, and what it
means to be a group member. From this perspective, Orange Order parades are so
contentious in Northern Ireland because they are meant to commemorate William of
Orange’s Protestant victory at the 1690 battle of the Boyne – which is, of course, seen
as a great defeat in the Catholic myth-symbol complex, and so its commemoration in
Catholic neighborhoods is seen as an insult. The insult, of course, is part of the point of
the exercise, as again the issues are group worth and legitimacy: the right to march
through Catholic neighborhoods was for many decades symbolic of Protestant political
dominance, and higher social status, in Northern Ireland.
The tendency of political conflicts to line up with ethnic divisions often causes
political parties in ethnically diverse countries to become associated with particular
ethnic groups. Belgium, for example, began with the typical European range of
ideologically based parties such as Christian Democrats and social democrats, but all
of these parties later split on linguistic lines between French-speakers and Flemish-
speakers. The same process occurred in many ethnically diverse Caribbean countries as
well (Horowitz 1985). Malaysia exemplifies a different model, in which the parties were
from the beginning ethnically-oriented, with the United National Malay Organization
and the Malaysian Chinese Association being for many years two of the leading parties.
Nigeria at its birth followed the Malaysian pattern, but later changes in Nigerian
election law required presidential candidates to gain political support across ethnic and
regional lines, leading to the rise of more ethnically diverse parties.
Ethnicity as a generator of violent conflict

As noted above, ethnic conflicts are usually managed peacefully. Sometimes, however,
ethnic diversity does lead to ethnic violence. In the statistics about ethnic conflicts
quoted above, the violent conflicts fell into two broad categories: riots, and armed
conflicts or civil wars.
Ethnic riots
Deadly ethnic riots have occurred all over the world, but how and why they occur
seems puzzling. Particularly puzzling is why rioters tend to be very careful in attacking
only members of the target ethnic group, while at the same time making no distinction
between men, women and children of that group, and indulging in unspeakable brutality
in how they are killed, with rape, torture and mutilation not uncommon. After the
killing is done, there is usually no remorse on the part of the killers: “they had it coming”
is the attitude typically expressed by rioting communities all over the globe (Horowitz
2000).
One comprehensive survey, which takes a social psychological approach, finds three
main factors that lead to deadly ethnic riots (Horowitz 2000). First, there needs to be a
hostile ongoing relationship between the groups – tensions of long standing to motivate
the killing. Second, there needs to be authoritative social support: potential rioters need
to be assured by public statements from community leaders in their group that the
leaders agree killing members of the other group is justified. At the same time, this
support usually extends to the security forces: riots usually become large only if the
police are sympathetic, or at least do not make determined efforts to stop the killing.
Finally, there needs to be a stimulus, some event – usually implying some sort of
threat – that provokes fear, rage, or hatred in the rioting group. For example, a report
(true or not) of a violent attack by one of “them” against one of “us” might spark a
widespread cry to “teach them a lesson.” Alternatively, a political change – even a
potential one – might provoke a similar outburst. In 1958, for example, Sri Lankan
Prime Minister S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, a Sinhalese, signed a power-sharing deal
with the leader of his country’s Tamil minority, but quickly backed away under political
pressure. After the deal was abrogated, ordinary Sinhalese vented their wrath at the
very idea of such power-sharing by attacking innocent Tamils in a large-scale riot.
Another approach to explaining ethnic riots focuses not on psychology but on social
organization. In India, for example, hostile relations between the Hindu and Muslim
communities are common, but most of the riot violence is concentrated in just a few
cities. Why is that? The riot-prone cities, in turns out, have “institutionalized riot
systems”: community activists and extremist organizations that benefit from keeping
tensions high, politicians who benefit from occasional violence, and criminals and thugs
who can profit from it (Brass 1997). On the other hand, Indian cities with little or no
riot violence have community organizations (business groups, labor unions, etc.) that
cross communal lines, bringing Hindus and Muslims together instead of driving them
apart (Varshney 2002).
Ethnic civil wars

Explanations of ethnic civil wars divide along similar lines: social psychology
approaches, social mobilization approaches, and instrumentalist approaches.
Instrumentalist approaches start with what creates the opportunity for rebels to act:
weak governments, large populations and inaccessible terrain create the opening
extremists need to act (Fearon and Laitin 2003). Also important in most instrumentalist
arguments are extremist leaders seeking to grab or hold on to power, who stir up ethnic
disagreements and provoke violence to create a “rally around the flag” effect uniting
their group around their own leadership (Gagnon 1995). Extremist media also plays a
key role in this view, as these extreme outlets seek popularity by appealing to group
loyalties, presenting the news in terms of “us” against “them” (Snyder 2000). These two
factors work together: extremist leaders provide heroes for the extremist media to
promote, while one-sided media portrayals seem to validate the extremist leaders’
claims that their group must unite against the “enemy.” In most of these accounts,
security fears play a crucial role: the argument by extremist politicians and media
outlets that one’s own group is in danger is what makes their appeals seem credible.
Some instrumentalists go a step further and claim that civil wars involving these
issues are not ethnic at all, but merely about political power or economic benefits. These
scholars argue that the statistical link between ethnic diversity and civil war is weak,
and that the main causes of civil war are poverty, weak governments, and other factors
that make it easy to start a guerrilla campaign (e.g., Fearon and Laitin 2003). It is also
true, however, that while economic grievances are always present, in ethnic conflicts
they are expressed in ethnic terms. In Mindanao in the southern Philippines, for
example, the poor – Christians as well as Muslims – are all disadvantaged by inadequate
government spending on education and infrastructure. But the communist New
People’s Army, which tries to exploit such rich–poor distinctions to gain support, has
had little luck in Muslim areas. Rather, Muslims there respond to specifically Muslim
rebel groups who emphasize the differences between Muslims and Christians, not
between rich and poor (McKenna 1998). In other cases, it is not the poor ethnic group
but the rich one that rebels: in Yugoslavia, for example, it was the relatively prosperous
Slovenes and Croats who first tried to secede, because they felt they were being held
back by the more “backward” ethnic groups in the rest of the country. In these cases,
the contest for power and wealth takes a peculiarly ethnic form.
Like instrumentalist approaches, social mobilization approaches consider the roles
of leaders, but they are also interested in how ethnic groups mobilize – that is, how do
members of the group get together the people and resources needed for collective
action? The answer, these theorists point out, is that people use social organizations
and networks that already exist, like political parties and labor unions. Successful
mobilization efforts find “brokers,” people who can link different groups and networks
together to help them cooperate in a single movement (McAdam et al. 2001). This
provides one answer to the question: why do people mobilize as ethnic groups instead,
for example, of organizing as economic interest groups? It is because people’s social
networks tend to be mostly within their ethnic group; barriers of language or religion
typically separate them from members of other groups.
Social psychological approaches focus on a different puzzle: why do followers follow
these extremist leaders? Even if people mobilize as ethnic groups to look out for their
interests, why do they follow extremist leaders who want violence, instead of following
moderate leaders who will work for peace? Symbolic politics theory suggests that when
the group’s myth-symbol complex points to the other group as an enemy, its members
will be predisposed to be hostile to the other group. Politicians will then be able to
appeal to symbols of past hostility – such as Slobodan Milosevic referring to the battle
of Kosovo Field – to rouse people’s emotions against the enemy that symbol brings to
mind (Muslims, in the case of Kosovo). If the group is at the same time convinced that
they are in danger of extinction – of being wiped out as a group – they can be persuaded
to back extreme measures that are justified as “self-defense” (Kaufman 2001).
One point on which the different approaches agree is that even when groups are
differentiated by religion, violent conflicts are rarely religious in the sense of one group
trying to impose its religion on another. For example, even though Sri Lanka’s Tamils
are Hindu while the majority Sinhalese are Buddhist, neither group wants the other to
convert. Rather, the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam want to establish their own
state (Tamil Eelam) in northern and eastern Sri Lanka, while the Sinhalese-dominated
government wants to prevent that outcome. The Kashmir, Chechen, Palestinian, and
Philippine Muslim conflicts have a similar flavor. The biggest exception is Sudan, where
the main grievance of the Christian and animist southerners was the attempt by the
Sudanese government to impose Islamic law on the whole country, including them.
To see how these complex processes play out in practice, let us consider in more
detail the example of one prominent case of ethnic warfare, the 1990s fighting in the
former Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia, formed in the aftermath of World War I, was a multi-
ethnic state with no majority group. The three largest groups all spoke the same
language, Serbo-Croatian, but differed in their religious tradition among Serbs
(Orthodox Christians), Croats (Catholics), and Bosnian Muslims. The fourth-largest
group, the Slovenes, are Catholics but speak a different (though related) language; the
next largest, the Albanians, are Muslims who speak a wholly unrelated language.
Before World War II, Yugoslavia was ruled by a Serbian king and dominated by
Serbian politicians. During World War II, the Germans conquered the country and
placed Croatian fascists, the Ustashe, in power in the regions of Croatia and Bosnia
and Herzegovina, where they engaged in genocidal violence against the Serbs. As the
war ended, communist partisan leader Josip Broz Tito took power in Yugoslavia,
massacring the Ustashe and re-creating Yugoslavia as a nominal federation of six
republics: Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Macedonia, and
Montenegro (Kaufman 2001).
When Tito died in 1980, the loss of his charismatic authority severely weakened
Yugoslavia’s government. The increasingly powerful republic governments more and
more allowed the kind of mutually hostile mythmaking Tito had tried to stamp out.
For example, nationalist Serbs began talking about the menace of the Albanian
minority in the symbolically important Kosovo region while labeling any Croatian
disagreement as evidence of resurgent Ustashe fascism. As symbolists would note,
ethnic myths and fears were growing. The leader of Serbia’s League of Communists,
Slobodan Milosevic, noticed the power of this nationalist sentiment and in the late
1980s became its spokesman, repressing the Albanians and attempting to impose
Serbian control on the whole of Yugoslavia (Gagnon 1995). In response to this Serbian
threat, voters in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina turned to supporting
their own nationalist leaders – with the Croatian nationalists reviving the national
symbols last used by the Ustashe fascists, raising alarm among Serbs and making
Milosevic’s appeals ever more plausible.
Yugoslavia was dying. Slovenia moved first, declaring independence on June 25,
1991. The Croats quickly followed, sparking a month-long war in which the Yugoslav
army conquered areas in Croatia inhabited by Croatia’s Serbian minority.
The agony of Bosnia and Herzegovina was to be longer. Home to a mixture of
Bosnian Muslims, Serbs, and Croats, Bosnia and Herzegovina was torn three ways.
Serbs wanted to remain in Yugoslavia but, fearing Serbian domination, the Muslims
wanted to secede and form an independent Bosnian state, while Croats wanted their
areas (especially western Hercegovina) to join Croatia. In 1992 a coalition of Muslims
and Croats therefore declared Bosnian independence, sparking a three-sided civil war
in which Serbia and Croatia – trying to take over chunks of Bosnian territory – provided
military assistance to their co-ethnics in Bosnia and Herzegovina, while the Muslims
were the principal victims. Under the slogan “Only unity saves the Serbs,” Serbs
exaggerated the disadvantages of separation from Serbia into a threat to their national
existence, and used this invented threat to justify – and invent the term – “ethnic
cleansing”: the Serbs’ program of massacring enough of their ethnic enemies to force
the rest to flee any territory they claimed. Finally, in 1995, a Croatian military
counteroffensive backed by NATO air power prompted the Serb side to agree to stop
the fighting.
Conclusion
Ethnicity generates conflict in a number of different ways. When ethnic groups are
differentiated by language, then disputes about the use of language, especially in
government and education, tend to line up across ethnic divides. When ethnic groups
are differentiated by religion, disputes over the role of religion and the influence of
religious values on public policy tend to arise. Regardless of what differentiates groups,
economic interests – and disputes – tend to pit ethnic groups against each other due to
the importance of social networks in causing members of ethnic groups to favor their
own economically. In addition to disputes over tangible interests, ethnic politics also
often turns into contests for status or group worth, so groups may seek political
dominance as a way of expressing their desire for high social status. When this sort of
seeking for group dominance becomes especially pronounced, and especially when
groups’ myth-symbol complex encourage hostility toward other groups, peaceful ethnic
disputes can escalate into violent conflict.
Further reading
Brass, Paul R. (1997), Theft of an Idol: Text and Context in the Representation of Collective
Violence (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press).
Horowitz, Donald L. (1985), Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley CA: University of California
Press).
Kaufman, Stuart J. (2001), Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War (Ithaca NY:
Cornell University Press).
Laitin, David D. (2007), Nations, States and Violence (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Ross, Marc Howard (2007), Cultural Contestation in Ethnic Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press).
References
Brass, Paul R. (1997), Theft of an Idol: Text and Context in the Representation of Collective
Violence (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press).
Cohen, Lenard J. (1995), Broken Bonds: Yugoslavia’s Disintegration and Balkan Politics in
Transition (Boulder CO: Westview Press).
Fearon, James D., and David D. Laitin (1996), “Explaining Interethnic Cooperation,” American
Political Science Review 90, No. 4 (December), pp. 715–35.
—(2003), “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War,” American Political Science Review 97, No. 1
(February), pp. 75–90.
Gagnon, V. P. (1995), “Ethnic Nationalism and International Conflict: The Case of Serbia,”
International Security 19, No. 3 (winter), pp. 130–66.
Gurr, Ted Robert (2000), Peoples versus States (Washington DC: United States Institute of
Peace).
Hardin, Russell (1995), One for All: The Logic of Group Conflict (Princeton NJ: Princeton
University Press).
Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger (1992), eds, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press).
Horowitz, Donald L. (1985), Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley CA: University of California
Press).
—(2000), The Deadly Ethnic Riot (Berkeley CA: University of California Press).
Isaacs, Harold R. (1975), The Idols of the Tribe: Group Identity and Political Change (New York:
Harper & Row).
Kaufman, Stuart J. (2001), Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War (Ithaca NY:
Cornell University Press).
—(2006), “Symbolic Politics or Rational Choice? Testing Theories of Extreme Ethnic Violence,”
International Security 30, No. 4 (spring), pp. 45–86.
Kaufmann, Chaim (1996), “Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars,” International
Security, 20, No. 4 (spring), pp. 136–75.
Lijphart, Arend (1985), Power Sharing in South Africa, Policy Papers in International Affairs 24
(Berkeley CA: Institute of International Studies, University of California).
McAdam, Doug, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly (2001), Dynamics of Contention (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press).
McKenna, Thomas M. (1998), Muslim Rulers and Rebels: Everyday Politics and Armed Separatism
in the Southern Philippines (Berkeley CA: University of California).
Rieff, David (1996), Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West (New York: Simon &
Schuster).
Ross, Marc Howard (2007). Cultural Contestation in Ethnic Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press).
Saideman, Stephen M. (2001), The Ties that Divide: Ethnic Politics, Foreign Policy and
International Conflict (New York: Columbia University Press).
Smith, Anthony D. (1986), The Ethnic Origins of Nations (New York: Blackwell).
Snyder, Jack (2000), From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict (New
York: Norton).
Varshney, Ashutosh (2002), Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India (New
Haven CT: Yale University Press).
Volkan, Vamik (1997), Bloodlines: From Ethnic Pride to Ethnic Terrorism (New York: Farrar
Straus & Giroux).
Wallensteen, Peter (2002). Understanding Conflict Resolution: War, Peace and the Global System
(London: Sage).
Wallensteen, P., and M. Sollenberg (1999), “Armed Conflict, 1989–1998,” Journal of Peace
Research 36, No. 5, pp. 593–606.
Zartman, William I. (1985), Ripe for Resolution: Conflict and Intervention in Africa (New York:
Oxford University Press).
9 Democracy and democratisation
Jenny Engström
Since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe,
democracy has become widely toted as the political system best poised to deliver peace,
both between states and within them. The emergence of complex UN peace operations
has also led to an increased focus on elections and democratisation as components of
post-conflict reconstruction (see, for example, Namibia, Cambodia and Mozambique).
Democracy today is widely accepted as a universal value and the holding of elections is
generally perceived as a minimum requirement for legitimate government. Yet, as this
chapter will show, importing liberal democracy to a society riven by inter-group
competition, deep-seated grievances, and strong identity-based politics, does not
necessarily produce peace and equality.
Democratisation as peace-building in ethnically divided societies?

Whereas Western policy-makers continue to insist on promoting democracy as a means
toward more peaceful communities around the world, scholars remain in disagreement
over the actual relationship between democracy, ethnic diversity and peace/violence.
Snyder (2000) and Horowitz (1985; 1993), among others, argue that the introduction of
democracy in societies divided along ethnic and/or religious lines, can be not only
ineffective but also inappropriate, because majority rule, competitive party politics,
and an open political system can exacerbate, rather than mitigate, inter-ethnic tensions
(Horowitz 1985, 291). The initiation of democracy, they warn, may generate violent
conflict, as democratisation allows populist politicians to manipulate ethnic divisions
for their own gain, thus increasing the risk of ethnic groups acting in their own narrow
interests, as opposed to the general interest of the political community as a whole, i.e.
the state. The phenomenon of ethnic politics – the formation of political parties along
ethnic lines, and the pursuit of political agendas limited to the protection of the interests
of one’s own identity group – with its emphasis on collectivist principles, sits uneasily
with Western liberal democratic principles of individualism. A strong element of ethnic
politics in incipient democracies is seen as a stepping stone towards an accelerating
spiral of conflicting inter-ethnic interests that may eventually culminate in violence
between ethnic groups occupying the same territorial space. In such instances, the
democratisation process is bound to undermine the unity of the state, provoke conflicts
over the allocation of political, economic and social resources, and make fair, just, and
efficient government more difficult (Rothstein 1993, 27). It is believed that, when
introduced in ethnically heterogeneous societies, democratic processes feed conflict and
potential violence, which may eventually result in such a rise in the level of
104 Jenny Engström
inter-communal conflict that ‘any belief in democracy as a peaceful lever of change is
extinguished in the competition which it encourages’ (Austin and Gupta 1994, 267).
Others hold a less pessimistic view of democratisation in plural societies. De Nevers,
for example, suggests that democratisation can serve either to mitigate inter-ethnic
conflict or to exacerbate it, depending on a host of factors including how speedily ethnic
issues are recognised; the extent to which inter-ethnic tension was already present at the
start of the democratisation process; the relative size and power of ethnic communities;
the ethnic distribution of power in the previous regime; the political stance of major
ethnic leaders; the presence of ethnic kin in neighbouring countries; and the ethnic
composition of the army (De Nevers 1993, 61).
De Nevers points out that national unity is a necessary precondition for successful
democratisation (ibid.). Political moderation, too, must be present if democratisation is
to have a conflict mitigating impact in ethnically divided states. Moderation can be
promoted via an electoral structure that is inclusive and encourages power-sharing
among different ethnic groups (ibid., 62−3). By allowing for the establishment of an
inclusive means of government that takes into account the diversity of interests and
needs of all ethnic groups, democratisation has the potential to help mitigate inter-
ethnic tension and prevent the eruption of ethno-political violence (ibid., 75). De Nevers
further notes that ‘[b]ecause in most cases democratisation includes a negotiating phase,
there is an inherent opportunity in the process to address issues raised by ethnic tensions’
and that ‘[f]or democratization to reduce ethnic tension, the inclusion of all relevant
groups in the negotiating process is required; in addition, there must be a willingness by
all parties to work for, and then accept, a mutually beneficial agreement’ (ibid., 65).
In Wars, Guns and Votes Collier posits that the peace-promoting benefits of
democracy and democratisation depend in large part on the level of economic
development in a country. Whereas democracy tends to promote peace and stability in
more economically advanced societies, it has the opposite effect on poor countries, or
what Collier calls ‘the bottom billion’ (Collier 2009). The reason for this, Collier argues
is that ‘in these societies, democracy does not deliver either accountability or legitimacy’
(ibid., 24).
It follows that we cannot be satisfied simply with assuming that, since democracy is
purportedly a system designed to mediate competing interests in society, it will suffice
as a tool for inter-communal conflict. Any conflict rooted in basic human needs such as
security, recognition, identity and autonomy, cannot be resolved through competitive
bargaining, as the ontological quality of human needs means that they are in essence
non-negotiable. To the extent possible, according to Burton’s theory, individuals will
seek to meet their needs within socially and legally established norms in society. But, if
societal norms hinder rather than enable their pursuit of needs, then, ‘subject to values
he attaches to social relationships, he will employ methods outside the norms, outside
the codes he would in other circumstances wish to apply to his behaviour’ (Burton
1988, 52–53).
The democratic system of governance is peculiar in that it contains within it
characteristics of co-operation as well as competition and inclusion as well as exclusion.
As a system for mediating conflicting interests in society it appears to have fared well
overall. But is it a system capable of mediating needs-based conflict? It depends. It
appears that the liberal definition of democracy, with its emphasis on the individual
rather than the collective, and on the equality of opportunity rather than equality of
outcome, is sometimes inadequate as a mechanism for protecting the needs of citizens,
Democracy and democratisation 105
especially in societies where – despite an official adherence to civic ideals – the ethnic
majority dominates. For by taking a neutral stance to the conception of the common
good, it perpetuates the majority culture’s values, norms and preferences. Whilst liberal
democracy may justifiably be regarded as a fair system for negotiating competing
interests, it falls short in terms of protecting people’s needs in a society where political
and economic power is unevenly distributed.
In multi-ethnic countries in general, the limits of democratisation as a conflict-
mitigating tool depend very much on the nature of the conflict at hand. If the conflict is
largely one of competing interests, implementation of democratic rules and principles
may serve to promote peaceful cohabitation. But if the conflict is rooted in needs, the
advancement of democracy is unlikely to facilitate the resolution of the conflict.
Elections alone do not make a democracy

Since the early 1990s, Western powers, notably the United States and the European
Union, but also international institutions like the United Nations and the Organisation
for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), have sought to promote elections as
a key feature of democracy. Consequently, countries ravaged by war and lacking in the
infrastructure necessary for conducting free and fair elections, have often been pushed,
prematurely, into electing a new government. The result has not always been an increase
in democracy and democratisation, as witnessed in Iraq, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Afghanistan, et al.
As Collier points out, American and European pressure on the bottom billion has
indeed led to a rise in the number of elections held, but what is problematic is how
democracy has come to be seen largely as synonymous with elections. But elections
alone do not make a democracy. For elections to be meaningful, there needs to be in
place the necessary political infrastructure to ensure that elections are free and fair
(Collier 2009, 15). Diamond, in turn, points out that democracy is impossible without
freedom of speech and association and the rule of law (Diamond 2008, 21).
According to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance
(International IDEA), a political system is deemed democratic only if it allows for
meaningful competition for political power; inclusive participation, expressed through
free and fair elections; and civil and political rights that safeguard the integrity of
political competition and participation (Harris and Reilly 1998, 19). Civil and political
rights are absolutely essential to democratic governance given that democracy is
fundamentally about the equal right of every citizen to participate in public affairs and
to exercise control over government (Beetham 1998, 73). A democratic regime with the
proper institutions (a legislative, executive and judicial branch) that holds multiparty
elections on a regular basis, cannot be considered genuinely democratic unless its
citizens enjoy full civil and political rights, which permit them to choose their political
representatives in a society that allows for a free media, access to alternative sources of
information, and freedom of thought, expression and association. As Diamond notes,
if a country holds regular, multiparty elections and has an established national assembly,
a court system, constitution, etc., ‘but the people are not able to vote their leaders out
of power because the system is, in effect, rigged, then the country has … [a]
pseudodemocracy (Diamond 2008, 23).
106 Jenny Engström
Challenges to successful democratisation
Liberalism, with its focus on the individual rather than the community, has come to
represent the premise and foundation of modern democracy in the West (Parekh 1993,
157). The Western concept of liberal democracy imposes a restriction on the state’s
authority over its citizens, by virtue of its focus on individual rights. Civil and political
rights are not only intrinsic to a particular form of democracy but are inherent in any
modern democratic system, since without them the democratic principle would
effectively be non-functional.
In ethnically divided states, however, the issue of human rights becomes complicated
by the demand from some ethnic minorities for group rights. This raises the question
whether individual rights – a concept intimately linked with liberal democracy – are
sufficient in societies where a minority perceives its freedom and survival to be
threatened. Where the asymmetry of power structures favours the majority ethnic
group, the principle of individualism/liberalism often fails to deliver its promise of a just
society. Instead it perpetuates the status quo, i.e., the asymmetrical power structures,
thus allowing the majority ethnic group to retain a position of cultural hegemony vis-à-
vis the minority groups.
Zakaria warns of the emergence of what he calls ‘illiberal democracies’: regimes that
habitually disregard any constitutional limits on their power and violate the human
rights of citizens (Zakaria 1997, 22). He distinguishes between democracy and
constitutional liberalism, where the latter is characterised by the rule of law, separation
of powers and the protection of basic liberties, including freedom of speech, assembly,
religion and the right to own property. Democracy, on the other hand, is characterised
by free and fair multi-party elections (ibid.).
Another challenge to democratisation is the problem of weak states. Sørensen notes
that it is exceedingly difficult to construct stable democracies out of weak states that lack
the institutions necessary for democracy and where trust and mutual acceptance among
competing groups are in short supply (Sørensen 2008, 142). The premature introduction
of democratic rule in the form of elections in weak states can even lead to an increase in
violent conflict (ibid., 143). State building is therefore a precondition to democracy in
weak states. At the same time, Collier argues that one of the main mistakes in the West’s
approach to state-building ‘has been to forget that well-functioning states are built not
just on shared interests but on shared identity. Shared identity does not grow out of the
soil; it is politically constructed’ (Collier 2009, 9).
Democracy is generally associated with majority rule, a principle which is not without
controversy, especially in societies divided along ethnic and religious lines. Defenders
of majority rule maintain that the principle of political equality, which is fundamental
to democracy, is secured over time since majorities and minorities are bound to trade
places in the long-term. This means that today’s winners will become tomorrow’s losers,
and vice versa. As Beetham points out, this argumentation presumes a functional
principle of reciprocity, so that ‘I agree to be bound by a decision which goes against
me in return for your being bound when it goes in my favour and against you’ (Beetham
1999, 20). Such an arrangement may work sufficiently well in a culturally homogeneous
society, but when the majority rule is applied to states with deep ethnic divisions, and
where politics is ethnically aligned, there is a considerable risk that the electoral majority
and minority become identical to the ethnic alignments in society. Consequently,
majorities and minorities become frozen, thus violating the principle of political
equality since the minority is permanently on the losing side of the political game. As
Touraine points out, the idea of democracy is intrinsically connected to the idea of
rights and democracy cannot, therefore, be reduced to majority government (Touraine
1998, 23).
A challenge to democratic development in ethnically plural societies is the tendency
for the emerging party system to form along ethnic lines, thus undermining the liberal
democratic principle of citizenship based on civic ideals. Western observers tend to
view ethnic politics as fundamentally contrary to democratic norms of inclusion and
equal rights. Horowitz, for example, states that, in societies divided along ethnic lines,
inclusion in the government tends to correlate with inclusion in the community, just as
exclusion from government means exclusion from the community (Horowitz 1993, 18).
Consequently, party politics only serve to reinforce ethnic divisions, thus rendering
democracy harmful to inter-ethnic peace and stability. Yet prohibiting ethnically based
parties does not necessarily promote peace and democracy. A constitutional ban on
political organisation along ethnic lines may itself be a manifestation of ethnic politics,
as its tendency is to privilege the majority ethnic group.
The security of one’s group (ethnic, linguistic, etc.) identity, both of the majority and
the minority ethnic groups, as well as socio-economic security, plays a significant part
in shaping the political agenda of ethnic parties, in so far as a high level of security
experienced by an ethnic community will weaken the perceived need to pursue a
narrowly defined ethno-centric political platform. Whether or not – or to what extent
– an ethnically based party limits itself to a narrow, ethnic chauvinist political agenda,
is likely to be influenced by its sense of security and recognition within the larger society
it inhabits.
How democracy comes about

The arcane notion of democratisation being an organic process that happens naturally
when the time is ripe, has given way to the realisation that democracy is highly agency-
driven. In Di Palma’s words, democracy is ‘crafted’. Democratisation is always a
conscious, and often strategic, undertaking. But does a state need democrats in order to
democratise? Not according to Āgh, who suggests that democrats are the results, not
the precondition of democratisation (Āgh 1998, 19). Typically, democratisation is seen
as more probable if two conditions are present:
• ‘when there are clear splits among existing autocratic leaders, in which some urge
reform in order to accommodate popular demands for change, while others in the
ruling group seek to preserve the current order at all costs’;
• ‘when power has been strongly centralized in the person of a charismatic leader who
has ruled for many years, sometimes for decades. When such leaders centralize
power in their own person, usually with a cadre of loyalists around them, the end of
a leader’s tenure – often from natural causes – can induce a political vacuum in
which there is rapid political change’.
(Large and Sisk 2006, 71–72)
‘Diffusion’ is sometimes cited as an important factor in democratisation processes. Di

Palma, for example, suggests that ‘[n]ew democracies are … less the result of cumulative,
necessary, predictable, and systematic developments than of historical busts and
108 Jenny Engström
booms, global opinion climates, shifting opportunities, and contingent preferences’ (Di
Palma 1990, 15). However, that is not to say that global circumstances are always
decisive in determining whether or not democratisation takes place. Whereas it might
determine the fall of a non-democratic regime, it does not necessarily lead to
democratisation, which as stated, is a deliberate process. More specifically, Di Palma’s
‘crafting’ describes four main aspects of democratisation (1990, 8–9):
• The ‘quality of the finished product’, i.e. the choice of democratic institutions and
rules.
• The structure of the decision making that determines those institutions and rules.
• The nature of the ‘craftsmen’ involved in the process (coalitions, alliances, etc.).
• The timing of each step taken during the transition.
A much debated issue within democratisation theory has been whether democratisation
necessitates certain preconditions in order to be successful. In the past it was said that
a requisite for democratisation was a strong middle class, a theory that has since been
refuted by cases where democratisation was successful despite the absence of a powerful
middle class. Market economy has also been said to be a necessary condition for
democracy to be successful. Whilst the debate continues, it seems there are at least two
indisputable preconditions necessary for democratisation to succeed.
First, before democratisation can be initiated, an issue that must be resolved is, who
are the people? That is, who are the nations that are going to democratise? A certain
degree of national unity is a necessary precondition for democratisation to be effectively
implemented. Why? Because, as Beetham points out, in conditions that allow freedom
of expression and association, democratic government is dependent upon popular
consent. This implies that if people are unwilling to agree on a framework for
cohabitation, the imposition of authoritarian rule is the only alternative to war or
secession (Beetham 1999, 82). Moreover, national unity is absolutely essential precisely
because of the divisive nature of electoral competition.
The expression ‘national unity’ is highly problematic though, as it seems to presume
the existence of single-nation-states, rather than multi-ethnic, multinational states. Few
states, however, can be said to be authentic nation-states, and those that might qualify
often had to resort to force in order to attain the status of nation-state. According to
Rustow, national unity is present when ‘the vast majority of citizens in a democracy-
to-be … have no doubt or mental reservations as to which political community they
belong to’ (Sørensen 2008, 47). In regard to ethnically divided societies, Rustow’s
definition might be slightly amended to reflect the need for sufficient consensus across
ethnic groups making up the citizens of the state. Hence, national unity can be said to
exist when ‘the vast majority of citizens in a democracy-to-be [including a majority of
members of all ethnic groups] … have no doubt or mental reservations as to which
political community they belong to’. Without a unified political community, i.e. without
a general consensus about what constitutes the nation, efforts to develop democracy
are likely to be undermined by conflicting perceptions of the identity and character of
the political community. Hence a common framework to which all communal divisions
in society can pledge their allegiance is absolutely essential for democracy to work. We
might therefore say that what matters is not only that democracy is introduced, but also
that it is based on broad societal consensus. In fact, unless the process of determining
the shape of the new democratic system is itself subject to an inclusive participatory
process that goes some way towards honouring the democratic principle of ‘rule by the
people’, the outcome may indeed be unstable.
A second precondition for any democratic system, one which is often neglected in
discussions of democracy, is the existence of a popular will to democracy. The various
subgroups of the population must agree that democracy is desirable, and commit
themselves to the democratic process, and to the rules inherent in it. Contrary to
authoritarian systems of governance, democracy cannot function effectively unless
there is an overall consensus that democracy is the preferred choice, and any attempt at
democratisation in an unwilling domestic environment is bound to fail. The legitimacy
and viability of a democratic regime rest on such a will to democracy.
Democratisation and marginalised groups

Whilst democracy is intimately bound up with human rights protection, democratisation
has not always resulted in greater inclusion of marginalised groups. In apartheid South
Africa, democracy was limited to the white population and it was only after a prolonged
violent campaign by the ANC, followed by negotiations at a time when the regime was
beginning to face up to its own demise, that the majority of South Africa’s population
was included in the political process. In Rwanda, colonial rule that had favoured the
Tutsi minority eventually gave way to Hutu-majority rule, with Tutsis suffering
repeated attacks that culminated in the 1994 genocide. And whilst some ethnic
minorities – notably the Turkish minority in Bulgaria – have benefited from
democratisation processes in Eastern Europe following the collapse of communism, the
Roma remain on the fringes of political life. In societies where the democratic process
has successfully integrated previously marginalised groups, negotiations have typically
been preceded by some measure of civil strife. In Macedonia, a former Yugoslav
republic, a brief armed conflict in 2001 was followed by an elaborate peace agreement
between the ethnic Macedonian majority and the Albanian minority that effectively
revised the Macedonian constitution to strengthen the political power of the Albanians.
In Kenya, ethnic divisions were highlighted in a wave of widespread violence, mainly
between the Kikuyu and Luo ethnic groups, following the country’s controversial
presidential elections in 2007. Civil strife eventually came to an end with the help of
outside mediation, which brought about a power-sharing agreement whereby Mwai
Kibaki, the incumbent president and a Kikuyu, remained in his post whilst Raila
Odinga, a Luo, assumed the post of prime minister. In Bulgaria, the transition from
communism to democracy was carried out mainly through negotiations between the
old communists and the democratic opposition. Excluded from the negotiations,
however, was the country’s Turkish minority, who went on to form their own political
party, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF). Despite a constitutional ban on
ethnic parties, the MRF was allowed to participate in national elections and won
enough votes to become an influential force in Bulgarian politics. Its political inclusion
was made possible largely as a result of a national effort to overcome inter-communal
tensions that were a legacy of communist-era oppression of the Turkish minority. Yet
another example of a democracy where inter-group conflict still persists is Turkey,
where the government continues to pursue a strategy of assimilation by proscribing the
use of Kurdish in public affairs. Examples of democracies that continue to deny
minority rights to some of its citizens can be found in Western Europe too, notably in
110 Jenny Engström
Greece, where the government refuses to acknowledge the presence of any ethnic
minorities, including a Macedonian one.
Conclusion
Although few would dispute that democracy is currently the political system best suited
for managing plural identities and conflicting interests, the road towards democracy –
democratisation – is more often than not a bumpy one, especially in societies fraught
with inter-communal tension. Neither democracy nor democratisation is a panacea for
ethnic (or religious) minorities, as witnessed by the experience of Eastern Europe’s
Roma population and there is no guarantee that all segments of society will be included
in the political life of the state. Ideally democratisation offers a chance for dissenting
voices to be heard and for minorities (and disgruntled majorities) to challenge policies
they perceive as unjust and discriminatory. Flaws aside, democracy continues to stand
out as a political system that offers the best chance for mediating conflicts non-violently.
The fact that calls for democracy around the world are growing stronger also points to
the fact that people on all continents, regardless of ethnicity or religion, are increasingly
recognising its value.
Further reading
Collier, P. (2009), Wars, Guns and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places (London: Bodley
Head).
Diamond, L. (2008), The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout
the World (New York: Times Books).
Gurr, T. R. (2000), People versus States: Minorities at Risk in the New Century (Washington DC:
United States Institute of Peace Press).
Harris, P. and Reilly, B. (1998), Democracy and Deep-rooted Conflict: Options for Negotiators
(Stockholm: International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance).
Sørensen, G. (2008), Democracy and Democratization: Processes and Prospects in a Changing
World, 3rd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press).
Bibliography
Āgh, A. (1998), Emerging Democracies in East Central Europe and in the Balkans (Cheltenham:
Edward Elgar).
Austin, D. and Gupta, A. (1994), ‘The Politics of Violence in India and South Asia’, in P. Janke
(ed.), Ethnic and Religious Conflicts: Europe and Asia (Brookfield VT: Research Institute for
the Study of Conflict and Terrorism).
Beetham, D. (1998), ‘Democracy and Human Rights: Civil, Political, Economic, Social and
Cultural’, in J. Symonides (ed.), Human Rights: New Dimensions and Challenges (Brookfield
VT: UNESCO and Dartmouth Publishing).
—(1999), Democracy and Human Rights (Cambridge: Polity Press).
Burton, J. (1988), ‘Human Needs versus Societal Needs’, in R. Coate and J. Rosati (eds), The
Power of Human Needs in World Society (Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner).
Collier, P. (2009), Wars, Guns and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places (London: Bodley
Head).
De Nevers, R. (1993), ‘Democratization and Ethnic Conflict’, in M. Brown (ed.), Ethnic Conflict
and International Security (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press).
Di Palma, G. (1990), To Craft Democracies: An Essay on Democratic Transitions (Berkeley CA:
University of California Press).
Diamond, L. (2008), The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies throughout the
World (New York: Times Books).
Hayden, R. (1999), Blueprints for a House Divided: The Constitutional Logic of the Yugoslav
Conflicts (Ann Arbor MI: University of Michigan Press).
Horowitz, D. (1985), Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley CA: University of California Press).
—(1993), ‘Democracy in Divided Societies’, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 4, No. 4, October, 18–38.
Large, J. and Sisk, T. (2006), Democracy, Conflict and Human Security: Pursuing Peace in the
Twenty-first Century (Stockholm: International IDEA).
Linz, J. and Stepan, A. (1996), Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern
Europe, South America, and Post-communist Europe (Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins
University Press).
Parekh, B. (1993), ‘The Cultural Particularity of Liberal Democracy’, in D. Held (ed.), Prospects
for Democracy: North, South, East, West (Cambridge: Polity Press).
Rothstein, R. (1993), ‘Democracy and Conflict’, in E. Kaufman and S. Abed (eds), Democracy,
Peace, and the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner).
Snyder, J. (2000), From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict (New York:
Norton).
Sørensen, G. (2008), Democracy and Democratization: Processes and Prospects in a Changing
World, 3rd ed. (Boulder CO: Westview Press).
Touraine, A. (1998), What is Democracy? (Boulder CO: Westview Press).
Zakaria, F. (1997), ‘The Rise of Illiberal Democracy’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 6, November–
December, 22–43.
10 The causes and consequences of ethnic
cleansing
Erin K. Jenne
Ethnic cleansing refers to ‘the expulsion of an “undesirable” population from a given

territory due to religious or ethnic discrimination, political, strategic or ideological
considerations, or a combination of these’ (Bell-Fialkoff 1993, p. 110). On the most
basic level, it is the deliberate policy of homogenising the ethnic make-up of a territory.
As this definition suggests, ethnic cleansing comprises not only ethnic expulsions and
extermination during war, but also policies of ethnic homogenisation undertaken
during times of relative peace. In strategic terms, it involves the removal of targeted
minorities from a given territory and the subsequent resettlement of members of the
dominant group in the minorities’ abandoned homes and property. In sum, ethnic
cleansing consists of policies of ethnic expulsion and resettlement, which may be
implemented either violently or non-violently. These policies are undertaken with the
purpose of achieving ethno-territorial homogenisation.
The expression ‘ethnic cleansing’ did not enter the modern lexicon until the 1980s,
when Kosovar Serbs publicly accused the Albanian majority of ethnically cleansing the
province. The term was later applied retroactively to the Serb campaign against the
Muslims during the Bosnian war as well as Belgrade’s attempts to empty Kosovo of
ethnic Albanians in the late 1990s. Although the concept itself is relatively new, the
phenomenon to which it refers is as old as human civilisation itself. The ancient
Assyrians used collective deportations to manage internal unrest and rebellions as
early as the thirteenth century BCE; both the Assyrians and the Babylonians exiled
Jewish populations in the seventh and fifth centuries BCE. During and after the Crusades,
Jews were massacred and expelled from Germany, England and France. In South
East Asia, meanwhile, over 100,000 Cham people were driven out of their homes by
the Vietnamese in the late fifteenth century. At the same time, the Roma and Jews
were being expelled from Spain. During the religious wars, the Huguenots were driven
out of France; and hundreds of thousands of Spanish Muslims, or Moriscos, were
exiled from Spain in the early seventeenth century. In nineteenth-century America,
many Native American tribes in the territories were corralled on to reservations under
the policy of ‘Indian removal’. In Haiti, too, tens of thousands of French settlers were
expelled from St Dominique by Haiti’s new leaders, who declared the country an
‘all-black’ nation. Following World War II, as many as 11 million ethnic Germans
were driven out of East European countries on charges of collaboration with Nazi
Germany. Around half a million Ukrainians and Belorussians were exiled from Poland
to the territories of the Soviet Union, while 2 million Poles were transferred from the
Soviet Union to Poland (Wolff 2004, p. 17). Over 12 million people were displaced in
the 1947 partition of India, including as many as a million dead. The 1974 division of
Ethnic cleansing 113
Cyprus into Greek and Turkish regions led to the internal displacement of as many as
200,000 people.
Ethnic cleansing is still practised in the contemporary period. Outside of the Balkans,
hundreds of thousands of ethnic Georgians were expelled from Abkhazia in the early
1990s. In the meantime, hundreds of thousands of Azeris and Armenians were exiled
from their homes during the Nagorno Karabakh war. After Kurdish guerillas were
crushed by Saddam Hussein’s government in the First Gulf War, millions of Iraqi
Kurds fled to Iran and Turkey to escape collective retaliation. In 1994, 500,000 Tutsis
and Hutu political moderates were murdered and expelled from Rwanda in a
coordinated effort by Hutu extremists to eliminate their political opponents. Indeed, it
would appear that violent ethnic cleansing has accompanied almost every deadly
conflict. In peacetime as well, countless programmes of ‘silent ethnic cleansing’ have
been undertaken by political elites to consolidate their hold over a given territory. Such
policies are difficult to monitor, much less prevent or resolve, by the international
community.
Definitions: ethnic cleansing, genocide and population transfers

Ethnic cleansing, genocide and population transfers are often used interchangeably, so
it is worth parsing their meanings. Naimark (2001, pp. 3–4) and Bell-Fialkoff (1993, p.
110) believe that the principal distinctions between these concepts lie in the type and
extremity of ethnic removal. In their view, genocide and population transfers are both
subsets of ethnic cleansing, with population transfers the most moderate form and
genocide the most extreme. Their implied targets are another distinguishing feature.
According to the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide adopted by the
UN General Assembly in 1948, genocide refers to ‘acts committed with intent to
destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group’ (Art. 2). In
contrast, ethnic cleansing and population transfers are designed to move or remove
ethnic groups from a given territory. Because of its focus on human destruction,
genocide is viewed as the most sinister and deadly of the three.
The underlying goals of the three policies constitute a third important difference.
Genocide and ethnic cleansing are undertaken by one side of the conflict to rid the
territory of one or more ethnic groups, while population transfers aim to resolve conflict
through ethnic separation with the implied consent of the conflict parties as well as the
international community (Wolff 2004, p. 13). A final distinction is their ethical and legal
standing. Genocide is a crime under international law, whereas ethnic cleansing and
population transfers are not – although the acts that comprise ethnic cleansing, such as
deportations, are war crimes and crimes against humanity (Waters 2006, p. 4 n. 4).
Nonetheless, it must be said that genocide, ethnic cleansing and population transfers
shade into one another in terms of impact, severity, targets and methods. As Hayden
(1996, p. 736) notes, ‘[p]hysical slaughter enters the picture as an element of ethnic
cleansing, since, after all, it usually takes a great deal of pressure to persuade people to
leave their homes for “homelands” that they might, in fact, never have seen’.
These nuances aside, choosing from among these terms is a politically loaded act
with clear policy implications. Establishing that a campaign of ethnic removal
constitutes genocide (as opposed to ethnic conflict or population transfers) implies a
responsibility by the international community to halt the violence (Power 2002). So it
goes for the distinction between ethnic cleansing and population transfers. Hayden
114 Erin K. Jenne
(1996, p. 734) observes that our enemies engage in ‘ethnic cleansing’ to further their
private interests, while we undertake ‘population transfers’ to save lives and rebuild
peace. The former is used to vilify expulsions by hostile governments, while the latter is
used to legitimise similar policies by friendly governments. Indeed, a cursory
examination of the record shows that the same event can be termed either ethnic
cleansing or population transfer, depending on one’s perspective.
Ethnic cleansing in international law and public opinon

Beginning in the inter-war period, ‘states began experimenting with the exchange of
minority groups as a means of solving the ethnic problems so deeply interwoven into
the changing patterns of political conflict in eastern Europe’ (Office of Population
Research 1947, p. 8). The centuries-long intermingling of ethnic populations in Europe
came to be seen as a problem in light of the turn-of-the-century ideal of national
self-determination under which territorialised national minorities had a right to
self-government. This principle informed the 1919 Allied reconfiguration of Central
and East European borders in the wake of collapsed multinational empires. In some
cases, large minorities were stranded outside the borders of their putative national
homelands, and the Allies dealt with these mismatches by concluding minority treaties
with the new multi-ethnic states. In other cases, however, states were permitted to
approximate a one-to-one nation-state fit through population transfers. The League-
supervised Greco-Turkish and Greco-Bulgarian population exchanges are widely
viewed as a success, since those countries have not engaged in war since the early 1920s.
However, it may be argued that the exchanges merely legitimised Turkey’s expulsions
of ethnic Greeks from the Anatolian peninsula after Greece’s failed invasion. In fact,
the vast majority of the 1.2 million Greek refugees were expelled before the League-
supervised exchanges got under way. Did these transfers facilitate conflict management
or did they simply provide cover for policies of national homogenisation by the Turkish
state?
Large-scale programmes of ethnic cleansing re-emerged after World War II when
millions of Germans and Hungarians were deported from East European countries.
The inter-war population exchanges served as a blueprint for these transfers, most
notably in the case of German minorities. As many as 3 million ethnic Germans were
deported from Czechoslovakia, leading to tens of thousands of deaths and summary
executions in 1945. These actions were retroactively legalised under the 1946 Beneš
Decrees, which sanctioned the forcible exile and expropriation of Germans from the
Sudetenland. Following the mass expulsions, international legal norms began to turn
against population transfers as an acceptable means of conflict resolution. Beginning
with the Nuremberg judgement that Nazi population transfers constituted a war crime,
the policy of involuntary resettlement gradually came to be seen as anathema to the
international community.
During the 1990s Yugoslav wars, population expulsions were given the moniker of
ethnic cleansing in the international press. The 1993 UN Subcommission on the
Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities came out against the
practice, and the subsequent Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Art. 7)
designated population transfers a ‘crime against humanity’. Also in the 1990s, a small
group of security studies scholars began to re-evaluate this technique as a useful device
for conflict resolution (Posen 1993; Mearsheimer and van Evera 1995; Kaufmann 1996,
1998; Downes 2004, 2006). These (mostly) hard-nosed realists have argued that, albeit
costly and morally repugnant, partition and population exchanges may be the only
means of resolving an intransigent conflict in which two or more groups are locked in
mortal combat. On the heels of internecine warfare, neither side can trust that the other
will not take the opportunity to vanquish them if they disarm – thus post-war
reintegration of warring groups is a hopeless and potentially dangerous endeavour. To
the argument that population transfers violate human rights, partition advocates argue
that far worse atrocities would result from failing to partition the groups into separate
territorial enclaves. Kaufmann urged policy-makers to ‘endorse separation’ in conflicts
with significant sectarian violence, ‘otherwise, the processes of war will separate the
groups anyway, at much higher human cost’ (Kaufmann 1998, p. 123). The argument
for population transfers as a conflict management technique clearly turns on whether
they prevent more human suffering than they cause.
The logic of ethnic cleansing

Ethnic cleansing consists of two tactics that can be executed simultaneously or
sequentially. The perpetrators first use force, the threat of force, or other methods of
intimidation to induce members of the targeted group(s) to flee. They then resettle the
newly abandoned homes with displaced members of the dominant group. In this way,
ethnic cleansers create permanent facts on the ground, helping them to consolidate
their territorial claims.
The first step, ethnic removal, involves not only exiling ‘enemy’ groups from the
territory (through induced flight, forced expulsions or mass murder), but also destroying
or purposely defiling their sites of national significance, including graveyards, churches,
monuments and other landmarks that tie the group to the land. In this way, ethnic
cleansers sever both the corporal and symbolic links between the targeted group and
the desired territory. It was not by accident that Serb paramilitaries destroyed Muslim
mosques and burned libraries, manuscript collections and archives that served as the
repositories of Bosnian Muslim national history. This ensured ‘the destruction of
communal memory by the ethnic cleansers’ (Riedlmayer, 2007, p. 117). The centuries-
old Ottoman bridge in Mostar, an important Muslim landmark, was destroyed for
similar reasons. A Croatian militiaman explained the incident to a British reporter: ‘It
is not enough to clean Mostar of the Muslims – the relics must also be removed.’ These
policies of ‘cultural genocide’ are designed to complete the process of ethnic cleansing
by wiping out the group’s national history and erasing all signs of its ties to the territory
(Carmichael 2002; Gallagher 2003; Cigar 1995). Mass rape and forced impregnation
serve as additional methods of ethno-territorial conquest. According to MacKinnon
(2006, p. 145), ‘ethnic rape’ is ‘an instrument of forced exile, to make you leave your
home and never come back … It is rape to shatter a people, to drive a wedge through a
particular community … It is rape as genocide.’
The second step in the ethnic cleansing process is to resettle members of the dominant
group in the homes of the displaced minorities and to replace or repurpose sites of
national significance belonging to the undesired groups. This two-step process can be
observed in most cases of ethnic cleansing, particularly during ethnic civil war. Ethnic
segregation is the predictable result. In the Bosnian war, for example, many Serbs
driven out of the Federation were resettled in the homes of Bosniaks or Croats in
Republika Srpska (RS). Many Bosniaks and Croats expelled from RS were in turn
116 Erin K. Jenne
resettled in the homes of ethnic Serbs who had fled the Federation. Similarly, the Shi’as
of Iraq were driven out of Sunni strongholds and Sunnis from Shi’a neighbourhoods.
Both Sunnis and Shi’as were likewise expelled from Kurdish territory in the north.
Displaced minorities tend not to return to their homes, but to resettle in territories
where they can become part of the local majority. With each step, it becomes increasingly
difficult for the expelled groups to reclaim their homes, livelihoods and national
homeland. The territory has become effectively rebranded for the dominant group in
whose name the campaign was waged.
The difficulty of returning minority refugees or internally displaced persons (IDPs)
to their homes after the war indicates that ethnic cleansing campaigns continue well
beyond the formal peace settlement. Koser and Black (1999, p. 8) note that after war
‘returnees are often actively directed to certain areas, either to strengthen the position
of one party against another, or, as in several recent conflicts such as that in the former
Yugoslavia, as a continuation of “ethnic cleansing”’. The Ottomans, for example,
moved Muslims into newly conquered Balkan territories while simultaneously
transferring Christian communities to Thrace and Anatolia in order to consolidate
control over lands they had already won in battle.
It should also be noted that while ethnic cleansing is usually associated with violence,
it may also be conducted during periods of relative peace – through campaigns of
intimidation, threats of force, or various forms of discrimination. As a general rule,
ethnic war nearly always involves ethnic cleansing, but ethnic cleansing need not involve
ethnic war. Territorial gains are territorial gains, whether begotten under conditions of
peace or war. A key difference is that war can provide cover for extensive ethnic purges
that would be difficult to justify during times of peace. For instance, during the 1999
NATO war, Slobodan Milošević was able to accelerate a decade-long campaign of
‘quiet ethnic cleansing’ in Kosovo to a rapid violent expulsion of Kosovar Albanians
under the cover of NATO bombing.
The drivers of ethnic cleansing

What explains this phenomenon? Some have argued that contemporary ethnic cleansing
is the unique by-product of system-level variables such as modernity, state formation or
national self-determination. According to Bartov (1996, pp. 3–4), the ‘mechanized,
rational, impersonal, and sustained mass destruction of human beings, organized and
administered by states, legitimized and set into motion by scientists and jurists,
sanctioned and popularized by academics and intellectuals, has become a staple of our
civilization’. Also invoking systemic factors, Mann (2005) claims that ethnic cleansing
is the outgrowth of democratic norms under which the demos is equated with ethnos,
thus laying the groundwork for the exclusion of rival ethnic groups, sometimes through
violence. Still others contend that the age of nationalism and the doctrine of national
self-determination both invite and justify policies of ethnic cleansing (Hobsbawm 1995;
Naimark 2001).
A second stream of scholarship identifies grass-roots factors that facilitate ethnic
cleansing. An essentialist line holds that the explosive force of nationalism and
pernicious stereotypes about ‘the other’ fuel popular support for such campaigns. In
this view, grievances from past experiences of victimisation and collective desires for
revenge may lead victims of ethnic cleansing to become perpetrators in later periods
(Lieberman 2006). In a now largely discredited thesis, Goldhagen (1996) argues that the
German people favoured expulsions and extermination of Jews during the 1930s and
1940s due to ‘eliminationist antisemitism’ rooted deep in the German culture.
Interestingly, Goldhagen’s culturalist narrative was written to rebut a social-
psychological explanation of mass participation in the Holocaust. In this account,
Browning (1992) draws explicitly on the work of Stanley Milgram to deconstruct the
motives of individual members of German police reserve units tasked with sending Jews
to concentration camps in Poland. They were ordered to shoot any excess persons who
did not fit on the train cars destined for the camps. Although allowed to opt out of this
task by their superiors, these individuals declined to do so – not out of animus toward
the Jews, but rather out of a desire for social approval and deference to authority.
Alternative grass-roots explanations focus on ecological drivers of conflict, such as
economic competition or social divides between groups. One argument follows that
deeply divided societies – where social, class and ethnic cleavages coincide – are at
greater risk of sectarian violence than more cohesive societies (Horowitz 1985; Kuper
1981; Fein 1993). In an account based on the logic of opportunism and inter-group
competition, Götz (2007) contends that the Reich procured support for the Holocaust
from working-class Germans by redistributing Jewish wealth among ordinary Germans
– parcelling out Jewish furniture to those who had suffered from Allied bombing and
transferring Ukrainian food and French luxury goods acquired by the Wehrmacht
through its foreign wars. In this view, the complicity of ordinary Germans was bought
by wartime elites. Similarly, Gross (2006) describes cases in which Jews who returned to
their homes in Poland after the Holocaust were killed in pogroms organised by their
Polish neighbours. He demonstrates that the Poles were largely motivated out of a fear
of losing their new-found status and wealth that they had appropriated from their
Jewish neighbours. As a general rule, there is a strong tendency for the dominant group
to acquiesce, if not actively participate, in elite-organised campaigns that target ethnic
minorities.
Still other grass-roots arguments focus on mutual enmities stoked by national
symbolism (Kaufman 2001), mutual fears of victimisation during state transition
(Posen 1993), and state institutions that can be used to mobilise people to engage in
violence. Drawing on extensive field work in Rwanda, Straus (2006) concludes that the
genocide in 1994 could not have taken place in the absence of these conditions on the
ground. Others dispute the very notion that ethnic violence is the result of grass-roots
fears of ‘all against all’ – a dynamic strongly suggested by the label ‘ethnic war’. In one
such critique, Mueller (2000, p. 62) contends that the violence and ethnic cleansing in
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Rwanda ‘came about not because people
generally gave in to murderous enmity, but because they came under the arbitrary
control of armed thugs’. Ethnicity, in this view, served as ‘an ordering device or principle
[upon which politicians organised their campaigns], not as a crucial motivating force’.
Although politicians and other leaders routinely recruit paramilitary groups to achieve
their war aims, they quickly and easily lose control of the situation. It follows from this
that ‘a mass of essentially mild, ordinary people can unwillingly and in considerable
bewilderment come under the vicious and arbitrary control of small groups of armed
thugs’ (Mueller 2000, p. 42).
In this view, ethnic cleansing is an elite-driven project rooted in perceived political or
economic imperatives, patronage networks, ideologies of racial purity, or individual
interests in private gain. Such arguments stand in marked contrast to those that focus
on inter-group competition, mutual hatreds and fears as the primary impetus for ethnic
118 Erin K. Jenne
cleansing. Rather than viewing ethnic cleansing and other mass violence as a product of
inter-group dynamics, where groups are assumed to be monolithic actors whose
interests inform elite preferences, elite-based arguments draw a clear distinction between
the responsibilities that ordinary people have in perpetrating the violence and those of
the architects of such campaigns. In this formulation, programmes of ethnic cleansing
are designed by elites – sometimes to benefit the dominant group, sometimes to stabilise
the state, and sometimes to serve their narrow self-interests. For their part, ordinary
people are forced or manipulated into cooperating with such policies – either through
active participation or passive support.
Ethnic cleansing is sometimes undertaken in the interest of state or nation-building.
Pappe (2006) argues, for example, that the destruction of hundreds of Palestinian
villages by Israel in 1947–49 was a deliberate policy of state-building by Israeli elites
and not, as sometimes argued, a defensive response to an earlier wave of Arab–Israeli
violence or fears of Palestinian rebellion. Martin (1998, p. 858) explores the origins of
the Stalin’s programmes of ethnic cleansing in which approximately 800,000 members
of mostly diasporic nationalities were arrested, deported or executed between 1935 and
1938. These operations were undertaken partly to consolidate new national territories
and partly out of suspicions by the Soviet leadership that diasporic nationalities in the
borderlands were disloyal subjects vulnerable to manipulation by outside actors seeking
to undermine the Soviet state.
In other cases, ethnic cleansers may be motivated by ideological convictions or
desires for private gain. Browning and Jurgen (2004) demonstrate, for instance, that the
commitment of Hitler’s inner circle to ‘racial imperialism’, the aim of ridding Central
and Eastern Europe of its inferior races, led the Reich to abandon a relatively mild
programme of ethnic cleansing the Jews from the region to one of exterminating the
Jews as the fortunes of Germany changed during the course of the war. Valentino
(2004, p. 234), too, writes that mass killing ‘is usually conceived of and organized by a
relatively small number of powerful political or military leaders acting in the service of
their own interests, ideas, hatreds, fears and misperceptions – not reacting to the
attitudes or desires of the societies over which they preside’. He adds that ‘[p]erpetrators
do not need widespread social support to carry out mass killing’, negative popular
support or compliance is more critical to the success of such campaigns than active
support by the wider population. Although Valentino focuses specifically on mass
killing, his theory applies equally well to ethnic cleansing. In this view, ethnic cleansing
campaigns are executed to achieve a specific end, including radical political reforms,
seizing and settling territory, and suppressing insurgency. Consistent with this line of
argumentation, Downes (2008) puts forward a strategic theory of mass violence to
explain civilian targeting during war. He contends that targeting civilians as a wartime
strategy is driven by a desperate desire to win the war while minimising the loss of
human life and resources on one’s own side. Straus (2006) likewise argues that the
ethnic cleansing in Rwanda was at least partly due to the hard-line leadership’s attempt
to use mass violence to hold on to power in the face of growing international pressure
to liberalise and democratise.
Naturally, elite and mass-level explanations of ethnic cleansing are not incompatible,
and many authors advance one theory to account for elite policies of ethnic cleansing
and another to explain public willingness to participate in them or permit their
execution.
Conclusion
Ethnic cleansing follows a different logic than genocide. Since ethnic cleansing is
principally aimed at consolidating control over territory, rather than destroying all or
part of an ethnic group, conflicts with extensive ethnic cleansing call for territorial
solutions such as regimes for land- and resource-sharing. They also call for targeted
sanctions and prosecution of individual ethnic cleansers, rather than grass roots solutions
that are aimed at healing societal divisions.
Second, our definition of ethnic cleansing should be broadened to encompass both
violent expulsions and policies of quiet ethnic cleansing undertaken during periods of
peace. This expanded definition should also include not only the exile of unwanted
groups, but also the resettlement of homes and property with members of the dominant
group. This broadened perspective suggests the need for interventions with a broader
mandate than simply ending violent conflict and keeping the peace. Third parties should
instead monitor and sanction policies of territorial aggrandisement – not only during
times of violence, but prior to the outbreak of conflict and following the cessation of
hostilities.
Finally, since ethnic cleansing is the key driver of wartime (and peacetime) segregation,
effective conflict mediation requires an assessment of the extent to which ethnic cleansing
is driven by grass roots fears, hostilities and insecurities, as opposed to elite policies aimed
at territorial conquest. If the former, then ethnic cleansing is an extremely unfortunate
but inevitable by-product of ecological pressures, and the international community
should use population transfers to complete the separation of groups to prevent additional
mass murder and violent expulsions driven by the inexorable logic of sectarian war. If the
latter, then the international community should identify and target the architects of ethnic
cleansing using a mix of legal and economic (and possibly even military) sanctions.
If societal cleavages or political or economic factors on the ground are not the main
impetus of ethnic cleansing, and such policies are instead driven by the agendas of small
groups of elites, then the most effective means of deterring or halting ethnic cleansing is
changing elite behaviour rather than trying to effect large-scale political or economic
changes such as democratisation and economic development (Valentino 2004). Prevention
is, of course, easier than the cure, and the first step in preventing ethnic cleansing
campaigns is monitoring elite behaviour, which might involve examining the statements
and beliefs of influential political elites and powerful groups in transitioning or otherwise-
at-risk societies. An effective early warning system for ethnic cleansing before it comes to
fruition is clearly the most desirable policy response.
Further reading
Naimark, N. M. 2001, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth Century Europe, Cambridge
MA, Harvard University Press.
Valentino, B. A. 2004, Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century,
Ithaca NY, Cornell University Press.
Power, S. 2002, ‘A Problem from Hell’: America and the Age of Genocide, New York, Basic
Books.
Browning, C. R. 1992, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in
Poland, New York, HarperCollins.
Pappe, I. 2006, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Oxford: Oneworld Publications.
Bell-Fialkoff, A. 2005, Ethnic Cleansing, New York, St Martin’s Press.
120 Erin K. Jenne
Bibliography
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Bell-Fialkoff, A. 2005, Ethnic Cleansing, New York, St Martin’s Press.
—1993, ‘A Brief History of Ethnic Cleansing’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 72, No. 3, pp. 110–21.
Browning, C. R. 1992, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in
Poland, New York, HarperCollins.
Browning, C. R. and M. Jurgen. 2004, The Origins of the Final Solution: the Evolution of Nazi
Jewish Policy, September 1939–March 1942, Lincoln NE, University of Nebraska Press/Yad
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Carmichael, C. 2002, Ethnic Cleansing in the Balkans: Nationalism and the Destruction of
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Goldhagen, D. J. 1996, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, New
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Kaufman, S. J. 2001, Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War, Ithaca NY, Cornell
University Press.
Kaufmann, C. D. 1996, ‘Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars’, International
Security, Vol. 36, No. 4, pp. 136–75.
—1998, ‘When All Else Fails: Ethnic Population Transfers and Partitions in the Twentieth
Century’, International Security, Vol. 23, No. 2, pp. 120–56.
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The End of the refugee Cycle: Refugee Repatriation and Reconstruction, Oxford, Berghahn
Books.
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Ivan R. Dee.
MacKinnon, C. 2006, Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues, Cambridge MA,
Harvard University Press.
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Martin, T. 1998, ‘The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing’, Journal of Modern History, Vol. 70,
No. 4, pp. 813–61.
Mearsheimer, J. and van Evera, S. 1995, ‘When Peace means War’, New Republic, 18 December,
pp. 16–21.
Melson, R. 1992, Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the
Holocaust, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
Mueller, J. 2000, ‘The Banality of “Ethnic War”’, International Security, Vol. 25, No. 1, pp.
42–70.
Naimark, N. M. 2001, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth Century Europe, Cambridge
MA, Harvard University Press.
Office of Population Research. 1947, ‘Population Transfers: Facts and Reflections’, Population
Index, Vol. 13, No. 1 (January), pp. 8–11.
Pappe, I. 2006, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Oxford, Oneworld Publications.
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European Perspective’, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 11–29.
11 Genocide
James Hughes
The greatest challenge for understanding genocide is that, while there is almost universal
revulsion today at what the term is presumed to encapsulate – mass killing and group
annihilation – there is in fact no consensus over the definition of what acts are covered,
which groups are protected, or what causes it. Harff and Gurr identified forty-four
cases of state-sponsored mass murder occurring since 1945 that they believe satisfy the
‘general definitional criteria’ of genocide (Harff and Gurr, 1988: 362–5). Academic
scholarship on genocide has grown immensely in response to the Holocaust, postcolonial
conflicts, and civil wars in developing countries. Yet, until the Yugoslavian civil wars of
the early 1990s the international community was reluctant to even attribute the word
genocide to any particular conflict, and generally prefers to use, as in the case of
Rwanda, the more diluted term ‘acts of genocide’.
There are, broadly, two main areas of contention in the question of genocide. First,
there is a lack of agreement over the very definition of the term, and even whether this
matters for how perpetrators should be dealt with. Second, scholars are divided over
the extent to which genocide is strictly a phenomenon of the modern era and linked
with modern state-building and nationalism or is a recurrent feature of human history.
Clearly, the capacity of the modern state to engage in genocide has grown exponentially,
yet how one interprets the modernity of genocide itself will shape the identification of
the principal causes of genocide. This is perhaps the most vigorously disputed area –
between those who seek to find the drivers of genocide in historical events, ancestral
hatreds, extremist ideologies, radical leaders and crisis contingencies and those who
stress the role of social structural determinants such as plural societies, uneven power
relations, group competition and materialist grievances.
Definitions
The term ‘genocide’ was coined by Polish legal scholar Raphael Lemkin in 1943
(Lemkin, 1944), but as early as 1933 he had formulated the concept, proposing that a
new crime of ‘barbarity’ under international law be created to cover acts that included,
among others, ‘acts of extermination’ directed against ‘ethnic, religious or social
collectivities whatever the motive (political, religious, etc.)’. Lemkin’s conceptualisation
developed prior to the Holocaust. The most important sources of inspiration for his
thinking were historical genocides, from the more recent – the genocide and deportation
of Armenians by Turks from the Ottoman Empire in 1915 and after – to earlier patterns
of European colonisation and colonial genocides. Lemkin’s concern with genocide was
intellectually grounded in his study of international law and the concept of universal
Genocide 123
human rights, both of which developed largely from philosophical and legal debates
that began in the sixteenth century over the legitimacy and conduct of European
colonisation. By the time he wrote Axis Rule in 1944 the European present, in the form
of Nazi extermination policies, had caught up with its genocidal past. Nevertheless,
there was a lack of clarity in Lemkin’s original conceptualisation of genocide, for he did
not distinguish it sufficiently from other forms of mass violence but rather understood
it as incorporating ‘massacres, pogroms, actions undertaken to ruin the economic
existence of the members of a collectivity’. He was the first, nevertheless, to stress the
‘existential’ threat posed to a ‘collectivity’ by genocide (Lemkin, 1933). Today, genocide
is most frequently associated with the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis during
World War II – a genocide that is by far the most studied and commemorialised,
including a ‘Holocaust Remembrance Day’ held annually on 27 January (the date of
the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp by Soviet troops) – a date
first commemorated in Germany from 1995 but established as an international
commemoration by the United Nations in 2005.
Despite the Holocaust, embedding the concept of ‘genocide’ in international law was
problematical due to a lack of consensus on its meaning. The Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of Genocide was passed by the UN General Assembly in
December 1948 and became international law in 1951.
The term was not employed in the charter of the International Military Tribunal
established by the Allies under the London Agreement of 8 August 1945. There were
several references to acts of ‘extermination’ including ‘on political, racial or religious
grounds’, mostly but not solely in reference to persecution of Jews, and they were
subsumed within the category of ‘crimes against humanity’ (Nuremburg Trial
Proceedings, 1945a). However, somewhat confusingly, the term ‘genocide’ was
mentioned once in the indictment at the Nuremberg Trials, and that was actually under
count 3, ‘War crimes’, rather than count 4, ‘Crimes against humanity’. The indictment
against leading Nazi officials charged that they ‘conducted deliberate and systematic
genocide, viz., the extermination of racial and national groups, against the civilian
populations of certain occupied territories in order to destroy particular races and classes
of people and national, racial, or religious groups, particularly Jews, Poles, and Gypsies
and others’ (Nuremburg Trial Proceedings, 1945b). The Nuremburg trials therefore
employed the concept before it was actually specified as a crime under international law,
but also narrowly framed it as a war crime perpetrated by states and their agents.
Lemkin’s more expansive conceptualisation was more fully captured by the
Convention. His core idea that genocide posed an ‘existential’ threat to a group was
retained in the Convention, but the range of groups protected was limited. Article II of
the Convention defined ‘genocide’ as ‘acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole
or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such’. Acts covered included:
‘(a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members
of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to
bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) imposing measures intended
to prevent births within the group; (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to
another group’ (United Nations, 1948). Lemkin’s notion that genocide could also be
applied to the extermination of ‘social collectivities’ was dropped, for this was seen as a
euphemism for ‘class war’ by the Soviet Union. The Nuremburg Trials’ inclusion of
‘political’ groups in the crime of ‘extermination’ was also abandoned. The Stalinist
regime of the Soviet Union had conducted in the early 1930s one of the worst (in
124 James Hughes
numerical terms) genocides in history by its extermination of ‘kulaks’ (nominally
‘wealthy peasants’), which included the Holodomor famine genocide in Ukraine
(Conquest, 1987). Due to the Soviet Union’s opposition to the inclusion of ‘political’
groups as a protected category, and to secure the passing of the Convention at the
General Assembly, its framers settled on a narrow definition of the groups covered and
thereby intentionally excluded not only political but also cultural, linguistic and
socioeconomic groups (Whitaker Report, 1985). The Holodomor genocide is an
example of the paradoxical politicisation of genocide that has been shaped by the
narrow framing of the definition in the Convention. The Ukrainian peasantry was not
specifically or disproportionally targeted by Stalinist dekulakisation, which ravaged the
Soviet peasantry in general, but the exclusion of political and social groups from the
definition forced Ukrainian claimants to construct these historical events in national
and ethnic terms.
Because the crime of genocide was not part of international law prior to 1945, trials
of former Nazi officials and collaborators post-Nuremburg have usually involved
charges of ‘crimes against humanity’ with no mention of ‘genocide’. This was the case,
for example, in the most prominent of the post-Nuremburg trials of Nazis, the case of
Adolf Eichmann in Israel in 1961. Eichmann’s fifteen-count indictment cited ‘physical
extermination of the Jews’ among other ‘crimes against humanity’ (Trial of Adolf
Eichmann, 1961). The Genocide Convention envisaged prosecution by the national
courts of the territory where the crime took place, and by an international criminal
court, not universal jurisdiction. For some law scholars the Eichmann trial was part of
the positive process of creating an international legal architecture based on
‘cosmopolitan’ (a.k.a. Western liberal) norms – a process that was accelerated by
judicial activism on crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide during the 1990s
(Benhabib, 2005). Such interpretations are based on a poor historical understanding of
the post-World War II era and ignore the seminal work on genocide by scholars such
as Leo Kuper. It was Kuper’s series of studies in the 1980s that drew attention to the
failure of the international community to prevent and punish genocide (Kuper, 1981,
1984, 1985). Kuper highlighted the perverse ironies inherent in the international
treatment of genocide: the Convention stipulated that genocidal states were expected to
prosecute themselves, and no international tribunal or court had been set up as a
guardian to the Convention; and the UN system itself protected perpetrators, because,
as he put it, ‘the sovereign territorial state claims, as an integral part of its sovereignty,
the right to commit genocide, or engage in genocidal massacres, against peoples under
its rule, and that the United Nations, for all practical purposes, defends this right’
(Kuper, 1982: 161).
Recommendations made by Kuper and others for strengthening international action,
the Convention, and preventing genocide made little progress during the Cold War.
Even internal UN reports were largely ignored. In 1985 the report of the UN Special
Rapporteur on genocide – the so-called ‘Whitaker Report’ – suggested that
‘considerations of both of proportionate scale and of total numbers are relevant’ in
determining acts of genocide, and recommended that ‘political’ and ‘sexual’ groups be
included among those specifically protected by the Convention. Given the weakness of
international and domestic action, many, like Kuper, turned their energies to developing
non-governmental organisations (NGOs) which could monitor conflict, raise media
and public awareness, act as an early warning system and press states and international
organisations such as the United Nations to act. (There are by now a number of such
Genocide 125
advocacy organisations, most notably in the case of genocide: Genocide Watch, http://
www.genocidewatch.org/). The idea of forceful international action to constrain
genocide within states informed the development of the concept of ‘humanitarian
intervention’ by the United Nations or states in concert or alone, but, as we shall discuss
later, this idea became salient in international politics only after the Cold War.
Cold War politics heavily militated against not only a wider definition of the crime
but also its prosecution through universal jurisdiction. Acts of genocide, including
several involving hundreds of thousands of victims, such as those against political
opponents (the murder of some half a million ‘communists’ by the Indonesian military
in 1966–65), against declared ‘class enemies’ (the deaths of some 1.7 million Cambodians
by starvation, overwork, untreated illness or execution during the Khmer Rouge regime
in 1975–79), against ethnic groups (the Tutsi genocide of hundreds of thousands of
Hutus in Burundi in 1972 and the Guatemalan military campaigns of extermination of
at least 200,000 indigenous Maya in 1982) went unpunished. After World War II the
ideology of ‘counter-communism’ led the United States to attempt to forcibly resist the
spread of hostile ‘communist’ regimes, first in North Korea in the early 1950s, and then
in Vietnam in the 1960s and early 1970s. In his later years Robert McNamara, US
Defense Secretary during the Vietnam War, recoiled at the 3.2 million Vietnam dead
(excluding South Vietnamese military) and the near genocidal policies of the United
States: ‘we were trying to do something that was militarily impossible – we were trying
to break the will; I don’t think we can break the will by bombing short of genocide’
(McNamara, 1995). The paranoia of the United States about a ‘domino effect’ in the
spread of communism in South East Asia led it to supporting a number of genocidal
regimes in the region, notably Indonesia’s military rulers, who, having exterminated
their communist opposition in the mid-1960s, massacred some 300,000 East Timorese
seeking an independent state after Portuguese decolonisation in 1975. With US and
Chinese backing the followers of Pol Pot continued to hold the Cambodian seat at the
United Nations long after they had been ousted from power by a Vietnamese military
intervention in 1979 (much criticised in the West). The United States, Australia and all
other Western nations refused aid, trade and diplomatic relations with the new
anti-genocidal Cambodian regime, and the United Nations even imposed sanctions on
it. The international community did not act when Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq
perpetrated genocide against the Kurds in the ‘Anfal’ campaigns culminating in 1988,
which included the use of chemical weapons against civilian areas (Human Rights
Watch, 1993) but intervened only when he attacked oil-rich Kuwait. The many examples
of hypocrisy in the international community highlighted by Kuper and other genocide
scholars were despite the duty imposed by Article I of the Convention on its contracting
states ‘to prevent and to punish’ the crime.
As these cases, and others, demonstrate, during the Cold War the United States, the
Soviet Union, China and their allies tended to be indifferent to genocidal acts perpetrated
by regimes and governments that were considered to be allies, partners or of strategic
importance. After the Cold War, however, some of these genocides were more widely
recognised, notably that in Cambodia. Here lies a contradiction, for having refused to
prevent or prosecute the genocide in Cambodia during the Cold War, the United States
was at the forefront of attempts to institute international criminal proceedings against
Pol Pot when he was ousted from the Khmer Rouge leadership in 1997. Yet the domestic
parties in Cambodia had reached a peace agreement to end civil war in 1991 that
specifically excluded war crimes trials of Khmer Rouge leaders, and former Khmer
126 James Hughes
Rouge Foreign Minister Ieng Sary was even pardoned in 1996. Almost thirty years
later, in 2007, under pressure from the United Nations, Cambodia began the prosecution
of five senior Khmer Rouge leaders, including Ieng Sary, but the indictments give
prominence to various crimes against humanity and downplay genocide (Cambodia,
2007). A legitimate question is why now, and does the prosecution of five individuals
serve any positive purpose? Advocates believe that the trials will be an important step
against impunity – a salient factor in the new international norm of ‘transitional justice’
that emerged in the 1990s – as well as being a forum for disseminating knowledge about
Khmer Rouge crimes. But the trials may also do more political harm than good by
destabilising some of the fundamental compromises undertaken internally to end the
civil war.
After the fall of communism, despite the new openness for action in the international
system, states remained unwilling to fulfil their duties under Article I, as evidenced by
the failure to intervene in a timely manner to prevent genocides in Rwanda (1994) and
former Yugoslavia (1992–96). The changed international climate did, nevertheless,
create opportunities for a new international judicial activism against perpetrators of
war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Since the early 1990s, national
courts, whether of the territory where genocide was committed or elsewhere, and the
ad-hoc international tribunals created by the Security Council, such as the International
Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the International Criminal Tribunal for the
former Yugoslavia (ICTY) have proactively interpreted Article VI of the Convention
as permissive of universal jurisdiction despite the article’s explicit wording. The
conceptualisation of the crime of genocide, however, became confused with other forms
of mass intimidation and violence in the expulsion and transfer of populations during
warfare, captured by the term ‘ethnic cleansing’. This term first came into wide currency
as a result of the conduct of civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 to 1996.
The term, a translation of the Serbo-Croat term etničko čišćenje, is derived from the
Communist Party’s sense of ‘purge’, and in practice covered a spectrum of activities
from non-violent administrative intimidation and discrimination to violent expulsion
and mass murder, and thus is of doubtful value in assessing genocide (Bell-Fialkoff,
1993; Petrovic, 1994). Nevertheless, the powerful rhetorical critique resonating from
this vague term led to its wide employment by diplomats, politicians and especially
journalists. UN General Assembly Resolution 47/121 of 18 December 1992 is very
explicit in its paragraph 9 of the Preamble: ‘…the abhorrent policy of “ethnic cleansing”
[which] is a form of genocide’. Forced transfer and expulsion of populations, however
brutal, generally fall short of a true definition of genocide. In some cases, however, as
in Bosnia and Herzegovina, forced transfer and expulsion of populations may precede
or precipitate genocide. ‘Death marches’ of expelled populations have been a key
feature of many historical cases of genocide, such as the Armenians, the Jews and
Cambodians.
Since the early 1990s, tension has arisen between the judicial activism of UN courts
and national courts, with the former attempting to provide rigorous and substantive
judgements against perpetrators of genocide and other crimes against international
humanitarian law, while the latter tend to make superficial and lightweight claims to
‘customary international law’ (Schabas, 2003). Universal jurisdiction has in fact
involved few genocide prosecutions. Obstacles to prosecution are not just political, but
include not least the problem of proving intent to destroy a group ‘as such’. Outside of
the UN courts, such as the ad-hoc tribunals on former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the
Genocide 127
special court on Sierra Leone and the special tribunal on Cambodia, the small number
of prosecutions by states suggests that such trials are more symbolic and political in
intent rather than serious efforts to prosecute perpetrators and thus deter the crime.
National courts in Rwanda, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Kosovo have also
held trials based on the provisions of the Convention. Several European states have
prosecuted government ministers, military officers and individuals for genocides that
occurred in other states (notably Germany in cases relating to Bosnia and Herzegovina,
and Belgium in cases relating to Rwanda).
The Rwanda case illustrates many of the problems inherent in prosecuting the crime
of genocide. This genocide arose when a long-running civil war in an ethnically divided
society, with a majority Hutu and minority Tutsi population in conflict, escalated in
1994 and triggered a Hutu elite mobilisation for the annihilation of the minority group.
When the mainly Tutsi-dominated Rwanda Patriotic Front came to power in the
aftermath of the genocide the mass punishment of perpetrators was made possible. A
retrospective genocide law was passed in 1996, but with some 120,000 accused in
detention the legal system in what was already a weak state simply could not cope. The
sheer scale of potential cases in Rwanda meant that to prosecute the suspects by normal
legal measures would have taken more than 100 years. A small number (eighty-one) of
the highest-level suspects were arrested, detained and tried by the ICTR, of whom, by
2009, just twenty-three were convicted (for the cases see http://www.ictr.org). To deal
with the case backlog in Rwanda a radical approach was taken. A special law of 2002
established a grass-roots community justice system (the gacaca ‘courts’) with minimal
legal process (or protection) for judging the ordinary genocidiares. Some 12,000 such
courts, involving hundreds of thousands of local participants, have judged and speedily
convicted the low-level suspects, although the process has raised concerns about lack of
due process and the role of revenge and score-settling.
Important developments in the prosecution and of the legal concept of genocide
emerged from the ad-hoc International Criminal Tribunals established to deal with
cases of Rwanda and Yugoslavia. Technically, the first head of government to be
convicted of genocide was Pol Pot in 1979 (by a ‘revolutionary tribunal’ of the Vietnam-
backed Cambodian regime), though this was in absentia and he died before being
brought to justice. The first head of government to be convicted and imprisoned for
genocide is former Rwandan Prime Minister Jean Kambanda (1998), who pleaded
guilty. In the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina high-level Serbian officials were indicted
by the ICTY for genocide or complicity to commit genocide, including the first sitting
head of state, FRY President Slobodan Milošević (2001). Bosnian Serb leader Radovan
Karadzić was originally indicted for genocide in 1995 but was arrested and put on trial
only in 2008.
One of the brutal characteristics of the civil wars in Yugoslavia was the systematic
use of rape against women. By the mid-1990s this type of rape was increasingly being
analysed by legal scholarship and in UN reports on conflict within the lens of
international legal instruments such as the Genocide Convention (Chinkin, 1994). The
Akayezu decision by the ICTR in September 1998 illustrates some of the forwards–
backwards contradictory legal development. This case established the precedent that in
a context of mass violence systematic rape is an act of genocide when it is designed to
‘prevent births within a group’ (ICTR, 1998). Equally, the ICTR compounded existing
confusion over the definition of a protected group under the Convention by reaffirming
a Soviet-influenced definition of ‘group’. Based on its reading of the travaux
128 James Hughes
préparatoires of the Genocide Convention (http://www.ictr.org/ENGLISH/cases/
Akayesu/judgement/akay001.htm, n. 96) it pronounced that protection extended only
to ‘stable’ groups that are:
constituted in a permanent fashion and membership of which is determined by

birth, with the exclusion of the more ‘mobile’ groups which one joins through
individual voluntary commitment, such as political and economic groups.
Therefore, a common criterion in the four types of groups protected by the
Genocide Convention is that membership in such groups would seem to be normally
not challengeable by its members, who belong to it automatically, by birth, in a
continuous and often irremediable manner.
(ICTR, 1998)
The court reaffirmed not only a politicised reading of ‘group’, but also a meaning that
is archaic, seemingly oblivious to the fact that all groups are socially constructed.
The Krstic decision of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
in August 2001 concerned events in the UN-designated ‘safe haven’ of Srebenića in
August 1995. Bosnian Serb forces under General Ratko Mladić pressed the outnumbered
UN and Bosnian Muslim forces to surrender. Many tens of thousands of Bosnian
Muslim civilians and soldiers were taken prisoner under guarantees of safety, but at
least 7,000 Bosnian Muslim males approximating to fighting age were separated out
and subsequently murdered. By judging Srebenica to be an act of genocide the ICTY
took up the recommendation of the Whitaker Report and established the precedent
that the reference in the Genocide Convention to ‘in whole or in part’ essentially meant
instances when ‘the alleged perpetrator intended to destroy at least a substantial part of
the protected group’ (ICTY, 2001).
Arguably, the international adjudication on the genocidal aspects of the international
and internal armed conflicts of the 1990s has been more backward-looking than
directional. On the one hand, the tribunals significantly expanded the definition of
genocide by widening the interpretation of acts considered to fall under the intention to
destroy the ‘group as such’. On the other hand, they reaffirmed a politicised and
restrictive understanding of ‘group’ in evaluating who is protected by the Convention.
The contemporary conceptualisation of the act of genocide has also been strongly
influenced by the much looser formulations of Lemkin in the 1930s, thus confusing the
existential threat to a group with other forms of ‘barbarity’ in warfare and armed
conflict such as massacre and mass rape. The Rome Statute establishing the International
Criminal Court (ICC) in 1998 did not develop the concept any further, and merely
incorporated the definitional part of the genocide convention verbatim in its Article 6.
Illustrating some progress in international law since Nuremburg, the statute did,
however, establish genocide as the most serious of the crimes of concern to the
international community under its jurisdiction (Rome Statute, 1998).
The politicisation inherent in action to prevent genocide became more salient in the
international community in the wake of the Yugoslav civil wars. There was a brief
interlude of flirtation in some Western states with the doctrine of ‘humanitarian
intervention’, the tenets of which were most succinctly stated by UK Prime Minister
Tony Blair during the Kosovo crisis: ‘the principle of non-interference must be qualified
in important respects. Acts of genocide can never be a purely internal matter’ (Blair,
1999). Two recent cases involving claims of genocide illustrate many of the dilemmas of
Genocide 129
intervention and the problem of politicisation and state interests: Kosovo and Darfur.
US President Bill Clinton asserted that NATO’s military intervention in Kosovo in
1999, subsequently approved by the United Nations, ‘stopped deliberate, systematic
efforts at ethnic cleansing and genocide’ (Clinton, 1999). Much controversy surrounds
the motives for this intervention and whether the claim of genocide was employed by
NATO states to legitimise a war pursued against Serbia’s Milošević regime for other
political and strategic reasons. There have been no indictments at the ICTY for genocide
in Kosovo. NATO’s intervention may have been intended to stop potential genocide
against Kosovar Albanians, but it also allowed Albanian pogroms which caused violent
ethnic cleansing of the vast bulk of the Kosovar Serb population (some 250,000 people).
In the case of Sudan’s Darfur region, the divisions in the international community
over how to respond are even more starkly apparent. This was the first major test case
for the efficacy of the newly appointed (in 2004) UN Special Adviser on the Prevention
of Genocide. The first Special Adviser (2004–07), Juan E. Mendez, an internationally
distinguished human rights and transitional justice advocate, struggled to have Darfur
classified as genocide. The United Nations estimate that 300,000 people have died in a
six-year internal armed conflict starting in 2003, the bulk through hunger and disease,
and more than 2 million more have been displaced. A UN report on Darfur of 2005
found that the Sudanese government was not pursuing a policy of genocide, though
war crimes were rampant in the conflict, and it recommended ICC prosecutions in that
vein (United Nations, 2005). Several Sudanese leaders have been indicted by the ICC,
including the first sitting head of state, President Omar al-Bashir. Al-Bashir was, in
fact, charged in July 2008 with genocide and crimes against humanity, with the
indictment alleging he orchestrated systematic killings, rape and deportation by
Janjaweed militia groups against ethnic minorities. The ICC prosecutor, Luis Moreno-
Ocampo, who was formerly an experienced prosecutor of military human rights abuses
and war crimes in Argentina, declared that the main genocidal weapons in Sudan were
‘rape, hunger, fear’ and ‘ Al Bashir does not need gas chambers, bullets or machetes.
This is Genocide by attrition’ (Moreno-Campo, 2008). The credibility of the ICC has
been challenged, however, by the fact that only Africans have been indicted. The Darfur
case illustrates the ways in which the claim of genocide is politicised. Mamdani has
persuasively argued that it was not genocide but a bloody civil war (initially not
involving the government) between rival groups competing for land in a context of
drought-enforced population movements. The political pressures to declare it as
genocide arose from the Bush Administration’s ‘global war on terror’ and demonisation
of the government of Sudan, and guilt among US opinion makers at a perceived failure
to do ‘something’ in Rwanda. Colin Powell, then US Secretary of State, argued in June
2004 that Darfur did not meet the criteria of genocide, but by September he declared
Darfur was genocide and the government of Sudan ‘bore responsibility’ (Mamdani,
2009: 6, 24–5, 67–70). Prunier, an influential writer on Rwanda’s genocide could only
ambiguously describe Darfur as a ‘quasi-genocide’. In August 2009 the African Union
rejected the genocide claim and announced that its member states would not enforce
the ICC indictment.
Causes
A formidable problem in the study of genocide is to account for its very occurrence. For
decades scholars have debated the causes and the motivations of the perpetrators.
130 James Hughes
Today, most scholars reject as unsatisfactory accounts of genocide that attribute its
cause to any single process or event trigger. Factors such as historical, ethnic, and
religious enmity between groups in a particular territory may provide a context where
objective, structural conditions such as redistributions of power, a deteriorating
economic situation, rising social inequalities, and sudden demographic changes may
contribute to tensions between groups. But such group tensions have been historically
and are today fairly ubiquitous and they do not deterministically lead to genocide.
Given the ubiquity of group tensions across time, space and cultures, one might say
that what is surprising is that the occurrence of genocide is relatively rare. This makes
the predictive power of genocide scholarship poor. The study of genocide stresses the
role of catalysts and additional fomenting drivers in contexts of increased tensions and
raised anxieties. Studies give prominence to the presence of charismatic leaders or
‘conflict entrepreneurs’ who mobilise groups around exclusivist, racist ideologies, and
who communicate a discourse and programmatic direction for mass inter-group
violence. However, there is little agreement on why certain contexts or triggers turn
mass violence into genocide in some cases and not others.
The two major perspectives in the study of genocide are the structural or functional
approach and the ‘intentionalist’ approach. The connection of genocide with modernity
is, to be more precise, an association with the origins and development of the modern
state. In this sense, it provides a structural explanation of its cause. For Bauman, there
is an ‘elective affinity’ between genocide and ‘modern civilisation’, which hinges on the
organisational capacities of the modern bureaucratic state for social engineering
(Bauman, 1989). The association of genocide with the state builds on the seminal work
of Arendt on the nature of the totalitarian state as a twentieth-century phenomenon,
with its capacity to draw on modern technology and communications for mass
mobilisation of society, and on the role of genocide and terror as part of its ideological
logic (Arendt, 1951). Twentieth-century genocide, notes Fein, ‘is virtually always a state
crime – not a collective outburst, a riot or communal violence’ (Fein, 2001). The state-
of-the-art techniques and organisational mode of genocide thus become frames for
understanding it. The Holocaust was characterised by systematised coercive channelling
of targeted groups to conveyer-belt mass murder, organised akin to an industrial grand
projet. Austrian architects and German engineering firms constructed the ‘death
factories’, as Arendt termed the extermination camps. Attempts by genocide scholars to
theorise and develop typologies have not moved beyond the linkage of state and genocide
(and it is nearly always a totalitarian or authoritarian state that they have in mind). Fein,
for instance, developed a typology of genocides in which she identified four types:
ideological, retributive, developmental or despotic (Fein, 1990). Chalk and Jonassohn
distinguished between those that seek to implement an ideology, eliminate a threat (real
or perceived), acquire wealth, or spread terror, while also arguing for a much looser
definition that included social and political groups (Chalk and Jonassohn, 1990).
The attempt to link genocide with nationalism has necessitated a further retraction
into history. Mann fixes the relationship between genocide and the modern state in the
nineteenth century, shifting the explanation away from an emphasis on the totalitarian
state and the notion of the Holocaust as the ultimate form of genocide. He points to the
role of nationalist and democratisation ideologies that emerged largely in the middle of
the nineteenth century in generating organic conceptions of the nation and the state.
Nationalism entwined the demos with the dominant ethnos, leading to forms of
democratic nation-state-building that, according to Mann, produced wholesale
Genocide 131
inter-group violence. This he termed the ‘dark side of democracy’ (Mann, 2005).
Critiques of Mann argue that he has revealed the ‘dark side’ of the nation-state, not
democracy, but this deflects from Mann’s robust use of historical evidence to
demonstrate the interdependent origins of exclusivist nationalist ideologies in
democratic modern state-building, and of the role of this kind of ideologically motivated
violence in the pre-totalitarian state era.
The relationship between genocide and modern state formation is retracted even
further into history by Levene, who argues that the earliest genocides occur in a small
coterie of states at the forefront of the modern revolution from the sixteenth century to
the eighteenth – England (the conquest and settlement of Ireland and other colonies),
revolutionary France (the repression of the Vendée revolt), and the United States
(extermination of native Americans). Moreover, these genocides adhere to the same
diverse forms as more recent genocides – with racial, ethnic, religious and political
factors playing a role. For Levene, genocide should be understood as an intrinsic part
of the historical process of modernisation. The birth of the modern state during the Age
of Enlightenment occurred in parallel with the formation of the international system.
(Its birth is generally dated to the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648.) Geopolitical and
economic competition between states in an increasingly internationalised context drove
a race for modernisation which impelled some states to target for genocide populations
perceived to be a threat or an obstacle to their power. The success of the most advanced
modernising states – England, France, the United States – was founded on genocide.
This success had demonstration effects on other modernising and colonising powers,
for which genocide often became a response to uneven historical development. For
Levene, modern genocides are most likely to occur in states undergoing a systemic crisis
where the dominant ideology favours a radical and speedy modernising social
transformation (the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Germany after World War I,
Stalinist Russia in the 1930s) (Levene, 2005a, and 2005b). A mentality of betrayal by a
targeted group is a powerful undercurrent in such crises: the ‘stab in the back’ by Jews
in Germany in 1918–19, the kulaks’ ‘grain strike’ in 1927–28, the Armenians as an
‘enemy within’ in 1915, the Tutsi insurgency against Rwanda in 1994.
For classic studies of genocide, however, such as those by Kuper and others, the
focus on modernity and the state as the key factors of causation is too restrictive. As
Kuper’s famous aphorism about genocide put it, ‘the word is new, the crime ancient’
(Kuper, 1981). Kuper argued that the essential structural base for genocide is the plural
society based on persistent and pervasive cleavages between its segments. Such societies
have a variety of synonyms: deeply divided societies, communally fragmented societies,
multi-ethnic societies, composite societies, segmented societies and internally colonised
societies, and so on. The strong historical correlation between genocidal conflicts and
plural societies (as for example in India on partition, or in Bangladesh, or in Rwanda
and Burundi) suggested a symbiotic relationship. This is not to say that genocide is
inevitable in plural societies, as their history shows otherwise, but only that the presence
of a diversity of racial, ethnic and/or religious groups that are politically, economically,
socially and/or culturally distinct, organised and competing as segments offers the
necessary conditions for domestic genocide. In extremis the plural society is characterised
by systemic inequalities, discrimination and segregation. Such societies are often
polarised into dominant and subordinate groups, with rigidity in power distribution
that reflects the group inequality. Conflict tends to follow the lines of cleavage and
inequality, generating zero-sum politics where grievances can be generalised into
132 James Hughes
systemic challenges. These structural conditions are likely to be conducive to genocidal
conflict because they facilitate the framing of scapegoats, direct mass violence against
collectivities and allow whole communities of the ‘enemy’ group to be targeted for
annihilation.
The ‘intentionalist’ studies stress the role of radical, fundamentalist, usually
apocalyptic, ideologies in fomenting genocide. Intent must be organised and systematic,
not an individual spontaneous epiphenomenon. Attributing intention to destroy whole
groups of people is highly dangerous, as it can itself result in crude stereotyping. For
Semelin, ideologies of genocidal intent are concerned with ‘identity, purity and security’
(Semelin, 2007). These are, in essence, ideologies of racial superiority based on the
construction of ‘us versus them’ antagonistic relationships between groups, notions of
insiders and outsiders, with destructive paranoid fantasies of mass violence and
conspiracy theories framing the ‘other’ as ‘enemies within’. Developments in the arts
and sciences in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – Darwinism and
eugenics, research on disease and its causes (vermin, contamination, bacteria and
bacilli), and the concern with ‘national character’ in history – coincided with the rise of
nationalist ideologies that stressed the organic concept of the state, people, culture and
territory. Stone refers to this phenomenon as ‘biopower’ (Stone, 2008). This was also an
era of mass epidemics in the growing urban centres. The obsession within racist
ideologies on finding scapegoats, the excessive valuing of ethnic authenticity and purity,
denouncing ‘mixing’ and defending against contamination from ‘outsiders’ to the
group resonated with society-wide phobias. But it would be a mistake to connect the
dehumanising frames inherent in genocide to one historical era. Dehumanisation,
whatever the time or context, necessitates the use of non-human ascriptive labels: Nazi
extermination of Jewish ‘vermin’, Soviet ‘liquidation’ of ‘kulak spiders’, Pol Pot’s
crushing of ‘worms’, the Hutu killing of ‘cockroaches’.
History suggests that it is not only structure or a crisis/war time context that is
important for the occurrence of genocide but also that charismatic leadership is pivotal.
For some it is so pivotal that the crime is named for the leader: ‘Hitler’s Holocaust’,
‘Stalin’s Great Terror’. For genocide is not only infused with apocalyptic fears but is
orchestrated by a messianic design for the remaking of society, the state and the wider
world, whatever the cost. The impetus may come from intellectual leaders – Cato’s
constant plea for Rome to destroy its strategic enemy, Carthage (‘Carthago delenda
est’), Gokälp’s romanticising of the Anatolian Turks as an authentic core ethnie for
national regeneration; it may involve a leader deluded by a ‘divine mission’ to transform
the nation – Cromwell, Hitler; and revolutionary leaders bent on rapid social
transformation – Stalin’s ‘Year of the Great Turn’, Pol Pot’s ‘Year Zero’; or it may
simply reflect a broader elite’s racism and strategic anxieties – Jefferson’s and Jackson’s
framing of native Americans as obstacles to US expansion, and US counter-communism
during the Cold War.
Mass society has also its role to play. The logistics of organising the deportation to
extermination camps of some 6 million Jews, 1 million Sinti and Roma, and hundreds
of thousands of other targeted groups (homosexuals, communists, trade unionists) by
the Nazis between 1939 and 1945 required societal involvement on an immense scale.
The genocide of the Jews in Eastern Europe also in many cases was characterised by
barbaric personalised killing (especially in Latvia, Poland, Belorussia and Ukraine) not
dissimilar to the immediacy of the machete-wielding goriness of the Rwanda genocide
of 1994. The study of process allows us to differentiate between forms of participation,
Genocide 133
violence and barbarity that precede or precipitate genocide, and genocide proper.
Studies of the participatory process, such as Goldhagen on the Holocaust, or Prunier
on Rwanda, illustrate that genocide, whether perpetrated by a technologically advanced
modern bureaucratic state like Nazi Germany or a relatively undeveloped rural society
like Rwanda, requires mass mobilisation (Goldhagen, 1996; Prunier, 1995). It is the
mass of ‘ordinary’ citizens who become engaged. This may generally involve assisting
the state with the process of identification, exclusion, dehumanisation and ultimately
extermination. Equally, we should not overlook the role of envy, resentment and greed
in grass-roots genocide, as Gross’s study of the murder of the Jews of Jedwabne by their
Polish neighbours in 1941 reminds us (Gross, 2001). Sometimes, as in Nazi Germany,
most citizens will be insulated by one or more removes from the actual killing, but
Rwanda was a case of mass complicity in mass killing. Although separated by fifty
years and a huge disjuncture in levels of modernity, the kill rate in pre-modern Rwanda
also significantly exceeded that of the peak period in the Nazis’ industrial extermination
process. (Estimates indicate 500,000–800,000 Rwandan Tutsi were murdered over three
and a half months in April–July 1994, compared with some 400,000 Hungarian Jews
murdered at Auschwitz in April–June 1944.) Modern forms of mass communication
provide an immediate translation of leadership ideology to mass society, a facilitation
of command and control of the process and a capacity for the instantaneous repetition
of propaganda for emulation that are among the most distinctive features of genocides
in the twentieth century. Even in undeveloped Rwanda the process was largely
orchestrated by radio. By the late twentieth century technological advances in mass
communications had become not only a significant part of the causation of genocide
but are also critical to its disclosure, if not prevention and punishment, through the
publicity of mass media (for example, in the Balkans, Rwanda and Darfur) and the use
of communications technology to internationally track, detain and build a trial case
against suspected perpetrators.
But how far can we plausibly pursue historical retraction in the study of genocide? By
the modern criteria of what constitutes genocide, there is no logical reason to determine
it as a modern phenomenon. Baumann, Arendt, Mann and Levene, and others, offer us
good grounds for understanding why genocides occurred in the particular historical
eras that concern them. There may be no particular relationship between genocide and
the twentieth century, but equally, as Kuper reminds us, there is no logical reason for
the modern definitions to exclude cases from the pre-modern or even ancient era (for
example, Mongol massacres across Eurasia in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
Caesar’s destruction of ‘barbaric’ Gallic civilisation, the Roman republic’s destruction
of Carthage). The lessons from the distant past remain of value. After all, Thucydides’
Melian Dialogue concerning the Athenian Empire’s genocidal annihilation of Melos in
416 B.C. – a case not unlike Srebenića – frequently features in modern US and UK
military officer training on war crimes and genocide. This reminds us that genocide is a
recurrent feature of war. To be precise, genocide characterises those wars where the
‘laws and norms’ of war have been refuted by one or other party. The decision to deny
an opponent in a conflict (whether inter-state war or internal armed conflict) the
legitimacy and protection afforded by the laws and norms of war is generally a strategic
decision, and is one that is often configured by racism and/or religious zeal. Such
behaviour is nearly always reciprocated by other parties to a conflict, as is evident on a
grand scale from the responses to Hitler’s direction of a race war against Slavs on the
eastern front, and Japanese genocidal acts in South East Asia. There are numerous
134 James Hughes
historical cases of anti-colonial resistance, guerrilla wars and insurgencies where states
refuse to recognise armed resistance as being legitimate, and refuse to comply with the
combatant–noncombatant distinction in the use of force, thus leading to war crimes
and indiscriminate civilian casualties. The decision can also arise, however, from
tactical responses to resistance, military frustration and opportunities for rape and
plunder (through the siege of a city, for example: the British army’s sacking of Badajoz
in 1812; the Japanese army’s ‘Rape of Nanking’ in 1937; the Wehrmacht’s obliteration
of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944; the Russian military assault and destruction of Grozny
by aerial bombing in late 1994–early1995, and many others).
The relationship between military culture and genocide has been most extensively
studied in the case of Germany. The German Empire’s displacement and extermination
of the Herero and Nama peoples at the beginning of the twentieth century (1904–07) in
what is today Namibia is often represented as the ‘first’ modern genocide. Hull locates
the intentionality for ‘absolute destruction’ (genocide in this case) within the
‘developmental logic’ of German military culture, which encouraged a doctrinal fixation
on a strategy of ‘annihilation’ and the overriding ‘military necessity’ to achieve victory
at all costs through extreme solutions. The doctrine laid the foundations of what
became ‘total war’ in World War II: rapid and unrestrained action against an enemy,
without distinction of civilians or soldiers, including a repertoire of savagery – of laying
waste, reprisals, summary justice, mass killings, even genocide (Hull, 2005). Not for the
first time, however, a people were annihilated less by direct killings than by forced
starvation and neglect in concentration camps.
But how distinctively brutal was German military culture? Parallels could be drawn
with other contemporaneous episodes of systematic mass killing by the military, such as
the US repression of the Philippines rebellion (1899–1902). There was certainly
murderous neglect by the British military and civil authorities of Boer civilians who died
by the tens of thousand in concentration camps during the ‘Boer War’ (1900–02). Race
is an obvious vital point of distinction in explaining the different levels of barbarity or
restraint and deathly outcomes. The Herero and Nama were black. The US pursued a
colonial ‘race war’ where Filippinos were generally dehumanised, akin to blacks and
native Americans in the United States proper (Kramer, 2006). The US military’s
savagery in crushing resistance in the Philippines differed little from the German military
except that the scale was greater – some half a million war casualties, and perhaps as
many again perished through disease and neglect. Moreover, US military policy had
direct antecedents in the genocidal campaigns against native American peoples. In
contrast, the comparative British restraint during the Boer War was rather exceptional,
and can be attributed to the fact that the Boers were white descendants of Europeans.
Distinguishing a brutal exceptionalism in German military culture is myopic.
Military culture and behaviour can be more appropriately disaggregated into forms
which generally accept the laws and norms of war and those which do not. Military
practices developed by the colonial powers to combat anti-colonial resistance in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – concentration camps for whole populations,
relocation and displacement of peoples, land seizures, all punctuated by massacres and
occasionally genocide, fall into the latter category. This bifurcation of military culture
continued to be evident in the military repertoire of what was later in the twentieth
century termed ‘counter-insurgency’. The racism and brutality of British military policy
against the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya and the Chinese communist insurgency in
Malaya, French policy against the Algerian revolt and later US policy in Vietnam built
Genocide 135
on lessons learned in the nineteenth century. A similar pattern is evident also in another
great European colonial power, Russia. It is unsurprising that Russian military vehicles
in the military campaigns in Chechnya in 1994–96 and 1999–2004 often bore the legend
‘Ermolov’, for General Ermolov’s genocidal campaigns against the peoples of the north
Caucasus in the 1820s fit well within the overall pattern of practices of military conquest
established by other European colonial powers.
The evolution of a culture of non-restraint and non-discrimination in German
military doctrine undoubtedly contributed to German complicity in the Armenian
genocide in 1914–18 in which at least a million Armenians were murdered, starved or
died from neglect and forced marches in a campaign of deportation and extermination
pursued by the Ittihadist Turkish military regime determined to build an exclusivist
Turkish nation out of the collapsing Ottoman Empire. The Armenian case is perhaps
the best, but far from being the only, illustration of the state-enforced collective
amnesia, censorship and self-censorship that often surrounds genocide. States rarely
promote a historical narrative of their genesis and development that throws light on
genocidal episodes. Post-World War II Germany is a notable exception to this rule, as
the study of the Holocaust features prominently in the educational curriculum from an
early age, and the German state has made immense efforts to compensate and
commemorate victims. In sharp contrast, other European colonial powers, notably
Britain, France, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands, have yet to undergo a
Vergangheitsbewaltigung (actively coming to terms with the past) as pervasive as that of
post-war Germany. In the case of Turkey, however, the censoring of the past has
reached heights where not only careers are threatened but prosecution, forced exile and
murder face those who recognise the Armenian genocide. Conscious of the shame
attached to the term genocide, successive Turkish governments have pressed foreign
states, including the United States and many European states, into using alternative
terminology such as the ‘tragic events of 1915’ to disguise the genocide. The use of
euphemisms and metaphors by perpetrators to cloak genocide is not uncommon, and
to some extent could be understood as reflecting shame. The minutes of the Wannsee
Conference of 1942, where the Nazis organised the ‘Final Solution’ to the ‘Jewish
Question’, referred to ‘emigration’ and ‘transportation’ to the east. Stalin spoke of the
‘liquidation of the Kulaks as a class’. Truman referred to the atom bombs dropped on
Japan as a ‘rain of ruin’, whereas RAF Bomber Command labelled its mass killing of
German civilians in World War II as ‘dehousing’.
The discussion of the causation of genocide so far has largely focused on the question
of threat perception, or what realists term the ‘security dilemma’ – whether and how
states or dominant ethnie (and they could be majorities or minorities) perceive other
groups to be a threat that requires the mass physical extermination of that group. The
threat is generally claimed to be one that is posed to a state-building project, and by
extrapolation to the geopolitical power of a state vis-à-vis other states. These are
interdependent existential threats. The state-building group fears that the purity and
power of its state is threatened by the presence of a hostile group, to which the answer
is to annihilate that group. Focusing on this formula, with the state as the unit of
analysis, overlooks other significant dynamics and rationale for genocide. The threat
perception may also be ethnic, cultural, or religious and assume transnational forms.
The emergence of a transnational ‘globalised’ form of Islamist extremism since the
mid-1990s, as most clearly articulated by the militant Salafism of al-Qaeda, has
employed claims of ‘massacres’ of Muslims in diverse places, including Lebanon,
136 James Hughes
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Chechnya, Kashmir, Somalia, Burma et al. to legitimise an
armed struggle against the ‘Judeo-Christian alliance’ of the United States, Israel and
the ‘West’ (Bin Laden, 1996).
The materialist rationale for genocide might be often quite narrow and explicit – land
greed, conquest and forced seizure, and settler colonialism. Recent scholarship on
genocide has more systematically and rigorously analysed and highlighted Lemkin’s
interest in the connection between genocide and colonialism (Moses, 2008). A persuasive
case has been made for the colonial ‘land-grabbing’ origins of the modern conception
of genocide. A pattern of genocide has emerged historically in places where land greed
has become infused with religious bigotry, and where the racist and religious ideologies
of coercive colonial conquest combine with settler colonialism (Kiernan, 2007).
European philosophers have debated since the sixteenth century on the morality of
colonial occupation and barbarism, including the physical and ‘cultural’ genocides of
indigenous societies versus their rights – all conducted under the rubric of the mission
civilisatrice (Fitzmaurice, 2008). Historically, settler colonists and the settler colonial
mentality of forced acquisition have been the driving forces for the dehumanisation and
displacement of peoples, the logical conclusion of which is genocide. The interaction of
religion and the interests of settler colonists is most illuminating when the core elements
of both are the basis for an overriding state ideology, as in the US ideology of
‘providence’ and later ‘manifest destiny’, and the Zionist biblically rooted claims to
Palestine. In these and other cases genocidal massacres were employed as a terrorising
land-clearing device. While state leaderships have often attempted to disguise the
motivations of racism and religious bigotry within the more legitimate ideological
wrappings of security or national interests, it is generally only the exceptionally fanatical
leader who openly expresses clarity of genocidal intent. Cromwell saw his massacres of
the Irish as a ‘judgement of God’ on ‘Papists’. The Cromwellian attributed slogan ‘to
Connaught or Hell’ captured the genocidal logic. Hitler’s demand for ‘living space’ for
Germany in the east also had racial and ideological ends – the ‘obliteration of Jewish
Bolshevisation’. Yet even great democrats can articulate deeply genocidal instincts.
How different the Jefferson Memorial would look if it inscribed his damnation of the
native Americans: ‘to pursue them to extermination’. To be fair to Jefferson, this and a
few comments of similar ilk were reluctantly made in the aftermath of massacres of
settlers by native Americans, and, unlike many of his contemporaries, Jefferson
recognised that genocide was part of the ‘Anglo’ culture of colonial occupation, from
Ireland to Asia. For some scholars, ethnic competition for land was a factor in the
Rwanda genocide, as it is in Darfur. A sole focus on threat perception and security
dilemmas, however, distracts us from the role of state ambitions and material interests.
Elites may exaggerate a threat and thereby provide a discourse to legitimise acts which
may, in fact, have an ulterior motive, whether it is the pursuit of material interests –
seizing and colonising lands from another group – or imposing ideological hegemony
– as in racial purity, or to counter communism.
Conclusion
Explanatory frameworks for understanding genocide are weak both as regards the
looseness of definitions and determining its causes. Examining the main genocides of
the modern era – say since the French revolution – reveals a diverse list of states from
all regions of the world, representing all cultures, all ideological trends, rich and poor,
Genocide 137
and all regime types from democracies, to empires, authoritarian and totalitarian states.
There is much of merit in the observation that genocidal states/societies have been the
ones with the greatest complexes about security and position internationally, and
political and cultural coherence internally. A focus on wars and other crisis contingencies,
and leaderships who articulate this anger and resentment by seeking a radical
transformation of domestic politics and foreign policies, are important but not sufficient
to explain genocide. Observing the social contexts in which genocide occurs appears to
confirm Kuper’s pointing to the segmented composition of societies as the structural
foundation for genocide. However, most societies are structured plurally. So the
question remains: what makes some societies genocidal and others not? Much of the
scholarship on genocide, generated from the United States and informed by liberal
norms, is overly focused on the relationship between genocide and twentieth-century
totalitarian and authoritarian states. As Kuper, Mann and others have argued, genocide
affects all historical periods and regimes, including democracies. If we further take into
account the role of state strategic ambitions, ideological and material interests, racism,
imperialism and settler colonialism, and forms of inequality and group competition, we
come closer to explaining why state/societal resentments against specific groups can
turn genocidal. Ideologies of racial superiority, in particular, however explicit or
implicit, are likely to be an important part of the justification for genocide.
Undoubtedly, genocide is a product of extraordinary circumstances. What genocide
studies have proved unable to do is to provide a general model which would allow us to
forecast when state anxieties and societal antagonisms reach the threshold of toxicity
where they unleash genocide.
Further reading
Robert Gellately and Ben Kiernan, eds (2003) The Specter of Genocide. Mass Murder in Historical
Perspective, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ben Kiernan (2007) Blood and Soil. A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta
to Darfur, New Haven CT: Yale University Press.
Leo Kuper (1981) Genocide. Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century, London: Penguin.
A. Dirk Moses, ed. (2008) Empire, Colony, Genocide. Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern
Resistance in World History Oxford: Berghahn.
Israel W. Charny, ed. (2000), Encyclopedia of Genocide, 2 vols, Santa Barbara CA: ABC-CLIO.
References
Hannah Arendt (1951) The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York: Harcourt Brace.
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12 Debating partition
Evaluating the standard justifications
Brendan O’Leary
Political partition may usefully be defined as a fresh political border cut through at least
one community’s national homeland with the goal of resolving conflict (see Talbot and
Singh 2009; applying the approach suggested in O’Leary 2007). Political partition is
therefore distinct from adjacent phenomena, such as secessions, which are attempted
within existing recognized units (O’Leary 2001: 54, 2005, 2007; the latter article defends
this definition), or from border adjustments, such as those that occur after a shift in the
course of a river bed, or from a shift in maritime boundaries following the immersion
of an island, i.e., where the placements of people are not at stake.
Explanations of partitions, both in particular and in general, are recurrent in political
science and history (e.g. Fraser 1984; Hasan 1993, 2002; Mansergh 1997), but this
chapter focuses on the arguments used to justify them, drawing mostly from the
twentieth-century cases of Ireland, India, Palestine and Cyprus. Just as no one is a
relentless advocate of divorce at the slightest hint of disagreement between couples, so
there are no relentless advocates of partition at the slightest hint of national or ethnic
conflict. Partitionists, however, are obliged to use rhetoric. This phrasing is not
disparaging. Long ago the Stagirite taught the world that rhetorical argument must be
advanced when we are uncertain of our premises but must nevertheless persuade
ourselves of the best choice of policy (Aristotle, Rhetoric). The most powerful arguments
for resolving antagonisms through partition may be labeled, in order, as “historicist,”
“last resort,” “net benefit,” “better tomorrow,” and “realist rigor.”
Partitionist arguments
The historicist argument. Historicists assume that history is necessarily evolving in a
given direction (Popper 1976/1957), and conclude that we should aid the inevitable by
giving it a nudge. Some insist that once nationalist, ethnic, or communal conflicts pass
a certain threshold they will end in partition (e.g. Galbraith 2006; Kaufmann 1998).
They may detect such tendencies in residential, educational, and employment
segregation, in the formation of nationalist, ethnic, or communal parties, or in the
overheating of political systems with the demands of what W. H. Auden’s poem
“Partition” satirizes as “peoples fanatically at odds, With their different diets and
incompatible gods” (Auden 1976).
Historicism may shape policy because it is seen as both informed and realistic. That
partition is inevitable, or is already happening, that facts have already been established
“on the ground,” are assumptions that may persuade policy makers that the process
should be sped up to reduce the pain. In 1993 advocates of the partition of Bosnia and
Partition 141
Herzegovina and of “population transfers” John J. Mearsheimer and Robert A. Pape
maintained, “transfer is already occurring. … The only question is whether it will be
organized, as envisioned by partition, or left to the murderous methods of the ethnic
cleansers” (Mearsheimer and Pape 1993). Another partitionist argues that “ethnic wars
always separate the warring communities,” so it is not a question of “whether the
groups will be separated but how” (Kaufmann 1998: 123). It is a tempting argument
when extensive expulsions are afoot by militias, paramilitaries, or police, but there is no
confirmed social science law that all segregation – voluntary or forced – leads inevitably
to the breakup of states. Not only has no one identified clear thresholds of violence
(absolute or proportional to population) beyond which partition (or separation more
broadly) becomes inevitable, but also simple comparative evaluations of recent conflicts
show that there can be peace without separation (Carment and Rowlands 2004: 369 ff.).
The “last resort” argument. This argument acknowledges that alternative strategies
exist to manage or resolve national, ethnic or communal conflicts, such as federalism,
consociation, arbitration, or integration, and accepts that these alternatives should be
attempted before partition is considered. But, if these options fail, so the argument
goes, partition should be chosen to avoid genocide or large-scale ethnic expulsions
(universally acknowledged to be the worst possible outcomes). Partition, in short,
should be pursued as public “triage.” Exponents of this argument often invoke the
“security dilemma” (Jervis 1968; Kaufmann 1996b, a, 1998; Posen 1993; Johnson 2008).
The claim is that in conditions of emergent anarchy, e.g. when an empire or a regime is
collapsing, the relations among ethnic groups become akin to that of individuals in a
Hobbesian state of nature. One distrustful community will seek to enhance its security,
which will enhance the insecurity of the other communities, creating a vicious and
escalating cycle of insecurity. Ethnic groups with strong and durable identities will be
mobilized for war in conditions of insecurity, and will attack ethnic islands of the other
community, or protect their own by expelling others. Partition is justified, in these
conditions, because it ends the imperatives to cleanse and rescue, and renders war
unnecessary to achieve mutual security. In Auden’s poem the partitionist lawyer,
Radcliffe, is told, “It’s too late/For mutual reconciliation or rational debate/The only
solution now lies in partition” (Auden 1976). The logic and the modeling and the poetic
satire are neat, but critics rightly suspect the underlying psychology and sociology.
The net benefit argument. A third line of argument need not presume the empirical
existence of an ethnic security dilemma, or justify partition only when it is absolutely
necessary to prevent genocide or large-scale expulsions. Instead, it suggests that
partition should be chosen when, on balance, it offers a better prospect of conflict
reduction than maintaining the existing borders. The suggestion is that partition is
desirable in its own right as a preventative strategy; it need not be the option of last
resort. The net benefit argument was maintained in the last years of British imperial
rule by the leading politicians of minorities who opposed independence within existing
colonial borders – by Ulster unionists in Ireland, who were prepared to abandon their
fellow unionists elsewhere in Ireland; by Zionists in Israel who then thought some
sovereign Israeli land was better than hoping for Eretz Israel; and by the Muslim
League in India, which decided that southern Muslims would have to fend for
themselves. Here it was argued that partition was justified to prevent a loss of freedom
– it was not then maintained that genocide and ethnic expulsions were going to be
carried out by Irish, Indian, or Palestinian nationalists. Some consider partition an
appropriate and prudent preemptive policy choice simply where there are ethnically
142 Brendan O’Leary
intermixed populations which are capable of sustained pogroms, massacres, expulsions,
and genocide. The argument, of course, tends to license too many partitions: after all,
of which groups could it be said that they are incapable of genocide? Organized
extermination has occurred in every continent, in all periods of human history, within
every major religious civilization, and in all political systems (though under some more
than others) (Chirot and McCauley 2006).
The “better tomorrow” argument. The historicists, the triagists, and the utilitarian
calculators jointly maintain that after partition there will be a reduction in violence and
conflict recurrence. New more homogenized polities will have better prospects of stable
democratization, of political development, and of better relations in general. The
analogy is with divorce. After the trauma is over, the former partners will conduct
themselves better because their interests will not interfere so intimately with one
another’s identity, pride, and emotions. This argument predicts a better tomorrow
based on key counterfactual assumptions, namely, that without partition there will be
more conflict and conflict recurrence; and that more heterogeneous polities have poorer
prospects of democratization, political development, and intergroup relations. One
author even claims that the evidence from Ireland, India, Palestine, and Cyprus
confirms that partitions reduce violence and conflict recurrence, and that the
post-partitioned entities were no less democratic or culturally exclusive than their
precursors (Kaufmann 1998)!
The “realist rigor” argument. The tough-minded partitionist maintains that any
possible difficulties with partition flow from irresolution – a thoroughgoing revision of
borders, which fully separates the relevant antagonistic communities, is what is required.
Good fences make good neighbors; bad fences provoke disputes. Policy makers must
devise borders – and provide incentives for controlled population movements – that
will create sufficient homogeneity so that the incentives for national, ethnic, religious,
and communal violence are radically reduced. Another and better cut will be advocated
to rectify the surgery if it was botched the first time.
For it to work, the rigorous realists maintain, that partition must lead to radical
demographic restructuring, reducing the military and political significance of the new
minorities. Mearsheimer and Pape and subsequently Mearsheimer and Steven van
Evera argued for the partition of Bosnia and Herzegovina, “shrinking it to save it,” as
they put it (Mearsheimer and Van Evera 1995). They deemed unworkable the alternative
federal formula developed under the plan proposed by former US Secretary of State
Cyrus Vance and former UK Foreign Secretary David Owen, and criticized the 1995
Dayton settlement, negotiated and effectively dictated by US diplomats, as “an
unfinished peace,” precisely because it did not arrange a three-way partition of
Bosnia and Herzegovina between Muslims, Serbs, and Croats, but just an incomplete
two-way split between the recently constructed Muslim-Croat federation and Republika
Srpska.
These five standard arguments for partition are political and moral. They are not on
their face simple apologias, or excuses for land-grabbing, or indeed for dereliction,
though, of course, they may provide cover for such actions. Indeed I have carefully
avoided selecting propartitionist arguments which are obviously racist, sectarian, or
civilizationist in order to present partitionism in its best light.
These five arguments are only partially testable. One accepts historicist philosophies,
or approaches, or one does not – Popper’s critique (1957) of historicism is convincing to
Partition 143
this author even though Popper’s history of ideas is not always accurate. The leap from
demographic trends to assumptions of future political behavior by pro-partitionists is
not scientific; the same trends may be compatible with a range of political relationships
– from genocide to federal or consociational coexistence. The “realistic rigor” thesis is
probably not testable at all, because confronted by the evidence of catastrophe
partitionists will claim that the tragedies lie in the imperfection of the attempted project
rather than the idea itself. Though there is now an interesting literature which tests
partitionist claims (Sambanis and Schullhofer-Wohl 2009; Sambanis 2000; Chapman
and Roeder 2007), not all of the above arguments are testable, and, at least on my
definition of partition, the number of twentieth-century cases that were not rapidly
reversed is pretty small, making large-n testing problematic (the existing literature usually
conflates partitions and secessions in order to get a larger n). Many partitionists’ claims,
however, are at least implicitly empirical. Partitionists implicitly predict either a linear or
an exponential relationship between the degree of national and ethnic heterogeneity of a
place and the security dilemmas that provoke violence (false). They insist “restoring civil
politics in multiethnic states shattered by war is impossible because the war itself destroys
the possibilities for ethnic cooperation.” They insist that the “stable resolution of ethnic
civil wars is only possible when opposing groups are demographically separated into
defensible enclaves” (Kaufmann 1996b: 137). These arguments suggest that it is foolish
to insist on maintaining unviable multinational polities.
The modalities of partitionists

The above partitionist arguments do not tell us who should execute the deed, or how
they should go about their work. Partitionists who are not mere annexationists come in
two general types – proceduralists and paternalists – though they may come in fusions.
Proceduralists favor justice and agreement, while paternalists favor imposition in
others’ interests – they put order before justice.
Proceduralists advocate consultation with the “affected parties,” to achieve as much
reciprocal consent on the new border as possible, and try to establish rules to which
reasonable partitions should conform. They see roles for commissions, and particularly
judges and technical experts, in determining appropriate boundaries. The British
Empire was a procedural partitionist. It set up boundary commissions in twentieth-
century Ireland, Palestine, and India. The United Nations attempted to be proceduralist
in Palestine in 1947.
Honest proceduralists reject any partition proposal that does not meet fairness and
feasibility requirements. Some proceduralists are less honest, and claim that it is not
they or their governments who partition. Mountbatten declared in his radio broadcast
of March 3, 1947, which announced the plan to partition India, that “I felt it was
essential that the people of India themselves should decide this question of partition”
(Ahmed 1999: 119). He ordered the legislative assemblies of Bengal and the Punjab
(excluding European members) each to meet in two parts, one representing the “Muslim
majority” districts, the other the rest of the relevant province. The districts were to be
defined, not by the past votes for the members, but by reference to the 1941 census. A
simple majority in either part would be sufficient to trigger partition of the relevant
region. (In the Punjab the new West section of the assembly voted against partition by
ninety-nine votes to twenty-seven, while the new East voted in favor by fifty votes to
twenty-two (Ahmed 1999: 121). Punjab therefore had one hundred and twenty-one
assembly members’ votes against and sixty-seven for, but under Mountbatten’s rule the
partition process continued.)
Arend Lijphart has specified the requirements of a fair partition (Lijphart 1984). A
partition can be acceptable where it is negotiated by all the affected groups rather than
imposed; when it involves a fair division of land and resources; and where it results in
homogeneous, or at least substantially less plural, independent states. The major
difficulty with this reasonable conception of a principled partition is the sheer
unlikelihood of the first requirement: nonimposition. The affected parties – politicians
and their publics – are not likely to agree unanimously, and even if representative
politicians did concur, it is unlikely that all the adversely affected people will agree,
even if offered significant compensation. Partitions involving the movement of people
or of their sovereign territory are simply not likely to proceed with technical agreement
and political consensus.
Lijphart’s other criteria offer feasible benchmarks against which to evaluate the
fairness of partitions of binational or multinational polities. The Radcliffe “Award” in
Bengal in 1947 almost perfectly met Lijphart’s second and third criteria. West Bengal,
an area of 28,000 square miles, was to contain a population estimated at 21.19 million
people, of whom 29 per cent were Muslims. East Bengal, to become East Pakistan, an
area of 49,000 square miles, contained a population of 39.11 million, of which 29.1 per
cent were Hindus (Chatterji 1999: 191). West Bengal was to get 36.6 per cent of the land
to accommodate some 35.1 per cent of the Bengal population, while East Bengal was to
get 63.6 of the land to accommodate 64.8 per cent of the population. The ratio of the
majority to the minority populations was almost identical, and the resulting entities
more homogeneous than their predecessor, partitioning a polity with a Muslim:Hindu
ratio of 56:44 into two with 70:30 majority:minority ratios. But we might equally
conclude that Radcliffe created two large Northern Irelands out of Bengal, and very
few regard the bloody Indian partition as a success story.
Jan and Birgitta Tullberg have also proposed procedural criteria for a fair partition
(Tullberg and Tullberg 1997). They conflate partition with secession, but then so too do
most of their critics (e.g. Rothchild 1997). The Tullbergs believe that borders should be
drawn to leave as few people as possible in the “wrong” state, advocating that an equal
number of people from each group should be wrongly placed after a partition. The
partitioning border also ought to be as “natural” as possible. They also propose rules
for “transfers”: in a binary partition each state should be responsible for accepting
people of its own nationality; each individual may emigrate to the “right” state; and
each state should be entitled to evict members of the other group. The Tullbergs’ critics
have little difficulty in picking out the difficulties with these proposals (e.g. Lustick
1997; McGarry and Moore 1997; Ryan 1997). Why should an equal number of
“wrongly” placed people be regarded as a fair outcome, as opposed to an equal ratio of
“wrongly” to “rightly” placed people in each jurisdiction? Surely fairness should include
proportionality, not just absolute numbers? The notion of “natural” borders is highly
problematic – even if common among politicians and mass publics. Lastly, the proposed
transfer rules are appalling – and illegal under international law. They license ethnic
expulsions, and incentivize them. The proposals also give insufficient recognition to the
importance of the integrity of the territorial homeland in the eyes of at least one
community: for whom it is not the rules of partition with which they disagree, but the
very idea, which is equivalent to a discussion of the modalities under which they are to
be executed.
Partition 145
Paternalists, by contrast, assume that the local parties or communities are incapable
of reaching a reasonable agreement, except perhaps after protracted wars that end in
stalemate. They propose that a sufficiently powerful outsider should determine a
partition, one that that will be durable, and reduce conflict as much as possible – and
quickly. A settlement that addresses security imperatives is more important than
meeting participation requirements or considerations that might flow from abstract
social justice. Paternalists usually advise or lobby great or regional powers. “Better
rough justice than none” is their outlook. For contemporary Kosova, Mearsheimer
argued that partition is the only viable strategy for anything that resembles peace in the
long term – the best, as he put it, of a handful of really lousy alternatives. His premise
was that multiethnic states do not (or cannot?) survive, especially, he claims, in Europe.
Interventions to hold multiethnic states such as Bosnia and Herzegovina together will
not work “unless we [the United States] stay there forever” (Mearsheimer 1999a, b).
American realists are not against multinational or multiethnic states in principle,
but believe, correctly, that there is a general American tendency to underestimate the
power of nationalism, and a dogmatic American faith that other multiethnic societies
can integrate themselves as America’s immigrants have (Mearsheimer and van Evera,
1995: 21).
Anti-partitionist arguments
Let us now consider the most powerful rebuttals of partitionist arguments.
Anti-partitionists include nationalists and multinationalists. Nationalists reject the
rupturing of their national territories; multinationalists reject the historicist assumptions
of homogenizers and their negative assessments of the prospects for coexistence. They
share common appraisals of how partitions are perverse, of how they jeopardize existing
relationships, and of the impossibility of achieving fair partitions. Their arguments
include (1) the rejection of the rupturing of national unity, (2) advocacy of the
possibilities of constructive bi- and multinationalism, (3) the practical impossibility of
just partitions, (4) the high likelihood of worsening violence, (5) the elusive mirage of
homogenization without expulsions, (6) the damage to the successor states, and (7) the
failure to make a clean or elegant cut, all of which jointly render the surgical and the
triage claims highly suspect.
The rupturing of national territorial unity is protested by those who hold that partition
is a violation of the right to self-determination, of the right to territorial integrity of the
entity that is being partitioned. This complaint is usually accompanied by the claim that
partition is being proposed or executed in the interests of privileged minorities, and that
it is especially brutal in its impact on what will now become border communities. In all
cases the nationalists observe that “border communities” which were previously not
“border” communities may suffer most – the Sikhs of the Punjab; the Irish nationalists
of south Armagh, Tyrone, Fermanagh, Derry city and Newry; and the peoples among
divided cities, for example those of Jerusalem (between 1948 and 1967) and Nicosia.
In the twentieth century partitions were rejected by most of the majority nationalists
whose national homelands were freshly cut. Irish, Indian, Palestinian, and Cypriot
nationalists argued that partition was a violation of national self-determination and
directly contravened the expressed preferences of the relevant majorities in their
national territories. Bosniaks made the same claim – though ethnic Bosniaks were just
a plurality in the former Yugoslav republic. Indian nationalists, for example, argued
that their nation had a long past, had been treated as an entity by the British Empire,
prepared for self-government as such, and that India as a whole was the appropriate
unit for self-determination (Nehru 1989). The Muslim League’s claim that there were
two nations and not one on the subcontinent was treated as false, proved by Congress’s
own Muslim voters and politicians, and dismissed as being made very late in the day –
in the vested interests of privileged elites regrettably manipulating communal passions.
Until the end, many Congress leaders regarded Jinnah’s endorsement of the two-nation
thesis as a bargaining posture. Cypriot nationalists likewise insist that the partition of
Cyprus, and the proclamation of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, violated
Cyprus’s integrity and its right to self-determination and sovereign independence –
entrenched in treaties between the UK, Turkish, Greek, and Cypriot governments.
They complain that the United Kingdom’s resistance to Greek demands for
decolonization and enosis (union) with Greece led the imperial power in the 1950s to
mobilize the Turkish minority in their support, especially within the police and the
army, and that this encouraged Turkish Cypriots to demand taksim, the partition of
Cyprus between Greece and Turkey (Anderson 2008). Cypriot nationalists see the
“counternationalism” of the Turkish minority as manipulated or rooted in past
privilege, believing that the British had played Greek and Turkish Cypriots against one
another (Hitchens 1997; Kyle 1984).
Advocacy of binationalism or multinationalism. Only disputing their premises plausibly
rebuts nationalist anti-partition arguments. That involves either insisting that within
the pre-partitioned entities there was more than one nation with a right to
self-determination, or rejecting national self-determination arguments completely (an
intellectual move not evaluated here because partitionists do not reject the idea of
nation-states).
The binational or multinational case is that plurinational arrangements must be
properly exhausted before partition is considered genuinely as a last resort.
Multinationalists maintain that if one were to accept that there were two nations in
Ireland, India, Palestine, and Cyprus, or three in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina,
no automatic case for partition followed. Instead they observe that partitionists must
insist on the undesirability, infeasibility, or insecurity of binational, federal,
consociational, or confederal arrangements. It is just assumed by partitionists that such
options are or were impossible, and often this claim obscures more creative modes of
coexistence. In three British imperial cases most of the relevant minority – Ulster
Unionists, the Muslim League, and Zionists – appeared unwilling to propose or
experiment with such formulas. Their veto of alternative formulas, backed by force,
was rendered more effective by the declarations of the imperial power that they would
not coerce the relevant minorities. These minorities’ leaders sought partition either
before, or coterminous with, the withdrawal of the imperial power, and refused or
blocked all other options. That partition was “a last resort,” or a regrettable choice
“when all else had failed,” therefore usually rings hollow. In Cyprus, by contrast, before
independence a generous constitutional arrangement was negotiated for Turkish
Cypriots, but arguably one that was so generous in its overrepresentation of the
minority that it was bound to provoke Greek Cypriot resentment.
The impossibility of just partition. Anti-partitionists argue that, even if partition
should be an option of last resort when clashing nationalities have rejected binational
or multinational forms of shared rule and self-rule, that does not justify any partitions,
but only fair or just partition. The latter, however, demands the wisdom of Solomon,
Partition 147
which by definition is rare. They require not just wisdom but a great or regional power
that is well governed if they are to be procedurally proper (all of which seems an unlikely
combination).
International procedures, including World Court jurisprudence, have peaceably
addressed some border disputes between states. Typically, however, these arise from
ambiguities in historic treaties or legislative documents (for example, disputes between
the Netherlands and Belgium, Burkina Faso and Mali, Honduras and El Salvador, and
over the Aouzou desert strip – at issue between Chad and Libya). Or they involve
maritime jurisdictions (for example, the negotiations over the Timor Gap, disputes
between Norway and Great Britain, and between the United States and Canada in the
Gulf of Maine). Or, they are occasioned by natural geographical changes in terrain and
river beds (e.g. through “avulsion”) (Prescott 1996). Legal procedures are not, however,
appropriate for what is at stake in political partitions. From 1945 until 2009 only two
disputes where homelands were arguably at stake, both involving marginal islands,
have been settled by the International Court of Justice, one being the Minquiers and
Ecrehos islands located between the English-speaking Channel Islands and French
Normandy. It remains to be seen whether the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The
Hague has successfully determined the borders of Abyei, which will be at issue between
Northern and Southern Sudan – whether the South opts for secession or unity in the
referendum scheduled for 2011 (Arbitral Tribunal 2009).
According to the Book of Kings, Solomon did not partition the famously disputed
baby but adopted a procedure, the threat of partition, to establish its true mother. No
such procedure is likely to work well amid mass ethno-nationalist politics. The credible
threat of partition will likely provoke preemptive action, in the form of ethnic expulsions,
to establish “facts on the ground.” These repercussions are more likely than the
disputing parties coming to their senses. Kaufmann and partitionists therefore get the
causality wrong: it is partitionists who generate a self-fulfilling security dilemma. The
credible threat of partition flows from decisions of a state or imperial authority – or of
known plans by paramilitaries that have state support. It is they who occasion the
“security dilemma,” not the mere presence of heterogeneous populations. It was
partition which occasioned extensive violence in Northern Ireland between 1920 and
1922, and “it was the escalating possibility of partition, and the tensions that unleashed,
which caused the August 1946 violence in Calcutta and the subsequent ‘security
dilemma’ [of the] Hindus and Muslims of Bengal” (Bose 2002: 179).
Partitionists usually come from among the self-appointed, as with most paternalists,
and are unlikely to be impartial. The Peel Commission, which first proposed the
partition of Palestine, exceeded its terms of reference, at the prompting of Professor
Coupland, who became the chief enthusiast and crafted the text. The outgoing imperial
power determined the procedures for partition in Ireland and India, and handed over
some established groundwork for the UN partition plan for Palestine. In Ireland
partition was executed unilaterally in 1920 before the United Kingdom negotiated with
Ireland’s elected Sinn Féin government. An invading Turkish army in 1974 determined
the fresh cut in Cyprus, stopping at a line that the Turkish government had proposed in
1965 and which had been rejected by the UN mediator Galo Plaza (Kliot and Mansfield
1997: 503).
Anti-partitionists observe that boundary commissions usually give the pivotal power
to the relevant big power. Thus the Irish Boundary Commission of 1924–25, and the
1947 Radcliffe Commissions in Punjab and Bengal, had British appointees as the
decisive chairs. With some exceptions, the local appointees acted as partisan champions
of the ethno-national or religious communities that they were appointed to represent
– though they were constrained to make their arguments persuasive, and to make their
proposals as consistent as possible with the commissions’ terms of reference. If the local
nominees to boundary commissions are bound to act to some degree as ethno-national
champions, that places the burden of decision upon the organizers and chairs of such
commissions: in Auden’s words, Radcliffe was told, “We can give you four judges, two
Moslem and two Hindu/To consult with, but the final decision must rest with you”
(Auden 1976). The key difficulty for such chairs is what we might call Solomon’s
agenda. That can be defined by the following questions.
• Which should be the units around which new boundaries should be drawn? One cannot
have elections to determine who should be among the electorates that have the final
say. The Irish Free State thought that a plebiscite should be conducted in all the
Poor Law jurisdictions in Northern Ireland – excepting in Belfast and County
Antrim – whereas unionists insisted that the six counties of the north-east be treated
as a bloc. Relatedly:
• Should there be subunit opt-outs? If unit A opts to be with one state, but B, a
concentrated minority within A, wants to go with another, may it opt out?
• How should units’ preferences be determined? If there is agreement on the units of
determination, then how should the new boundary respect popular preferences?
Should this be done through local plebiscites, or through determining people’s
presumed preferences through their ascriptive identities as recorded in census data
(that may be unreliable)? If there are to be plebiscites, what rule should be adopted
for determining whether a given unit goes to one jurisdiction or another: a simple
majority of those voting, an absolute majority of registered voters, a weighted
majority? And, if working from census data, who should count: adults, or adults and
children?
• Should local popular preferences be considered just one criterion to be balanced among
others? How important should be matters such as the maintenance of contiguity (at
issue in the formation of Pakistan, and in the redistricting of West Bengal); preserving
a cultural heartland (at issue in the division of Sikh sacred sites in the Punjab, in the
placement of Jerusalem, and at issue in proposals to partition Kosova); retaining a
unit within an economic, geographical hinterland or infrastructure (at issue in the
location of Derry and Newry in Ireland, and in the waterways and canals of the
Punjab); or ensuring militarily secure borders (at issue in every partition)?
• If nonpreferential factors are to be considered in designing new borders, should local
popular preferences be subordinated to these other considerations, and, if so, which
ones – and who should make that determination?
• Should there be constitutional amendments to ratify the commission’s proposals or
referendums, and should there be provisions to enable their subsequent revision?
Given the difficulties in Solomon’s agenda it is not surprising that Radcliffe, the man
who drew the partition of Bengal and the Punjab, refused to be interviewed on his work
for the rest of his life (Ahmed 1999; Chatterji 1994, 1999): “Return he would not/Afraid,
as he told his Club, that he might get shot” (Auden 1976). Radcliffe’s commission
worked fast, and it mattered; its resolutions were implemented. The commission chaired
by Richard Feetham in 1924 to consider adjustments in the light of Article 12 of the
Partition 149
Anglo-Irish Treaty did not work in a hurry, and eventually made no difference to the
line of partition in Ireland. But Feetham’s judgement of his terms of reference shaped
the commission’s outcome: “the Commission is not to reconstitute the two territories,
but to settle the boundary between them. Northern Ireland must, when the boundaries
have been determined, still be recognizable as the same provincial entity” (Hand 1969;
O’Callaghan 2000). In south Down, the location of a new reservoir to supply Belfast,
not yet finished, incredibly became an argument for maintaining the existing border
because Feetham maintained that, whenever there was a clash, economic and geographic
factors had to trump local popular wishes. This case, of a failed commission, vividly
demonstrates the procedural conundrums attached to boundary commissions, and the
unpredictable consequences of giving judges vague terms of reference. It is difficult to
imagine impartiality in the appointment and management of a boundary commission
– an empire or regional power has its own interests, and their officials will take great
care over appointments to such bodies.
The likelihood of disorder and violence. Anti-partitionists turn the tables on the subject
of violence. They maintain that partitions encourage ethnic expulsions; trigger partially
chaotic breakdowns in order, leading to flight, opportunist killing, rapes, and looting;
lead to more violence than that which preceded them; have domino effects; contribute
to post-partition wars, and insecurities; and set precedents that lead to demands for
repartitions. Their case is that partitions are perverse: they achieve the exact opposite
of what they nominally intend.
In raw numbers of dead and forcibly displaced, the critics are correct across the cases
of India, Palestine, Ireland, and Cyprus. The partition of India was accompanied by a
death toll, variously credibly estimated at between 200,000 (Moon 1998) and 500,000
(Khosla 1989; Kumar 1997). (Figures of up to 2 million are also cited.) Involuntary and
expelled cross-border refugees and displaced persons may have approached 15 million.
The scale and intensity of the brutal coercion, rape, abduction of women, looting,
family fragmentation, and resettlement pains were individually and collectively
appalling. The partition of Palestine and the war that accompanied Israel’s declaration
of independence led to the deaths of approximately 6,000 Israeli Jews and over 10,000
Arabs, and to the expulsion and flight of over 750,000 Palestinians, who became
homeless refugees, whom Israel refused to allow to return, and whom the Arab states
refused to integrate. As a byproduct of the partition, and of Israel’s war of independence,
over half a million Jews were expelled from surrounding Arab states. In the Turkish
invasion and partition of Cyprus 6,000 Greek Cypriots were killed and 2,000 reported
missing, and some 1,500 Turks and Turkish Cypriots were killed. After the partition
more than 10,000 Greek Cypriots were pressurized into leaving Northern Cyprus, on
top of the nearly 160,000 who had already fled before the invading Turkish army. The
partition of Ireland was accompanied by the least violence amid twentieth-century
partitions, in raw numbers and taking into account the scale of the population. But the
deaths accompanying the formation of Northern Ireland between 1920 and 1922 have
been estimated at between 232 and 544 (O’Leary and McGarry 1996: 21) and either
figure is much higher than the death toll in Ulster before the partition. Moreover,
thousands of Catholics were expelled from their jobs and their homes in Belfast and fled
south; thousands of Protestants also emigrated from independent Ireland. It therefore
beggars belief that Kaufmann (1998) argues that in all these cases partition successfully
reduced violence! He compares post-partition internal violence in the new units with
the violence that accompanied the partition – which begs the appropriate evaluative
question because it discounts the conflict immediately caused by the partition itself. In
Cyprus significant intercommunal killings between 1960 and 1974 preceded the partition
(Loizos 1988) but Kaufmann’s argument is made convincing only by failing to count
the costs of the partition itself.
At bottom, claims such as Kaufmann’s are counterfactual, not factual: his claim is
that without partition the conflicts would have been worse. In three of the cases –
Ireland, India, and Palestine – Kaufmann maintains that it was independence from
Britain, and the collapse of its military and policing authority, rather than partition,
that caused large-scale violence. This is simply unconvincing. Had the imperial authority
transferred power to a single central authority then the security dilemma would surely
have had less resonance than one accompanying partition and the formation of two
new governments. Partitionists inevitably have to defend the historical record of
partitions through counterfactual propositions: partition was not the problem per se,
but rather the particular partition was defective in key respects. Kaufmann, for example,
regards the leaving of intermixed populations as potential triggers of future insecurity.
The reason the Cypriot partition, according to his criteria, was “better” than any of the
others was because of the planned and implemented ethnic expulsion that accompanied
it. Kaufmann’s argument shows it is easy to slip from a defense of partition as a last
resort to tacit support for ethnic expulsions, or “population transfers” in the standard
euphemism.
Partitions are especially perverse when they have domino effects – triggering
post-partition wars. Security dilemmas now take an interstate rather than merely
intercommunal form. The Arab–Israeli wars of 1956, 1967, and 1973, and the Israeli–
Lebanese wars, show that the partition of Palestine was not the end of conflict in the
region. India and Pakistan have fought three wars, in 1948, 1965, and 1971, triggered
by two regions troubled by the repercussions of the 1947 partition: Kashmir in the first
two, and East Bengal in the third. Radcliffe did not partition Jammu and Kashmir.
Instead, the United Kingdom left it to its princely head, as with all other princely states,
to determine its future. Princely self-determination was Great Britain’s last contribution
to the theory of partition management. Under coercive pressure from Pakistan, its
Hindu ruler took his majority Muslim province into the Indian Union. Bose (2002:
183–89) documents Kaufmann’s errors in understanding what happened in Kashmir).
War was triggered, leaving Kashmir divided by a line of control and with a UN presence.
India and Pakistan still confront one another over what Pakistanis are inclined to call
the “unfinished business” of partition, but now with each state in possession of nuclear
arms. A thousand miles divided the Pakistan that resulted from partition – a security
nightmare for any armed forces. Its internal divisions proved deeper than geographical
noncontiguity: East Pakistan’s Bengalis experienced discrimination and domination at
the hands of West Pakistan’s power elite, and when the latter refused to allow authentic
federalism or authentic democratization, and engaged in genocide, the secession of
Bangladesh was fought for, and won, in 1971, with the aid of a decisive Indian
intervention. Conflict in and over Northern Ireland, though it never took the form of
interstate war, was not resolved before 1998, or 2007, depending upon your point of
view (Taylor 2009). The partition of Cyprus is maintained by the presence of the
Turkish army, and by UN peacekeeping forces in buffer zones. It threatens war between
Turkey and Greece, two NATO “allies,” while the nonrecognition of the Turkish
Republic of Northern Cyprus affected the complex diplomacy attached to the accession
to the European Union of Cyprus (as a whole). Official Cyprus is now within the
Partition 151
European Union and has the ability to help veto Turkey’s accession. These post-partition
interstate tensions (Cyprus and Ireland) and interstate wars (in the Middle East and
South Asia) hardly inspire confidence that partition offers a “realistic” settlement of
security dilemmas.
The receding goal of homogenization. Critics of partition maintain that the only thing
they “are unlikely to produce is ethnically homogeneous … states” (Horowitz 1985:
589). This argument may seem compelling. Post-partition India and Pakistan were both
vast, populous, and multiethnic, and remained multireligious; and West Pakistan
experienced a fresh infusion of linguistically differentiated refugees. Post-partition
Israel was left with a significant Palestinian Arab minority, and soon had waves of new
Jewish refugees of diverse ethnic formation. Its subsequent settler colonial infusion
policies in the West Bank and Gaza hardly aided the homogenization of the occupied
territories. Northern Ireland was left with a unionist and cultural Protestant/nationalist
and cultural Catholic ratio of 67:33 that has since shifted to 60:40, and may have moved
past 55:45 toward parity. Horowitz’s argument, however, needs to be qualified by
considering religious, not ethnic, homogenizing. Pakistan is certainly proportionally
more Islamic than India, even though India had, and still has, the largest minority
Muslim population in the world. (The secession of Bangladesh led to an irony: Muslims
in India separately outnumber those in Bangladesh and Pakistan.) In Ireland, ethnicity
and religion were fused in many people’s identities, but the Irish Free State was more
Catholic than pre-partition Ireland, and Northern Ireland was more Protestant than
historic Ulster. Israel was more Jewish, and the West Bank and Gaza more Muslim and
Christian, than pre-partition Palestine. The units of post-partition Cyprus are very
ethnically, linguistically, and religiously homogenized by comparison with pre-1974
Cyprus.
Critics of partition establish their point more effectively when they say that partition
alone is unlikely to generate the presumably desired homogenization. The rigorous
realists rely on a tacit assumption: the necessity of expulsions. Consider just twentieth-
century European ethno-national and ethno-religious history. None of the new
European states created after 1919 – after the collapse of the Czarist, Hohenzollern,
Habsburg, and Ottoman Empires – came close to being mononational because of the
Versailles settlement, or the settlements at other chateaux in the Paris region, or because
of other subsequent border adjustments before 1939. Of the seven that survived in some
form after the Second World War their proportion of national minorities fell from 25
per cent in the 1930s to 7.2 per cent in the 1970s, a radical homogenization. But only a
small proportion of this change was the consequence of border adjustments. The rest
has to be accounted for by genocide, expulsion, and assimilation (Coakley 1992b, a;
Horak 1985: 4). The dark nights of Nazism, the Second World War, and Stalinism –
not partitions – “tidied up” Europe’s states.
Partitions are never enough for rigorous homogenizers. They must pursue voluntary
or quasi-voluntary “transfers,” and are driven to condone or organize expulsions, while
post-partition states may pursue policies of control that encourage potentially or
actively disloyal minorities to emigrate while encouraging inward immigration of the
“right” people to ensure the demographic advantage of the Staatsvolk. Partitions
without comprehensive expulsions generate two kinds of orphaned minorities: former
prospective majorities, and formerly dominant minorities. The former are often double
losers – they may have never shared in the self-government of their community as part
of a majority, and now they are in another jurisdiction. Former prospective majorities
and formerly dominant minorities may both become part of irredentist movements, or
campaign for a further partition.
Damage to successor states. Anti-partitionists maintain that partitions generate new
security crises of an interstate form, but also cause significant economic disruption, and
not just because they may be accompanied by communal conflict and warfare, and
sudden flows of refugees. They disturb established monetary and exchange networks,
increase transactions costs, enhance the likelihood of protectionism, and provide
incentives for smuggling and other border-related criminal activity. They have led to
the depreciation of significant capital investments in transport, as roads, railways and
canals, and ports and airports, have their original functions terminated or significantly
damaged, and to losses that may flow from failure to cooperate in agriculture, water
management, and energy production and distribution (Moriarty 1994). The new
post-partition entities have common functional and infrastructural interests flowing
from their shared pasts. So they usually end up, ironically, by considering post-partition
cross-border functional cooperation, or confederal arrangements – which put in
question part of the necessity of partition in the first place. Great Britain accompanied
the partition of Ireland with a proposed Council of Ireland, intended to link the Belfast
and Dublin parliaments, and it insisted that the Irish Free State share a common crown
and membership of the “British Commonwealth of Nations.”
Of the cases considered here the Irish Free State has had, in the long run, the most
successful post-partition experience in state-building, development, and democratization.
But its early years were deeply affected by the civil war that accompanied its inception
– and that might have been avoided had there been no partition. Ireland’s comparative
homogenization, through its integration and assimilation of its formerly dominant
minority, the Anglo-Irish, suggests it was a beneficiary of the partition it opposed. But
this perspective neglects the costs of partition for Irish state-building, especially in
economic development. The new state began life without the industrial base of Belfast,
and with a larger Protestant minority the long cultural sway of the Catholic Church
over public policy in Ireland might have been less, and terminated earlier. Northern
Ireland, by contrast, has been persistently unstable. Between the 1920s and the 1960s it
was operated under a control system. Since the 1960s its conflict made the United
Kingdom the most internally politically violent established European democracy
(O’Leary and McGarry 1996: ch. 3; and 1). Post-partition Pakistan is acknowledged as
a developmental disaster. The story of post-partition Palestine is known to the world.
The unrecognized Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus has an unenviable reputation
for corruption. There is a pattern here: one entity (Ireland; India; Israel; and Greek
Cyprus) has done better than the other. Triage has certainly not been equally good for
all. In the separation of Siamese twins the record appears to show that at least one of
the twins has been badly lamed.
On the failure to make a clean or elegant cut. Partitionists do not have an easy time in
creating new maps. Not only do their maps bleed, but also they do not look good – look
at the shape of West Bengal, or the meandering border of Northern Ireland. One can
argue that partitions worsen the “compactness” of the post-partition entities by contrast
with their precursors. Compactness here refers to the physical solidity of a state –
something that once was widely believed to have implications for its military security,
and arguably still affects popular assumptions about the right shape of a state, however
much academicians reject the thesis of “natural boundaries.” It was once argued that
an ideal state is a circle, with a capital at its center, a form that has multiple
Partition 153
communications, control, and security advantages (Galnoor 1991; Galnoor 1995: 26
ff.). The most compact state, a perfect circle, would have an index score of 1; a square
state would score well too, as would a pentagon or a hexagon. It is possible to think of
partitions where the compactness scores of at least one entity have “improved.”
Hungary, as it emerged from the partition of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, became
fairly compact, with a score of 1.5, by comparison with its former shape. But, the Peel
Commission (1.8) and the UN partition plans for Palestine (3.3) would both have
worsened the compactness of the Jewish state by comparison with mandate Palestine
(1.5), and the Israel that emerged from the 1949 armistice lines had a worsened index
(2.1). Pakistan, of course, in two discontinuous entities, achieved no compactness.
Northern Ireland’s new borders created adverse security and transport connections
because its compactness was worse than that of Ireland as a whole. The potency of
argument of this kind is questionable to those who think that globalization has
abolished geography. Compactness may, however, have less salience for military
security and communications than it once had. And compactness is far more complex
to measure, assess, and use in evaluation than was once thought (Niemi et al. 1990).
Conclusion
The partitionist and anti-partitionist arguments just considered are universal; they recur
in response to, or in the aftermath of any proposed or actual partition. I have deliberately
not biased the evaluation of either partitionists or anti-partitionists by attributing racist,
chauvinist, or sectarian claims or motivations to their exponents – though these are part
of the historical record, and no doubt part of the future. The claim is that these are
typically the best arguments that accompany actual partitions as well as the best
arguments that accompany the defeats of proposals to have partitions. The arguments
themselves must enter any rounded historical explanations of why partitions do or do
not occur. When partitions occur the arguments of partitionists have been compelling
for at least one powerful agent, but they may not be sufficient to explain why they occur,
especially given that the rebuttals of partitionist arguments seem more generally
compelling – and are now internationally endorsed in international law.
Anti-partitionists, the foregoing evaluation suggests, have better arguments, judged
by realistic, political, and moral criteria. When partition threatens, the appropriate
slogan should not be John Lennon’s “Give peace a chance,” nor Edward Luttwak’s
“Give war a chance” (Luttwak 1999), but rather “Give power sharing a chance.”
Contemporary Northern Ireland suggests, and even Lebanon and Iraq may in future
suggest, that complex power sharing settlements are possible even after protracted
ethno-national wars (Kerr 2006; O’Leary 2009; Weller et al. 2008). They are at least as
feasible as partitioning intermingled populations and less likely to risk mass deaths.
Partitions deserve their poor press. They have not generated better security
environments. Most have been biased toward privileged or dominant minorities –
pushing conflict downstream. Partition processes and post-partition arrangements
have been worse than those predicted by supporters of partition for at least one
successor unit. Partitionists are generally forced to argue that the pathologies of their
preferred partition were the result of an imperfect design or of insufficient rigor, a
response that is unfalsifiable and unconvincing. Prudence therefore mandates opposing
partition as a tool of international public policy-making, and placing the burden of
proof on its advocates.
For those of who us who are not historicists there can be no certainty that there will
be no further partitions – partitionist plans have been proposed in the last two decades
for Quebec, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosova, Sri Lanka, Burundi, and Rwanda,
Afghanistan, and Iraq. (Galbraith’s 2006 advocacy of the partition of Iraq may be
usefully compared with my own reflections (O’Leary 2009, see especially 142–47).)
Moreover, it cannot be known in advance that there will never be any case where
partition truly is a better policy option for the affected peoples than the alternatives.
But the standard for making that argument should be that partition is demonstrably
the best way to prevent genocide, or large-scale ethnic expulsions, or their recurrence
– after reflecting that proposing partition may enhance the risk of genocide and ethnic
expulsions. Note carefully, the arguments surveyed here are not intended to hold any
sway against the merits of peaceful negotiated secessions within recognized boundaries.
(See Young 1997b, a for a good discussion of the commonalities of peaceful secessions.)
There are good and bad secessions, but, by contrast, it is hard to find a good twentieth-
century partition. What the argument here suggests is that the novelty of proposing and
implementing a fresh sovereign border may destabilize existing intergroup relations in
ways that may take generations to repair. By contrast, because secession takes place
within a recognized border it may be easier to accomplish a soft landing to the crisis
that promotes it.
This chapter has not discussed the reversibility of partitions (see O’Leary 2007: 905–6
for some speculations). It is sufficient to observe here that if the evidence suggests that
one should generally oppose partitionist arguments that does not mean that one should
necessarily support all efforts to reverse partitions; and even the practical feasibility of
overturning a partition does not mean that that it is necessarily the best political option.
The reunification of Ireland and of Cyprus under confederal and consociational
formulas may be in the material and collective long-run interests of all the majorities of
the affected peoples. By contrast, reunification in historic Palestine or South Asia are
less obviously in the interests of the affected peoples. Nor has this chapter extensively
discussed explanations of partitions (see O’Leary 2007), which are rooted in the
competition between the nation-state form and its rivals and the forces which underpin
nationalism in modernity (Gellner 1983). Nor has this chapter attempted to synthesize
the results of the large-n literature with the detailed comparative case histories that have
helped clarify the materials provisionally summarized here, partly because the author
believes that much of these discussions is at cross-purposes, given the lack of scholarly
clarity in coding what is to count as a partition – as opposed to a secession.
Acknowledgements
This chapter is a revised portion of a keynote address to the conference “Mapping
Frontiers, Plotting Pathways,” Armagh, 19–20 January 2006, which revised a section of
a long paper presented at the Keough conference on “Partition and Memory: Ireland,
India and Palestine,” University of Notre Dame, December 6–9 2001. I am grateful to
J. McGarry (as always), to participants at both conferences, and to K. Adeney, S. Bose,
S. Deane, A. Goldstein, G. W. Jones, J. A. Hall, R. Kumar, N. Kasfir, A. Lijphart, I.
Lustick, T. Mabry, M. Moore, J. Nagel, R. Smith and S. Wolff.
Partition 155
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13 Irredentas and secessions
Adjacent phenomena, neglected connections
Donald L. Horowitz
From Irredentism and International Politics, edited by Naomi Chazan. Copyright © 1991
Lynne Reinner Publishers inc. Reproduced here by permission of the publisher.
To think about something makes it necessary to identify and isolate it, to fix upon it
and, in fixing upon it, to reify it. Even before conscious conceptualization occurs, even
in the selection of phenomena for study, concepts creep in. The more careful the
thinking, the more precise the identification of the phenomena for study, the greater the
isolation of one phenomenon from its neighbours, even its near neighbours. When the
careful thinker says, “I mean to include this and to exclude that,” the precision that
makes any careful thinking possible may come at a price. Less careful but perhaps more
nimble thinkers – namely, those actors whose behaviour forms the subject of social-
science thinking – have a way of putting back together what careful thinkers pull apart.
Secessions and irredentas are near neighbours that can be pulled apart for analysis,
properly in my view, but with points of contact and even, at times, a degree of
interchangeability that might permit groups to choose one or the other and that also
makes it necessary to treat the two phenomena together, in order to have a full view of
each. By and large, the two have not been treated together. They have either been
treated in isolation or mentioned in the same breath without an appreciation of their
connections. When, however, secessions and irredentas are considered together, some
rather startling conclusions emerge. Since the two phenomena are sometimes alternatives
to each other, the frequency of each is, in part, a function of the frequency of the other.
Furthermore, the strength of a given movement may be, in part, a function of the
possibility that the alternative movement may arise, Indeed, the fate of a movement, at
least in the sense that it manages to extract concessions from a central government, may
depend on which course it takes,
Two distinct phenomena

Secession and irredentism are definable in distinct terms, even if we restrict ourselves
solely to ethnically motivated movements. Secession is an attempt by an ethnic group
claiming a homeland to withdraw with its territory from the authority of a larger state
of which it is a part. Irredentism is a movement by members of an ethnic group in one
state to retrieve ethnically kindred people and their territory across borders.
It will quickly be noted that disparate subphenomena are subsumed in the definition
of secession propounded here. The definition might be sufficiently elastic to embrace
the activity of a group that merely seeks regional autonomy or creation of a federal
Irredentas and secessions 159
system and control of its own state as a component of such a system. This was the aim
of the Federal party in Sri Lanka until at least 1972 and of the Liberal party in the
Sudan until 1958. The same definition of secession might also comprehend the activity
of an ethnic group occupying a discrete territory within a state in an existing federal
system but aiming to carve a new state out of its portion of the existing state, The
Telangana movement in Andhra Pradesh is one of several such movements in India.1
Nigeria has had many comparable movements, beginning with the United Middle Belt
Congress in the 1950s. Finally, and most relevantly for connections to irredentism, this
definition of secession certainly includes attempts to form separate, independent,
internationally recognized states out of existing sovereign entities, as in the unsuccessful
war for Biafra and the successful war for Bangladesh. In this definition, secession thus
entails several forms of greater or lesser withdrawal from existing units.
Similarly, irredentism, as defined here, contains two subtypes: the attempt to detach
land and people from one state in order to incorporate them in another, as in the case
of Somalia’s recurrent irredenta against Ethiopia, and the attempt to detach land and
people divided among more than one state in order to incorporate them in a single new
state – a “Kurdistan,” for example, composed of Kurds now living in Iraq, Iran, Syria,
and Turkey. Both forms of reconstituted boundaries would qualify as irredentist.
Despite their elasticity, the definitions of the two phenomena are conceptually
distinct. Irredentism involves subtracting from one state and adding to another state,
new or already existing; secession involves subtracting alone.
Moreover, the distinction between secessions and irredentas seems to capture some
important differences in political phenomena on the ground; it is not merely a figment
of the imagination of analysts. A glance at the relative frequency of the two phenomena
hints at this. There are possibilities aplenty for secession and irredentism in the
postcolonial world of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Most states are ethnically
heterogeneous; of these, most have territorially compact minorities. Likewise, many
ethnic groups are divided by territorial boundaries. Consequently, secession and
irredentism are both abundantly plausible possibilities in the contemporary world. The
necessary conditions, if not the sufficient conditions, for both are present, but the two
phenomena are by no means proportionately represented in relation to the possibility
of their occurrence. In spite of predictions to the contrary,2 there have been remarkably
few irredentas in the postcolonial states, but there have been a great many secessionist
movements.
Withdrawal alone attracts many more adherents to action than does withdrawal
coupled with the aim of reincorporation in another state. This seeming puzzle becomes
even more perplexing when additional facts are added to the comparison. Consider just
two. First, although secession is common, the victory of secessionist movements is
extremely uncommon. Victory requires external assistance, which is rarely forthcoming
in a volume and duration sufficient to win the war and create the new secessionist state.
The Bangladesh example was (until the 1990s) conspicuous by its exceptional character.
The improbability of success, however, has not deterred a significant number of
secessionist groups. Second – again contrary to forecasts that wealthy regions would be
more likely secessionists3 – secessionist regions are disproportionately ill favoured in
resources and per capita income.4 Not infrequently, groups attempt to withdraw from
states from which their region actually receives a subsidy.
Counterintuitively, then, in numbers that are both absolute and relative to the
possibilities, secession is much more frequent than irredentism, and this despite the
160 Donald L. Horowitz
enormous obstacles to success and the disadvantages most secessionist regions would
face were they to succeed. By contrast, irredentism is rare, even though the first subtype
of the definition of irredentism would usually involve the armed forces of one state in
retrieving kinsmen across borders from another. Although irredentism would often
carry with it military resources often denied secessionists, that advantage does not
appear to increase the frequency of irredentas. Some behavioural features must
therefore be associated with one phenomenon that is not associated with the other
Otherwise, the disparate incidence of the two phenomena cannot be explained.
This suffices to demonstrate the utility of distinguishing between secessions and
irredentas. In fact, there is a whole spectrum of phenomena worth distinguishing. At
one end, there are international border disputes that have no ethnic component and are
therefore not irredentist. Latin American history is filled with such disputes.5 At the
other end of the spectrum, there are territorially compact groups that nevertheless do
not wholly dominate their region, which is ethnically heterogeneous. Although they
may not aspire to secession, they may well aspire to homogeneity and take violent steps
toward that end. A good many ethnic riots produce a stream of refugees of the victim
group, which in turn fosters increased territorial segregation. Violence that increases
homogenization is, to be sure, a frequent prelude to secession or irredentism – it may be
that for the Albanians in the Kosovo province of Yugoslavia,6 but it need not be and
probably is not for groups like the Assamese in India.
Having delimited the two phenomena and argued that, on the face of it, the
delimitation seems useful, I now propose to put back together what I have pulled apart.
I adhere to the utility of the secession–irredentism distinction, and I continue to think
the differential incidence of the two is partly explicable in terms that are peculiar to the
dynamics of each.7 Nevertheless, I intend to show that there are some fairly close
connections between the two as well. For example, one reason there are few irredentas
may be that many groups that have a choice between irredentism and secession find the
latter the more satisfying choice. Indeed, the potential for irredentism may increase the
frequency and strength of secession, but not vice versa. In short, while it makes a
difference which course of action a group is embarked upon, my aim here is to elucidate
the neglected interrelations between secessions and irredentas where both are possible.
Two related phenomena

The connections between secessionist and irredentist movements can be divided into
three sets of issues. The first relates to the convertibility of the two types of movement.
The second involves the relative frequency of secessions and irredentas. The third
concerns the relative strength of the movements. These three issues are, as we shall see,
closely related to each other
The convertibility of claims

To speak seriously of interchangeability – of the possibility that a movement may
become either secessionist or irredentist or that it may move from one category to the
other – is to limit ourselves to those territorially compact ethnic groups that span
borders. Not all secessionists are in this category. Bengalis are found on the Indian side
of the border as well as on what is now the Bangladesh side and what was before 1971
the East Pakistan side, but Ibo (except for some migrants to other countries) are entirely
contained within Nigeria’s boundaries. The Bengalis might have become either
irredentist or secessionist, but the Ibo had no irredentist option. Although a great many
groups do span borders, a good many others are in the Ibo category.
Violence is frequently convertible from one form to another. Countries that
experience political violence of one sort are likely to experience violence of another
sort.8 Relatively spontaneous violence often gives way at later stages to more organized
violence. Riots, for example, are a common forerunner of secessionist movements; for
transborder ethnic groups, it stands to reason that if conditions are not propitious for
irredentism, those groups may turn to secession, and vice versa.
Underpinning the convertibility of movements is the mutability of ethnic-group
claims, of international relations, and of transborder ethnic affinities. Groups (and
states) are not born irredentist or secessionist; they can and do move back and forth
from integrated participation in the state of which they are a part to a posture of
secession or irredentism.
To begin with, whether a group is integrationist or secessionist depends, in large
measure, on its assessment of its prospects in the undivided state. The Ibo were the most
prominent proponents of one Nigeria. With a considerable investment in human
capital, they had migrated all over Nigeria in their quest for employment. Perhaps one
Ibo in four or five lived outside the Eastern Region before 1966. But when recurrent
violence, culminating in the massacres of September–October 1966, drove the Ibo back
to the east, then and then only did the Ibo become secessionist. Meanwhile, the Hausa
travelled in the opposite direction, from their openly secessionist inclinations of
mid-1966 to their strong role in suppressing the Biafra secession and preserving an
undivided Nigeria.
The Ibo and Hausa were not alone in altering their collective objectives. The Sri
Lankan Tamils are as reluctant a group of secessionists as may be found, but secessionist
some did become, especially after the bloody anti-Tamil riots of 1983.9 The southern
Sudanese, on the other hand, were divided and, even when not divided, were ambiguous
about what they wanted during the civil war of 1963–72. For some groups, the dominant
theme was a settlement within the Sudan; for others, it was southern independence. At
times, one or another of these themes was ascendant; at other times, both were heard
simultaneously, even from the same speaker. In 1972, an abrupt settlement of the war,
on terms of regional autonomy, was reached. Following the resumption of hostilities in
the southern Sudan in the 1980s, guerrillas fighting in the south declared as their goal
the democratization of the entire country, rather than merely the liberation of the
southern Sudan.10 Like the Nigerians, the southern Sudanese have, at various times,
moved in various directions.
That flexibility extends to irredentism, it is no secret that many Kurds advocate the
creation of a Kurdistan out of portions of several independent states. During most of
the post-World War II period, however, regional autonomy and secession, rather than
irredentism, have been the stated Kurdish objectives.11 There is an obvious reason for
this. Kurds in Iraq have required assistance from Iran to make any claim effective.
From time to time, Iran has provided substantial aid. Without any doubt, no such aid
could be expected for a movement that pursued the irredentist objective of unification
of all the Kurds, including those in Iran.
To put the point sharply, the propensity for an irredentist ideology to emerge among
an ethnic group to be retrieved is directly related to the likelihood that the putative
irredentist state will espouse a similar irredentist ideology. That propensity is inversely
related to the likelihood that the emergence of an irredentist claim will produce denial
of the international assistance that would be accorded to secessionists or, even worse,
will produce suppression of the irredentists.
To make matters more complex, it is not merely ethnic groups that are fickle in their
objectives. State policies supporting or opposing secessions and irredentas also change.
In 1975, Iran abruptly terminated military assistance to Kurds in Iraq and eventually
closed its border to them, thereby dooming their movement. In 1987, India ceased its
assistance to Sri Lankan Tamil secessionists, reached an agreement with the Sri Lankan
government providing for Tamil regional autonomy instead, and attempted to suppress
by armed force Tamil guerrillas in Sri Lanka itself. Periodically, Somalia, perhaps the
most persistently irredentist state in the postcolonial world, has embarked upon a
policy of détente with Ethiopia, which at other times is the target of its irredenta.12 State
policy in pursuit of irredentism tends to be inconstant.
That inconstancy drives some potential irredentists to secession instead. For a time
in the 1970s, it seemed as if the connections between the Malaysian state of Sabah and
the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) in the Philippines might support an
attempt to link the two politically. The ethnic identity of the Chief Minister of Sabah
was Suluk, as was that of a good many Philippine Muslims engaged in the combat, and
the Chief Minister had relatives across what had always been a permeable water
boundary. But there are Malaysians of Suluk origin only in Sabah, and they are a
distinct minority even there. No leaders in Kuala Lumpur were Suluk. Eventually the
Chief Minister was voted out of office, and the remote possibility of irredentism was
stillborn. The MNLF never turned its struggle in an irredentist direction.
The southern Philippine example brings us to one final aspect of convertibility: the
convertibility of ethnic affinities. To define irredentism as an attempt to retrieve kindred
people across boundaries is to assume that kindred people know each other, that
kinship and ethnicity are firm. It is by now well established, however, that ethnic
identity is variable over time and over context. Consider, for example, the case of
Malays in southern Thailand. There is no doubt whatever that migration and
interchange between them and Malays in the northern Malaysian states of Kedah and
Kelantan have been considerable, and there are still family ties across the border.13 To
most Malays, however, the “Pattani Malays” of southern Thailand seem rather foreign,
and their distance is accentuated by the Indonesian origin of many Malays in southern
Malaysian states. One of the major problems with irredentism is that the ethnic affinity
of the core of a putative irredentist state may not extend to people at and beyond the
periphery, and those are the very people who are to be retrieved.
The relative frequency of movements

Like some of the other forces conducive to the convertibility of movements, the
variability of group affinities across borders extends also to the relative frequency of
secessionist and irredentist claims. Because of the common reluctance of people at the
centre to see nominally kindred people on the periphery as truly members of the same
ethnic group, and for many other reasons as well, irredentist action on the part of the
potential retrieving state is distinctly uncommon. I shall not rehearse all of these reasons
here, because they have been laid out carefully elsewhere.14 I shall merely touch on a few
that bear on the comparative frequency of secessions and irredentas.
For several reasons, the foreign-policy goals of most putative irredentist states (apart
from the actual goal of retrieval) can be achieved better by encouraging secessionist
movements by groups located in antagonistic states than by encouraging irredentism.
For one thing, there is the easy reversibility of the policy. As the Iranians demonstrated
in 1975, aid to secessionists can be terminated abruptly in return for a quid pro quo.
Carefully rationed Malaysian assistance to the Moro secessionists in the Philippines
helped persuade the Philippine government to abandon its claim on the Malaysian state
of Sabah. Ethiopia has helped southern Sudanese secessionists in order to discourage
Sudanese help for secessionists in Ethiopia. Typically, when the objectives are achieved,
the aid is terminated – which is one reason why there are many wars fought by
secessionists but few that they win. Even the government of India was able to reverse its
policy of support for the Tamil secessionists in Sri Lanka in return for a regional
autonomy agreement. The Sri Lankan Tamils are a kindred people, which many
secessionists who receive aid are not,15 but there was no irredentist claim advanced in
their behalf. Aid to irredentists, however, is underpinned by an ideology of common
fate that hardly lends itself to abrupt termination. Indeed, when the Somali regime did
disengage from war in the Ogaden the decision helped precipitate the Somali coup of
1969, because kindred groups in the armed forces did not wish to abandon Somalis of
the Darood subgroup on the Ethiopian side of the border,
If adjacent states find irredentism unattractive, the feeling is reciprocated by many
discontented, territorially compact, transborder ethnic groups, Groups like these, with
the potential to be retrieved, find retrieval by the putative irredentist state undesirable.
This may be because that state is poorer or less prestigious or more authoritarian than
the state in which they are now encapsulated. Baluch would rather be in Pakistan or be
independent than be in Afghanistan, even if Afghanistan were at peace. Toubou in
northern Chad might equally prefer several alternative fates to merger in Qaddafi’s
Libya. Ethnic affinity across borders is not enough by itself to make merger attractive.
One reason fostering the reluctance to be incorporated is so obvious that it has
escaped notice altogether: the interests of political leaders of a potentially secessionist
region. They are generally willing to accept independence, even though independence
often means an economic position for their state that is inferior to the one it enjoyed as
part of an undivided state, partly because with independence they will no longer have
to compete for leadership positions with all the other political leaders in the undivided
state. By partitioning their area within sovereign boundaries they also keep out
competition for leadership. The ready willingness of so many backward regions to
attempt secession soon after independence owes something to the interests of leaders
who felt unable to compete in the wider arena.
The same logic applies to the response to the prospect of annexation in an adjacent,
albeit ethnically kindred, state. Irredentism will re-merge not just populations but
leadership pools. True enough, the ethnic affinities of the annexing and the annexed
peoples may be more felicitous, but for leaders this may be more, rather than less,
dangerous. If there is a sharp disparity of ethnic identification between the population of
a given region and the population of the rest of the state in which it is currently merged,
leaders of the group dominant in the region at least face no external challenge to their
leadership of that group from leaders of the population in the remainder of the undivided
state; by the same token, they are unable to aspire to leadership positions in the undivided
state. This is the pre-secession situation. In the post-secession situation, those leaders
still face no external challenge to their leadership, but now their group leadership
becomes state leadership, for the region has achieved sovereignty. If, instead of secession,
the choice is merger into an existing, adjacent state via irredentism, regional leaders have
not achieved sovereignty and also are no longer immune from external challenge. Quite
the opposite. Ethnic affinities across the irredentist border open the way to challenges to
their leadership from ethnically kindred leaders of the annexing state.
There are also, of course, wider opportunities for leaders of the annexed region in the
larger irredentist state as a whole, but these are more circumscribed than they might at
first appear. First, leaders from the newly annexed region must break into what is likely
to be a crystallized political situation and do so from a merely regional base, with at
best imperfect knowledge of the new state and its political patterns. Second, because
ethnic affinities are rarely undifferentiated, the newly annexed area stands every chance
of being regarded as at least subethnically different in composition (in dialect, accent,
family ties, or customs) – in short, as truly peripheral16 – and its people, cousins though
they are, are likely to be viewed as rustics who lived too long under an alien regime. So
the position of the annexed region as peripheral newcomer is an enormous impediment
to the national-level ambitions of its leaders should irredentism succeed.
Given this structure of opportunities and constraints, is it not obvious that secession
will be the preferred alternative of most ethnic leaders in separatist regions? Of course,
leadership interests are not always overriding, Leaders may be, and sometimes are,
overruled by an avalanche of mass ethnic sentiment.17 Moreover, the particular structure
of opportunities and constraints will vary from one situation to another, and some
regional leaders may prefer irredentism to secession, just as many prefer continuation
of the region in the undivided state of which it is currently a part.18 But where withdrawal
from that state is the preferred option, most leaders, most of the time, will think in
terms of becoming leaders of the sovereign state, rather than risking reincorporation
into another, larger state, the behaviour of which toward a newly annexed region is, in
any case, impossible to foretell. Overall, leadership interests are a major explanation for
the frequency of secession and the infrequency of irredentas.
Reluctance to be annexed by an adjacent state may also derive from the heterogeneity
of the irredentist state. Even assuming transborder ethnic affinities are intact, the
retrieving state may contain a plurality of ethnic groups, so that a decision in favour of
irredentism will not necessarily be a decision resulting in ethnic self-determination,
much less domination in the new state. The Ewe and the Bakongo (of the Democratic
Republic of Congo [Kinshasa] and the Republic of Congo [Brazzaville]) are in this
position. Even if adjoining states containing other Ewe and Bakongo wished to retrieve
them – which they do not – the presence of still other powerful ethnic groups in the
retrieving state would deter acceptance of the offer.
Moreover, such potentially irredentist groups – the Kurds are also among them –
cannot practically go the alternative route and opt for multiple secessions, carving out
of several existing states a new, homogeneous Ewe, Bakongo, or Kurdish state. One
secession is difficult enough; it has long odds. But multiple secessions threaten the very
governments whose aid across borders is the indispensable component of success. I
have already noted the unwillingness of the Kurds in Iraq to take a position regarding
Kurds in Iran that would have precluded Iranian assistance. The same applies to all
such transborder groups; for this reason, potential irredentists are much more likely to
engage in their own separate secessions.
As a matter of fact, virtually everything I have said thus far points in the same
direction. If claims are convertible from secession to irredenta and vice versa, if
transborder affinities are imperfectly developed, if state policy is at best inconstant, and
if there is frequently a reluctance to retrieve or to be retrieved, the sum of all of this is a
powerful structural bias against the incidence of irredentism. What that means is that
discontented groups will tend to look favourably on secession, rather than on
irredentism, where both are possible. The Malays of southern Thailand, who might
have become irredentist but find no such invitation from across the Malaysian border,
are likely to find secession an attractive alternative. As noted earlier, the many compact
groups that do not span borders do not, by definition, have an irredentist option. In
practice, neither do most of the many transborder groups have an irredentist option.
In short, all else being equal, the fewer the irredentas, the larger the number of
secessionist movements. And since irredentas are rare, secession is by far the more
frequent movement of territorially compact ethnic groups. The opposite conclusion
also seems likely: ceteris paribus, if for some reason the various inhibitions on
irredentism were to decline and irredentism were to become more common, there would
also be fewer secessionists.
That is not to say that there is only a finite amount of ethnic discontent available or
a finite number of movements possible among territorially compact ethnic groups. It is
only to make the important point that the two types of movement are closely related
and frequently are plausible alternatives to each other. The behaviour of many groups
in one direction or another is structured by the availability or absence of the other
option. Since there is no reason to think the inhibitions on irredentism will in fact
decline – particularly because irredentism, unlike secession, depends on the presence of
two willing parties whose interests and affinities are rarely identical – secession is likely
to remain by far the more common movement.
The strength of movements

The strength of secessionist and irredentist movements – and their prospects for success
– may be affected in various ways by whether they choose one or the other alternative
and by whether the other possibility lurks in the background. If a transborder group
attempts secession, the states hosting its population may combine to suppress the
movement, as Iran and Pakistan have both suppressed the Baluch movement. If the
groups adjacent to the border choose separate secessions at different times, the
neighbouring governments may, on the contrary, provide assistance to the secessionists
in the country across the border, on the Ethiopia–Sudan model. If, on the other hand,
a movement becomes irredentist and one of the transborder segments seeks incorporation
in the neighbouring state, it is quite possible that the two states will be at war over the
issue.19 So the range of possibilities simultaneously affects prospects for the discontented
ethnic groups and for relations between the states of which they are a part. The form of
the movement thus has consequences, and the likely consequences presumably have a
reciprocal influence on the form the movement takes and the objectives it proclaims.
Whether secessionists receive any significant support from the state across the border
will depend, in considerable measure, on the international interests of that state and its
objectives with respect to its neighbour. Where interests are perceived to be in conflict,
at least some help can generally be expected, as Pakistan’s receptivity to the Sikh
independence movement shows. But where irredentism is in the background – even in
the very remote background, as in India’s relations with the Sri Lankan Tamils (despite
Sinhalese suspicions of worse) – more support can be expected, at least for a time.
Indeed, because of external help of various kinds, from various sources, both the Sikh
and the Sri Lankan Tamil movements engaged in armed warfare far out of proportion
to the underlying and at best ambivalent sentiments of their putatively secessionist
populations. The armed militants had their way because of international connections.
Where, however, irredentist sentiment is more strongly felt in the putative retrieving
state, warfare may be initiated even if – and perhaps because – the authorities in the
putative irredentist state are unsympathetic to the irredentist objective. I am thinking
here of the warfare that made Bangladesh independent. To be sure, there were several
reasons why India intervened in East Bengal in 1971. There was an unparalleled
opportunity to dismember Pakistan and install a friendlier government on the eastern
frontier. There was the burden of refugees and the prospect of long-simmering guerrilla
warfare across borders under circumstances that might later become more favourable
to Pakistan. Pakistan’s retaliation for inevitable Indian assistance to the guerrillas
might prove painful. But, above and beyond all the other reasons, there were incipient
claims in West Bengal for the unification of all Bengalis, east and west. Had this
movement succeeded, the Hindu–Muslim balance in India would have been altered
permanently, and India would have assumed the burden of supporting a very poor
dependent state. An independent Bangladesh was far preferable to a growing demand
for a Bengali irredenta. Consequently, India’s willingness to go to war to secure
Bangladesh’s independence was likely coloured by the alternative (and undesirable)
possibility of irredentism. The success of the war produced a fait accompli, an
independent Bangladesh that ended the irredentist clamour the government of India
had no wish to encourage,
If this analysis is correct, it shows that the only successful secession from 1945 to
1991 was the result of a secessionist war conducted in the growing shadow of a potential
irredenta. And if this is so, the example shows again, not merely how the two phenomena
are related, but how the reluctance of states to espouse irredentist claims drives ethnic
movements toward secession – in this case, secession augmented by military force that
an irredenta-shy regime committed in time to forestall an irredentist movement it had
no wish to encourage.
The choice of movement and the bases of action

In explaining the relationship between secessions and irredentas. I have not gone all the
way back to account for the emergence of movements for ethno-territorial separatism
in the first instance. To do this would require much greater explication of the course of
ethnic relations within the undivided state. There is now quite a wide range of theorizing
on the emergence of such movements, some more inward-looking, emphasizing intra-
ethnic history, myths of origin, and connections to land, others more outward-looking,
emphasizing interethnic changes within the present territory.20 What is rare is a general
theory that accounts for whether ethnoterritorial separatism will take a secessionist or
irredentist course. The two are typically bracketed together in the literature, as if the
emergence of one or the other were a matter of no consequence or a happenstance
event.
We have seen, however, that secessions and irredentas are convertible under some
circumstances but not perfectly interchangeable at all. Their widely differential
frequency shows how much more attractive secession is overall. To the participants, it
obviously matters enormously which course is chosen, and it follows that the conditions
associated with each course can, in principle, be specified. As they make such choices,
group members and leaders resort to an array of perceptual and calculative
considerations. Who are our true cousins? In which territorial unit are my political
ambitions more likely to be fulfilled? Who will deploy force against us if we go in one
direction or another? Neither secession nor irredentism is a spontaneous, unorganized
movement, so it is hardly surprising that the strategic choice should have a heavy
overlay of calculations of rational interest.
Such a conclusion should not, however, displace the role of the emotional discomfort
that is customarily felt in conflict-prone interethnic relations or the perceptions of
ethnic affinity and disparity that define group boundaries – neither of which is properly
subsumed in any sensible scheme based wholly on rational interest. Indeed, even as we
explain the preference for secession over irredentism on understandable calculative
grounds, we elide an element of choice that belies the dominant role of calculation: if
nearly every secession is doomed to failure, why do secessionist movements continue to
arise? Until we are able to specify the mix of givens and chosens, of passionate and
calculative behaviour, with greater precision, we shall continue to bracket related ethnic
phenomena, the choice of which is neither an unpredictable event nor a matter of
indifference to the participants.
Notes
1 On 9 December 2009, the Indian government announced that it would start the process of
creating a separate Telangana state. This was followed by serious unrest in the existing state
of Andhra Pradesh, prompting the government on 24 December 2009 to make any further
action dependent on a political consensus in the existing state.
2 Rupert Emerson, From Empire to Nation (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1960),
p. 105.
3 Immanuel Wallerstein, Africa: The Politics of Independence (New York: Vintage, 1961), p. 88.
4 Donald L. Horowitz, “Patterns of Ethnic Separatism,” Comparative Studies in Society and
History 23, 2 (April 1981):165–195, at p. 194.
5 As Jacob Landau pointed out at the conference to which this chapter in its original form was
a contribution.
6 Subsequent developments in the former Yugoslavia confirm this assessment from two decades
ago: Kosovo is now an independent state, recognized by over fifty members of the UN
following its unilateral declaration of independence on 17 February 2007.
7 Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of
California Press, 1985), chapter 6.
8 Ted Robert Gurr, Why Men Rebel (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970), pp. 4–5.
9 The military defeat of the Tamil Tigers by the Sri Lankan government in spring 2009 may
have put at least a temporary end to any further secessionist impulses among some Tamils.
10 The 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement for Sudan includes an option for independence
for the South. In late 2009, North and South reached an agreement on the terms of a
referendum on the future status of the South in 2011.
11 Joane Nagel, “The Conditions of Ethnic Separatism: The Kurds in Turkey, Iran, and Iraq,”
Ethnicity 7, 3 (September 1980): 279–297; George S. Harris, “Ethnic Conflict and the Kurds,”
The Annals 433 (September 1977): 112–124.
12 While Somalia subsequently experienced a complete state collapse and has not had a
functioning government for almost two decades now, irredentist impulses have kept
resurfacing regularly.
13 David J. Banks, Malay Kinship (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1933),
pp. 25–28.
14 Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, pp. 281–288, section entitled “Irredentism: Prerogative
of the Few.”
15 Ibid., pp. 274–275.
16 This is not necessarily a reflection of the actual historical role of the region now regarded as
peripheral.
17 Here, however, it should be borne in mind that the leadership interests are likely to be
disproportionately important. Once the matter comes down to secession or irredentism it will
probably also come to fighting, and the leaders will negotiate access to the crucial arms.
18 For a discussion of the many African groups divided by boundaries see A.I. Asiwaju, ed.,
Partitioned Africans (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985).
19 This point is based on Myron Weiner’s comments at the conference to which this chapter in
its original form was a contribution.
20 Compare, for example, Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Revival in the Modern World
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 64–66, with Ronald Rogowski, “Causes
and Varieties of Nationalism: A Rationalist Account,” in Ronald Rogowski and Edward A.
Tiryakian (eds) New Nationalisms of the Developed West (Boston MA: Allen & Unwin, 1985),
pp. 87–107.
Further reading
Emerson, Rupert, From Empire to Nation (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1960).
Gurr, Ted Robert, Why Men Rebel (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970).
Horowitz, Donald L., Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley CA and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1985).
Horowitz, Donald, L., “Patterns of Ethnic Separatism,” Comparative Studies in Society and
History 23, 2 April 1981.
Smith, Anthony D., The Ethnic Revival in the Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1981).
Wallerstein, Immanuel, Africa: The Politics of Independence (New York: Vintage, 1961).
14 Conflict prevention
A policy in search of a theory or a theory in
search of a policy?
David Carment and Martin Fischer
The claim that preventive statecraft is not just a noble idea but a viable, real world
strategy has four principal bases. They are: the purposiveness of conflict interactions, the
availability of early warning, opportunities for meaningful response strategies, and the
unavoidability of international action.
(Jentleson 2003)
Written in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, Jentleson’s words ring true today
just as they did when policy makers were faced with an unprecedented rise in ethnic
conflict around the globe. Through an evaluation of both theory and policy, this chapter
advances our understanding of why prevention remains, as Jentleson argues, both
necessary and possible but also very difficult. Apart from this introduction, the chapter
unfolds in five sections. In the first section, we discuss the conceptual aspects of
prevention theory and policy. In the second section we engage in a broad discussion of
ethnic conflict, and how its analysis can contribute to effective structural prevention. In
the third section, supported by evidence from recent preventive activities by regional
organizations and civil society, we assess conflict prevention policy in its operational
guise, thus identifying key contributions to the field and opportunities for innovation.
We conclude with some direction for future research and implications for policy.
Our chapter is premised on the assertion that, for the last twenty years, there has
been a widening range of organizations that have been called upon to ‘do’ ethnic conflict
prevention. These actors range from the corporate sector and NGOs to regional and
multilateral economic and political organizations whose mandates, objectives and
interests are quite different.
Yet, despite the fact that development practitioners, foreign policy makers, security
specialists, civil society and even the private sector have historically approached ethnic
conflict prevention from different directions, they have, over time, through cooperation
as well as through support for extensive research and policy networks, developed a
much better understanding of what conflict prevention entails and how it can be
comprehensively applied. As a result, we have seen a virtual explosion in toolkits, early
warning methodologies, frameworks for impact assessment and project evaluation,
handbooks for practitioners, specialized funding envelopes, and multinational task
forces. Donor agencies, foreign policy departments, defence departments, regional
organizations and international financial institutions have all taken up the need for
conflict prevention mainstreaming. Structural as well as operational initiatives have
been put in place, prevention centres and units within governments and IGOs
established, and collaborative research projects undertaken. Regional organizations
170 David Carment and Martin Fischer
have been bolstered financially, and the private sector has been encouraged to take a
more accountable role through the UN-led Global Compact.
In short, the gap between rhetoric and reality, which loomed large at the century’s
end, has been narrowed. Does this mean that more effective conflict prevention is now
within reach? The answer is both yes and no. On the one hand, while there has been
considerable deepening of capabilities through structural prevention and specialized
departments within government agencies, in the absence of effective monitoring and
evaluation methodologies, it is difficult to determine if these initiatives have lived up to
the rhetorical claims. On the other hand, operational measures are more easily evaluated
because of their presumed direct impact on conflict processes.
Bridging the gap

Much of the necessary conceptual and theoretical brush-clearing on conflict prevention
has been conducted over the years by a number of think tanks in Europe and North
America, publishing key findings on, among other things, the phases of conflict, tools
and techniques for monitoring and assessment, political will and response strategies. In
an important contribution to the field, Michael Lund (1999) examined the issues of
conflict prevention impact assessment and the improvement of techniques and methods
for conflict prevention. In doing so, he provides an all-inclusive definition of conflict
prevention that provides a useful point of departure for this chapter. Lund suggests
that:
conflict prevention entails any structural or interactive means to keep intrastate

and interstate tensions and disputes from escalating into significant violence and to
strengthen the capabilities to resolve such disputes peacefully as well as alleviating
the underlying problems that produce them, including forestalling the spread of
hostilities into new places. It comes into play both in places where conflicts have
not occurred recently and where recent largely terminated conflicts could recur.
Depending on how they are applied, it can include the particular methods and
means of any policy sector, whether labelled prevention or not (e.g. sanctions,
conditional aid, mediation, structural adjustment, democratic institution building
etc.), and they might be carried out by global, regional, national or local levels by
any governmental or non-governmental actor.
(Lund 1999)
It is obvious that a broad definition has both advantages and disadvantages. For
example, in some instances the term conflict prevention is qualified by the antecedents
“violent” or “deadly” as if to suggest that some conflicts may be constructive and are
not in need of immediate attention or are at least less threatening. Others have taken
conflict prevention to mean the task of addressing latent, underlying, or structural
features, which, under certain conditions, have the potential to become deadly. Still
others equate preventive diplomacy with conflict prevention, although that too is
overlaid with conceptual ambiguity since preventive diplomacy carries with it
connotations of crisis management, statecraft and the use of force in order to prevent
the escalation of organized and wide-scale violence.
Is conflict prevention an ad hoc action-oriented operational approach to emerging and
potential problems or is it a medium and long-term proactive structuralist strategy
Conflict prevention 171
intended to create the enabling conditions for a stable and more predictable international
environment? One possible answer can be found in Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s An Agenda
for Peace (A/47/277-S/2411, 1992). To be sure, Boutros-Ghali chose to reflect only on
preventive diplomacy within a range of conflict management techniques that include
peace-building, peacemaking and peacekeeping and essentially on those activities that
usually, but not always, fall under the purview of the United Nations, such as confidence-
building measures, arms control and preventive deployment. Preventive diplomacy
has now come to refer to a response generated by a state, a coalition of states or a
multilateral organization – often represented by eminent envoys – intended to address
the rapid escalation of emergent crises, disputes and inter-state hostilities. Preventive
diplomacy entails primarily, but not exclusively, ad-hoc forms of consultation using
non-compartmentalized and non-hierarchical forms of information gathering,
contingency planning and short-term response mechanisms. The risks are proximate
and analysis and action are combined at once in rapid succession.
Kalypso Nicolaïdis (1996) provides a useful conceptual framework for determining
how preventive diplomacy and long-term structural approaches relate. Preventive
diplomacy is seen as an operational response. It is premised on incentive structures
provided by outside actors to change specific kinds of undesirable behaviour. Preventive
diplomacy is, therefore, targeted and short-term and the preventive action taken relates
directly to changes in conflict escalation and conflict dynamics.1 In this regard outside
actors can seek to influence the course of events and try to alter or induce specific
behaviour through coercive and operational threats and deterrents or through less
coercive strategies of persuasion and inducement.
Of course, operational and structural approaches are not mutually exclusive activities.
Shifting attitudinal change necessarily entails a concerted movement toward, and
investment in, both strategic operational responses and long-term approaches. Though
not exclusively, conflict prevention is more and more often being associated with
structural transformations achieved through developmental aid and with indeterminate
processes that may take years if not decades to achieve. Ultimately, conflict prevention
is a strategy intended to identify and create the enabling conditions for a stable and
more predictable international security environment.
Causes of ethnic conflict and linkages to structural prevention

Much of the discussion on the causes of ethnic conflict as seen through a prescriptive
lens has been shaped by the events of September 2001 and emerging problems associated
with failed, fragile and weak states. As a result, security policy and development policy
have become more intertwined than ever before. From a research perspective, a lot has
been written and said about the relationship between ethnic conflict and prevention but
there is little consensus on the relationships between them and, more important, where
to focus policy relevant analysis. To fully understand ethnic conflict, it is suggested that
there is a need to consider the political and economic advantages there are for certain
parts of the elite and their client groups to either incite or sustain ethnic conflict. In fact,
one body of literature, which may be too simplistic, argues that the “greed” of these
groups is more important than the “grievances” for which violent conflicts take place.
Often, one can observe a shift from “grievance” to “greed” in the course of conflict. At
the same time, a shadow economy emerges to make high profits on the margin of the
conflict. Political and other entrepreneurs benefit from the general insecurity and lack
of rule of law to extract precious natural resources trade. Both forms of economy result
in a concentration of power and wealth, the destruction of economic assets, and the
impoverishment of vulnerable ethnic minorities.
There is also an assumption that poverty is a source of ethnic conflict. This too is
simplistic. Although nowadays most violent conflicts take place in poor countries, they
do not necessarily occur in the poorest of them, nor are all poor countries involved in
violent ethnic conflict. Research has shown, however, that extreme horizontal
inequalities can become sources of conflict, where they are linked to the real or perceived
exclusion of certain groups (Stewart 2001). The state thus plays a central role in the
above processes, as it can either be an instrument of discrimination and private
enrichment in the hands of a powerful elite and its followers, or it can mediate between
different interest groups through inclusive political processes and the redistribution of
resources.
Over the last ten years, various reports from the Center for International Development
and Conflict Management, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, and
the Peace Research Institute of Oslo, to name a few, have shown that large-scale ethnic
violence is in decline globally. This evidence may point toward a more effective
international response to conflict in the last decade, greater autonomy for ethnic
minorities and possibly opportunities for peaceful protest for groups through
democratic institutions. However, despite the apparent decline on a global basis, not
enough attention has been paid, both by governments and donors, to developing
approaches to integrating conflict sensitivity into development strategies and assistance
at the sectoral and community level and to linking this assistance to the overall conflict
analysis of a country or region. If indeed large-scale violence is in decline but horizontal
inequalities are increasing then better analyses of these changes is crucial. The effects of
conditionality, aid impacts and democratization on ethnic conflict also require
attention. Prevention may take the form of responses to structural factors that may
contribute to future and current conflict. However, this assumption is premised on the
ability of structural efforts to contribute to equitable economic and social development
among groups, governance reform which includes minority rights, arms control for
groups in conflict, and inclusive security sector reforms that address legitimate minority
grievances. Structural conflict prevention also includes activities that enhance the
selectivity of aid and trade, such as the use of peace and conflict impact assessments,
that contribute to a better understanding of specific groups are affected.
It is difficult to give an overall assessment of the impact of external development
assistance on the dynamics of ethnic conflict. However, it is an important factor to
consider. Macroeconomic assistance, mostly in the form of budget support, can have a
stabilizing role. States mainly use it for debt servicing and paying the bureaucracy, thus
maintaining critical state services. Yet, conditionalities attached to this aid (e.g.
austerity programmes) can have opposite effects. At the programme and project level,
externally imposed priorities and insensitive targeting policies can fuel tensions.
Additional resources brought into poor ethnically divided areas risk being appropriated
by the local elite and thus increase inequality, while the technical equipment is being
vied for by conflict actors. The actual impact of external assistance, however, widely
varies and strongly depends on local circumstances.
An understanding of the proximate causes of ethnic conflict indicates that elections
and regime change, whether legitimate or not, are often trigger events for ethnic conflict
and instability. Though democracy and trade may create peaceful states over the long
term, weak ethnically divided states often have short-term vulnerabilities that make
transition to effective democratic governance extremely problematic, and even
destabilizing. Thus, any strategy advocating democratization, good governance and
economic modernization must take into account the possibility that such efforts may
themselves trigger ethnic conflict and possibly even state failure in the short term,
thereby denying the promise of long-term democratic stability. A process of peaceful
political development is sometimes more important than holding elections especially
when states have little or no experience in, or history of, democracy. Power-sharing
failures abound, as illustrated by experiences in Fiji, Sri Lanka, South Africa and
Bosnia and Herzegovina. Political parties are often seen as the key to prevention, but
they can become weak, narrow and personalized.
The need for timely and correct analysis

All this assumes that those engaged in structural prevention know what to look for at
the outset of their engagement. However, several problems arise in translating analysis
in to action. Misdiagnosis can create “situational ambiguity” in which there is
uncertainty about cause and effect, creating a perception of high risk with little or no
potential for lasting impact. Under conditions of uncertainty, policy makers employ
the phrase “the absence of political will” to rationalize their inactions. According to
Woocher (2001), Jentleson (2003) and Ivanov and Nyehim (2004), among others,
political will is a largely a “smokescreen” for either not taking the time to get the
analysis right or not fully understanding the kinds of capabilities that could be deployed
to address the problem.
As Suhrke and Adelman (1996) showed long ago in their careful assessment of the
failure to respond to the genocide in Rwanda, that breakdown was due in large part to
strategies of “passing the buck” and “waffling” by lead actors who actively encouraged
situational ambiguity to discredit clear-cut analyses that would initiate decisive
responses. The media played their part by engaging in misdiagnosis, interpreting the
conflict as a complex humanitarian disaster rather than the politically motivated
agendas of leaders who carefully laid out plans with genocidal intent (Suhrke and
Adelman 1996; Jentleson 2003).
Fifteen years later, little research has been done to “unbundle” the political will
problem and its relationship to analysis. Several task forces on genocide prevention2 in
Canada and the United States have been established but it remains to been seen what
impact their recommendations will have on either ongoing or future risks (Albright and
Cohen 2008).
In sum, forging a relationship between analysis and political will is complex but not
insurmountable. The donor community, NGOs and the private sector need analytical
tools. Investments in the development of local capacity is also crucial because NGOs
and local actors are, by design, a crucial and necessary part of the analysis and response
chain of responsibilities (Schnabel and Carment 2004). For example, the donor
community has played a role in advancing a framework for analysis-driven programming
in fragile states. A number of international partners, including the Department for
International Development (DfID), the German Agency for Technical Co-operation
(GTZ), the Dutch Foreign Ministry, the Swedish International Development Agency
(SIDA) and the Canadian International Development Agency, among others, along
with NGOs such as International Alert and SaferWorld from the United Kingdom; the
Africa Peace Forum (APFO) in Kenya, the Centre for Conflict Resolution (CECORE)
in Uganda, and the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies (CHA) in Sri Lanka, the
West Africa Peacebuilding Network (WANEP) and the Forum on Early Warning and
Response (FEWER) pioneered the mainstreaming of analysis and training into
government agencies.
Investments by government agencies led to the Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment
(PCIA) initiative, which sought to create a series of tools to aid in programming and
policy decision-making. Though not concerned with ethnic conflicts per se, the
initiative’s focus on early warning and early response, driven by objective analysis and
risk assessment, clearly has much in common with current efforts to enhance monitoring
and assessment capability. These approaches assume that a demand side-oriented
approach to analysis and response is better suited to local capacity building, given that
various frameworks could be adapted to local needs (Nyheim 2008). Localized
approaches also have another distinct advantage. Active and applied conflict prevention
can easily be perceived as a serious threat to a state’s sovereignty – and so political
resistance is unavoidable. In part because of the unwillingness to allow outsiders to
“meddle in their affairs,” there has been much rhetoric and advocacy and sadly little
specific in tackling conflict prevention within the United Nations. Thorough training,
mainstreaming capacity building, is required to enhance preventive thinking. This does
not just happen by itself or overnight, but can only be the result of deliberate action,
collaboration and commitment from governments.
In sum, as Ouellette (2004) argues, financial capacity building might be seen as a easy
short cut between analysis and prevention. However, earmarking funds or creating a
central fund to support preventive measures, whether through agencies or civil society, is
only part of the story. As with any government policy, the development of conflict
prevention policy is constrained by various systemic, political and bureaucratic factors.
These factors include the characteristics of the existing expenditure management system,
the bifurcation of policy and budget, the fact that ends are chosen to fit available means,
and poor horizontal integration across agencies and Ministries. In the case of conflict
prevention, these problems are further compounded by the diversity of situations and the
range of tools needed to address any given conflict. Establishing a sustainable financial
regime able to support both operational and structural prevention requires a framework
that allows for clear priority setting and operational doctrine (Ouellette 2004).
In answer to this challenge, a notable convergence has taken place between research
and policy interventions that deal on the one hand with conflict and, on the other, with
development. Hot conflicts have become primarily a poor-country affair, and extreme
underdevelopment a problem of countries at war. It is now impossible to think seriously
about development without considering conflict, and conversely to think of conflict
without considering development. Such a convergence has spawned a number of
research initiatives, and a growing willingness on the part of development agencies,
from the World Bank and the Development Aid Committee of the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to the United Kingdom’s DfID and
Canada’s CIDA, to make conflict a standard preoccupation of their work.
Yet significant bureaucratic and institutional constraints remain. The most serious of
these relate to problems of “political will”, stovepiping, and inter-agency and
interdepartmental coordination and collaboration. It has long been believed that one
way to overcome “political will” and related issues is to provide specialized funding
pools and to mainstream conflict prevention into the core mandates of agencies and
organizations. The World Bank for example has specialized in conflict prevention
capacity building for over a decade now. The Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development (OECD) has developed a specific set of policy recommendations for
donor countries. The British DfID and the German government, among others, have
developed action plans for conflict prevention (see for example the Action Plan on
Civilian Conflict Prevention, Conflict Resolution, and Post-conflict Peace-building
(German Federal Government 2004). In the United States, the Office of the Coordinator
for Reconstruction and Stabilization within the Department of State (S/CRS) is the
new locus for American preventive strategies (Krasner and Pascual 2005). Though
some emphasis is placed on structural preventive action, the core mission of S/CRS is
to quickly mobilize and coordinate the American response to any emerging conflict
situation. Toward this end, the office coordinates the efforts of both the State
Department and USAid, and draws on resources from the Department of Defense, the
intelligence community and other relevant government departments. The UK
government has created two Conflict Prevention Pools (CPPs), one for sub-Saharan
Africa (ACPP) and one for outside Africa (Global CPP, or GCPP), to improve
department coordination and priority setting. The CPPs are jointly funded and
administered by the Ministry of Defence (MOD), Department for International
Development and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).
Evaluating the operational prevention of ethnic conflict

Turning now to the operational dimensions of ethnic conflict prevention, in the early
1990s it became increasingly evident that the United Nations, government and most
regional organizations were not up to the task of operational prevention. The problems,
as highlighted above, were primarily bureaucratic but, as Michael Lund showed, a core
issue was also attitudinal. His various analyses have helped dispel the sometimes
prevailing assumption that operational prevention is an idealist notion that cannot
succeed in a world driven by reactive – not proactive – notions of conflict management
(see Lund 1996a, b, 2005). Lund shows that there has been growing interest in investing
in the maintenance of peace to prevent potential conflicts. There are, in sum, intrinsic
benefits of systematic preventive thinking, as reflected in serious commitments to
mainstream operational prevention by numerous international organizations. To
evaluate this assumption we look at recent evidence indicating that, on the operational
side of the equation, some progress has been made.
An Agenda for Peace (A/47/277-S/2411, 1992), the Brahimi Report (A/55/305-
S/2000/809, 2000) and the High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change
(A/59/565, 2004) all sought to bring operational prevention to the attention of the
United Nations and its member states. As Carment and Fischer (2009) suggest, “there
is little doubt that conflict prevention has won the rhetorical battle, judging by the
various reports released within the last several years”. But does it work?
To answer this question, we suggest that a much wider range of tools is available to
external and internal actors than simply preventive diplomacy. Operational conflict
prevention measures can be grouped into four sets of hands-on action:3 first, political
measures such as mediation with muscle, the creation of institutional mechanisms
through regional and international organizations; second, economic measures such as
sanctions; third, military measures such as preventive peace operations; fourth, civil
society-led initiatives as network building and forums for dialogue.
Political measures and instruments
Political measures and instruments aimed at preventing ethnic conflict may include the
establishment of national and regional mechanisms and institutions, direct preventive
diplomacy activities (see Jentleson 2000, 2003) such as mediation, fact-finding,
establishing good offices, initiating peace conferences, sending envoys, the creation of
back channels, message carrying as well as problem-solving and confidence-building
workshops, talks initiated by faith leaders and cross-group discussions. While there is an
abundance of examples for each of these activities, it is at times hard to pinpoint if and
when exactly they were successful at preventing the outbreak of ethnic conflict. Repeated
reference has been made to efforts undertaken by former UN Secretary General Kofi
Annan to curb the post-election violence in Kenya in late 2007 and early 2008.
On December 27, 2007, Kenya held its fourth multi-party elections. Violence erupted
between supporters of the different parties after the Election Commission of Kenya
prematurely declared President Kibaki the winner (see Dagne 2008; Nicoll and Delaney
2008). Many observers described the violence as being based on ethnic differences
between the President’s Kikuyu and the Luo and Kalenjin ethnic groups, supporters of
the opposition leader Raila Odinga. Initial efforts by the African Union (AU) and
European Union (EU) to curb the violence and bring about a negotiated settlement
between the two parties failed. It was only “after intense mediation by a panel of eminent
African led by the former United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, [that] a power
shower agreement was reached between the Kibaki government and the opposition
party led by Odinga” (Kwaja 2009, 43). It is widely believed that without the mediation
efforts led by Annan the ethnic violence would have escalated into full-blown civil war
(see Romero et al. 2008). The Annan-led mediation effort was undertaken under the
umbrella of the AU’s Panel of the Wise, which was established as part of the AU’s Peace
and Security Council as “a panel of five eminent African personalities to engage in
conflict prevention diplomacy” (Cilliers and Sturman 2004, 98). It serves as an example
of an initiative originating directly from a regional organization’s political organ.
Most regional organizations have included conflict prevention in their core mandate
and have developed some political, civilian and military preventive capacities (see
Carment and Fischer 2009; contributions in Schnabel and Carment 2004 I; Wulf 2009).
Dorn (2004), among others, suggests that the EU played a crucial role in preventing a
full-blown ethnic war in Macedonia in the mid-1990s. Based on its early prevention
experience in the Balkans, the EU has created a host of different mechanisms to
coordinate and increase the effectiveness of the various civilian and military resources
at its disposal. As is the case with other regional organizations, the OSCE and EU have
focused their political measures and instruments on the prevention of conflict stimulated
by ethnic motives. Since the release of the International Commission on Intervention
and State Sovereignty’s report The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) in 2001, much of the
academic and policy discussion relating to ethnic conflicts in general and genocides in
particular has been focused on the tools and mechanisms detailed in the R2P.
The R2P agenda’s threshold for the direct involvement in identity-based conflicts is
fairly high. While much attention has been paid to the R2P’s reactive component,
Bellamy (2008) argues that the preventive pillar of the R2P has been largely overlooked.
Instead of tying the R2P and conflict prevention together, the 2005 World Summit
Outcome document (A/RES/60/1) shifted its focus on early warning by fully supporting
the office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide. The Special Adviser’s
mandate was defined by the Secretary General to include, inter alia, the collection “of
existing information … on massive and serious violations of human rights and
international humanitarian law of ethnic and racial origin that, if not prevented or
halted, might lead to genocide” and to “act as a mechanism of early warning to the
Secretary General, and through him to the Security Council, by bringing to their
attention situations that could potentially result in genocide” (S/2004/567).
Carment and Fischer (2009) conducted an in-depth review of seven regional
organizations’4 implementation of R2P’s preventive principles. Here, we depart from a
specific focus on the R2P’s preventive pillar and broaden the framework’s scope to
reflect regional organizations’ position toward the prevention of ethnic in conflict in
general. We evaluate regional organizations along six criteria:
• Charter endorsement: to what extent do organizations’ charters reflect preventive

principles?
• Adherence to the principle of non-interference in member states’ domestic affairs
and the recognition of the principles of different identities.
• Capacity-building efforts that aim at strengthening capabilities for the long-term
prevention of ethnic conflict.
• Dimensions of preventive diplomacy.
• Dimensions of conflict management.
• Direct preventive engagement.
Table 14.1 summarizes our findings along these six dimensions.
Table 14.1 Regional organizations’ reflection of R2P prevention principles

Adherence to Direct
Charter principle of Capacity Preventive Conflict operational
Organization endorsement non-intervention building diplomacy management engagement
AU      
ECOWAS      
OSCE  a
    
EU  a
    
ASEAN      
OAS      
SAARC      
Key  Strong.  Moderate.  Weak.
Note: aNot explicit charter endorsement but endorsement through key organs.
We conclude that these regional organizations’ approach the prevention of ethnic

conflict in very different ways. On the supportive end of spectrum, the AU’s Constitutive
Act strongly endorses preventive principles while ASEAN and the OAS strongly oppose
interference in their member states’ internal affairs. At a rhetorical level, the AU has
shown a strong commitment to prevent ethnic conflicts from occurring and escalating.
The Union has actively intervened in Burundi (African Union Mission in Burundi),5 in
Somalia (African Union Mission in Somalia),6 and in Darfur (African Union Mission
in Darfur). However, despite the AU’s strong formal commitment, its capacity for
operational conflict prevention continues to be dependent on external support.
Presently, the AU is unable to effectively engage in situations prior to the eruption of
ethnic conflict (see Williams 2007).
At times, ECOWAS has been able to benefit from Nigeria’s ability to provide
operational capabilities and pressure other country to match its contributions. The
OSCE’s strong operational capabilities are at times hampered by political constraints
brought about by struggles between member states. In East Asia (see Morada 2001)
and Latin America (see Spehar 2001), regional organizations have not been able to
move toward operational conflict prevention due to their adherence to the principle of
non-intervention. In South Asia, the SAARC has had little, if any, effect in preventing
ethnic conflict in its member states. The review shows that a direct connection exists
between each regional organization’s adherence to the principle of non-interference in
the domestic affairs of member states and the position toward the prevention of ethnic
conflict.
Regional organizations continue to pay insufficient attention to the prevention of
ethnic conflict. We suggest two main reasons for this. First, many regional organizations
continue to lack the operational capacity to prevent ethnic conflicts prior to violence
erupting. Donors have for some time focused on mainstreaming conflict prevention by
conducting training in conflict risk assessment and the development of conflict prevention
policy (see contributions in Schnabel and Carment 2004 I and II). Second, as long as
regional organizations are unwilling to institutionalize the prevention of ethnic conflicts,
political problems will continue to undermine possible capacity building successes (see
Lund 2000). The prevention of ethnic conflict requires substantial financial investments
as well as long-term political commitment to develop effective operational structures. As
long as the process of “formulating and promoting a shared set of ideas and a common
moral commitment” (Lund 2000, 23) is hampered by the lack of political will, regional
organizations will struggle with the operational prevention of ethnic conflict.
Economic measures
A central element of the UN Charter’s mechanisms for the maintenance of international
peace and security is the use of sanctions as set out in Article 42. A variety of sanction
mechanisms including arms embargos and individual travel sanctions (see contributions
in Brzoska 2001), the freezing of financial assets (see Biersteker et al. 2001) as well
sanctions on specific natural resources such as oil and diamonds are available to the
United Nations. Escribà-Folch (2009) argues that economic embargoes imposed by
international organizations are the most effective type of coercive conflict management
measure and have a shortening effect on the duration of intrastate conflicts. The UN
Security Council has frequently reverted to economic sanctions targeted at natural
resources to manage ethnic conflicts (see Cortright and Lopez 2000), most prominently
perhaps in the post-conflict phase in Liberia in the early 1990s and as a tool to prevent
the escalation of ethnic violence in Ivory Coast starting in 2004 (see Eriksson 2008).
Beginning with the initial decision to impose targeted sanctions on Côte d’Ivoire in
2004, the aim was to prevent a return to full blown ethnic conflict and achieve a settlement
through democratic means (see Wallensteen, Eriksson and Strandwo 2006; Tamm 2002).
A series of UN Security Council resolutions imposed a comprehensive sanctions regime
on the country. This regime included an arms embargo, travel ban and the freezing of
financial assets (initially imposed through S/RES 1572 in November 2004) and later
included sanctions on rough diamonds (S/RES 1643 in December 2005). In its assessment
of the Ivoirien sanction regime (S/2006/204), the Expert Panel responsible for the
evaluation concluded that the sanctions had “the effect of preventing a return to pre-war
production levels” (Wallensteen et al. 2006, 13). Although the New Forces were able to
diversify their revenue sources, we suggest that, in combination with other elements of
the comprehensive sanctions regime, the restrictions placed on diamonds did in fact
contribute to preventing the renewed outbreak of ethnic conflict in Côte d’Ivoire.
Military measures
As early as 1992, the Agenda for Peace directly points to the possibility of preventive
military deployment7 as a possible strategy for the prevention of increased inter- and
intra-state violence. Jentleson (1996) argues that “preventive diplomacy, no less than
other forms of diplomacy, often needs to be backed by the threat if not the actual use
of force” (8). In 2001, the Secretary General’s report Prevention of Armed Conflict
suggested that all peacekeeping operations contain a preventive component. It further
clarified that peace operations’ “preventive role has been particularly clear when they
have been deployed before the beginning of an armed internal or international conflict”
(A/55/985-S/2001/574, 20). For a variety of reasons – the lack of political will (see
contributions in SIPRI 2000) and operational readiness being the ones most frequently
referred to – there are very few examples of military missions that were deployed prior
to the outbreak of ethnic violence. The United Nations was first able to successfully
move from these rhetorical commitments to operational reality with the deployment of
the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) and later the UN Preventive Deployment
(UNPREDEP) from March 1995 to February 1999 to Macedonia. UNPROFOR has
been widely cited as an example of the deployment of a multinational force prior to the
outbreak of significant ethnic violence (see Findlay 2002, 284); Björkdahl (2006)
suggests that through Resolution 795 the Council explicitly highlights the mission’s
preventive nature: “concerned about possible developments which could undermine
confidence and stability in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia or threaten its
territory.” The mission was thus tasked to monitor and report on activities that could
lead to instability in Macedonia. Ackerman and Pala (1996) conclude that UNPREDEP
in Macedonia was the first time the United Nations mandated a preventive mission
“which aimed at preventing a first round of fighting”. It proved that “despite its location
in a war zone, a country can hold on to peace if it receives the help it needs in time”
(Ackerman 1999, 4).
Civil society initiatives

In conflict settings around the world, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) engage
in a host of preventive activities (see Aal 2004). These range from advocacy for human
rights and the protection of civilians, the provision of humanitarian aid, strengthening
of local civil society to concrete conflict prevention measures such as the facilitation of
dialogue and problem-solving workshops. Recognizing the broad spectrum of roles that
NGOs in general play in the prevention of ethnic conflict, in this part we pay particular
attention to operational activities by organizations rooted in civil society (CSOs). Barnes
(2006) argues that CSOs can engage in the prevention of ethnic conflict in three ways
(27): first, there are responses rooted in a specific civil society sector, for example trade
unions, youth groups, women’s associations or faith communities; second, CSOs can
focus on working toward structural/policy changes in national, regional and global
systems; third, local CSOs as well as ad-hoc coalitions of concerned citizens can target
specific emerging conflict situations. Our focus will be twofold as we first return to the
discussion of mechanisms that contributed to preventing the escalation of the
post-election violence in Kenya into full-blown ethnic conflict and then briefly present
efforts to build a global civil society network for the prevention of armed conflict.
Various civil society-led efforts worked alongside the high-level Annan-led mediation
undertaken to prevent the escalation of ethnic violence after the December 2008
elections in Kenya. One of these initiatives was a movement called Concerned Citizens
for Peace (CCP), a group of five eminent Kenyans, two former generals and two civil
society activists, led by Ambassador Bethual Kiplagat (see Abdi 2008). The group’s
preventive activities occurred on three levels (Abdi 2008, 9–11). First, upstream
activities aimed at supporting the top-level mediation and dialogue process. The five
members were able to access key national and international politicians and engage
them in preventive action (see Fisher and Zimina 2009). Second, middlestream efforts
supported mid-level public and private institutions and key individual by mobilizing
the government and public institutions as well as the media. For example, using
national, regional and local media, CCP members made public appeals for the cessation
of violence. Third, downstream activities targeted local-level programmatic actions by
key individuals, groups and institutions to transform local violence, mobilize for change
and offer practical support for confidence-building and healing. CCP was able to
mobilize an extensive national network of peace resources that made important
contributions to preventing the further escalation of violence.
In recent years, efforts have been undertaken to establish and strengthen a global
network of CSOs working in the field of preventing ethnic conflict. The Global
Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC) is made up of nearly 1,000
NGOs working in the field of conflict prevention. Wolter (2007) argues that by creating
a “knowledge based regime of prevention … GPPAC is becoming a driving force for
effective UN/government/CSO partnerships” (75). GPPAC’s Early Warning Early
Response working group seeks to bring together partners working on civil society-
based preventive actions. By facilitating dialogue and producing action-oriented
analysis the working group seeks to enhance the capacity of CSOs to react to appropriate
early warning signals.
This review of operational mechanism suggests that progress has been made in a
variety of areas. Earlier we pointed to the lack of political will as an obstacle to structural
prevention of ethnic conflict. Operational responses, in particular civil society-based
activities, often fall victim to government’s unwillingness to support “hard to measure”
preventive activities. National, regional and global coalitions need to create and
maintain sustainable partnerships in order to foster long-term preventive action that
can produce preventive “success stories.”
Conclusion
Our conclusions relate to directions for future work, not only to make ethnic conflict
prevention effective but to ensure that it is sustainable. Three areas merit particular
attention:
• Integrating findings and methodologies across communities. There is a lot of good,
mostly complementary, analysis both in academe and advocacy circles. Some
analysis and research finds its way into the policy community but not much of it is
linked together in a formal institutionalized way with ongoing and secure funding.
When it is used, risk analysis tends be drawn on in an ad-hoc and selective way. As
a result, key findings remain underutilized and researchers have little incentive to
collaborate among themselves and with the policy community. More hazardous is a
trend within government towards individually tailored in-house analytical tools with
each department advocating a distinct set of indicators, toolkits and a set of
assumptions about causal connections that support their agendas. While this
approach might be helpful in mainstreaming prevention of ethnic conflict within
these departments to the extent that it forces decision makers to ask questions about
causality (that they might not have considered before) it also poses challenges to
interdepartmental coordination and inter-donor harmonization.
• Linking analysis to response. There remains a need for effective strategies that link
analysis to policy. It has been argued, many times before, that a key problem in
improving the prevention of ethnic conflict is not the availability of information or
for that matter, the absence of early warning information, but a clear understanding
of how to make diagnosis policy relevant. Risk analysis and early warning need to
be practicable, standardized and accessible. In other words, the absence of a clear
understanding of how specific information fits within the operational capacities of
the end user is the most significant constraint on effective conflict prevention.
Properly understood policy-relevant diagnosis combines real-time dynamic analysis
with structural information, matches the analysis to the operational capacity of the
end user and provides an evaluative framework for assessing policy impact.
• Making prevention pay. Political will, or more specifically its absence, is the No. 1
justification for inaction. Making prevention pay means that the costs (and risks) of
inaction must be fully calculated and clearly communicated. It also means that
institutional incentive structures must be developed to ensure better coordination
across departments and between governments. Pooling of resources is one way to
assist in the process of identifying costed options but this must be achieved at both
the micro and macro level. Coordination means that programme officers from
different departments should work effectively together as a problem-solving team
and not in isolation. Making prevention pay applies to the private sector as well.
While it is not without controversy the suggestion that the private sector, in particular
the mining and resource extraction sectors, have a role to play in conflict prevention
is well founded both on analytic as well as ethical and commercial grounds.
In this chapter, we have pointed to some of the challenges and opportunities of

preventing ethnic conflict through structural and operational response mechanisms.
For conflict prevention to move from rhetorical catch phrases to effective action, all
involved – actors, national, regional and local governments, the United Nations,
regional and civil society organizations, research institutions and the private sector –
still have much more room to improve their analysis of emerging ethnic tensions, to
take seriously warning signals and engage in appropriate preventive action. Only after
this gap has been closed can we say that the concept of conflict prevention has moved
from theory to policy.
Notes
1 For similar approaches linking prevention to response using an overarching framework see
Lake and Rothchild (1998), Carment and James (1998), Tellis and Winnefeld (1998), Schneider
and Weitsman (1997).
2 For a detailed overview of the literature on genocide prevention see Totten (2006).
3 Both the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict (1997) and the International
Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (2001) provide comprehensive lists of
direct preventive tools.
4 A key criterion for the inclusion in the comparative framework is that the organization should
have a security dimension in its mandate and charter. The reviewed organizations are: the
African Union (AU), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the Association of South
East Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Organization of American States (OAS) and the South
Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).
5 The AU’s engagement in Burundi commenced in April 2003 and was the first mission carried
out by the AU. Its principal mandate was to monitor and verify the implementation of the
cease-fire agreement.
6 Created in January 2007, the AMISOM was mandated to support transitional governmental
structures, implement a national security plan, train the Somali security forces, and assist in
creating a secure environment for the delivery of humanitarian aid.
7 For an assessment of coercive and military prevention in ethnic conflict see Carment and
Harvey (2000) and Carment (1995).
Further reading
Berdal, Mats R., and David Malone, eds. Greed and Grievance: Economic Agendas in Civil Wars.
Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000.
Jentleson, Bruce. Preventive Diplomacy and Ethnic Conflict: Possible, Difficult, Necessary. La
Jolla CA: Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, 1996.
Lake, David, and Donald Rothchild, eds. The International Spread of Ethnic Conflict: Fear
Diffusion and Escalation. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998.
Schnabel, Albrecht, and David Carment, eds. Conflict Prevention, from Rhetoric to Reality:
Opportunities and Innovations, 2 vols. Lanham MD: Lexington Press, 2004.
Schnabel, Albrecht and David Carment, eds. Conflict Prevention: Path to Peace or Grand Illusion?
Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2001.
Conflict Prevention Network. The Impact of Conflict Prevention. Baden-Baden: Nomos,
1999/2000.
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15 Managing and settling ethnic conflict
Asaf Siniver
Contending approaches to conflict management

The management of ethnic conflict, either by local elites or external actors such as
individual states and international organisations, rarely results in the resolution of the
conflict or the dissipation of rival ethnic claims and grievances. Conflicts characterised
by ethnic and cultural rivalries are the most common types of conflict, most notably in
Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Europe (Bercovitch and Fretter 2004, 46; Wallensteen
and Sollenberg 1999). The significance of a group’s ethno-cultural identity cannot be
dismissed as a guise to power-seeking. Depending on their historical and geographical
experiences, ethnic groups are highly diverse in their aspirations and claims. Minority
groups within existing political communities may seek access to power and equal
rights (for example, Israeli Arabs), indigenous groups such as the Mayans and the
Chiapas may resist attempts by the state to assimilate them, whereas the Basque people
can be described as ethnonationals who strive for self-determination and even
independence (Gurr 2000). Most contemporary conflicts need external assistance in
order to be brought under control, and accordingly such strategies of conflict
management may involve diplomacy (for example, negotiation and mediation), legal
methods (arbitration, adjudication) and even the use of military force. However, due to
the intricate nature of some ethnically generated conflicts, we may at best hope to
manage, or regulate them, rather than resolve them. Accordingly conflict management
can be defined as the limitation, mitigation and containment of conflict without
necessarily solving it. Importantly, conflict management is distinct from conflict
resolution, where the emphasis is placed on resolving the underlying incompatibilities
which have caused the conflict, rather than simply containing them. Conflict
management and resolution are separate but related mechanisms which need to be used
at different stages in the ‘conflict cycle’; managing a conflict may take a long time and
must foster conditions which are amenable to the successful resolution of the conflict
(Tanner 2000).
The choice of strategies depends on the nature of the conflict and the identity of
the warring parties, as well as the identity of the third party and its available resources
and linkage to the conflict. This chapter will examine the efficacy of such strategies
employed by third parties in their efforts to manage and settle ethnically generated
conflicts in recent years. The primary purpose of conflict management is to slow, or
stop, the escalation of violence and to create conditions which are conducive to peaceful
reconciliation between the warring parties. Accordingly conflict management is
understood as a dynamic social process, in which external and internal actors employ
188 Asaf Siniver
an array of strategies to reduce the rival parties’ economic, political and humanitarian
costs and enhance their mutual benefits through cooperation and compromise.
There is much debate, however, not only about which strategies work best and under
what conditions, but whether intervention by third parties is desirable in the first place.
Attempts by external actors to settle violent ethnic conflicts, some of which are fuelled
by ‘ancient hatreds’, may sometimes compound the problem, rather than solve it, as
their priorities and objectives may not necessarily be compatible with those of the
warring parties (Lake and Rothchild 1996). In broad terms we can think of three
contending views on the desirable role of third parties in the management of ethnic
conflicts: realist approaches which emphasise the security of the state; liberal,
governance-based approaches which focus on the role of third parties in shaping and
developing linkages between state and society; and social-psychological approaches
which are concerned with societal or human security (Hampson 2001, 388). Importantly,
these approaches are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but rather offer complementary
elements which together may offer the best route to the understanding and successful
managing of ethnic conflicts.
Realist approaches
While all realist interpretations of the causes of ethnic conflict and the role of third
parties in managing it are rooted in similar assumptions about state-centrism and the
rationality of the actors involved, they offer different emphasis on power sharing and
the use of force as a means to an end. For ‘hard’ realists, the dynamics of ethnic conflicts
are rather similar to the processes which shape interstate rivalries, that is to say, they
are motivated by, and act in accordance with the security dilemma (Collins 2007).
Accordingly the need to maintain a balance of military power between the warring
parties is imperative – for example by supporting the weaker side with arms or
withholding resources from the stronger side. In extreme cases, direct intervention on
behalf of a third party is necessary to maintain such a balance in military power (Betts
1994; Van Evra 1994). Military intervention may be carried by a single state (the United
Kingdom in Sierra Leone in 2000) or by a multilateral effort of international
organisations (the United Nations in Mozambique in 1992–94) and regional
organisations (NATO in the Balkans in the 1990s). Whether these strategies involve
military aid to one party and sanctions on the other, or coercive military intervention
for the purpose of ending the fighting, the emphasis here is often placed on creating new
geopolitical boundaries, most notably through partition, rather than seeking political
accommodation or reconciliation (Kaufman 1996, 2007). However, this approach to
the settlement of ethnic conflict is often criticised for assuming that just and mutually
acceptable territorial partition is a readily available solution to ethnic rivalries.
Examples from Israel/Palestine, Cyprus, Kosovo, and most recently Iraq, suggest that
in some cases the competition over territory is a zero-sum game where alternative forms
of intervention may be necessary (Downes 2006; Pischedda 2008). Accordingly ‘softer’
approaches of realism to ethnic conflict management advocate the use of non-coercive
forms of third-party intervention such as mediation, the provision of good offices and
other confidence-building measures (Bercovitch 2002; Princen 1992; Zartman and
Touval 1996). Moreover, these activities are not limited to the great powers, but are
being taken by a wide range of states and international organisations, though with
various degrees of success in managing such conflicts (Siniver 2006; Touval 1994;
Managing and settling ethnic conflict 189
Zartman 1995). Nevertheless, mediation by third parties with different resources and
strategies creates opportunities for non-territorial solutions such as power sharing,
political accommodation and other sociopolitical mobilisation mechanisms to drive the
parties towards the settlement of the conflict. While these strategies offer an attractive,
non-coercive alternative to direct military intervention by third parties, they can be
effective only as long as the rival ethnic groups accept the identity of the mediator and
indeed the strategies employed. Thus, even when mediation is undertaken by great
powers, the ultimate power in the mediation process lies with the disputing parties.
Furthermore, these attempts by third parties must take place under the most propitious
circumstances of timing, or ‘ripeness’ of conflict to optimise the likelihood of success
(Zartman 1985).
Liberal approaches
Governance-based approaches to conflict management have their roots in the Kantian
notions of liberalism and just governance. Thus while variants of realism emphasise the
use of force and balancing strategic security dilemmas as keys to manage conflicts,
liberal approaches stress the importance of creating democratic institutions and
mechanisms of governance. Here causes of ethnic conflict are understood as the lack of
the authority and legitimacy of pluralist structures, violations of human rights and the
breakdown of the rule of law. In addition to the reconstruction of political and security
institutions, other reforms may include the establishment of truth and reconciliation
tribunals in order to restore faith in the judicial process and to install a new cooperative
and peaceful environment, as has been demonstrated in South Africa, East Timor,
Haiti and El Salvador (Hayner 2006; Kingston 2006; Mani 2005). Thus in order to
achieve these objectives, third parties must engage not only at the state level with local
governments but, perhaps more importantly, with grass-roots actors, civil society
leaders and the private sector. Like softer versions of realism, here too the role of a
third party may be assumed not only by the great powers, but by intergovernmental
and non-governmental organisations. These organisations have the advantage of
apparent neutrality and the emphasis on elevating the humanitarian suffering; however,
they may lack the clout and resources which are often accompanied by the great-power
intervention. Particularly with reference to the working of the United Nations in this
field, the need to achieve first a wide consensus about the objectives and the contours of
the settlement may hinder the effectiveness of the operation (Annan 2005). Still, this
approach has a strong normative component in that the intervening outside party must
stand by those in the conflict who are committed to the liberal democratic way. This
raises obvious problems of neutrality for the mediator and indeed may damage the
effectiveness of the entire approach on grounds of hypocrisy and bias. This has been
demonstrated recently in the American and European support for the moderate and
secular Fatah government in the West Bank, compared to the isolation and sanctioning
of the militant Hamas government in Gaza. The most acute result of this policy has
been the worsening of the humanitarian situation of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza
Strip (Pace 2009). Indeed, this normative crusade in the name of liberal democracy has
been criticised repeatedly not only for failing to appreciate the difficulties in introducing
democratic practices in unstable and torn societies with no democratic experience, but
also in emphasising procedural and institutional priorities while neglecting the
importance of an engaged and informed civil society. In extreme cases this may lead to
190 Asaf Siniver
a return to violence and political instability (Mansfield and Snyder 1995; Tocci 2007).
Finally, while the advance of various confidence-building measures such as elections
and power sharing are important techniques to reduce violence and increase cooperation,
they cannot alter the basic fears and perceptions which are embedded in individuals and
ethnic groups.
Social-psychological approaches
The important contribution of social-psychological approaches to the study and
practice of ethnic conflict management is the added dimension of image formation of
the other. In other words, here the key to understanding the root causes of ethnic
conflicts is not in the security dilemma or the breakdown of state authority, but rather
in the development and reinforcement of ‘enemy images’, or ‘us versus them’ mentality
(Stein 2005). These images and identities are formed by individuals and groups, political
elites and the general public, and they relate to either tangible experience or certain
beliefs about the behaviour of the other group. This basic need to establish individual
and societal identity is most commonly achieved by differentiating ‘us’ from ‘them’.
Obviously, identity differentiation does not necessarily and invariably lead to violent
conflict. The critical components which combine with these social images to cause
violence are mostly environmental, namely the domestic and international conditions
which may help to facilitate the formation of enemy images (Coleman and Lowe 2007;
Lake and Rothchild 1996; Ross 1995). Accordingly any efforts by third parties to
successfully manage the conflict must first address the embedded anxieties and identities
which inform the rival groups’ images of each other. Strategies designed to change these
entrenched identities may range from reconciliation processes to special problem-
solving workshops, as well as the development of systems which are compatible with
the relevant local culture and norms (Kaufman 2006). These efforts are targeted at the
local level, rather than the state, and the third party must assume a neutral role with
the emphasis on communicating and facilitating strategies. Individuals and
non-governmental organisations are best suited to perform these activities, as they
often possess the required sensitivity, local expertise and perceived impartiality which
are needed to lead the rival parties out of conflict. Successfully managing ethnic conflicts
according to this social-psychological framework seems a particularly difficult task
given the kind of knowledge and sensitivity which is required of the third party. Since
conflict is caused by deep-rooted stereotypes and ethnocentric views of the other, it
does not necessarily follow a rational pattern, and instead must be understood as a
subjective and context-dependent social process. Third parties therefore need to engage
with a cross-section of society on both sides and help change perceptions and attitudes
without imposing new ones in the process. These strategies are best carried out in small
informal groups which are composed of middle-range elites, such as academics, retired
politicians and officials who can still influence policy but are removed from decision-
making (Hampson 2001, 396). Nevertheless, third parties may find it difficult to access
the local groups and may be prevented from intervening on the grounds of suspected
biased or poor credentials. Moreover, even if these activities prove successful, their
impact on society at large is not guaranteed. Unless high-level officials are informed
and engaged with the process, these programmes will have limited effect, particularly in
areas which are inaccessible or dangerous due to ongoing fighting. Most acute, however,
is the question of whether these programmes can indeed change for the long run deeply
embedded images and attitudes which have been hardened over a long period of time
and through personal experience.
Assessing the efficacy of conflict management strategies

As noted above, the first hurdle to successful outside intervention lies in the
imperviousness of some conflicts to external efforts to bring an end to violence. This
resistance derives most commonly from the parties’ perceptions about the characteristics
of the conflict and the associated stakes (Stedman 1996). Humanitarian intervention is
perhaps the most visible manifestation of operations designed to address these issues. It
can be defined as ‘the threat or use of force across state borders by a state (or a group
of states) aimed at preventing or ending widespread and grave violations of the
fundamental human rights of individuals other than its own citizens, without the
permission of the state within whose territory force is applied’ (Holzgrefe 2003, 18).
However despite the large number of such missions in recent years, their record of
success is mixed. Interventions in northern Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Rwanda, Kosovo, East Timor and Darfur (to name a few) have failed to produce a
definite protocol for such missions. Inevitably, the conduct and efficacy of these
activities breaks down to the question of the right of the international community to
intervene in intrastate conflicts, followed by questioning the desirable characteristics of
such interventions if they are indeed necessary. The principle of state sovereignty is
embedded in international law, and calls for external intervention, even on humanitarian
grounds, invariably raise important legal and ethical questions. Nevertheless, while
non-intervention is still the norm in international relations, the post-Cold War period
has witnessed a definite rise in the number and range of third-party interventions as the
demise of the Soviet Union has removed the strategic constraints which had previously
restricted the potential for ethnic clashes. The concern over the increasing failure of
governments to protect their people and the rise in conflicting ethnonational claims of
neighbouring ethnic groups has led former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-
Ghali to assert that ‘the time of absolute and exclusive sovereignty has passed’ (1992,
9). Others have similarly supported the need for more proactive engagement. According
to Teson, ‘foreign armies are morally entitled to help victims of oppression … provided
that the intervention is proportionate to the evil which it is designed to suppress’ (1998,
15).
In recent years greater emphasis has been placed on defining the appropriate
boundaries for interventions. Hoffman, for example, identifies two categories where
intervention may be necessary: first, where there is a threat to international peace by
‘dangerous’ states, as was demonstrates in the cases of Somalia, Haiti and the plight of
the Kurds in northern Iraq. Second, where there are massive violations of human rights,
including the forcible expulsion of minorities and ethnic cleansing, such as in cases like
Rwanda, Kosovo and East Timor (Hoffman 1998, 161–64). An attempt to establish
norms of intervention was manifested in the International Commission on Intervention
and State Sovereignty’s framework of The Responsibility to Protect. This concept is
designed to provide a legal and ethical basis for humanitarian interventions, as well as
authorise military interventions in cases where the primary objective is to prevent
human suffering. Moreover, it is suggested that in order to establish consistency in
norms and operations the United Nations must assume a primary role in authorising
and coordinating such interventions (Macfarlane et al. 2004). Despite its many
192 Asaf Siniver
organisational and institutional faults, the UN is the only body in world politics which
maintains, albeit not always successfully, the image of communal values and shared
responsibility. Nevertheless, there are still some who object to the legitimisation of
humanitarian interventions, for several reasons. As noted above, realists argue against
humanitarian interventions as they not only challenge the principle of state sovereignty
but can harm the national interest, and in some cases can even damage the state’s
reputation abroad (as in the case of American intervention in Somalia in the early
1990s). Moreover, they argue that states have no moral duty to intervene on behalf of
the citizens or ethnic groups in other states, and that inevitably states will apply selective
measures in their choices of intervention, which will lead to accusations of hypocrisy
and double standards. This was evident when Western states failed to respond quickly
and effectively to the genocide in Rwanda, or to the plight of Bosnian Muslims. Finally,
pluralists point to the problem of forming an international consensus on what principles
should guide these interventions. Described as rule consequentionalism, opponents of
humanitarian intervention argue that international peace and order are better served
by upholding the principle of non-intervention than by authorising humanitarian
interventions in the absence of a consensus about the relevant criteria for intervention.
Inevitably, these decisions are made by those who possess the power and the will to
carry out such missions (Welsh 2006, 52–68).
This brings us back to the importance of multilateral missions, ideally led by the
United Nations. Even though individual states are likely to respond more quickly and
decisively to an emerging humanitarian crisis, the more an intervention is removed
from the narrow interests of the big powers or neighbour states the more likely it is to
be perceived as a whole as just and appropriate. This last point is often measured by the
proportionality of the mission to the danger it posed in the first place. Proportionality
here means that human suffering must be met with humanitarian response; that is, not
to do more harm to human rights than the harm the intervention is aimed to prevent.
However, assessing the proportionality of the response is a difficult task, as it does not
entail ameliorating the level of violence displayed by the warring parties, but rather
providing a morally appropriate response. This is problematic, since two similar cases
of human rights abuse may necessitate different ‘proportional’ responses, depending on
the relevant sociopolitical and cultural contexts. Similarly the task of assessing the
success of humanitarian intervention is a difficult one. When evaluating success we
must first ask, ‘Success for whom?’ There are various parties involved in such operations,
each with different sets of objectives and desirable outcomes depending on how they
view the conflict. Thus for example the United Nations (or ‘the international
community’) may seek long-lasting peace and order, whereas the rival groups may be
less preoccupied with respecting human rights and more with regaining territory; the
primary goal of the civilians caught in the middle may be to return to their homes,
whereas the third parties who intervene in the conflict may be more concerned about
the safety of their personnel. In some cases success for one party to the conflict may
come at a loss for another. Accordingly the US mission in Somalia had successfully
limited its engagement after the initial setback, but this came at the expense of order
and protection for the local population. Moreover, in assessing the success of
interventions it is useful to distinguish between the short and long-term outcomes of the
mission; indeed, the outcomes of such operations are as significant as the motivations
to engage in the first place. Thus while in the short term the immediate suffering of
civilians or the fighting between rival groups may be ended successfully, the long-term
and underlying causes of mutual fears and dilemmas must also be addressed. External
actors must not withdraw quickly once the alleviation of human rights abuse has been
achieved. To prevent the resumption of violent ethnic conflict, there must be a long-term
commitment to address the underlying causes of the conflict through a combination of
political, social and economic reforms (Walzer 1995).
These two different interpretations of success have their respective benefits, but
inevitably they are in tension with each other and implicate different forms of
intervention. Broadly, interventions of limited objectives and short duration have a
stronger military component, whereas non-armed humanitarian interventions are more
likely to engage with long-term objectives in order to address the underlying causes of
conflict. Notwithstanding the evident differences between cases of humanitarian
intervention, some generic criteria for success are applicable to all cases of intervention.
Brown, for example, identifies three criteria for determine success, namely the fulfilment
of the mission’s mandate as specified by the Security Council resolution; the resolution
of the underlying disputes of the conflict; and the contribution to the maintenance of
international peace and security. It is important to note, however, that often UN
mandates are the result of political bargaining between different actors, the result of
which may be overly vague or flexible, which makes the fulfilment of the conditions set
in the mandate an unattainable task. Other criteria of success, such as the abatement of
conflict or at the very least the discouragement of violence, invariably need to be judged
based on their longevity, which opens up the question of how long a time frame should
be considered in assessing the outcome (Bratt 1996; Diehl 2008, 118–23).
In addition to humanitarian and military interventions, third parties often assume the
role of mediators in their efforts to manage violent ethnic conflicts. While mediation is
often overlooked as an integral mechanism of conflict management, compared to the
high profile of peacekeeping missions, it has in fact proved to be the most popular form
of contemporary conflict management. It was present in nearly 60 per cent of international
and intrastate disputes between 1945 and 2003 (Bercovitch and Fretter 2004, 29), while
nearly half of all post-Cold War crises were mediated by third parties (Beardsley et al.
2006, 59). While definitions of, and approaches to, mediation vary, it is commonly
understood as the intervention of a third party in the dispute of two or more parties for
the purpose of improving the nature of interaction between the disputants (Kressel and
Pruitt 1989). While it is distinct from other forms of intervention by its voluntary,
non-forceful and non-coercive nature, third parties can exercise a significant amount of
leverage on the parties in order to draw them closer to reconciliation. Zartman and
Touval (1996) suggest that mediators may call upon up to five sources of leverage The
first, persuasion, is the ability to depict a more favourable alternative to the present
conflict. The second, extraction, is the ability to produce a favourable position from each
party. The third, termination, is the ability to withdraw – or threaten to withdraw – from
the mediation process. The fourth, deprivation, is the ability to deprive resources from
one or both disputants. The final source, gratification, is the ability to reward the parties
for ‘good’ behaviour. Rather than describing the full range of mediator activities these
particular sources of leverage seem consistent with a select mediation strategy, one that
is based upon tactics of manipulation (as opposed to pure communication or
formulation), where mediation is viewed as a process of ‘three-cornered bargaining’
(Touval 1982, 16) in which the mediator has a clearly defined stake.
This is not to suggest, however, that third parties who do not possess the necessary
resources to conduct such bargaining are powerless and hence less effective as mediators.
194 Asaf Siniver
Here mediators are depicted as rational third parties who offer their services to
disputants upon the basis of self-interest and shrewd cost–benefit calculations (Zartman
and Touval 1996, 446). While it is especially apparent in the conduct of individual states
(great and small), these rational calculations can also be found in the motivations of
international organisations and other non-state actors, who maintain certain norms
that they wish to uphold beyond the principle of peaceful settlement (Zartman and
Touval 1996, 452). Indeed, mediation is a particularly useful tool to the United Nations
and non-governmental organisations’ efforts at conflict management. Compared to
military and humanitarian interventions it is a cost-effective and flexible strategy which
can successfully support other mechanisms of conflict management and resolution.
However, here too assessing success is not an easy task. It is possible to identify two
broad contending conceptualisations of mediation success. The first approach offers
seemingly objective criteria which asses the ultimate consequences of the mediation
effort. These criteria are often defined broadly to compensate for the idiosyncratic
nature of different conflicts, and accordingly link success with objective and observable
signposts, such as cease-fire, peace treaty or other tangible political settlements, as well
as the opening of a dialogue and a marked reduction in the level of violence (Kriesberg
1991; Touval 1982). This measurement of success is problematic, as it fails to account
for the effectiveness of mediation. The 1993 Oslo Accords between Israelis and
Palestinians is one example of an objective mediation success (a binding political
agreement), although it cannot be said to have been effective in ending the bloody
conflict between two peoples. The second measurement of mediation success attempts
to bridge this gap between results and perceptions. While the first approach eschews
any discussion of the subjective interpretations of the disputants or the mediator to the
bargaining process, this approach explains mediation success by focusing on the process
of communication as a means of changing attitudes, largely outside the structures of
formal negotiation. Successful mediation is defined here in terms of the (subjective)
perceptions of the disputants and the mediator regarding their respective efforts to
accomplish their aims as they were outlined at the initiation of the process (Hopmann
1995; Smith 1985).
Despite the real differences between the various strategies of conflict management,
evidence suggests that best practice would entail both military and diplomatic
components. Third party mediation is more effective when it is backed by actors who
possess the will and the power to change the status quo, and conversely military
intervention alone is less likely to produce a long-lasting settlement without a viable
political process. (This partly explains the failure of US and UN missions in Somalia
and Haiti.) Moreover, in their actions third parties must possess staying power and
remain fully engaged during negotiations and military operations. History suggests
that most modern conflicts do not resolve themselves, and that some type of external
intervention is necessary to bring them under control. While the ultimate responsibility
for changing modes of behaviour and reforming systems of governance lies with the
parties themselves, it is clear that without armed and non-armed interventions by
individual states and international organisations many more ethnic conflicts would
spiral out of control and bring more suffering.
Further reading
D. Byman, Keeping the Peace: Lasting Solutions to Ethnic Conflicts (Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2002).
C. Crocker, F. O. Hampson and P. Aall (eds), Turbulent Peace: The Challenges of Managing
International Conflict (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2001).
C. Crocker, F. O. Hampson and P. Aall (eds), Leashing the Dogs of War: Conflict Management
in a Divided World (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2001).
D. A. Lake and D. Rothchild, ‘Containing Fear: The Origins and Management of Ethnic
Conflict’, International Security, 21:2 (1996), pp. 41–75.
U. Schneckener and S. Wolff (eds), Managing and Settling Ethnic Conflicts: Perspectives on
Successes and Failures in Europe, Africa, and Asia (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004).
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16 Multilateral frameworks for conflict
resolution
Eva Sobotka
This chapter examines the evolution of approaches to international conflict resolution

and focuses on the shift in the nature of conflict resolution that emerged with the end of
the Cold War and the demise of the accompanying bipolar system. The first section of
the chapter outlines developments in conflict resolution from peacekeeping to the
emergence of multilateral conflict resolution enforcement frameworks in the United
Nations (UN) context. Examining multilateral approaches in the conflict resolution
that were applied in El Salvador, Mozambique and Tajikistan, it illustrates peacekeeping,
peace-making and conflict prevention/resolution approaches in practice. The second
section of the chapter analyses the multidimensional character of conflict resolution,
the functions of various actors and their potential impact on conflict resolution within
multilateral frameworks. This section discusses examples of conflicts where new
approaches to conflict resolution have been implemented, including a role for regional
organisations, such as the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE), the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and the European Union (EU).
Lastly, acknowledging critiques made following the high-profile failures in peacekeeping
in Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia and Herzegovina, which caused member states to
place stringent conditions upon UN operations, the chapter takes a closer look at a case
of conflict resolution in Kosovo.
The evolution of conflict resolution frameworks

Following the end of the Cold War, fundamental changes in the nature of the
international system have ushered in a new thinking with respect to traditional
approaches to conflict resolution (Saunders 1999, p. 7). One cause of the change was
identified as the strengthening of the internationalisation of international relations and
the recognition of a duty of the international community to maintain international
peace and thus secure the elementary security of individuals (Bigo 2003, p. 185). Yet,
the promise of world peace in 1989 never materialised. Instead, the number of
increasingly internal, violent conflicts around the world soared, where the majority of
victims were civilian and where identity conflicts and poverty became a common feature
(Gurr 2002; Fleitz Jr 2002, p. 16).
The United Nations is designed to serve as both first and last resort in dealing with
threats to peace. Since 1945, peacekeeping has been a method of operation mostly
applied by the United Nations in its efforts to resolve conflicts and secure lasting peace.
The UN Charter commits states to the maintenance of international peace, justice and
human rights, including social progress. These goals are also achieved through
Multilateral frameworks for conflict resolution 199
assistance in early intervention in conflict. Article 33(1) of the Charter requires that
parties to any dispute seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation,
arbitration, and resort to regional agencies or apply any other peaceful means of their
own choice. The UN Secretary General is mandated by the General Assembly and the
Security Council to undertake and maintain efforts including the appointment of
special representatives and envoys, good offices, fact-finding missions, and other
peaceable means to assist parties in the resolution of disputes prior to their escalation.
Preventive diplomacy is intended to be proactive, although traditionally the international
community has taken only a reactive stance to conflict.
Since the UN Charter does not provide an explicit definition of peacekeeping, its
meaning was established in an ad hoc fashion through specific situations and
deployments. Still, Chapter VI and Chapter VII of the UN Charter provide a basis for
understanding this term: Chapter VI refers to approaches of peaceful settlement while
Chapter VII enables the enforcement of decisions, should the Security Council decide
to do so. Chapter VII also sanctions the use of armed force, if necessary. The decision
of the Security Council to intervene is dependent on the agreement of the five permanent
members, which is not always guided by the normative criteria of human rights
protection or humanitarian need (Weiss 1996, p. 62). The provisions for regional
organisations under Chapter VIII of the UN Charter were intended to provide an
option through which the Security Council could mandate action and thus proceed
with collective responsibility for peace and security between the United Nations and the
regional organisations. Article 53 of the UN Charter provides for the possibility that
disputes are first addressed by regional organisations, as long as the Security Council is
informed. However, the unwillingness of states in the Security Council to support
action, whether directly or indirectly through authorisation for regional organisations,
during the Cold War has limited the ability of the United Nations and other actors to
undertake collective action. That said, during the initial phases of conflict, the
humanitarian agencies of the United Nations have played more independent roles,
working with local and government actors to support initiatives aimed at crisis
alleviation, of which assessment missions, diplomatic initiatives, support of civil society
initiatives, and emergency aid are just a few examples.
Cold War peacekeeping and conflict resolution

The first UN peacekeeping mission was the Emergency Force (UNEF), which was
dispatched to the Sinai peninsula in response to the 1956 Suez crisis. Its role was to
observe the cease-fire, and the withdrawal of British, French and Israeli forces. The
mission was successful and set a precedent for other UN missions, creating a role for
unarmed and neutral forces in keeping sides of the conflict away from each other by
creating a buffer zone between them. A set of principles was established to guide future
UN missions. Through trial and error during the Cold War, the international community
adapted and amended principles of peacekeeping, developed by the UNEF into a set of
minimum conditions for the deployment of UN peacekeeping missions (Allen 1996, pp.
137–41; Hansen et al. 2001, p. 3). These principles can be summarised as: acceptance,
impartiality and minimum use of force. While acceptance means that parties to a
dispute consent to the deployment of a peacekeeping force and agree to co-operate with
it. Impartiality refers to the importance of traditional peacekeeping troops being
acceptable to the warring parties and having no stake in their dispute. Peacekeepers are
200 Eva Sobotka
bound to minimum use of force and permitted to use force only in self-defence. In the
words of the former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, ‘peacekeeping can
rightly be called the invention of the United Nations’ (Boutros-Ghali 1992, p. 14).
During the Cold War, peacekeeping missions were deployed to mediate inter-state
conflicts and their number rose to a total of fourteen in the period 1945–90. In a number
of conflict situations, the United Nations created multinational military forces to
supervise a truce or administer arrangements that had been established as part of the
conflict’s resolution. Such peacekeeping forces were an important part of many efforts
at conflict resolution, and by the 1990s they had become an accepted resource for
conflict management in global affairs. United Nations peacekeeping forces were sent to
the Sinai peninsula following the Suez crisis (1956–67), the Congo (1960–64), West
Irian Jaya (1962–63), Cyprus (1964–90s), the Sinai again (1973–79), the Golan Heights
in Syria (1974–90s), southern Lebanon (1978–90s), territories in the former Yugoslavia
(beginning in 1992), Cambodia (beginning in 1992), Mozambique (beginning in 1992)
and Somalia (beginning in 1993). Although traditional peacekeeping missions must be
multilateral, they do not have to be conducted by the United Nations. One of the most
successful peacekeeping missions deployed, in the period 1945–90, was the Multinational
Force Organisation (MFO), a non-UN multilateral operation in the Sinai peninsula to
help verify the terms of the 1979 Israel–Egypt Camp David Accords.
The United Nations provided mechanisms for dealing with conflicts, either avoiding
war or assisting in bringing it to an end. These mechanisms were less effective, however,
with conflicts involving the major powers, who exercise a veto in the Security Council.
The United Nations also had only limited jurisdiction to become involved in civil wars
and the internal affairs of member states. Nevertheless, within these limits the United
Nations performed important services in conflict resolution. At the end of World War
II, there were issues that needed resolution based on international agreement. Although
the United Nations was active in helping to resolve many conflicts, critics noted that its
effectiveness was limited by the ability of the superpowers to restrict UN action (Fleitz
Table 16.1 Selected traditional peacekeeping missions, 1945–1990
Peacekeeping mission Start–end Authorised size Total cost ($ million)
UNMOGIP (India–Pakistan) 1948– 102 163

UNTSO (Palestine) 1948– 572 592
UNEF I (Sinai–Gaza Strip) 1956–67 6,073 214
UNOGIL (Lebanon) 1958 591 4
ONUC (Congo) 1960–64 19,828 400
UNSF (West New Guinea) 1962–63 1,576 26
UNYOM (Yemen) 1963–64 189 2
UNFICYP (Cyprus) 1964 1,257 980
UNIPOM (India–Pakistan) 1965–66 96 2
UNEF II (Sinai–Suez) 1973–79 6,973 446
UNDOF (Golan Heights) 1974– 1,454 732
UNIFIL (Lebanon) 1978– 7,000 3,240
UNIMOG Iran–Iraq) 1988–91 399 190
UNGOMAP (Afghanistan) 1988–90 50 14
Source: UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, available at http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko.

Jr 2002). Although the International Court of Justice has limited jurisdiction, its rulings
and advisory opinions played an important role in resolving some conflicts and further
defining the rights and obligations of states under international law.
As the Cold War came to an end, the demand for the United Nations by the
international community increased, aiding in the end of the Iran–Iraq War of the 1980s;
mediating conflicts in Cambodia, Angola, and the western Sahara in 1988; assisting in
the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989; and monitoring the elections that
brought an end to the civil war in Nicaragua in 1990. Formal observer groups were
among the most important mechanisms created by the United Nations to help monitor
agreements. Major UN observation missions played a role in Palestine (1948), India
and Pakistan (1949), Lebanon (1958), Yemen (1963), the Dominican Republic (1965),
Afghanistan (1988), the Iran–Iraq cease-fire (1988) and Kuwait (1991).
In addition, the United Nations was the organisational framework for two major
military mobilisations in response to aggression. This function was limited by the Cold
War rivalries, which meant that either the United States or the Soviet Union could
prevent the UN response to North Korean attacks. However, in 1950, when North
Korea invaded South Korea, the Soviet Union was temporarily boycotting the United
Nations. This enabled the Security Council to pass without veto the appropriate
resolutions calling on member states to contribute forces for a UN police action to stop
the aggression, with the United States providing the major source of military power for
the action. The second major UN military response was in 1990, when Iraq invaded
Kuwait. In the Persian Gulf War of 1990–91, the United States again provided the
major source of military power, and the United Nations provided the international
authority for the multinational response to Iraqi aggression. Such multilateral action
had become possible by the end of the Cold War.
Post-Cold War peacekeeping and conflict resolution during the 1990s

Assessing the opportunities for UN-led missions, we must first acknowledge how the
world of conflict management has changed since the end of the 1980s and beginning of
1990s. As Monty Marshall and Ted Robert Gurr have both noted, international conflict
reached its peak during this period (as measured by both the number of international
conflicts and the number of fatalities or war-related deaths in those conflicts (Gurr 2002,
pp. 41–62; Marshall 2002, p. 66). At the beginning of 1988, as the Cold War was coming
to its end, there were only five operations active in the field: three in the Middle East, a
small observer mission in Kashmir and UNFYICYP I Cyprus. Between 1996 and 1998,
twenty-nine operations were created, compared to the establishment of only thirteen
operations undertaken between 1948 and 1987 and none between 1979 and 1988.
In addition, the increase in operations has brought about a diversification in the
nature of these operations. In ‘An Agenda for Peace’ then UN Secretary General
Boutros Boutros-Ghali recommended strengthening and making more efficient, within
the frameworks and provisions, the capacity of the United Nations for preventive
diplomacy, for peacemaking and peacekeeping (Boutros-Ghali 1992, p. 1). Traditional
state-centric approaches to conflict resolution were no longer suitable. The function of
missions has evolved into a multiplicity of tasks, while the composition of missions has
become more diverse. Hence the contemporary practice and theory of peacekeeping
has become more multilateral, multidimensional, multinational and multicultural. The
second generation of conflict resolution techniques contributed to the notion of human
202 Eva Sobotka
security as opposed to state security. This allowed the inclusion of non-state actors and
attempted to address the root causes of the conflict, focusing on conflict transformation.
The complexity of arrangements concerning multilateral peacekeeping today requires
the involvement of various levels of actors in an operation: two or more conflicting
parties, peacekeepers, the United Nations, regional and international organisation or
institutions, civil society, international financial institutions, corporations and
influential private individuals, usually acting under the umbrella of a foundation or
peace institute. Similarly, the terms of multilateralism or multiculturalism in conflict
resolution require that a peacekeeping force is formed from a diverse range of nations
or agencies, each of which will bring its own understanding, resources, political influence
in conflict resolution.
The first such multidimensional operation, the United Nations Transition Assistance
Group (UNTAG), was deployed in Namibia at the end of the Cold War. Although a
detailed assessment of UN-mediated interventions in the 1980s and 1990s is outside the
scope of this chapter, and there is an obvious temptation to focus on the United
Nations’ negotiation failures, we can point to a few cases where the United Nations did
succeed through its mediated interventions in promoting a peaceful settlement of major
conflicts. The conditions of these successful cases are also instructive about the potential
strengths that the United Nations can bring to a negotiating table. As is shown by the
three case studies that follow, over the years the United Nations has developed a more
nuanced approach to (ethnic) conflict resolution.
El Salvador (1991–1995)
The resolution of this conflict is a good example of the emerging multidimensional and
multilateral approach to peacekeeping. The Special Representative of the Secretary
General, Alvaro de Soto, played a key role in leading the parties to a negotiated settlement
(Hume 1994, p. 45). The fundamentally different political position of parties to the conflict
made the political settlement a subject of intensive negotiation, despite the fact that a
military stalemate helped to bring the parties to the negotiating table. The government’s
goal was to end the war, whereas the goal of the Farabundo Marti National Liberati
(FMLN) was to change Salvadorian society entirely, starting with intensive demilitarisation.
The United Nations was an outside mediator, and was able to replace the diminishing
influence of big powers, the United States and the former Soviet Union. Through the
United Nations, which was perceived as neutral, both parties turned to the negotiator,
who was a trusted source of proposals, reframing the meaning of concessions, creating a
sense of urgency, imposing deadlines and resorting to sanctions, if necessary. In maintaining
its independence when undertaking these tasks, the Special Representative also enjoyed
the support of ‘allies’ – Colombia, Mexico, Spain and Venezuela – who lent their support
when negotiations were running into difficulties.
Mozambique (1992–1994)
The special representative of the UN Secretary General, Aldo Ajello, who was responsible
for overseeing the implementation of the General Peace Agreement, played a critical role
in mediating when one of the parties threatened not to fulfil their commitments (Ajello
1999). While the peace accords were negotiated between Marxist-led government party
FRELIMO and the opposition guerrilla movement RENAMO, with the assistance of
Sant’Egidio, a Catholic organisation, and the direct support of Italian government,
implementation of the General Peace Agreement, signed in 1992, was undertaken by the
United Nations (Bartoli 1999, p. 256). When the RENAMO candidate, Alfonso Dhlakama,
threatened that he would pull out of the UN-supervised general election, because he feared
that the process was not fair, the Special Representative intervened and thus helped the
general election to maintain its credibility. The special representative convinced all parties
that the election would be fair and that the UN supervision and monitoring commission
would inquire into all irregularities of the election.
Tajikistan (1991)
The United Nations helped to facilitate negotiations between the government of Tajikistan
and Islamic rebel groups in a war that displaced one-sixth of a total population of 6
million, following the break-up of the Soviet Union. In the 1996 Peace Agreement between
Tajik President Imomali Rakhmonov and the Islamic leader Said Abdullo Nuri, both
parties agreed to power sharing in the Commission for National Reconciliation, prisoners’
exchanges, amnesty laws and the integration of the armed forces of both sides into a new
army. An important role in this conflict settlement was played by non-governmental
organisations, which worked hard in promoting community reconciliation and cohesion
(Saunders 1996a, p. 425, 1999, p. 173).
Since the early 1990s a number of terms have been applied and suggested for the
extension of international responsibility and administration of war-torn societies. Some
scholars have adopted the UN terminology ‘interim administration’ and ‘transitional
arrangements’, which refers to the temporary assumption of governmental functions by
the United Nations over territories and peoples that have been left in a conflict-torn
environment, for instance because of civil war, crimes against humanity, territorial
disputes and environmental disaster (Caplan 2005, pp. 16–41). Others have referred to
comprehensive peace-building efforts, which are derived from former UN Secretary
General Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s ‘Agenda for Peace’. The term signifies the readiness of
the United Nations to take on increasing responsibilities in such complicated operations
through the 1990s, as is evident from the gradual drift from traditional peacekeeping to
wider peace enforcement, humanitarian intervention and, ultimately, the civil, political,
social and economic reconstruction of entire societies (Pugh 1997, p. 20).
A crucial development in the post-Cold War era has been the increase in the number of
political and non-political actors who deal with conflict and its resolution. In recent years,
the impact of international organisations (e.g. UN, NATO), regional organisations
(Organisation of American States, OAS; European Union, EU), non-governmental
organisations (e.g. Amnesty International, International Crises Group, the Carter Centre)
and individuals have all become increasingly involved in various aspects of conflict
resolution. There is also a strong tendency to favour multilateral approaches to conflicts,
especially with the potential for spill-over effects.
204 Eva Sobotka
Table 16.2 Non-UN peacekeeping and interventions, 1990–2005
State or regional organisations peacekeeping Location and intervention
Great Britain Sierra Leone

France Central African Republic, Ivory Coast,
Lesotho
South Africa Burundi
French-led coalition Democratic Republic of the Congo
Italy Albania
US-led coalition Haiti
Australian-led coalition East Timor, Solomon Islands
Africa
Economic Community of West African States Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bussau,
Ivory Coast
Southern African Development Community Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lesotho,
Economic and Monetary Community of Central African Republic
Central African States
African Union Burundi, Sudan
Europe
Commonwealth of Independent States Moldova, Georgia, Tajikistan
European Union Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia
NATO Kosovo
Asia
NATO Afghanistan
Source: Bellamy and Williams (2005).
Actors and their function in multilateral frameworks for conflict resolution

The 1990s began with a hopeful phase in which the United Nations set out to implement
the expanded conception of peacemaking envisioned in Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s
‘Agenda for Peace’, with notable peace-building operations in areas with recent peace
settlements, including Cambodia, Namibia, Angola, Mozambique and El Salvador. A
general model for UN peace-building has emerged from these cases. It calls for military
measures to secure the demobilisation, disarmament and cantonment of opposing
forces; constitutional measures to implement elections and establish a transitional
government; governance measures to support civilian government and infrastructure,
including training and, if necessary, supervision of local police; human rights measures;
the return of refugees; and the restoration of war-damaged infrastructure. At first, this
model appeared to have striking successes, and in some cases, such as Namibia and
Mozambique, a peaceful transformation from war was indeed achieved. In others,
however, such as Angola and Cambodia, violent conflict resumed.
While international interventions have, in these cases, seemed to have halted ethnic
wars, the extent of transformation of the underlying conflict remains limited. Ethno-
nationalist leaderships remain and settlements based on the realities of ethnic divisions
in the war have preserved these divisions during peace time. These high-profile cases, of
course, involved imposed settlements, achieved after considerable vacillation on the
part of a divided international community. More impressive have been the cases in
which conflicts were prevented even before they became violent. Here, real changes in
the context of the conflict and in the structure of the societies have resulted in some
impressive transformations. In the case of Estonia, for example, a potential ethnic
conflict was averted in part through the well-known interventions of the OSCE High
Commissioner on National Minorities, supported by the EU and Scandinavian
governments. In part, the transformed economic context served to create incentives for
the Russian-speaking community. Moreover, an additional key factor was the
introduction of an electoral system that created incentives for cross-ethnic voting, thus
resulting in a transition from ethnic politics to a politics of economic and regional
interest groups. Non-Estonian politicians were included in the party lists of Estonian
parties, and the Estonian Centre Party won wide support from Russian-speakers as a
vehicle for promoting their interests. This is a particularly striking success for the
conflict management and ethnic accommodation approaches, made possible by the
transformation of the Estonian context after 1991.
Several problems remain to exist with regard to the United Nations’ preventive
capacity. Although both the UN Charter and the 1988 Declaration on the Prevention
and Removal of Disputes and Situations and on the Role of the UN in the Field urged the
United Nations to become involved ‘early in a dispute of a situation’ or ‘at any stage of
a dispute or a situation’, the fact is that most disputes do not reach the Security Council’s
agenda until they have escalated into armed conflict (Peck 1998, p. 70). Ultimately, the
decision for action has rested with member states.
The engagement of human rights and humanitarian agencies has become more visible
since the 1980s and 1990s. These agencies were increasingly drawn into the costly
business of rebuilding war-torn societies, and were responding to the acute humanitarian
need, by targeting development and human rights monitoring programmes specifically
towards peace-building. In some cases, their activities supported UN peace-building
operations, for example in Mozambique, where donors helped to keep the elections on
schedule and supported the transformation of RENAMO into a political party. In
other cases, development aid was channelled to directly mitigate conflict, as when
donors supported refugees in neglected parts of Somalia with the intention of reducing
discontent in a politically unstable area. Programmes to support the reintegration of
child soldiers or the rehabilitation of agricultural land are further examples of
development tasks that can readily have a peace-building component. Capacity-
building and support for indigenous conflict handling capacity are also crucial.
Development aid can, of course, have unintended as well as intended consequences;
in some circumstances, aid is captured by the parties to the conflict, and then sustains
the fighting. Although development agencies are increasingly important and influential
in this field, they generally see their role as principally to support and encourage the
work of others, rather than to take prime responsibility for transforming particular
conflicts. (That role is still seen as a new and untested function.) Most of the conflict
transformation work has therefore been left to NGOs (Collier 2007; Lederach 2001). In
addition to NGOs, international financial institutions have begun to incorporate
conflict resolution and post-conflict reconstruction departments within their
organisations, most importantly the World Bank’s Post-conflict Reconstruction Unit.
This shift is in part the result of a more holistic approach to peace and conflict resolution
that has led various scholars and practitioners to link conflict with issues of human
rights and development (Holtzman et al. 1998).
206 Eva Sobotka
Table 16.3 Functions of multidimensional peacekeeping operations
Military component
• Monitoring and verification of cease-fires
• Cantonment
• Disarmament and demobilisation of combatants
• Overseeing the withdrawal of foreign forces
• Mine awareness education and mine clearance
• Ensuring security for UN and other international personnel
• Activities in support of the peace process
Civilian police component

• Crowd control
• Establishment and maintenance of judicial system
• Law enforcement
• Monitoring, training and advising local law enforcement authorities on organisational, administrative
and human rights issues
Civilian component
Political element
• Political guidance on overall peace process
• Assistance in the rehabilitation of existing political institutions
• Promotion of national reconciliation
Electoral element
• Monitoring and verification of all aspects and staged of the electoral process; co-ordination of
technical assistance
• Education of the public about electoral processes and provision of help in the development of
grass-roots democratic institutions
Human rights element

• Human rights monitoring
• Investigating of specific cases of human rights violation
• Awareness raising of human rights
Humanitarian help element

• Provision of humanitarian aid (food and other emergency relief supplies)
• Implementation of refugee repatriation programmes
• Resettlement of displaced persons
• Reintegration of ex-combatants
Source: Hansen et al. (2001).
Collective threats to security are best met by collective responses, yet strong norms
regarding sovereignty and non-interference have limited the ability of states to
collectively deal with conflicts, let alone engage in prevention (Brems Knudsen and
Bagge Laustsen 2006). Demand for UN interventions, particularly in the form of
peacekeeping operations, has strained the resources available to that organisation.
Conflicts in the post-Cold War period have tested the United Nations’ capabilities to
the limit, and the failures in Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia and Herzegovina have led to
critical assessment (Betts 1994, p. 25; Rieff 1994, p. 17; Luttwak 1999). The genocide in
Rwanda, where approximately 800,000 people were killed between April and July of
1994, was described as one of the most ‘most abhorrent events of the twentieth century’
(United Nations 1999a, b). A year later, in one of the worst war crimes committed in
Europe since the end of the Second World War, the Bosnian town of Srebrenića, which
had been designated the world’s first-ever civilian safe area under Security Council
Resolution 819 (16 April 1993), fell to Serb militias. Eight thousand Muslims were
killed under the eyes of the UN peacekeeping force deployed in the area.
In light of such failures in peacekeeping, the concept of peace support operations
(PSO) has evolved as an expression of states’ reluctance to deploy forces and provide
resources in conflicts for which they are inadequately prepared and supported. This
new way of thinking is best exemplified by Wilkinson, who argues that, in a world
marked by civil wars, collapsed states and declining respect for international and
humanitarian law, the wider peacekeeping concepts developed in the 1990s are in need
of updating (Wilkinson 2000).
During the 1990s, the debate surrounding conflict resolution increasingly advocated
a more innovative approach. Today, multilateral conflict resolution frameworks
involve a broad range of functions and actors, who make use of a wide repertoire of
practices. The operations are multilateral and multidimensional, incorporating military
and civilian police and other civilian components. The civilian police component has
become an increasingly important player in conflict resolution. Operating under the
auspices of the UN Security Council, international police monitors assist in the creation
of secure environments and in the maintenance of public order. Finally there is a
civilian component, which consists of intergovernmental organisations (IGOs), or
agencies, regional organisations and non-governmental organisations, international
organisations, foundations, etc. With respect to their mandates, civilian component can
be further divided to include subcomponents, such as political, electoral, human rights
and humanitarian mandates. Following on from this, it is arguable that the use of
Australian forces to lead the peace operations in East Timor in 1999 (see below) and the
deployment of British forces in Sierra Leone in 2000 are examples of such multilateral
and multidimensional operations.
East Timor
UN involvement in East Timor dates to the UN General Assembly Resolution in 1960,
when East Timor was added to the United Nations’ list of non-self-governing territories.
When Portugal, which administered the territory, decided to establish a provisional
government in 1974, civil war broke out between those who sought independence and
those who wanted union with Indonesia. Indonesia annexed East Timor in 1976. For years
afterwards, the United Nations conducted negotiations with Indonesia and Portugal to
resolve the status of East Timor. A set of agreements was reached in 1999, confirming East
Timor as holding ‘special autonomy status’ within the territory of Indonesia. In the same
year, a multinational force led by Australia was deployed to protect the United Nations
Mission in East Timor (UNAMET). Further to a general election in 2001 and independence
in 2002, the United Nations has continued its presence with a successor mission known as
the United Nations Mission of Support in East Timor. It is responsible for helping to
maintain security in the country and producing core administrative assistance to the new
government (Ramesh 2001, p. 118).
208 Eva Sobotka
Another example of the early application of the multilateral approach to conflict

resolution, including peace support operations to conflict resolution is the intervention of
the United Nations in the conflict in Kosovo.
Kosovo
Conflict resolution in Kosovo falls under the category of humanitarian intervention and
the creation of international trusteeship (Brems Knudsen and Laustsen 2006). Like
traditional peacekeeping (Chapter VI of the UN Charter), the Charter’s basis for
humanitarian intervention is ambiguous, lying somewhere in the grey zone between
Chapter VI and Chapter VII. Here we can speak of a third generation of conflict resolution
operations, which involves the application of all the principles of traditional peacekeeping
(consent, partiality and absence of use of force). In addition, such intervention may involve
further tasks, such as capturing criminals, gathering evidence of war crimes and effectively
helping to rebuild the country’s administrative institutions.
With the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1244 of 10 June 1999 and the
establishment of UNMIK, the United Nations and its partners, NATO, OSCE and the
EU became responsible for the territory, the people and the society of Kosovo. For the
first time in recent history, the United Nations administered an entire territory. To
facilitate the implementation of the mandate, the operation was divided into four pillars,
each managed by a different organisation: Civil Administration (UNMIK), Humanitarian
Assistance (UNHCR), Institution Building (OSCE) and Economic Reconstruction (EU).
The overall strategy in Resolution 1233 involves five phases. During the first phase, an
interim civil administration controlled by UNMIK was to be established. The interim
administration was to be strengthened and a gradual transfer to the population of Kosovo
was to begin during the second phase, while preparation for election was initiated. The
holding of elections was to constitute the third phase, leading to establishment of
provisional administration in the fourth phase. In the fifth phase, the conflict in Kosovo
has been finally resolved and the overall administration of the territory transferred to a
permanent civil administration directed and controlled by the local population. The largest
obstacle to the consolidation of democratic peace in Kosovo is inherent in the structure of
the UN operation: the unresolved end status of the territory. It is clearly stated in
Resolution 1244 that Kosovo is a legal part of Yugoslavia, and Yugoslavia has no intention
of allowing Kosovo to leave the Federation. The Kosovo Albanians nevertheless continued
to demand the creation of an independent state.
The UN trusteeship operation in Kosovo has had positive effects on the humanitarian
and democratic stability in the territory, although certain aspects of the current operation
continue to be a cause of conflict. Since the conflict in Kosovo there has been a stimulus
given to the policy development in relation to conflict prevention and conflict resolution in
the European Union, and the emergence of a new framework of conflict resolution
approaches (Hansen, Ramsbotham, Woodhouse 2001: 27).
Conclusion
By the 1990s it was clear that international organisations still could not prevent wars,
but that the international conflict resolution mechanisms of the United Nations were
more effective than those that had been available to the League of Nations. At the end
of the twentieth century, such mechanisms were an accepted part of the structure of
global political power. New impetus to lateral thinking on conflict resolution, going
beyond the state-centred approach to a multidimensional approach has taken place.
During the Cold War conflict resolution activities of the United Nations operated in
permissive environments but, since 1988, peacekeeping has had to adapt to
semi-permissive or non-consensual environments, where multilateral and multinational
approach in conflict resolution/settlement have become a predominant feature.
As we have seen, there are many examples of an increase in understanding by member
states that multilateral approaches to peacekeeping and conflict prevention is, from a
long-term perspective, a much more effective solution. The use of multilateral conflict
resolution will gain currency with the increasing use of these concepts by the United
Nations and regional organisations, such as the EU, OSCE or the Organisation of
African Unity or ECOWAS. By their very nature, regional organisations have a more
concentrated focus on a specific area, thus allowing the United Nations to focus its
limited resources on the emergence of conflicts outside the purview of areas falling
under regional systems. In the meantime, the capacity of these collective security
arrangements must be increased through the sharing of both resources and experience
by the United Nations and regional organisations.
Further reading
Bercovitch, J. and Jackson R. 2009. Conflict Resolution in the Twenty-first Century. Ann Arbor
MI: University of Michigan Press.
Collier, P. 2007. The Bottom Billion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fleitz, F. H., Jr. 2002. Peacekeeping Fiascos of the 1990s: Causes, Solutions and U.S. Interests.
Westport CT: Praeger.
Gurr, T. R. 2002. ‘Containing Internal War in the Twenty-first Century’, in From Reactions to
Conflict Prevention: Opportunities in the UN System. London: International Peace Academy.
Miall, H., Oliver Ramsbotham, and Tom Woodhouse. 1999. Contemporary Conflict Resolution,
Cambridge: Polity Press.
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Allen, J. 1996. Peacekeeping: Outspoken Observations by a Field Officer. Westport CT: Praeger.
Azar, E. and Burton, J. W. 1986. International Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice. Boulder
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Bartoli, A. 1999. ‘Mediating Peace in Mozambique: The Role of the Community of Sant’ Egidi’,
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17 Post-conflict reconstruction in ethnically
divided societies
Monika Heupel
Post-conflict reconstruction first appeared on the agenda of the United Nations and
multilateral development agencies in the early and mid-1990s. With the end of the Cold
War, many proxy wars in developing countries came to an end and other conflicts in
weak and failing states escalated, so that new strategies were needed to create the
conditions for self-sustaining peace in post-conflict settings. In this context, the United
Nations and other global and regional agencies exploited their new scope of action to
devise reconstruction strategies und build up respective capacities. Over the years,
commonly accepted principles and a ‘standard operating procedure’ (Ramsbotham
2000) developed that guided efforts at stabilising peace processes in the aftermath of
armed conflict or war.
Two decades after the end of the Cold War, a rich body of research on post-
conflict reconstruction has emerged. Earlier work predominantly concentrated on
conceptualising the term post-conflict reconstruction and describing and debating what
measures were and should be initiated within the scope of reconstruction endeavours
(e.g. Kühne 1996). Later studies increasingly centred on exposing the flawed liberal bias
of the ‘standard operating procedure’ of post-conflict reconstruction and suggesting
alternative approaches (most notably Paris 2004). Within the research on post-conflict
reconstruction, the question of ethnically divided societies holds particular significance.
With the number of ethnic conflicts on the rise since the early 1990s (Wolff 2006) and
ethnic conflicts being more difficult to settle and durably pacify than non-identity
conflicts (Hartzell and Hoddie 2003), a great number of scholars engaged in debating
what measures were most suitable to lay the foundations for stable peace in the
aftermath of armed conflict or war in ethnically divided societies.
The purpose of this chapter is to provide a brief overview of the state of the art of
post-conflict reconstruction in ethnically divided societies. It describes the ‘standard
operating procedure’ of post-conflict reconstruction (next section), reviews the main
perspectives on post-conflict reconstruction in ethnically divided societies (second
section) and presents the arguments of the critics of the conventional approach to
post-conflict reconstruction (third section). The conclusion summarises the key points
and marks out avenues for further research.
Post-conflict reconstruction
Post-conflict reconstruction – or post-conflict peace-building – is defined as ‘activities
undertaken on the far side of conflict to reassemble the foundations of peace and
provide the tools for building on those foundations something that is more than just the
Post-conflict reconstruction 213
absence of war’ (United Nations 2000: II.A). Reconstruction activities in the aftermath
of armed conflict or war are usually divided into four fields of activity that address
security-related, political, psychosocial and socioeconomic problems of post-conflict
societies respectively. It is commonly assumed that progress in all four fields of activity
is required to render post-conflict reconstruction effective (Hamre and Sullivan 2002).
Also, progress in each field of activity is assumed to depend on progress in the other
fields, with the provision of security frequently being considered the necessary
precondition for progress in other fields (Schwarz 2005).1
Security-related reconstruction refers to the (re-)transfer of the monopoly of force to
the state. The build-up of the state monopoly of force normally involves the disarmament
and demobilisation of private and parastatal combat units (Knight 2004; Ball 2001). In
many cases, security-related reconstruction also requires security sector reform. A core
element of security sector reform in post-conflict states is the integration of members of
all relevant warring parties and societal groups into national security institutions. Other
elements are the establishment of civilian control of the military and the police as well
as the reduction of the military to providing external security (Bryden and Hänggi
2005; Pauwels 2000). Frequently, security-related reconstruction also involves the
temporary deployment of multilateral peacekeeping forces that tend to be increasingly
endowed with robust mandates. Peacekeeping forces can monitor and enforce cease-
fire agreements and provide an environment that is secure enough to carry out other
reconstruction efforts. Thus, they are meant to ease the security dilemma that is
presumed to prevent or at least complicate peacetime co-operation among formerly
opposing parties (Walter 1997, 1999; Feil 2002).
Political reconstruction refers to the promotion of the rule of law and to the (re-)
building of democratic institutions in post-conflict societies. Oftentimes, political
reconstruction first and foremost requires the composition of a constitution that
embodies basic principles and norms as well as actionable rights (Samuels 2005). Rule
of law promotion involves the establishment of a judicial system that is open to every
citizen and shielded against political influence (Mani 1998; Carothers 1998). Democracy
promotion is based on the assumption that stable democracies are less likely to become
embroiled in internal armed conflict or war (Ellingsen and Gleditsch 1997). Democracy
promotion usually draws upon a procedural and a substantive understanding of
democracy. Thus, it aims to create formal democratic institutions and hold free and fair
elections, as well as strengthen civil society organisations and foster acceptance of the
values that underpin democratic orders (Barnes 2001; Ottaway 2003).
Psychosocial reconstruction refers to reconciliation both between civilians and
former combatants and between different social groups. Given the high number of
civilian casualties in many of today’s armed conflicts and wars, psychological
reconstruction is believed by many to be both highly relevant and particularly difficult
(see Schnabel 2002; Bigombe et al. 2000). Truth commissions that provide a forum for
perpetrators to acknowledge their wrongdoings and for victims to recount their stories
and possibly forgive the perpetrators are believed to have the potential to facilitate
reconciliation in the aftermath of armed conflict or war (Hayner 2002; Rotberg and
Thompson 2000). Furthermore, tribunals such as the international tribunals for the
former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and the hybrid tribunals for Sierra Leone and
Cambodia are assumed to make reconciliation possible through a decollectivisation of
guilt (Meron 1999; Bassiouni 2002). More recent studies, however, increasingly question
whether truth-telling mechanisms and war crimes tribunals really contribute to
214 Monika Heupel
reconciliation and point to counterproductive side effects (Mendeloff 2004; Graybill
2004).
Socioeconomic reconstruction, finally, refers to the improvement of the socioeconomic
well-being of civilians and former combatants in post-conflict societies. In the immediate
aftermath of armed conflict or war, the provision of humanitarian assistance often
takes centre stage. It is also frequently necessary to clear land mines and (re-)build
infrastructure to enable refugees and internally displaced persons to return to their
homes and resume agricultural production or other economic activities (Black and
Gent 2006; Chimni 2002). Assisting former combatants to (re-)integrate into civilian
life and take up work that enables them to support themselves and their dependants is
considered to be particularly important. That way, former combatants are assumed to
have fewer incentives to take up arms again and more incentives to support the peace
process (see Humphreys and Weinstein 2007). In the mid and long run, socioeconomic
reconstruction aims at the creation of sustainable economic growth and the reduction
of social inequality, acknowledging that low levels of development (Collier and Hoeffler
2004) and high levels of social inequality (Boyce 1996; Nafziger and Auvinen 2002) can
be important sources of armed conflict and war. The ‘standard operating procedure’ in
this regard is the introduction of a free market economy, normally with the help of
macroeconomic structural adjustment programmes (Mendelson Forman 2002; Collier
et al. 2008).
Post-conflict reconstruction in ethnically divided societies

Research on post-conflict reconstruction in ethnically divided societies forms part of
the broader research on post-conflict reconstruction. It draws heavily on the insights of
the long-standing research on the causes and dynamics of conflict in pluralistic societies
as well as on broader theoretical insights of several disciplines. The growing interest in
post-conflict reconstruction in ethnically divided societies after the end of the Cold War
has been inspired by the rising number of ethnic conflicts and by a growing perception
among scholars and policymakers that ethnic divisions replaced the ideological fault
lines of the Cold War as the dominant factor of conflict.2 Moreover, post-conflict
reconstruction turned out to be more difficult after ethnic wars than after non-identity
wars (Hartzell and Hoddie 2003; Doyle and Sambanis 2000), thus making research on
the preconditions for successful reconstruction in ethnically divided societies all the
more imperative. One can discern three main perspectives on post-conflict reconstruction
in ethnically divided societies that each relate to a specific field of the above specified
reconstruction activities: a (neo-)realist perspective underlines the importance of
security-related measures; an institutionalist perspective points to the value of balanced
political institutions; and a constructivist perspective highlights the significance of
reducing the political salience of ethnic divisions.
Scholars in the (neo-)realist tradition argue that the concept of the security dilemma
can be used to explain the behaviour of non-state actors in anarchical environments.
Traditionally, the security dilemma concept describes a situation in which two states
that do not wish to harm each other end up going to war against each other. The
dilemma arises because the anarchical structure of the international system compels
states to make worst case assumptions and rely on self-help strategies to increase their
security, which in turn decreases the security of other states (Herz 1951). The same
dilemma, the argument goes, occurs before the outbreak or in the aftermath of ethnic
conflicts if a state fails to provide security throughout its territory. Hence, ethnic groups
can equally be caught up in a situation in which they cannot trust one another and thus
feel compelled to introduce measures that decrease the security not only of other parties
but eventually also their own security (Posen 1993; Roe 1999; Snyder and Jervis 1999).
The application of the security dilemma concept to ethnic conflicts prompts scholars
in the neorealist tradition to make rather grim predictions for the success of many of
the post-conflict reconstruction measures summarised above. However, they come to
different conclusions on how to surmount the challenges posed by the security dilemma
in post-conflict settings. Some argue that warring factions might sign a ceasefire or
peace agreement but are unlikely to disarm and agree to power-sharing formulas if
there are no credible guarantees that all factions will abide by the terms of the agreement.
A necessary precondition for the success of post-conflict reconstruction is therefore the
presence of peacekeeping forces that are prepared to enforce the agreement and can
thus provide such guarantees (Walter 1997, 1999; Doyle and Sambanis 2000; Hampson
1996). By contrast, other scholars call for the geographic separation of ethnic groups.
They claim that, due to the security dilemma, cross-ethnic political appeals are unlikely
to resonate in the aftermath of armed conflict or war. Accordingly, they consider the
creation of ethnic enclaves, with or without independent sovereignty, to be a suitable
way to reduce both incentives and opportunities for armed conflict or war (Kaufmann
1996, 1998; Mearsheimer and Van Evera 1995).
Many scholars who draw on institutionalist insights assert that the establishment of
consociational democracy facilitates post-conflict reconstruction of ethnically divided
societies (Hartzell and Hoddie 2003). This is based on the assumption that the needs
and interests of all relevant groups must be accommodated to prevent the recurrence of
armed conflict or war in pluralistic societies. Therefore, it is crucial to develop power-
sharing mechanisms and/or agree upon group autonomy rights to give all relevant
groups the opportunity to participate in rule-making (see Lijphart 1977, 2004; Gurr
1993). Power sharing typically refers to centralised joint rule and consensus-based
decision-making of all relevant (ethnic) groups in divided societies. A narrow conception
corresponds to power-sharing provisions in the executive and legislative branch, such
as all-party governments or the right of all parliamentary factions to veto decisions. A
broader power-sharing conception refers to proportional representation of all relevant
groups, not only in the executive and the legislature but also in the public administration,
the judiciary and the security institutions (Lijpart 1977, 2004; Sisk 1996; Schneckener
2002; Hartzell and Hoddie 2003; Reynal-Querol 2002). Territorial group autonomy
provisions imply the introduction of federal structures in divided societies with
geographically concentrated (ethnic) groups. Non-territorial group autonomy
provisions relate to the granting of minority rights, for instance related to religion,
education and language, to (ethnic) groups that are not geographically concentrated
(Coakley 1993; Ghai 2000).
Horowitz and Reilly also draw on institutionalist insights but arrive at different
conclusions on how voting systems ought to be designed in ethnically divided societies
to contribute to the prevention or re-escalation of violent conflict. According to them,
power-sharing provisions that guarantee proportional representation of all relevant
ethnic groups in decision-making are counterproductive in that they reinforce ethnic
divisions and reward radical parties. Instead, they recommend alternative vote systems
that require voters to rank candidates according to their preferences, thus encouraging
parties to bid for support from different constituencies. Alternative vote systems
216 Monika Heupel
consequently reward moderate parties and facilitate coalition-building across ethnic
divides (Horowitz 1993, 1991; Reilly 2001, 1997).3
Finally, scholars that draw on constructivist theory point to the social construction of
ethnic identities and maintain that it is of particular importance to address the symbolic
and emotional roots of ethnic conflicts to cultivate stable peace in post-conflict settings.
Rational approaches, they argue, err in assuming that ethnic identities are fixed and
cannot be transformed. Proposals such as the geographical separation of ethnically
defined groups or the institutionalisation of power-sharing mechanisms and group
autonomy rights are therefore flawed because they build on the faulty assumption of
unchangeable ethnic identities. Moreover, such proposals hold risks in that they
institutionalise ethnic cleavages in post-conflict societies (Kaufman 2006; Simonsen
2005). Consequently, rather than institutionalising ethnic divisions in post-conflict
societies, steps should be taken to reduce the salience of such divisions and facilitate a
redefinition of identities and attitudes (Long and Brecke 2003).
There are several propositions on how to facilitate identity-related and attitudinal
changes in ethnically divided societies that emerge from armed conflict or war. Some
scholars underline the potential of problem-solving workshops that bring together
representatives of conflicting groups and social scientists to engage in informal
communication (Kelman and Cohen 1976). Others consider truth and reconciliation
commissions to be a promising tool to make identity-related and attitudinal changes
possible (Kaufman 2006; Hayner 2002). Again others suggest promoting societal
cleavages that cut across ethnic divisions in order to de-ethnicise politics and lay the
foundation for multicultural democracy in post-conflict settings. According to this
view, members of ethnic groups are supposed to become aware of the fact that they
share interests with members of other ethnic groups if they define their identity and
interests not only along ethnic but also along regional, gender, class and other lines.
The long-term objective, eventually, is not the suppression of ethnic identities but the
creation of an overarching national identity (Simonsen 2005; Kymlicka 1995).
‘Liberal internationalism’ and its critics

Throughout much of the 1990s, research on post-conflict reconstruction was primarily
concerned with mapping out how specific reconstruction strategies could be designed to
be effective and thus widely took a problem-solving approach. In the late 1990s, however,
when more and more efforts at post-conflict reconstruction in homogeneous and ethnically
divided societies alike faltered and failed (Tschirgi 2004), scholars increasingly challenged
the appropriateness of the normative underpinnings of ‘liberal internationalism’ or the
‘liberal peace’, which are generally used to denote the ‘standard operating procedure’ of
post-conflict reconstruction. In their view, post-conflict reconstruction was based on the
assumption that the introduction of a Western-style democracy and a free-market
economy would help states emerging from armed conflict or war to lay the groundwork
for self-sustaining peace. Yet, while democracy and a free-market economy were indeed
correlated with a low risk of violent conflict, political and economic liberalisation
engendered competition and were therefore not qualified to stabilise countries that lacked
reliable institutions for the peaceful management of conflicts in the immediate aftermath
of violence. The disillusioning success rate of post-conflict reconstruction since the end of
the Cold War can consequently, at least in part, be attributed to untimely liberalisation
(Paris 2004, 2002, 1997; Richmond 2006; David 1999).
Some scholars endeavoured to flesh out why premature democratisation in post-conflict
situations was risky. They showed that states undergoing a transformation from
autocracy to democracy are more susceptible to armed conflict or war than stable
autocracies or mature democracies. States in limbo between autocracy and democracy
are considered to be particularly at risk because the process of democratisation enables
societal groups to gather and voice their demands while the governing regime is
frequently not yet in a position or willing to accommodate such demands (Ellingsen
and Gleditsch 1997; Mousseau 2001; Paris 2004, 1997). The heightened vulnerability of
democratising states to violent conflict also applies to states with ethnically divided
societies. What is more, there are indications that the pacifying effect of maturing
democracies is less pronounced in ethnically divided societies than in homogeneous
societies (Mousseau 2001). The introduction of democracy in multi-ethnic societies, it
is argued, is likely to stimulate political competition along ethnic lines, facilitate ethnic
mobilisation and thus foment ethnic conflict. Especially premature elections are a
gamble, given that ethnic groups often perceive elections as a zero-sum game and may
resort to violent means if elections produce undesirable results (Snyder 2000; Horowitz
1994; Diamond et al. 1995; Huntington 1997; Zakaria 1997).4
Other scholars claim that the hasty introduction of free market economies in
post-conflict societies is likewise risky. They assert that states that are about to introduce
a free-market economy (and are at middle levels of development) are exposed to a
higher risk of armed conflict or war than states that are less open to the world economy
(or less developed) or that are already well integrated into the world economy (or highly
developed). The causal explanation of this relation is that the introduction of a
free-market economy, often guided by externally imposed neo-liberal structural
adjustment programmes, and integration into the global economy, give rise to social
inequality in war-shattered societies and create losers that may resort to violent means
to assert themselves (Bussmann and Schneider 2007; Mousseau 2001; Cooper 2005;
Paris 1997). As in the relation between the degree of democratisation and the risk of
violent conflict, the relation between economic openness (and development) and the
risk of violent conflict equally applies to ethnically divided societies. Processes of
economic development create more issues that societal groups can compete for and
thus heighten the risk of group conflicts (Horowitz 1985; Mousseau 2001), especially as
long as post-conflict states have yet to institutionalise social safety nets. Moreover,
horizontal inequality between ethnic groups renders societies more prone to armed
conflict or war, as it produces grievances that can be used by ‘ethnic entrepreneurs’ to
mobilise followers along ethnic lines (Humphreys 2003; Stewart 2002; Gurr and Moore
1997; Chua 2003).
In light of the negative side effects of precipitate political and economic liberalisation,
many critics of the conventional approach to post-conflict reconstruction call for what
has become known as ‘strategic liberalisation’ (Paris 1997). Proponents of ‘strategic
liberalisation’ share the normative underpinnings of ‘liberal internationalism’ but argue
for a gradual and controlled implementation of its ambitious agenda and, as a
consequence, long-term commitment by external actors. Instead of focusing on holding
(premature) elections, they emphasise constitution-building and recommend delaying
elections until disarmament and demobilisation efforts have made progress, civil society
organisations whose agendas cut across dominant cleavage lines have developed, and
electoral systems have been crafted with mechanisms that reward moderate parties
(Paris 1997, 2004; Zakaria 1997). To absorb the negative side effects of economic
218 Monika Heupel
liberalisation in fragile post-conflict situations, proponents of ‘strategic liberalisation’
suggest adjustment policies that avoid economic shocks and allocate resources to those
who are negatively affected by adjustment programmes (Paris 1997, 2004). Other critics
of the ‘liberal internationalist’ approach to post-conflict reconstruction question
whether external actors have the right and the ability to engage in far-reaching social
engineering in post-conflict societies (Chandler 2006). Rather, they demand that local
actors have a greater stake in deciding the constitutional foundations of the political
system and the parameters of the approach to peace-building (Chandler 2006; Richmond
and Franks 2007).
Conclusion
The body of research on post-conflict reconstruction in general and on reconstruction
in ethnically divided societies has grown substantially during the past two decades.
Until the late 1990s, most studies followed a ‘problem-solving’ approach and
concentrated on spelling out what specific reconstruction strategies proved effective.
Over the years, more and more scholars focused on the normative underpinnings of the
‘standard operating procedure’ of post-conflict reconstruction and the flaws of their
execution. At the same time, a field of research that specifically dealt with post-conflict
reconstruction in ethnically divided societies developed and generated insights that
enriched the broader debate on post-conflict reconstruction in general.
To further enhance our understanding of the determinants of effective post-conflict
reconstruction in ethnically divided societies, future research should first and foremost
strive to overcome some of the divides that separate the different perspectives on
reconstruction from each other. First, proponents of the conventional ‘liberal
internationalist’ approach to post-conflict reconstruction and proponents of ‘strategic
liberalisation’ should engage more seriously with each other and spell out more clearly
under which conditions individual approaches prove most promising. Second, scholars
that draw on different theoretical insights to account for the effectiveness of post-conflict
reconstruction in ethnically divided societies should likewise make greater efforts to
pool their findings. While it is true that some of the measures put forward by the
different approaches countervail one another, it is worthwhile to examine more closely
which measures can be combined under particular circumstances. Research on
post-conflict reconstruction in ethnically divided societies has come a long way and has
produced theoretically interesting and practically relevant insights. Yet, bringing
together insights from different normative and theoretical perspectives will certainly
expand our understanding of what makes post-conflict reconstruction in ethnically
divided societies work.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank Natascha Braumann for her research assistance on this chapter.
Notes
1 For comprehensive overviews of the fields of activity of post-conflict reconstruction see Jeong
(2005), Junne and Verkoren (2005) and Cousens and Kumar (2000).
2 Since the late 1990s, however, research commissioned by the World Bank and the debate on
the emergence of so-called ‘new wars’ has shifted the attention to ‘greed’ and ‘opportunity’ as
factors giving rise to armed conflict and war rather than grievances related to ethnic divisions
(e.g. Collier and Hoeffler, 2004).
3 For a criticism of the alternative vote system see Fraenkel and Grofman (2006).
4 For an opposing view see Saideman et al. (2002), who maintain that younger democracies are
less vulnerable to ethnic conflict than is commonly assumed.
Further reading
Hartzell, C. and Hoddie, M. (2003) ‘Institutionalizing peace: power sharing and post-civil war
conflict management’, American Journal of Political Science, 47(2): 318–32.
Kaufman, S.J. (2006) ‘Escaping the symbolic politics trap: reconciliation initiatives and conflict
resolution in ethnic wars’, Journal of Peace Research, 43(2): 201–18.
Paris, R. (1997) ‘Peacebuilding and the limits of liberal internationalism’, International Security,
22(2): 54–89.
Simonsen, S.G. (2005) ‘Addressing ethnic divisions in post-conflict institution-building: lessons
from recent cases’, Security Dialogue, 36(3): 297–318.
Walter, B. (1997) ‘The critical barrier to civil war settlement’, International Organization, 51(3):
335–64.
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Part III
18 Deepening democracy
The role of civil society
Ian O’Flynn and David Russell
Democracy and civil society

There is more to democracy than the responsibilities and decisions of elected
representatives. This is as true for societies deeply divided along ethnic lines as for any
other kind of society. Democracy means rule by the people, which, in turn, assumes
that ordinary people can hold representatives to account and make them responsive to
their preferences and opinions. Yet according to one reading of democracy,
representatives need only be held accountable for the positions and policies they adopt
at election time. If voters are dissatisfied with the way in which their interests have been
served, they can use their franchise to register that dissatisfaction in the hope of bringing
about a change of government (Schumpeter 1942; Riker 1982).
Critics argue that this is an overly reductive understanding of democracy – ordinary
people ought, they argue, to be more involved in political life. They should not be
merely passive recipients of decisions made in their name, who patiently (or frustratedly)
wait for the periodic opportunity to pass judgment on the performance of the
government of the day. On the contrary, a flourishing democracy must strive, on this
alternative view, towards achieving greater levels of public participation enabling
ordinary people to engage in meaningful deliberation that can inform decision making
on an ongoing basis (Barber 1984; cf. Warren 2001). In this vein, John Stuart Mill
famously argued that when an ordinary person participates in political life, he is:
called upon, while so engaged, to weigh interests not his own; to be guided, in case
of conflicting claims, by another rule than his private partialities; to apply, at every
turn, principles and maxims which have for their reason of existence the common
good: and he usually finds associated with him in the same work minds more
familiarised than his own with these ideas and operations, whose study it will be to
supply reasons to his understanding, and stimulation to his feeling for the general
interest. He is made to feel himself one of the public, and whatever is for their
benefit to be for his benefit.
(Mill 1991, p. 255)
One might agree with Mill that political participation raises the moral character by
obliging people to take a broader and more encompassing view of public issues than
merely that of their own special interests. However, if participation is to be effective or
constructive, it must be organised. The various associations that make up civil society
(e.g., Churches, universities, trade unions, employers’ associations, environmental
groups, etc.) provide ordinary people with multiple formal and informal channels that
226 Ian O’Flynn and David Russell
enable them to build affinities and mobilise for common purposes, to coordinate their
actions through discussion and to reach for new ideas and practices. But, in principle,
the associations of civil society can do much more than enable people to engage with
and learn from one another. They can also enable them to talk to government, either
directly through their own efforts or through channels and institutions established
specifically for that purpose. In doing so, they can exercise greater control over the
conditions under which they live and act – in effect, to be self-determining – and hence
increase the quality of their democracy (Young 1999, pp. 149–50).
The implications for societies deeply divided along ethnic lines are encouraging. If
the members of conflicting ethnic groups really could engage within civil society, they
might come to see that others can have reasons to hold their views as firmly as they hold
theirs, and perhaps even realise that they share many interests in common (e.g., housing,
employment, social security, education, economic development etc.). The pursuit of
those interests may sit uneasily with their ethnic commitments. But they might still lead
people to realise that life is a complex affair and that their political representatives
should be responsive to that complexity. In short, it might lead them to realise that
public opinion, or indeed their own interest, need not necessarily break down along
ethnic lines. Accordingly, as Larry Diamond argues, a rich and pluralistic civil society
‘tends to generate a wide range of interests that may cross-cut, and so mitigate, the
principal polarities of political conflict’ (Diamond 1999, p. 245). This not only
encourages tolerance and a healthy respect for difference, but, in principle, allows
representatives much more room to build the sort of composite compromises that are
necessary to address difficult political questions.
This, of course, is the theory. In practice, however, the ability of ordinary people to
engage in deliberation with one another through civil society associations may be
limited. Where ethnic groups are concentrated in different parts of a country, they may
have little or no meaningful contact with each other. But even in cases where groups are
intermingled, ordinary people may still find themselves leading parallel lives or living
within parallel social spheres – for example, people may typically marry within their
own community, send their children to separate schools, engage in different cultural
activities, speak a different language and so forth. In this kind of situation, it may seem
meaningless to speak of ‘civil society’ in the singular (O’Leary 2005, p. 10). Each group
may contain a plethora of civil society associations. Yet there may be little communication
between organisations from different sides of the ethnic divide or little attempt to
combine resources, even when they are concerned with the same issues and with
achieving similar outcomes. Instead, they may operate within discrete social spheres,
advocate on behalf of discrete publics, and even lobby separate government institutions.
The seriousness of this worry cannot be gainsaid. The experience of physical, social or
political separation may indeed mean that, even if ordinary people do participate in
associational life, they may still fail to think beyond the boundaries of their own ethnic
group or enlarge their sympathies so as to take a broader or more inclusive view of public
issues. If this were always to hold true, then we might rightly despair of the prospects for
strengthening democracy in deeply divided societies. In this chapter, we argue to the
contrary. It may not be possible to create civil society associations where none exists. But
weak civil society associations can sometimes be strengthened through sensitive and
appropriate forms of strategic intervention. But this is not all. Just as it is possible to
create institutions that facilitate power sharing between the representatives of different
ethnic groups, it is possible to create institutions that facilitate participation and
The role of civil society 227
deliberation between ordinary people, both within and across different ethnic groups,
and that enable them to effectively channel their views and opinions to government.
Civil society defined

People participate in civil society organisations for all sorts of reason and to all sorts of
end (Galston 2000, p. 67). One useful way of exploring the phenomenon of civil society,
and how people participate within it, is by analysing the component parts of the
definition put forward by Larry Diamond. According to Diamond, civil society ‘is the
realm of organised social life that is open, voluntary, self-generating, at least partially
self-supporting, autonomous from the state, and bound by a legal order or set of shared
rules’ (Diamond 1999, p. 221). While Diamond is primarily concerned with the role
that civil associations can play in transitions from authoritarian rule to democracy, his
definition can be put to good use with respect to understanding the particular challenges
that deeply divided societies present.
To begin with, Diamond claims that civil society is the realm of organised social life.
Naturally, social life can take many different forms and may be more or less organised.
It may also have nothing at all to do with politics. Yet if civil associations are to have
any real political influence, they must be effectively organised. There are at least three
obvious reasons that explain why this is so. Civil associations must be effectively
organised so that their members can successfully (1) exchange information and evaluate
alternative perspectives, (2) formulate a coherent political outlook or perspective on
public issues, (3) mobilise sufficient numbers to influence political decisions (cf. Young
1999, p. 149). Of course, this still leaves us wondering what might distinguish civil
associations from other forms of organised social life such as the family on the one
hand or political parties on the other (Galston 2000).
According to Diamond, what marks civil associations out as distinctive is their open
and voluntary character. The underlying ideal here is quintessentially liberal, and may
be stated thus. Individuals should be free to move between associations, as and when
they please. This freedom leads to the creation of an ever larger number of associations,
which in turn advances the cause of democracy – the more that people are free to move,
and the more associations there are for them to move to, the more space there is for the
expression of diverse interests (Walzer 2004, p. 75). Of course, the difficulty with this
liberal ideal is that, in practice, many civil associations cannot plausibly be described as
‘open’. Some religious groups provide a good example, since they may exclude people
not born into the religion (cf. Warren 2001, pp. 96–103). However, even religious
groups of this sort can plausibly be described as voluntary, since it is always possible to
leave the group. This may be extremely difficult (Green 1999, p. 266). But saying that
something is difficult is not the same as saying that it is impossible.
A further defining feature is that, although they aim to influence political decisions,
civil associations do not seek to take control of government (Schmitter 1997, p. 240).
Admittedly, the line between influence and control can be hard to draw. But at least as
far as democracy is concerned, one way in which we might seek to draw that line is by
asking whether, or to what extent, an association sees itself as autonomous from the
state. Civil associations do not seek to represent the complete set of interests of their
members or of society at large. In other words, civil associations are not hegemonic, but
instead seek to represent particular interests at particular times. Again, as Diamond
points out, this ‘partiality is crucial to generating one of the most important consequences
of a truly civil society: the profusion of different organisations and, for individuals,
multiple organisational ties that cut across and complicate existing cleavages and
generate moderating cross-pressures on individual preferences, attitudes and beliefs’
(Diamond 1999, p. 223).
At the same time, the relation between state and civil society remains highly complex.
Civil associations must be at least partially self-supporting because otherwise they may
become overly dependent on governmental support which, in turn, may compromise
their independence. When this happens, civil associations may lose the freedom to
advance their own interests in their own way. Perhaps more worryingly still, they may
lose the ability to stand as a critical check on the behaviour of elected representatives.
This risks undermining one of the principal arguments for civil society, namely the
purported benefits of a more participatory model of democracy. The worry here may
not be such a problem with respect to powerful associations that have significant
resources of their own. But for weaker groups, who often speak for the most vulnerable
or marginalised members of society, the threat to freedom is very real.
None of this is to ignore or deny the fact that civil society will often contain illiberal
and intolerant groups whose members refuse to be bound by a legal order or set of shared
rules. Groups of this sort have no place within a modern democratic order, since they
are not willing to respect the institutions of state, work within the rules and procedures
by which politics operates or be bound by the decisions of elected representatives.
Fundamentally, a civil association is one which respects the equal standing of other
people within a democratic order. It may disagree with them, or have conflicting
interests, but it nevertheless accepts that, as far as democracy is concerned, no one is
automatically entitled to get his or her way but must instead seek to convince or
persuade rather than merely outmanoeuvre or defeat (O’Flynn 2007, pp. 740–43; cf.
Przeworski 1993, p. 62).
Difficulties with civil society

So what should we make of this general definition when set within the context of a society
deeply divided along ethnic lines? For some, the idea that civil associations might have an
important role to play in deepening democracy in such contexts is at best questionable,
since, as Brendan O’Leary puts it, ‘there is more than one society and their relations may
be far from civil’ (O’Leary 2005, p. 10). In this section, we analyse this basic criticism
along two interlinking dimensions: the ‘positional dimension’ concerns how associations
are constituted and operate, and how they see themselves in relation to other civil
associations and the state; the ‘dispositional dimension’ concerns how they formulate and
articulate their interests, and how they interact with other civil associations and the state.
The positional dimension

In one sense, O’Leary is wrong to claim that ‘there is more than one society’. There is
only ever one civil society, albeit made up of different and sometimes conflicting
associations. But in another sense, what marks a deeply divided society out as distinct
is the degree to which associations are exclusive rather than inclusive: in the main,
membership tends to be drawn from discrete ethnic groups rather than from across
society as a whole. Consequently, the deliberations that go on within those associations
will tend to conform to what Cass Sunstein calls ‘the law of group polarisation’
(Sunstein 2003). That law refers to a statistical regularity which allows us to predict that
when people from the same background meet to discuss an issue of importance to them,
they will move toward a more extreme point in the direction indicated by the median
point of their prior views and opinions (Sunstein 2003, p. 176). Of course, the mere fact
of moving in a more extreme direction is neither good nor bad in itself. But if people
only engage in discussion and debate with members of their own ethnic group, they
may view every issue as an ethnic issue and hence fail to recognise the importance to
democracy of exposing themselves to alternative views.
Under such conditions, civil associations may differ little in their constitution from
political parties; after all, the usual mode of party organisation in deeply divided
societies is ethnicity. Indeed, they may explicitly attach themselves to such parties and
consciously view themselves as part of a larger political project. Thus, for example,
John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary argue in this vein that the political preferences of
civil society in Northern Ireland do not:
significantly differ from those of its political parties. The most popular civil society
organisations in Northern Ireland, the Orange Order and Gaelic Athletic Association,
are solidly unionist and nationalist, respectively. True, several, and sometimes
admirable, smaller, peace and conflict-resolution organisations reach across the
national divide and seek to promote a transcendent identity, but just as many … are
nationalist or unionist groups that want an honorable bi-national compromise.
(McGarry and O’Leary 2009, pp. 67–68)
When this occurs, civil associations, however ‘honourable’ they may be, fail to generate
networks that cross ethnic divides or, in the worst case, to provide an antidote to
violence (cf. Kaldor 1999, p. 61). Instead, they become part of an hegemonic programme
that seeks to take control of government and hence lose a key defining feature of a truly
civil association, namely its autonomy from the state. Naturally, this may do little or
nothing to foster mutual understanding or respect between groups or across society as
a whole, or to bridge the gaps of political conflict and thereby deepen democracy (but
see Keane 2003, pp. 160–61).
If civil associations are constituted and positioned in such a way that, as a realm of
organised social life, ordinary people only ever get to talk to others like themselves,
participation may be of little practical benefit (Varshney 2002, pp. 46–51). They will not
be informed enough to arrive at reasonable opinions or to make constructive
representations to government. On the contrary, there may even be a case for saying that
civil associations should be expressly positioned and constrained so that their members’
deliberations are shepherded into within-bloc channels where they can do little damage
(Lijphart 1977, pp. 41–44; O’Leary 2005, p. 10; but see Dryzek 2005, pp. 222 ff.). In these
circumstances, critics would, of course, be right to argue that our primary concern
should be with the creation of democratic institutions that enable elected representatives
to deliberate away from the glare of public scrutiny and to arrive at compromises that
they can then go on to sell to their constituents (Barry 1975, p. 486).
The dispositional dimension

As the term suggests, civil associations are partly defined by their civility. Here, ‘civility’
may plausibly be understood as the willingness to explain our political views on terms
that are accessible to everybody and could in principle be accepted by anyone. This
disposition is often lacking in deeply divided societies, however. Many groups are
extremely uncivil in their dealings with others from across the ethnic divide and may
even be uncivil in their dealings with government when decisions do not go their way
(O’Leary 2005, p. 10). For example, Ashutosh Varshney describes how so-called ‘peace
committees’ in the Indian city of Aligarh seek not to build bridges but to protect
co-religionists from the possibility of violent attack by other communities. ‘They don’t
facilitate communication with the other communities; they simply raise the perception
of risk and harden those who participate in them’ (Varshney 2002, p. 124). Groups of
this sort do not see themselves as bound by a legal order or set of shared rules, but
instead act outside the rule of law and show little or no respect for social morality.
It is important to understand what is not being said here. Some scholars argue that
civil associations are defined by their ability to transcend traditional ties, including
ethnicity. This argument has been most forcefully put by Ernest Gellner, who claimed
that civil society is a distinctly modern phenomenon, based strictly upon open and
voluntary associations. On this reading, the concept of civil society therefore excludes
associations that are explicitly ethnic, particularly those that are closed to outsiders
(Gellner 1995). Yet Gellner’s treatment of the concept of civil society seems unduly
narrow. For example, it would be odd to think that the Catholic Church, which is
clearly a traditional association, is not part of civil society. After all, it is autonomous
from the state, it enables ordinary people to gather together and deliberate about public
issues, it calls on government to account for its decisions and so forth. More generally,
it would be odd to think that taking pride in one’s ethnic group and working for the
group made one, ipso facto, ‘uncivil’ (Varshney 2002, p. 43).
What makes a civil association ‘civil’ is not how it is constituted or the interests that
it serves, but how it seeks to engage with other civil associations and government. As
Diamond points out, civil associations do not aim to represent the complete set of
interests of any particular group of people or of society as a whole. Rather, different
associations represent different aspects of the same interest – for example, the Catholic
Church will have one view on the issue of abortion, a women’s organisation will have
another, and a professional medical association will have another still (Diamond 1999,
p. 223). At some level, an association may claim to offer an encompassing perspective
or world view. However, as long as that association is willing to recognise that there are
other valid perspectives, and that democracy demands that those perspectives deserve a
hearing, the association can be legitimately classed as ‘civil’. This is as true for ethnic
associations as it is for any other kind of civil association.
Ethnic associations need not be uncivil in their dealings with other associations and
government. Yet, as far as deeply divided societies are concerned, the fact of the matter
is that many associations are not so disposed. They tend to make maximalist or
uncompromising demands, are often inward-looking and insular in their thinking, and
may even align themselves with powerful militant interests. Hence, the problem is not
so much that they speak in ‘ethnically toned voices’, but that they do not speak to
people with a different point of view or countenance what they have to say (cf. O’Leary
2005, p. 10). This incivility serves to reinforce exclusive identities and reify narrow
interests, and does nothing to generate new ideas or encourage people to take the
broader view. Otherwise put, in so far as there is little willingness to communicate
across ethnic lines, ordinary people have no way of testing and verifying whether those
who think differently from them can be trusted (Putnam 2000, pp. 134–47). Obviously,
under such conditions, the capacity of civil society to promote meaningful deliberation
and deepen democracy is severely impaired.
Potential solutions
Addressing the positional and dispositional difficulties attaching to civil associations in
societies deeply divided along ethnic lines is no easy matter. Yet given the important
role that those associations stand to play in deepening democracy, every effort should
be made to develop and implement appropriate solutions. The comparative politics
literature stresses the importance to democracy of designing political institutions that
can enable politicians from different ethnic groups to share power with one another.
But there is also an important body of research that points to the benefits of creating
institutions that can enable ordinary people to talk to and learn from one another,
thereby encouraging them to formulate views and opinions that bridge ethnic divisions,
and that in principle make it easier for politicians at the governmental level to make the
compromises upon which stable democracy inevitably depends. Underpinning this
latter body of research is one basic, but nonetheless profound, observation: politicians
can negotiate binding agreements and even enforce them, but only ordinary people can
change human relationships (Saunders 2001; Lederach 1998). Of course, one should
not exaggerate: macro political institutions are vitally important and can also assist in
shaping attitudes and behaviour. Nevertheless, the fact remains that deepening
democracy is the responsibility of everyone in society, not simply the responsibility of
politicians (Walzer 2004, p. 83).
One would not expect negotiations between politicians from different ethnic groups
to occur in the absence of facilitating conditions – for example, the presence of external
parties who are willing to act as impartial mediators, or agreed institutions and
procedures that structure the negotiation process itself (Zartman 1995; du Toit 2003).
By the same token, one should not expect meaningful deliberation to occur across civil
associations, or between civil associations and government, in the absence of appropriate
support. That support should involve a dual-track process. First, it should involve
strengthening inclusive associations whose members come from different sides of the
ethnic divide; second, it should involve conduits that enable exclusive associations
whose members are drawn from discrete ethnic groups to talk to one another. In both
cases, financial or material support may come from the state or from the international
community, although matters must be handled carefully (Lederach 1998, pp. 94–95).
The state or the international community may actively seek to support civil
associations whose memberships are cross-cutting. They may legitimately see such
associations as ‘schools for democracy’ which offer ordinary people the opportunity to
talk to those who are different from themselves and to learn to couch their views in
terms that those others can in principle accept. In other words, in seeking to offer such
support, they can try to overcome the positional and dispositional difficulties discussed
above. However, there is a risk that the state or the international community will make
funding conditional upon pursuing an agenda that transforms civil associations into
quasi regulatory agencies. This need not be a deliberate strategy, but its effect is to
compromise the autonomy of those associations it chooses to support (Belloni 2001, p.
176). Moreover, in choosing to support such associations, the state or international
community may end up alienating ordinary people by supporting associations that do
not seem immediately relevant to them. Thus, in his discussion of the case of Bosnia
and Herzegovina, Roberto Belloni argues that ‘Bosnians are often uneasy about and
confused by the term “civil society” and its frequent equation to civilised society’. As he
goes on to point out, most Bosnians ‘rightly think of themselves as intelligent and
educated people’, not least of all because ‘there already exists a long history of Bosnian
multi-ethnicity, inherited from the Ottoman and Yugoslav periods, that differs from
the liberal version of “civility” and makes the “civilising” mission of the international
community suspicious’ (Belloni 2001, p. 169).
Thus, on the one hand, is vitally important to support civil associations whose
members come from different sides of the ethnic divide, since those associations can
have a vital role to play in building bridges and in deepening democracy. But, on the
other hand, it is vitally important not to promote or impose a model of ‘civil association’
that is at odds with the way in which ordinary people generally tend to understand the
term. Consequently, it is also necessary to foster dialogue between civil associations
whose memberships are exclusive. In a deeply divided society, levels of social integration
will be low. As we noted in our introductory remarks, the members of different ethnic
groups often have little or no meaningful contact with one other and often live their
lives within parallel social spheres. This not only affects who joins which civil
associations, but also delimits the opportunities they will have to engage with those
who think differently to them. In other words, it affects how associations are positioned
in relation to one another and how they are positioned in relation to the state, as well
as the types of dispositions their members are likely to display.
A second track, then, involves the creation of institutions that serve as conduits
which enable civil associations whose members are exclusively drawn from one or other
side of the ethnic divide to become better informed about the views of others in society
and hence to arrive at greater levels of mutual understanding and respect. In so doing,
the hope is that ordinary people from different ethnic groups will have the space and
opportunity to develop their own sense of what ‘civil society’ ought to mean, given the
circumstances in which they actually find themselves. The role that the state or the
international community can play here carries less risk than along the first track, since
support is not provided directly to civil associations but is instead channelled indirectly
though facilitating institutions. A good example of the kind of institution that is at issue
here is the Community Relations Council in Northern Ireland, which was created by
the British government to promote better relations between members of the two
conflicting ethnic groups, Irish nationalists and British unionists. More specifically, its
purpose is to promote reconciliation and mutual trust, to develop opportunities for
social learning across division, to facilitate constructive debate throughout society, and
to encourage greater acceptance and respect for cultural diversity (Interim Strategic
Plan 2007).
Thus, the point of this two-track approach is to change how the members of ethnic
groups are positioned in relation to one another and, correspondingly, the dispositions
that they are likely to develop or display. However, as we have already indicated, it is
also important to consider how civil associations are positioned in relation to the state.
Just as it is possible to create conduits that enable the members of different ethnic
groups to talk to one another, it is also possible to create conduits that enable
associations to talk to government and hence to have their views and opinions factored
into the decision-making process. The creation and maintenance of such conduits
enables a more consultative and inclusive form of political engagement to develop – one
that enables civil associations to take part in deliberation with, and inform the thinking
of, politicians at the governmental level (Russell 2008, p. 226). A good example of the
sort of conduit that is at issue here is the Office of the Status of Women in South Africa,
the major objective of which is ‘to influence and shape government policy in order to
ensure that gender issues are integrated into the overall policies of government’ (Harris
and Reilly 1998, p. 326).
The vital point to note about this latter sort of conduit is that it helps to maintain a
sense of distance between state and society. It allows civil associations to talk to
government, but without getting caught up in the actual business of making decisions.
This ‘decoupling of the deliberative and decisional moments’ not only enables civil
associations to preserve their autonomy, but also allows their members to discuss
political issues without constantly having to worry about what any final decision might
mean for the future of their particular ethnic group (Dryzek 2005, p. 220). This sense of
increased distance can take some of the heat out democratic politics by enabling
ordinary people to realise that every issue does not have to be framed as an ethnic issue
or treated as a potential site of ethnic conflict.
Taking the heat out of the deliberations that go on within civil society also opens up
the space for exploratory interchange across difference (Dryzek 2005, p. 220; cf. Foley
and Edwards 1996, p. 39). Over time, it may therefore foster a greater sense of trust
among ordinary people, a greater willingness to defend their views and opinions on
terms that others might in principle accept, and hence a greater capacity to work
together for the sake of a common future. Crucially, this civilising potential of civil
society may not only serve to shape the dispositions of ordinary people in more positive
directions, but also to reinforce democratic institutions by making it easier for politicians
to compromise across ethnic lines. As such, civil associations may have a vital role to
play in deepening democracy – not as an alternative to political engagement at the
governmental level, but as a vital supplement to it.
Conclusion
As we have argued in this chapter, civil associations can have a vital role to play in
deepening democracy in deeply divided societies. Yet that role is heavily contingent
upon whether ordinary people from different sides of the ethnic divide have the
opportunity to deliberate together within appropriate institutional structures. In so far
as those structures can be fostered and sustained, ordinary people can come to learn
more about one another and perhaps also develop a greater sense of respect for the
views of those with whom they fundamentally disagree. This can give politicians from
different ethnic groups the confidence – and indeed the mandate – to compromise with
one another and hence, in the longer run, to work for the good of society as a whole. In
sum, civil associations can help foster those very things that are in shortest supply in
deeply divided societies but which are critical for peace and stability.
Further reading
Belloni, R. (2008) ‘Civil Society in War-to-Democracy Transitions’ in A. Jarstad and T. Sisk
(eds), From War to Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 182–210.
Cox, M. (ed.) (2008) Social Capital and Peace-building: Creating and Resolving Conflict with Trust
and Social Networks (Routledge Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution). London:
Routledge.
Cinalli, M. (2005) ‘Below and Beyond Power Sharing: Relational Structures across Institutions
and Civil Society’ in I. O’Flynn and D. Russell (eds), Power Sharing: New Challenges for
Divided Societies. London: Pluto, pp. 172–87.
Devic, A. (2006) ‘Transnationalization of Civil Society in Kosovo: International and Local
Limits of Peace and Multiculturalism’, Ethnopolitics, 5 (3), 257–73.
Edwards, M. (2004) Civil Society. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Orjuela, C. (2003) ‘Building Peace in Sri Lanka: A Role for Civil Society?’ Journal of Peace
Research, 40 (2), 195–212.
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Belloni, R. (2001) ‘Civil Society and Peacebuilding in Bosnia and Herzegovina’, Journal of Peace
Research, 38 (2), 163–80.
Diamond, L. (1999) Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation. Baltimore MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press.
Dryzek, J. (2005) ‘Deliberative Democracy in Divided Societies: Alternatives to Agonism and
Analgesia’, Political Theory, 33 (2), 218–42.
Du Toit, P. (2003) ‘Rules and Procedures for Negotiated Peacemaking’ in J. Darby and R.
MacGinty (eds) Contemporary Peace Making: Conflict, Violence and Peace Processes.
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Foley, M. and B. Edwards (1996) ‘The Paradox of Civil Society’, Journal of Democracy, 7 (3),
38–52.
Galston, W. (2000) ‘Civil Society and the “Art of Association”’, Journal of Democracy, 11 (1),
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Gellner, A. (1995) Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and its Rivals. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
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19 Human rights and ethnopolitics
Josef Marko
How to reconcile political unity, legal equality with cultural diversity?

Any overview on the intricate relationship between human rights and ethnopolitics first
has to give an exposition of the epistemological problems and ideological underpinnings
in understanding the ‘meaning’ of these concepts.
It goes without saying that the claim of universal human rights raised by the American
Declaration of Independence in 1776 never mirrored social and political ‘reality’. To
put it in a nutshell, the European history of state formation and nation-building can be
summarised in theory by two ‘ideal types’ of the relationship of the concepts of ‘state’
and ‘nation’ – namely, the ‘French’ model of a ‘state-nation’ based on ‘cultural
indifference’ and the ‘German’ model of the ‘nation-state’ by constructing ‘ethnic
difference’ and ascribing political and legal significance to it.
The French, or rather the ‘Jacobin’, model of a state-nation is firmly based on the
notion of popular sovereignty exercised by ‘abstract’ citizens, who are equal before the
law irrespective of their diversity due to gender, economic or social status or ‘ethnic’ or
‘national’ origin, and a complementary doctrine of ‘national’ sovereignty, based on the
original concept of ‘territorial indivisibility’ stemming from monarchic inheritance law.
In conclusion, the ‘imagination’ of an ‘other’ people within the French nation is
inconceivable with the consequence that cultural and political pluralism of groups,
formed on an ethnic basis and claiming rights as such, is prohibited1 and social upward
mobility is possible only through assimilation into ‘la civilisation française’.
The model of the ‘ethnicised’ nation-state is normatively based on the so-called
‘nationality principle’ with an ‘ethnically’ conceived nation based on the ideal of
cultural/ethnic homogeneity in contrast to the ‘civic’ nation based on ethnic indifference.
Hence, the individual person is no longer conceived of as an ‘abstract’ citizen, but
defined by its membership in a certain ethnic group. However, nowhere can we find a
state whose population is culturally homogeneous in terms of religion or language as
cultural markers. The fact of cultural diversity is thus translated by the nationality
principle into an ‘ethnic difference’ of groups and their power relations based on the
categorical distinction of majority/minority. In effect, this model has lead to suppression,
expulsion from the territory and genocide as the history of the twentieth century amply
demonstrates.
Is the lesson provided by history thus, that ethnic conflict with these effects can only
be avoided either through assimilation, i.e. by giving up one’s cultural identity, or
institutional segregation and/or territorial separation since ethnic diversity as such
seems to be, the major root cause of ethnic conflict? All ‘primordialist’ social and
political theories following this assumption are based on the epistemological trap of a
Human rights and ethnopolitics 237
‘naturalisation of difference’. The twin ideologies of racism and ethno-nationalism
make use of this strategy for their policy prescriptions by legitimising segregation or
partition as the ‘natural’ consequence of the allegedly biologically or culturally
predetermined, i.e. ‘natural’, trait of ethnicity.2 Hence, as long as ethnicity is ‘seen’ as a
‘primordial “given” of human existence’ (Smith 1991, pp. 39 and 20) which stands in
dichotomical opposition to political unity and legal equality, ethnic diversity must be
tamed or at least tempered by a strong state, and ‘muddling through’ is indeed the best
that can be achieved for reconstruction or reconciliation after a violent ethnic conflict
(Canovan 1996, pp. 83–100; Levy 2007).
In contrast to primordial theories, however, it has to be stressed that we ‘construct’
social, political and legal categories such as ‘people’ or ‘nation’ through three analytically
distinct, though, in practice, intimately linked steps:
• On the epistemological level, we have to make a choice based on the binary code of
identity/difference.
• On the normative level, we again have to make a choice based on the binary code of
equality/inequality.
• On the empirical level, we make a choice based on the binary code of inclusion/
exclusion.
Hence, all forms of racism and ethno-nationalism are based on the same structural
code, which is characterised by the unilinear equation of identity = equality = inclusion,
or, the other way round, difference = inequality = exclusion. Only if the ideologically
constructed and in no way ‘natural’ antagonism of equality and difference is transformed
into a triadic structure of identity, equality and diversity without the alleged
predetermination for conflict or co-operation, does institutional diversity management
become possible in order to reconcile political unity, legal equality and cultural diversity
within one social and political system.
Legal developments in human rights and minority protection

The problem of definition and the ‘right to self-determination of peoples’
With regard to the function of law, i.e. to regulate and limit the exercise of power,
conventional juridical wisdom will tell us that one must first define what or who should
later be protected by law. However, all efforts to establish a ‘general’ definition of the
term ‘minority’ as the ‘object’ of protection, which would universally be recognised
under public international law have so far failed. The defining element simply cannot
be an ‘objective’ criterion, the subjective will of persons or the number of the members
of a group, but has always to do with power relations. Consequently the first OSCE
High Commissioner on National Minorities, Max van der Stoel, declared, ‘Even though
I may not have a definition of what constitutes a minority, I would dare to say that I
know a minority when I see one.’
Moreover, when looking back into the history of the twentieth century, the critical
question arises, what else distinguishes a ‘people’ with a right to self-determination
from an ‘ethnic or national minority’ but the (re-)drawing of territorial boundaries by
the victorious parties of a war? Moreover, is it even theoretically possible to reconcile
the prima facie mutually excluding principles of state sovereignty and self-determination
of peoples?
238 Josef Marko
A first important test case came to the fore already after World War I with the dispute
between Finland and Sweden concerning the legal status of the Åland Islands, inhabited
by Swedish-speakers. In 1920 the dispute was brought before the League of Nations
Council, which appointed a Commission of Rapporteurs, concluding that the Åsland
Islanders were not a ‘people’ but simply a ‘minority’ without a right to self-determination.
However, at the same time, the Commission also addressed the question of oppression
through a government and concluded that oppression would indeed be a factor allowing
a minority to secede, but only as a ‘last resort when the state lacks either the will or the
power to enact and apply just and effective guarantees’ (Report 1921) for religious,
linguistic and social freedom. Thereby the Commission, through a functional
interpretation, opened the way to reconcile the seemingly antagonistic principles of
state sovereignty and self-determination of peoples by reference to the human rights
aspect of democratic governance and thereby deconstructing the alleged dichotomy
through a transformation of the problem into a triadic structure.
The principle of self-determination of peoples, explicitly enshrined in the UN Charter,
became legally entrenched by the UN General Assembly Resolution 1514 in 1960
‘Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples’ and the respective
Article 1 of the United Nations’ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
(ICPPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
(ICESCR) of 1966. The same triadic structure of state sovereignty–self-determination
of peoples–human rights as element of democratic governance can then be found in the
provisions concerning the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples of
the ‘Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and
Co-operation among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations’,
annexed to UN General Assembly Resolution 2625 of 1970. But, due to the political
premises of the Cold War, the mainstream of public international law scholars was of
the opinion that the right to self-determination and the principle of uti possidetis juris
for the establishment of frontiers of newly independent states were only applicable
within the colonial ‘context’, not in Europe.
With the disintegration of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) in
the course of 1991, the problem of self-determination returned to the European
continent. In November 1991 Lord Carrington asked the meanwhile established EC
arbitration commission, the so-called Badinter Commission, to deliberate on the
questions of whether the Serb population in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina had
the right to self-determination and whether the internal boundaries between Croatia,
Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina could be regarded as frontiers in terms of public
international law. In Opinions No. 2 and No. 3 of 11 January 1992 the Commission
responded that Serbs in Croatia had a right only to minority protection and confirmed
the principle of uti possidetis juris as a ‘general principle’ of public international law.
Despite strong criticism of these legal opinions (Ratner 1998; Stokes 2009), they
contribute in a substantive way to the further legal development by making clear that
self-determination and uti possidetis are no longer restricted to a ‘colonial context’ and
that the prohibition of the use of force does not apply to international borders only, but
also to internal boundaries and thus invokes the uti possidetis principle and its
functional logic: ‘territorial adjustments’ by use of force shall never be recognised.
Also Security Council Resolution 1244 in 1999 did not, initially, reward the use of
force by Serb authorities and the insurgent UÇK by referring to the right of territorial
integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) and promising only ‘substantial
autonomy’ to Kosovo until a ‘final settlement’ of the conflict could be reached. The
unilateral declaration of independence by the Kosovo Assembly in February 2008 and
the recognition of Kosovo as a new state can hardly be justified except for the illegal
obstruction of the UNMIK administration in northern Kosovo by all Serb governments
since 1999 in upholding parallel institutions and thereby trying to prepare the ground
for a territorial separation of Kosovo as well as the exclusion of Kosovo Albanians
from the right to vote and to participate in the referendum of the Serb constitution of
2006 (Muharremi 2008; Marko 2008b).
In conclusion, the use of force in international relations (Grey 2000; Gazzini 2005,
Hofmann 2003) is combined with two legal-dogmatic problems, which go hand in hand
in practice: unilateral and/or violent secession and humanitarian intervention by third
parties. With regard to the legality of secession and humanitarian intervention there are
two conflicting approaches: lawyers of public international law, methodically anchored
in strict legal positivism, simply deny the legality with reference to the text of the
principles and rules of the UN Charter and their interpretation in light of the ‘original
intent’. Lawyers preferring a method of contextual/functional interpretation will also
deny the legality, except for certain exceptions as ‘ultima ratio’. It is then a matter of
hotly disputed facts what will be recognised as ‘ultima ratio’. It is beyond doubt for
proponents of this approach that (attempted) genocide will be a situation which allows
the use of force by external intervention. It is, however, less clear and disputed whether
also ethnic cleansing allows the use of force and where the empirical and legal borderline
between genocide and ethnic cleansing can be drawn. The interpretation of genocide by
international criminal courts (Schabas 2000; ICJ 2007) is rather narrow and requires
specific intent which can hardly ever be proven, thus scholarly literature vehemently
argues to ‘criminalise’ also ethnic cleansing as a separate criminal offence (Mulaj 2008,
pp. 163–70; Hofmann 2003, p. 146).
It goes hand in hand with these developments that a new doctrine is also emerging in
international law. After the illegal NATO intervention in Kosovo 1999, the Canadian
government established an independent International Commission on Intervention and
State Sovereignty with the task to reconcile intervention for humanitarian purposes
and sovereignty. This commission produced a report with the programmatic title ‘The
Responsibility to Protect’ (ICISS 2001).
Hence, sovereignty does not only include a right of states to territorial integrity and
non-intervention, but also a responsibility to protect their own populations. Only if the
state concerned is unable or unwilling or itself the perpetrator, it becomes the
responsibility of the international community to act in its place. This new principle was
then adopted by the UN General Assembly at its World Summit in 2005. Under the
heading ‘Responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic
cleansing and crimes against humanity’, paragraphs 138 and 139 summarise the new
obligations following from this doctrine through measures of prevention, reaction and
rebuilding (UN GA 2005). However, it remains to be seen how this new doctrine will be
transformed into ‘hard’ public international law.
Legal standard setting: from minority protection to human rights protection and back?
After World War II, there was a dramatic shift of the paradigm from the protection of
the ‘special’ rights of minorities as ethnic groups to the notion that it is ‘essential’ and
appropriate to protect individuals and their ‘general’ human rights, as can be seen in
240 Josef Marko
the developments in the legal standard setting processes within the United Nations as
well as the Council of Europe (Thornberry 1991; Pentassuglia 2002). The ethnic issue
was not totally neglected, but it was expected that the protection of human rights in
combination with the principle of non-discrimination on grounds such as, inter alia,
‘race, sex, language, religion, or national origin’ in the language of Article 14 of the
European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) of 1950 would be much more
functional instead of a special and group rights approach. Due to the experience with
both totalitarian ideologies of Nazism and Bolshevism, for Western-style democracies
individual human rights and their effective protection against violation by public
authorities through judicial enforcement remained the ‘essence’ of liberalism and
democratic governance until the end of the Cold War.
At the European level the breakdown of communist regimes in Central, Eastern and
South-eastern Europe in 1989 brought again a swing of the pendulum back to the
minority protection paradigm, as can be seen from various international documents.3
The chapter on national minorities of the CSCE Copenhagen meeting 1990 sets the
tone by referring in the preamble to ‘…cultural diversity and the resolution of questions
relating to national minorities’ through ‘respect for the rights of persons belonging to
national minorities as part of the universally recognized human rights’ as ‘an essential
factor for peace, justice, stability and democracy…’. Hence, no longer is assimilation
into an ethnically homogeneous or indifferent nation-state the underlying premise of
minority protection, but cultural diversity as such is recognised as a basic value for
democratic governance. From this perspective, human and minority rights are no
longer opposite approaches, but minority rights are seen as part of an all-embracing
human rights regime and human and minority rights are seen not only as an essential
element of liberal democracy but also as a necessary precondition for peace and
stability. And finally, the provisions require states to take affirmative action measures
to protect and promote the (different) ‘ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious identity’
of minorities, i.e. the groups as such, and not only to abstain from discrimination.
Following this declaration, the CSCE/OSCE member states established a High
Commissioner on National Minorities (HCNM) as an ‘early warning’ and conflict
prevention mechanism at their Helsinki meeting in 1992. Within the Council of Europe,
the Parliamentary Assembly took the lead and adopted Recommendation 1201 on an
additional protocol on the rights of minorities to the ECHR, which included in Article
1 not only a definition of ‘national minority’, but would have rendered also a judicial
enforcement mechanism through the European Court of Human Rights.
However, a backlash followed. Due to the political and ideological resistance of
many unitary states within the Council of Europe, such an additional protocol was not
adopted by the CoE Committee of Ministers (CoM). Instead, the European Charter for
Regional and Minority Languages and the Framework Convention for the Protection
of National Minorities were adopted as a ‘substitute’. Despite early criticism with
regard to vague language, weak obligations and only political supervision by these
instruments (Benoît-Rohmer 1996, pp. 40–4), any assessment of the activities of the
HCNM and the monitoring mechanism of the FCNM after more than a decade must
come to the conclusion that they have established a rather effective ‘pan-European’4
minority protection regime. All of the opinions of the expert committees and the
conclusions and recommendations of the CoM offer a massive corpus of text, which is
already characterised as ‘soft jurisprudence’ (Marko and Lantschner 2008), consisting
of legally binding ‘minimum standards’, ‘emerging standards’ and ‘best practices’. In
conclusion, the political monitoring mechanism can be seen as an advantage today,
which has helped to overcome the political deadlocks in legal standard setting. In
addition, the permanent dialogue between the organs of the CoE and governments and
minority organisations and the political pressure following from the publication of all
documents must be seen as a long-term benefit which could also lead to a change of
attitude of majority populations in terms of the acceptance of cultural diversity.
However, despite this rather optimistic assessment, in particular if compared to other
regions of the world, there are some left-overs. So far the European Union has not
incorporated a specific minority protection provision into its primary law due to strong
resistance from the above-mentioned states. Article 13 of the EC Treaty and the
corresponding EC Directives5 are still an expression of the anti-discrimination approach,
and the burning banlieus in French cities as well as the electoral success of right-wing
populist or even extremist parties all over Europe prove the constantly pressing problem
of the integration of new minorities. Nevertheless, ‘effective participation, full and
effective equality and promotion of national minorities’ identity and culture’ as the
‘three corners of a triangle which together form the main foundations of the Framework
Convention’6 are fundamental values. They reflect a shift of the paradigm from ‘national
minority’ protection as means of conflict ‘resolution’ in the context of state sovereignty
and the European nation-state models to the ‘management’ of ethnic diversity, where
‘old’ and ‘new’ minorities can also serve as a bridge for peaceful co-operation based on
the functional prerequisites of (internal) ‘autonomy’, in order to preserve and promote
cultural diversity and ‘integration’, which would enhance social cohesion and stabilise
political unity within, between and beyond states.7
Human and minority rights in the life cycle of ethnic conflict

The pre-conflict phase: ethno-mobilisation and prevention
Against all forms of primordial theories it follows from the epistemological analysis of
the preceding section as well as from a careful comparative analysis of empirical case
studies of ethnic conflict around the globe8 that cultural diversity as one of the possible
‘structural’ causes does not automatically have to lead to tensions or even violent
conflict. In addition to political, socioeconomic or perceptual underlying causes, there
have to be internal or external ‘proximate’ causes which enable the outbreak of conflict:
Internal causes are ‘bad leaders’ or ‘predatory’ elites who control their own community
for their own, individual political and/or economic interest, are ready to spoil legitimate
government also by use of force and are not willing to compromise. External causes are
usually ‘bad’ neighbours either by diffusion, when conflicts spill over, or by escalation
through direct military intervention or (in)direct support of insurgent parties and their
militias.
Why do leaders then choose war over peace and how do fears and threats translate
into violence? The general hypothesis of the constructivist-instrumentalist approach
goes that ‘ethnic entrepreneurs’ in a ‘fear-producing environment’, such as a government
breakdown, shifts in political power balances between groups and/or changes in control
over economic resources and accompanying shifts in the balance of rival external
patrons, (mis)use the ‘feeling’ that only my own group can protect me against the
‘others’ for triggering a political process of ethno-national mobilisation. Hence in a
situation of regime change or weak or failed states, they create or make recourses to the
‘we’ feeling of their group and transform economic, political or cultural tensions into
242 Josef Marko
an ethnic conflict over identity and/or territory, in short they create a political or even
physical ‘security dilemma’.9 Hence, the creation of we–they antagonisms and enemy
stereotyping through political or religious leaders, intellectuals and in the media has to
serve as an ‘early warning’ indicator that such perceived or already real security
dilemmas are engineered. Political and legal disputes over the ‘justification’ of claims
and counter-claims concerning basic human and minority rights such as freedom of
expression and association and more special identity rights with regard to the use of the
minority languages and scripts for names, topographical indications, and/or as ‘second’,
additional, but equal official language in education, administration and before courts
are the next serious indicators that the process of ethno-mobilisation by transforming
competing rights and interests into ethnically perceived, antagonistic identity conflicts
is in full swing. The more one group challenges the status quo and the less another is
prepared to allow changes, the more likely is it that conflict will rapidly escalate into
violence. Finally, recourse to ‘extraconstitutional’ means such as ‘illegal’ referenda on
establishing territorial autonomies or the abolition of existing autonomy regimes and
the formation of paramilitary formations10 already require the question whether it is
high time for external mediation, arbitration or even intervention.
Conflict and conflict settlement

It goes without saying that ethnic conflicts over territory and identity, when they indeed
have become ‘primordial’ so that the physical existence of members of groups, because
of their group characteristics, is endangered in reality, may lead to gross violations of
human and minority rights, in the worst case to ethnic cleansing and genocide.11 Mass
killings, raping, torture in detention camps and expulsion from the territory are part of
the agenda of ethnic entrepreneurs in pursuing their ethno-nationalist policies.12 The
central question then is, how to stop violence? Through external mediation, sanctions
or, in the final analysis, military intervention? The legal-dogmatic problem of
‘humanitarian intervention’ and the use of force by external actors in ‘civil’ wars has
been discussed above. What is of concern here is the perspective of conflict management
and resolution.
As we have experienced in the wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in
the 1990s, mediation in the framework of the UN- and EU-led Yugoslavia conference
was a total failure. The international community, being ill prepared, ill equipped and
lacking political will, did always ‘too little, too late’ in order to prevent the outbreak of
violence or to stop violence. But even after military intervention the question arises,
how is it possible to negotiate for sustainable peace and not only a cease-fire? In other
words, what encourages ethnic entrepreneurs to give up their rational choice for a
politics of violence and how is it possible to deal with the legacy of violent conflict not
only in terms of security guarantees and institutional arrangements, but also concerning
the damages for the political culture, i.e. the mix of fear, hate and ensuing distrust13 and
thus the lack of societal solidarity and loyalty vis-á-vis state institutions following
violent conflict? But why should ‘radical’ claims for secession or partition be given up,
since there is no military solution possible for self-determination conflicts in terms of
long-term peace? Why should there be a ‘rational’ interest in stability, if a ‘frozen
conflict’ based on permanent international crisis management allows predatory elites to
enrich themselves and their clientele through state-controlled ‘privatisation’ and
organised crime, which might even be supported by an external strong patron?
Moreover, an ethic of self-restraint of political leaders and tolerance of the people as a
precondition for peace-building is exactly the problem after violent conflict. The
absence of tolerance and mutual trust is exactly the definitional essence of ‘severe
ethnic divide’. In addition the theoretical battles between accommodationists and
integrationists do not really help (McGarry et al. 2008).
Nevertheless, there are some general lessons to be learned from negotiations on the
terms of peace settlements and the effects of the structure of their provisions, based on
the assumption that tolerance and trust must and can be created by institutional design
and law-enforcement.14
First, to denounce one of the parties of ethnic conflict as ‘terrorists’, as was the case
on the eve of the fully fledged war between Serb authorities and the Kosovo Liberation
Army (UÇK) in Kosovo, simply pours oil on to the flames. The same is true, on the
other hand, if the ‘international community’ shies away from simply calling ethnic
cleansing and attempted genocide by state authorities or agents controlled by them
what it is, namely an international crime. Hence, there is a dialectic of necessary
impartiality and taking sides which can only be resolved if the dichotomy between
‘realists’ and ‘idealists’ in international relations theory and diplomacy is overcome by
a firm commitment to international legal standards and their implied value judgements.
It goes without saying that this needs also more legal clarity through a better
international criminal law regime as argued above.
Any attempt to exclude ‘radicals’ and their positions from the framework for
negotiation, and to accommodate only the interests of moderate parties in the settlement
agreement, is bound to fail. As can be seen from case studies on Northern Ireland
(McGarry and O’Leary 2008) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (Marko forthcoming), the
former will always try to spoil the peace-building process by continuing ethno-national
mobilisation and recourse to illegal means or even violence. Post-conflict reconstruction
efforts will then resemble permanent crisis management rather than stable
peace-building.
Wolff also argues (Wolff 2007, pp. 149–51) that the ‘velvet divorce’ of the Czech
Republic and Slovakia, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Israel–Palestinian
conflict demonstrate that separation and independent statehood are (potentially) viable
solutions provided that they are consensual and well managed. There are, of course, the
general moral and legal implications with this view that partition after violent conflict
would reward and legitimise ethnic entrepreneurs’ politics of violence in the end and, at
least in the European context, forced population transfer is prohibited by Article 3 of
Protocol No. 4, ECHR. However, it is also contestable that partition is a viable solution
in terms of political stability. First, new states created by partition are not automatically
homogeneous so that ‘new’ minorities are created which will be, in the logic of ethno-
nationalism as basis for territorial partition, be dominated and suppressed, thereby
creating new conflicts. Hence, partition makes sense in the ethno-nationalist logic only
if it goes hand in hand with population transfer, which has been termed the ‘Lausanne
principle’ after the international agreement concluded between Greece and Turkey in
1923. However, studies on the partition between India and Pakistan, Cyprus, etc., reveal
that population transfer is never voluntary but always forced and does not lead, either
in the short or the long run, to the acclaimed security for peoples in their new country
and regional stability between states (Kumar 1999, Clark 2007).
All post-conflict activities for political unity have to address the ‘Four Rs’, recognition,
restitution, reconciliation and remembrance, and thereby to address old and new root
244 Josef Marko
and proximate causes in order to prevent a relapse into a conflict cycle. Hence, in order
to be able to reconcile peace and justice from the very beginning, any interim settlement
agreement should reflect a ‘creative ambiguity’ along the following lines:
• The content of a settlement agreement must contain rules on immediate security

guarantees and a new institutional framework where conflicting interests can be
accommodated so that the incentives for non-violence and compromise outweigh
benefits expected from a further politics of violence.
• At the same time, it is necessary to entrench and enforce rules on human and minority
rights protection and transitional justice, in case of previous ethnic cleansing, in
particular through the right to return to the home of origin and the restitution of
property in conjunction with an obligation of authorities to take affirmative action
to reverse the effects of ethnic cleansing.
• Moreover, rules are needed to stop ongoing ethno-mobilisation by the respective
agents in government, political parties, media, and education to break the danger of
‘intergenerational vengeance’ and a conflict cycle.
• As far as procedure and timelines are concerned, the rules should enable flexibility
for the renegotiation of institutional arrangements in order to be able to ‘temper’ the
saliency of ethnicity for the entire political system in progressing from corporate to
liberal power sharing and, finally, to integration under an impartial internal umpire
as the case law of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina can
demonstrate (Marko-Stöckl 2010).
Finally, the IC must be ready for a long-term commitment. Any public exit strategy
with the announcement of deadlines will only invite the warring parties to compromise
on the surface, but to spoil in reality any implementation of the settlement in the
expectation that they have only to wait and see the withdrawal of the international
military and/or civilian presence.
The post-conflict phase: reconstruction and reconciliation

In the immediate aftermath of conflict, reconstruction efforts by implementation of the
peace settlement have to take priority. However, as can particularly be seen from the
‘democratisation’ efforts of the OSCE in Bosnia and Herzegovina, early and repeated
elections every second year, which have been free, but not fair, only legitimise the
‘radical’ ethno-nationalist parties and their leaders, thereby enabling them, on the basis
of the corporate power-sharing arrangements of the Dayton constitution, to form a
cartel of power and to hinder or even block reforms to overcome the institutional
weaknesses and to strengthen the rule of law. The general lesson for reconstruction is
that effectiveness of institutions and the rule of law must be given priority over
democratisation. Moreover, as the riots in Kosovo in March 2004 against Serb and
Roma communities demonstrated, vigilance with regard to security issues cannot be
given up, so that an international military presence with a robust and extended mandate
including police tasks and civil–military co-operation will be necessary also for
long-term peace-building.
The second important task is economic reconstruction in order to get rid of aid
dependence and to trigger sustainable economic development. More often than not
economic aid does not reach the people who are in need immediately after the conflict,
because the control over economic aid and its distribution by the warring parties
becomes a proximate cause for ongoing conflict. Moreover, what happens when
partition and a politics of divide and rule are not effectively tackled can be observed
again in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the power to legislate in economic affairs rests
almost exclusively with the Entities. Thus it was so far impossible to create a common
economic legal system as a precondition for a functioning common market even within
the country, let alone to integrate into the European Union.
As far as reconciliation is concerned, the climate of revenge, fear and hatred must be
overcome to create the preconditions for mutual trust and co-operation not only on the
elite level but also in the minds and attitudes of people. However, as we can see in
particular in the Balkans, instruments of transitional justice such as international and
national criminal courts in order to sanction individual guilt for genocide, crimes
against humanity and war crimes as well as truth commissions face the problem that
victims and perpetrators proclaim a different ‘truth’ with regard to past events.
Knowledge of facts and events, even if established by independent courts, does not
necessarily translate into moral or political acknowledgement (Marko-Stöckl
forthcoming). As long as there is either my truth against your truth, as one of the ICTY
indictees stated in his defence,15 there will be ongoing and ‘competing narratives of
resentment and blame.’16 The same phenomenon can be observed in education. A
moratorium on history teaching for ten years as it was foreseen in the Erdut Agreement
in 1995 for the peaceful reintegration of eastern Slavonia will thus not help to overcome
the we–they dichotomy which has been characterised as an important indicator for
ethno-mobilisation in the pre-conflict phase. Hence, as long as ethno-national
stereotypes, myths of victimhood and hate can be spread, the vicious circle of
‘intergenerational vengeance’ cannot be broken. The new approach of ‘positive
history’17 and ‘multiperspectivity’ of history textbooks is a first step in order to
deconstruct the we–they dichotomy and to prepare the ground for the insight that it is
necessary to find a consensus on the past, not in terms of collective guilt, but as collective
responsibility for reconciliation and peacefully living together in the future.
When is it possible to renegotiate the (interim peace) settlement and its institutional
design of corporate power sharing in order to democratise the entire political system
without opening Pandora’s box for a new round of conflict? And when is an exit for
ending international territorial administration possible? These two problems are again
intimately linked. Until the very day, intransigent, obstructionist and predatory
political elites are in power in both Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, which hinder
reforms to make institutions and public services more effective. ‘Representativeness’,
however, cannot be decreed by international supervisory mechanisms, but needs a
reform of the entire system of intermediary organisations, in particular of political
parties based on the acceptance of both leaders and electorate. In conclusion, only
when the party system is transformed so that governmental institutions are representative
of and accountable for the economic prosperity and well-being of the ‘entire population
without discrimination according to ethnic or national origin’, to paraphrase the UN
General Assembly’s Friendly Relations Declaration, will the relapse into ethnic conflict
become unlikely and endogenous cultural diversity management possible. This would
be the perfect point in time to end international territorial administration and to hand
over the exercise of sovereign power to the people and their leaders.
246 Josef Marko
Notes
1 For a detailed analysis see in particular Pierre-Caps (2008), pp. 12–13, and Marko (2008a),
pp. 256–7.
2 I have analysed these ideological underpinnings in detail in Marko (2008a).
3 All documents quoted in the following are reprinted in Benoît-Rohmer (1996).
4 In order to take over the book title of Verstichel et al. (2008). Since the activities of the HCNM
are not made public, it is much harder to assess them. But see Kemp (2001), Parzymies (2007)
and Verstichel (2008).
5 Council Directive 2000/42/EC of 29 June 200 implementing the principle of equal treatment
between persons irrespective of racial or ethnic origin, OJ L180, pp. 22–6, Council Directive
2000/78/EC of 27 November 2000 establishing a general framework for equal treatment in
employment and occupation, OJ L303, p. 16, and Council Directive 2004/113/EC concerning
equal treatment between men and women in access to and supply of goods and services, OJ
L373, p. 37. See also Meenan (2007).
6 At § 13, available at www.coe.int/minorities.
7 See the preambular provisions of the FCNM referring to ‘stability, security and peace in this
continent’, ‘cultural diversity … a factor, not of division, but of enrichment of each society’
and the necessity of ‘transfrontier co-operation between regional and local authorities’ in
addition to co-operation between states.
8 See instead of all Wolff (2007).
9 See, above all, Mulaj (2008), in particular chapter 4.
10 See, for all these elements of the process of ethno-mobilisation ending up in a spiral of violence
in the wars in the Balkans in the 1990s, Ingrao and Emmert (2009).
11 See Bell-Fialkoff (1996) and, for the need to distinguish conceptually and legally ethnic
cleansing from genocide, Calic (2009), p. 120, and Mulaj (2008), pp. 128–31 and 163.
12 See in particular the Rapport of the Special UN Rapporteur, the former Polish Prime Minister
Mazowiecki, E/CN/4/1992/S-1/10, stating already on 27 October 1992, at § 6, ‘…the principle
objective of the military conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina is the establishment of ethnically
homogeneous regions. Ethnic cleansing does not appear to be a consequence of the war but
rather its goal.’
13 See in particular Kaufman (2001).
14 See the case study on South Tyrol with the, in so far, programmatic title by Woelk et.al.
(2008).
15 The indicted Simo Drljaca stated to the judges, ‘You have your facts. We have our facts. You
have a complete right to choose between the two versions,’ available at www.cla.purdue.edu/
aacademic/history/facstaff/Ingrao/si/prospectus.pdf.
16 I borrow this phrase from Ramet (2007).
17 I.e. to identify also narratives of cooperation and tolerance that cut across ethnic lines,
stressing the commonalities of peoples despite ethnic conflict and war. See in general
McDonald (2009).
Further reading
Bell-Fialkoff, A. (1996), Ethnic Cleansing, St. Martin’s Press, New York.
Clark, B. (2007), Twice a Stranger: How Mass Expulsion forged Modern Greece and Turkey,
Granta Books, London.
Grey, C. (2000), International Law and the Use of Force, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (2001), The Responsibility to
Protect, viewed 16 September 2009, http://www.iciss.ca/pdf/Commission-Report.pdf.
Kaufman, S. (2001), Modern Hatreds. The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War, Cornell University
Press, Ithaca NY and London.
Mulaj, K. (2008), Politics of Ethnic Cleansing: Nation-state Building and Provision of In/Security
in Twentieth Century Balkans, Lexington Books, Plymouth
Bibliography
Bell-Fialkoff, A. (1996), Ethnic Cleansing, St. Martin’s Press, New York.
Benoît-Rohmer, F. (1996), The Minority Question in Europe. Texts and commentary, Council of
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Calic, M. (2009), ‘Ethnic Cleansing and War Crimes, 1991–1995’, in Confronting the Yugoslav
Controversies: A Scholars’ Initiative, ed. C. Ingrao and T. A. Emmert, Purdue University
Press, West Lafayette IN.
Canovan, M. (1996), Nationhood and Political Theory, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham.
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20 Territorial approaches to ethnic conflict
settlement
John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary
Governments that seek to accommodate mobilised national, ethnic, linguistic or

religious communities have a range of institutional strategies at their disposal if they do
not wish to permit secession.1 They may promote consociation, which accommodates
plural communities through power sharing, or centripetalism, which incentivises
majority politicians to take minority preferences into account. They may promote
group-based self-government, sometimes termed corporate or cultural autonomy. They
may also seek accommodation through territorially based autonomy, that may be
described as ‘territorial pluralism’ (McGarry et al. 2008; O’Leary and McGarry 2010).
The latter entails four distinct institutional arrangements: pluralist federation,
decentralisation within a union or unitary state, federacy, and cross-border territorial
arrangements, the last of which can be combined with any of the first three. Territorial
pluralism assists geographically concentrated national, ethnic, linguistic, or religious
communities. It is not relevant for small, dispersed communities, including immigrant
communities, for whom self-government is infeasible or undesirable. Territorial
pluralism should be distinguished not just from group-based (non-territorial) autonomy,
but also from territorial self-government based on ‘administrative’, or ‘geographic’
criteria, including regional components of the state’s majority community.2
Contemporary territorial pluralism originated as a conflict-regulating strategy in the
mid-nineteenth century with the creation of pluralist federations in Switzerland and
Canada. It has become particularly fashionable, at least in liberal democracies, in recent
decades (Gurr 1993a, b; Hannum 1989, 1990, 1993, 1996; Lapidoth 1997; Weller and
Wolff 2005). Within the past quarter-century, several democratic states, including
Belgium, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Spain, formerly either unitary or union states,
have transformed themselves into states in which some nationalities enjoy some territorial
autonomy. Even France, the home of the Jacobin model of centralised government, has
established a regional assembly for the Corsicans, though the extent of its autonomy is
minimal (Daftary 2001). Elsewhere, territorial pluralism has been implemented in
response to nationalist disputes in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Indonesia (Aceh and Irian
Jaya), Iraq (Kurdistan), and Sudan (South Sudan). It is frequently mooted to resolve
ongoing conflicts in Azerbaijan (Nagorno Karabakh), Cyprus, Georgia (Abkhazia,
South Ossetia), Moldova (Transnistria), and Nepal (the Terai and other regions).
Territorial pluralism allows nationalities, big or small, some autonomy within existing
states. It has significant support in the academy, and among political elites from minority
communities. International organisations, including the United Nations, the OSCE, and
the European Union, have seen it as a possible solution to the tension between the desire
of nationalities for autonomy and the desire of states to maintain their territorial integrity.
250 John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary
Mapping the varieties of territorial pluralism
Devolution / decentralisation in a union or unitary state
The central authorities of a unitary or union state can devolve or decentralise power to
one or more regions, and can give different or asymmetric degrees of autonomy to each
region (McGarry 2010; O’Leary 2010). The amount of self-government devolved can
be substantial, and the devolved powers may sometimes exceed the powers of states
within some federations, or of some federacies. A fundamental, and defining, feature of
decentralisation and devolution is that within the relevant political systems there is a
monistic conception of sovereignty, in which the central authorities retain the right to
alter unilaterally the grant of autonomy or rescind it altogether. The central authorities
are also able to change the boundaries of the autonomous region, and may retain the
right to continue legislating for it, even within those jurisdictional responsibilities that
have been devolved.
For example, in 1998, the United Kingdom’s Westminster parliament established a
parliament in Scotland, and assemblies in Northern Ireland and Wales, after referendums
in the respective entities. Scotland and Northern Ireland were given extensive powers of
primary legislation, while the National Assembly of Wales’s powers were restricted to
secondary legislation. In the Scotland Act Westminster clearly retains sovereignty,3
though some British academics believe it would be difficult for Westminster to act
unilaterally within the Scottish parliament’s sphere of responsibility, or to reduce or
rescind its autonomy (Bogdanor 2003: 225–28). Northern Ireland’s Agreement went
further, creating, as we argue below, a federacy, but did not prevent the UK government
(at least within its legal interpretations) from unilaterally suspending Northern Ireland’s
political institutions four times between 2000 and 2007, the fourth suspension lasting for
over four years. It did so in response to a perceived political impasse between unionist and
Irish republican politicians. Its actions were a breach of the Agreement in Ireland’s
readings of the relevant treaties, but reflected the continuing strength of the view within
Westminster that parliament’s sovereignty cannot be restricted (O’Leary 2001a, c, 2008b).
While India is usually considered a federation, it does not describe itself as such
but rather as a ‘union state’, and its constitution has a number of important features
akin to those of devolution in a unitary state. Article 249 of the Indian constitution
allows the Union parliament, by a two-thirds vote in the upper House (Rajva Sabha),
to make laws in the national interest with respect to any matter enumerated in the
‘States List’, while Article 250 allows the federal parliament to make laws on any item
included in the States List during an ‘emergency’, the existence of which is determined
by the federal government under Article 352. These provisions mean that there are,
constitutionally, no exclusive state jurisdictions in India. Article 250 has been used by
parliament on several occasions to shift powers from the states to the concurrent list
and to the ‘Union’ list. Article 356, ‘President’s Rule’, allows Delhi to take over the
government of a state, a provision that has been used 100 times since 1950 (Mathew
2005: 169). The Indian Union authorities are able, after a consultative process, to
redraw state boundaries and to establish new states, a power that has been used on
numerous occasions.
From the perspective of pluralist accommodation and political stability, devolution
is said to have certain advantages. It gives the state’s central authorities the flexibility to
correct experiments that have gone wrong, and to intervene to protect regional
minorities or to take measures to restore order. The United Kingdom’s belated decision
Territorial approaches to ethnic conflict settlement 251
to abolish Northern Ireland’s autonomy in 1972 was taken after clear evidence that this
had failed spectacularly, giving rise to sustained ethnocratic government by the Ulster
Unionist Party and, by 1969, pogroms by the majority amid a quasi-insurrection by
Northern Ireland’s Irish nationalist minority. Later, after the restoration of a Northern
Ireland Assembly, the United Kingdom’s suspension of Northern Ireland’s institutions
between 2000 and 2007 was seen as necessary to address a political stalemate, and to
protect moderate politicians against radicals. Canada has used its unilateralist powers
to accommodate newly mobilised regional nationalities who demanded regional
autonomy, while the use of President’s rule in India has usually been justified as
necessary to restore quiet.
These advantages, however, are deeply ambiguous. Devolution leaves ultimate
power in the hands of the state’s central authorities, which often means its dominant
nationality, religion or linguistic community. India’s federal authorities have used their
power not just to protect minorities within states but to control (larger) minorities that
possess their own states, including the Sikhs of Punjab and Muslims of Kashmir (Singh
1993, 1995, 2001). Even interventions that are aimed ostensibly at promoting the rights
of small minorities within regions may be motivated by a desire to rein in the larger
minorities who control the regions in question.
Devolution also suggests a hierarchy of authority within the state, with the relevant
regional institutions firmly subordinate to the centre, a status unlikely to sit well with
nationalities that seek a plurinational partnership of equals. Thus, Canada’s indigenous
nations have long insisted that they possess an ‘inherent’ right to self-government, one
that cannot be bestowed by anyone. It is also not difficult to imagine nationalities,
particularly after armed conflicts, being wary of an autonomy settlement that can be
unilaterally altered or rescinded by the state’s central authorities. In such contexts, the
most popular choice for non-dominant nationalities is not devolution but plural
federation, federacy, or independence. In Cyprus, even moderate Turkish Cypriots
insist on a ‘bi-zonal, bi-communal federation’ to give them both a share in Cyprus’s
sovereignty and guaranteed autonomy. Irish republicans rejected the Government of
Ireland Act of 1920, in part because it maintained Westminster’s ‘undiminished’
sovereignty, and accepted the 1998 Agreement only because they believed it had
qualified UK sovereignty, rendering the new institutions an act of Irish self-determination.
There are ways to protect regional minorities who might be abused by nationalities
who control autonomous territorial governments, short of granting overriding powers
to the state’s central authorities. Constitutionalised agreements can provide for
regional-level power-sharing; or for a regional-level Bill of Rights which includes
protection for minorities and individuals; and for cantonisation within regions, which
results in some level of autonomy for smaller nationalities. Northern Ireland’s 1998
Agreement sought to prevent a recurrence of the abuses that occurred between 1921
and 1972, not by relying on Westminster, which had not intervened to protect the
nationalist minority until 1969, but by extending autonomy with consociational
guarantees, other equality provisions within Northern Ireland, and a bi-governmental
oversight role for the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland.
Plural federation
In a federation, sovereignty is divided between a federal (not central) government and
the federation’s constituent units (provinces, states, Länder, cantons, republics,
entities). Each unit of government has exclusive responsibility for certain functions,
and the division of powers is entrenched in a written constitution. Neither the federal
government nor the constituent units can change the constitution unilaterally – there is
an amending formula that involves the assent of both. It is for this reason that India
cannot be constitutionally regarded as a formal federation. The Indian constitution
permits the Union parliament to make laws with respect to any matter under the
jurisdiction of the states, and the Union government to take over the government of a
state. In federations, an impartial judicial tribunal decides constitutional disputes.
Federations standardly imply bicameral federal legislatures. In the chamber of
the states (provinces, entities, etc.) the smallest component units are usually
disproportionately represented, i.e., overrepresented. In addition to entrenching
regional self-government, therefore, federations normally provide for a regional role in
the decisions of the federal governmental institutions. In federations, autonomous units
usually cover the entire state’s territory, with exceptions sometimes made for capital
city regions. The degree of self-government enjoyed by minorities in federations varies:
some are less ‘non-centralised’ than others. While federations offer more secure
autonomy than devolved polities, they do not necessarily offer more autonomy.
Northern Ireland, a devolved government of the United Kingdom between 1921 and
1972, had many powers, including policing powers that were at least as wide-ranging as
those enjoyed by the states of the United States.
Federations can be formed from previously independent states (including from a
confederation of independent states) or through separate ex-colonies deciding to ‘come
together’ (Stepan 1999). This route was followed in Switzerland and the United States. It
is the route that some hope (and more fear) that the European Union is embarked upon.
But a federation can also develop out of a unitary state, in an effort to ‘hold together’, as
has happened in the case of Belgium, and may happen in the United Kingdom and Spain.
It is currently thought that new federations are more likely to be of the ‘holding together’
rather than of the ‘coming together’ variety, an observation that should please
Eurosceptics (Linz 1997). Stepan has noted a third type of federation, one ‘put together’
by force. He cites the Soviet Union, established by Red Army troops (Stepan 1999).
More recently, while many Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) consider their federation as
springing from a unitary state, many Bosnian Serbs and Croats (as well as outsiders) see
it as forced together by the international community. The prospects for such federations,
under conditions of democracy, are not good (McGarry and O’Leary 2005).
Not all federations are pluralist. A minimal criterion for a plural federation is that it
has some internal boundaries that respect nationality, ethnicity, language or religion.
By this standard, Canada, Belgium and Switzerland are pluralist federations. While
India has the formal characteristics of a union state, in other respects, primarily its
move towards more linguistically homogeneous states, it resembles a pluralist
federation. Beyond this minimalist conception, pluralist federations vary. Full pluralist
federations entail three complementary arrangements. First, they involve not just a
constitutionally entrenched division of powers, which cannot be rescinded unilaterally
by the federal authorities, but also substantive autonomy, and a reasonable allocation
of fiscal resources. Second, a full pluralist federation has consensual, indeed
consociational, rather than majoritarian decision-making rules within the federal
government, i.e. inclusive executive power sharing and representative arrangements in
the federal government, and proportional principles of representation and allocation of
public posts and resources (O’Leary 2005b). Consensual federations create strong
second chambers representing the constituent regions and have strong regional
judiciaries and a regional role in the selection of federal judges. They do not create
strong single-person presidencies, or senates that are mirror images of the house of
representatives. Third, full pluralist federations are plurinational. They recognise a
pluralist rather than a monist conception of sovereignty. The plurinational character of
the federation may be recognised in the state’s constitution, or through its flag and
symbols, or through official bilingualism or multilingualism that treats the federation
as a multi-homeland, a partnership between or among distinct peoples. Iraq’s 2005
constitution stipulates in Article 3 that it is a ‘country of many nationalities’. Article 4
makes Arabic and Kurdish the country’s two official languages, while Article 12(1)
stipulates that ‘the flag, national anthem, and emblem of Iraq shall be fixed by law in a
way that represents the components of the Iraqi people’. A plurinational federation
involves collective territorial autonomy for the partner nations. Nations, by definition,
seek to be collectively self-determining, and a plurinational federation is incompatible
with the partition of a national community’s territory across several federative units, as
happened in Nigeria, and as some integrationists wanted for Iraq.
There are few examples of federal constitutions that are fully pluralist in design. Iraq is
an uncompleted example, and its future is uncertain (McGarry and O’Leary 2007;
O’Leary 2007b). Any viable federation of the European Union will have to be fully
pluralist. Pluralist federation enjoys some advocacy among contemporary academics. A
federation or pluralist federation is distinct from a confederation, though the two are
sometimes confused. The former is a state with shared citizenship and a single international
personality, while the latter is a union or alliance of (independent) states, established
usually for a limited set of purposes, such as defence or economic cooperation. The
(federal) governments of federations have a direct role in the lives of their citizens, while
confederal authorities normally interact with the citizens of their member states indirectly
– through the governments and bureaucracies of these states. As confederations are
generally much looser unions than federations, they are more likely to have decision-
making rules based on unanimity. It is also (formally) easier to leave a confederation.
The distinction between a pluralist federation and confederation, however, is not as
clear as it once was. Some pluralist federations allow their constituent units a role in
international relations. Both Canada and Belgium permit constituent units with
French-speaking populations to sit in ‘La Francophonie’, the league of French-speaking
states (Leonardy 2000). Canada’s Supreme Court, has, in effect, ruled that each of its
provinces now has a constitutional right to secede, providing certain procedures are
followed. From the other direction, the European Union, which originated as a
confederation, has developed some federal characteristics. Since the Maastricht Treaty,
there has been EU citizenship, and the ‘eurocracy’ in Brussels is increasingly having an
impact, though not clearly a ‘direct’ impact, on the lives of these citizens. The European
Union’s dominant decision-making rule has also been shifting from unanimity to
qualified majority rule within the con/federal institutions.
Federacy
When a nationality seeks guaranteed autonomy, but there is no general desire among
the dominant nationality for a federation, the state can establish a federacy, that is, it
can enter into a bilateral arrangement in which secured autonomy is offered to a part of
the state only (Rezvani 2003). The primary difference between federacy and devolution
is that the grant of self-government is constitutionally guaranteed and cannot be
revoked by the centre unilaterally. The primary difference between federacy and
federation is that a federacy normally applies to a part of the state’s territory, and
normally a small part (in population), whereas federation involves state-wide autonomy
arrangements. Where part of a federation’s territory enjoys a special guaranteed status
and a distinct type of autonomy, as in Puerto Rico’s relationship with the United States,
federation and federacy coexist.
The full and proper implementation of Northern Ireland’s 1998 Agreement will
create a federacy. While the Agreement’s institutions are the subject of ordinary
Westminster legislation, like those in Scotland and Wales, they are also entrenched in
an international treaty between the United Kingdom and Ireland. Moreover, the UK
government, as part of the Agreement, repealed the Government of Ireland Act, 1920,
including Section 75, which asserted the ‘supreme authority’ of the Westminster
parliament, and explicitly recognised the people of the island of Ireland’s ‘right of
self-determination’, including their right, voting separately, North and South, to bring
about a united Ireland. The reasonable reading of the Agreement is that the UK
government and parliament cannot exercise power in Northern Ireland in a way that is
inconsistent with the Agreement, without breaking their treaty obligations and without
denying Irish national self-determination. This fact was obscured by the actions of the
UK government between 2000 and 2002, when it unilaterally suspended Northern
Ireland’s political institutions. The Irish government chose not to challenge these
breaches of the Agreement because of the need to maintain good working relations
with Britain and to avoid dangerously polarising politics within Northern Ireland.
Nonetheless, since 1998, the United Kingdom has been composed of two unions, the
Union of Great Britain and the Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, each of
which has a different constitutional basis (O’Leary 1999a, b).
Cross-border territorial links

The three types of territorial pluralism discussed thus far grant self-government to a
nationality within the borders of a particular state. They are suited toward nationalities,
such as the Scots or Welsh, who mostly live within a single state’s territory. In some
cases, however, nationalities are separated from their national kin by international
borders. Their kin may be the dominant community in the neighbouring state, or a
minority. Such minorities exist all over Europe and elsewhere too. They are part and
parcel of the ‘Macedonian syndrome’ (Weiner 1971). They include the Basques of
France and Spain, Northern Ireland’s Irish nationalist minority, the Hungarian
minorities of Serbia, Slovakia, and Romania, the Croats and Serbs of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, as well as the Serbs of now independent Kosovo, the Albanians of
Macedonia, and the German-speaking (Austrian) community in South Tyrol. In these
cases, devolution, pluralist federation or federacy are necessary but insufficient to
establish ‘collective’ national autonomy. What may be sought in addition are cross-
border political institutions that allow co-operation between the different parts of the
national community. Within these areas of co-operation, the nation can be said to be
collectively self-governing.
There are few examples of such institutions. Most states remain wedded to the
traditional ‘Westphalian’ system of discrete sovereign states, and are reluctant to
consider cross-border institutions. The fear is that such institutions will promote
irredentism. Indeed, states are very often opposed to giving even autonomy within state
boundaries to minorities that have national kin on the other side of a frontier, and
particularly when these kin control a neighbouring state, i.e. the fear of irredentism
usually blocks even devolution, pluralist federation, or federacy, never mind cross-
border institutional links.
However, at least within the European Union, where relations between states are
friendly, irredentism is weak, and traditional notions of state sovereignty may be
weakening, such cross-border institutions are becoming possible, though they are not
uniformly accepted. The most far-reaching example stems from Northern Ireland’s
Good Friday Agreement of 1998. In addition to creating a federacy, the Agreement
provides for political institutions linking Northern Ireland (part of the United Kingdom)
with the Republic of Ireland (O’Leary 1999a, b). The most important is a North–South
Ministerial Council (NSMC), a body composed of Ireland’s government and the
Northern Ireland Executive. In addition, the Agreement led to the establishment of six
all-Ireland ‘implementation’ bodies, which were given the task of co-operating to
develop joint policies over inland waterways, food safety, trade and business
development, special EU programmes, the Irish and Ulster Scots languages, and
aquaculture and marine matters. The driving force behind Ireland’s trans-border
institutions was the fact that autonomy for Northern Ireland alone would not have
satisfied the aspiration of even moderate Irish nationalists. All of their elected politicians
insisted on such cross-border links.
Distinguishing territorial pluralism from other forms of autonomy.

Territorial pluralism should be distinguished from non-territorial forms of autonomy,
such as personal autonomy, and what is called, variously, corporate, segmental,
cultural, and national cultural autonomy, and from forms of territorial self-government
that do not accommodate nationalities or minorities.
From personal and corporate (non-territorial) autonomy

Conventional liberal individual or human rights, such as freedom of religion, expression
or association, protect personal autonomy. These rights extend to individuals but
permit minorities the freedom to practice their community’s culture in the private
sphere. Thus freedom of religion allows religious minorities to worship together;
freedom of expression allows minorities to establish media in their own language; and
freedom of association facilitates minority civic associations and political parties.
Corporate autonomy, by contrast, involves minority-based public self-government.
While personal autonomy can facilitate the formation of minority-based political
parties, which can then demand public accommodation, corporate autonomy entails
representative public institutions, which may be permitted to tax their members and to
exercise public authority with respect to cultural matters.
Corporate autonomy was used by the Ottomans originally to manage religious
diversity (Braude and Lewis 1982; Coakley 1994: 299). From the fifteenth century,
Greek Orthodox, Armenian Catholic, Jewish and Muslim communities administered
their own affairs in religion, education, and family law. With the growth of national
sentiment, these religious millets later split into linguistically based units (Laponce
1993). An equivalent of the millet, the kahal, was introduced in the old Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth, where it was used to give autonomy to the Jewish community. The
millet system has contributed to the current legal systems in India, Israel and Lebanon,
where different religious communities have autonomy over family law.
Corporate autonomy was proposed by the Austro-Marxists, Karl Renner and Otto
Bauer, as a solution to the nationalities question in the disintegrating Austro-Hungarian
Empire (Bauer 2000; McGarry and Moore 2005; Stouurzh 1991). Although their
proposals were not widely implemented in Austria-Hungary, there were limited
attempts to apply them in Moravia, Galicia and Bukovina (Coakley 1994: 300). A
much more significant application of corporate autonomy occurred in inter-war
Estonia, where a Cultural Autonomy Law was passed in 1925, which enabled ethnic
groups numbering at least 3,000 to establish cultural councils capable of taxing group
members, and exercising jurisdiction over a wide range of cultural activities, including
education, culture, libraries, theatres, museums and sport (ibid.: 307). Other
consociational systems – in Belgium, the Netherlands and Lebanon – have allowed
degrees of corporate autonomy to various religious and secular communities (Lijphart
1977: 41–44). More recently, Belgium has sought to manage its ethno-linguistic
communities through a mixture of consociational power sharing, territorial pluralism,
and corporate autonomy. The French and Flemish-language communities have
non-territorial jurisdiction over French and Flemish-speakers in Brussels (ibid.:
184–85). In New Zealand, the Maori Council supervises matters of interest to Maoris
throughout the country (Coakley 1994: 309). Corporate autonomy has been proposed
as a way of accommodating the significant proportion of Canada’s indigenous
population that lives in urban regions (Royal Commission 1996).
The demise of Marxism-Leninism in Eastern Europe led to a partial resurgence in the
popularity of corporate autonomy. Unlike Lenin, who railed against the idea of
corporate autonomy, the new rulers of the region appear to see it as preferable to
territorial pluralism, which they see as dangerous and destabilising. In 1993, Estonia
reintroduced its inter-war arrangements for corporate autonomy. In the same year,
Hungary passed an Act ‘On the Rights of National and Ethnic Minorities’ (Krizsan
2000: 248). In 1996, the Russian parliament adopted the National Cultural Autonomy
Act, which allows individuals to form National Cultural Associations, with rights over
culture, language, education and the media, as well as the right to represent the interests
of minorities to state (federal, republic and local) institutions. By mid-1999, 227
National Cultural Associations (NCAs) had been registered (160 local, sixty regional
and seven federal) (Codagnone and Fillipov 2000: 280).
The arguments for corporate autonomy institutions most frequently used by public
authorities in Eastern Europe are of the peace-and-stability sort. They fear the
secessionist dangers of territorial pluralism, but recognise the need to accommodate the
linguistic, religious or cultural diversity of their populations. In Russia, where territorial
pluralism was more vibrant in the early 1990s than it is now, corporate autonomy has
been promoted as an alternative or at least as a countervailing force. The first politician
to recommend it in the post-communist era, Gavril Popov, linked it with a proposal for
scrapping Russia’s system of territorial pluralism, and restoring the Tsarist system of
ethnically neutral administrative regions (Codagnone and Fillipov 2000: 275). Some
have speculated that the country’s adoption of ‘national cultural autonomy’ is aimed at
replacing territorial pluralism over the long run (Goble 2000). Certainly Presidents
Putin and Medvedev have combined corporate autonomy with the undermining of
Russia’s system of territorial pluralism.
The idea that corporate autonomy will suffice as a way to manage the concerns of
nationalities has become, apparently, a ‘veritable mantra’ among East European
intellectuals (Kymlicka 2002: 365). It is an argument that has some support among
Western states and international organisations. Since the Copenhagen Document of
1990 suggested territorial autonomy as an option for the accommodation of minorities
there has been a steady retreat in support for it in international documents, in part as a
result of conflicts arising from the break-up of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. These
documents are now more likely to stress corporate rather than territorial methods of
accommodation.
Corporate autonomy has some advantages over territorial pluralism. As Karl Renner
observed, membership in a corporately defined autonomous community can be voluntary,
which means that only those who identify with the group are governed by it. It offers one
way, therefore, to prevent territorially based governance discriminating against minorities,
or generating a government that lacks widespread allegiance. Corporate autonomy is
clearly useful for nationalities that are too dispersed or few in number to exercise, or to
aspire to, territorial autonomy. There is some evidence that Estonia’s inter-war
arrangements for corporate autonomy improved the position of its dispersed minorities:
it ‘did much to reconcile the Germans to life within the Estonian state’ (Coakley 1994:
307), and Jews appear to have been happy with Estonia’s autonomy arrangements.
Dispersed groups, like the Roma of Hungary and Russia, stand to benefit from those
countries’ arrangements for corporate autonomy, as these will provide institutions and
resources that they currently lack. In Canada, corporate autonomy has enabled
francophones outside Quebec to maintain some control over their own schools. The
natives who live in Canada’s cities would also benefit from it, as it is difficult to see how
plans for giving self-government to native reserves address their situation. However, for
dispersed nationalities which do not have the demographic basis to reproduce their
culture and identity, such schemes may just make assimilation gentler rather than stop it.
Even large territorially concentrated nationalities may find corporate autonomy, or
personal autonomy, better than the alternatives on offer. The Kurds in Turkey would
benefit significantly from genuine freedom of association and expression, as well as from
controlling publicly funded schools in the Kurdish language. This would represent a
considerable advance over the Kemalist regime of coercive assimilation to which they
have been subjected (Gunter 1990; Romano 2006). However, it is highly unlikely that
large and territorially concentrated nationalities will be satisfied with personal or
corporate autonomy, particularly if they have enjoyed territorial autonomy in the past.
Many of the public powers such nationalities seek, including over the economy, policing,
population influxes, and language planning, require control over territory.
Corporate autonomy fails, just as significantly, to consider the vital relationship that
most mobilised nationalities have with their homeland or ‘national territory’. For many
groups, there is a conception of a ‘homeland’, a geographical area with symbolic and
emotional significance, which is not captured simply by provisions for cultural
self-government over members. This relationship to the land is evident in the discourse
of the indigenous peoples, but is found among all mobilised nationalities, including
Scots, Catalans, or Uighurs (Connor 1986). Nationalists seek not just self-government,
but self-government over their national homeland.
While a minority religious community may survive without controlling territory,
particularly if the state is neutral on religion, there are reasons for doubting that a
linguistic community can do so. A language will prosper best if it has a territorial basis
in which that language is the primary medium of social and economic exchange, and a
principal language of work, business, and social interaction. Corporate autonomy,
usually limited to control over schools, even when combined with some kind of official
status for the minority language within state-wide public institutions, arguably does
not suffice. Territorial autonomy may be required, in which the minority can promote
its language as the public language, including in the work force, as the Québécois have
done in Quebec. The contrasting fortunes of linguistic minorities with territorial
autonomy and non-territorial autonomy can be observed by looking at the Swedes of
Finland. The Åland Islanders, who enjoy territorial autonomy, including control over
demographic influxes, and who have promoted their language in the public sphere,
have been able to reproduce their culture and their identity. By contrast, Swedish-
speakers on the Finnish mainland, territorially concentrated and beneficiaries of
language rights but not territorial autonomy, have not fared nearly as well (Alcock
1991: 13).
Territorial self-government regimes that do not accommodate nationalities and

minorities
There are two kinds of federation that are consistent with policies of integrating,
assimilating, or controlling minorities, rather than accommodating them. The first are
what we have described as ‘national federations’, to distinguish them from the pluralist
variety (McGarry and O’Leary 2005). National federations are usually relatively
centralised, as it is their federal governments that are normally seen as representing the
‘national’ will. An unambiguous national federation exists where the federation-wide
majority is a majority in every federal unit, as in the United States, Germany, Australia,
or the Latin American federations of Mexico, Brazil, and Venezuela. In each of these
cases, the decision to establish federations had nothing to do with the accommodation
of minorities but was taken for other reasons, such as to provide for accessible (regional)
government in a large country (Brazil, Australia, and the United States), to coax
previously independent units into joining a union without extinguishing their identity/
existence (the United States and English Canada), or to protect against the concentration
and abuse of power (Germany, the United States). Indeed, the establishment of national
federations has often been accompanied by purposive steps, where necessary, to prevent
minorities from becoming self-governing. As the United States, to take the most
prominent case, expanded southwestward from its original homogeneous (except for
black slaves) thirteen colonies, it was decided that no territory would receive statehood
unless minorities were outnumbered by White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs).
Sometimes, the technique employed was to gerrymander state boundaries to ensure
that Indians or Hispanics were outnumbered, as in Florida. At other times, as in Hawaii
and the south-west, statehood was delayed until the region’s long-standing residents
could be swamped with enough WASP settlers. The American authorities were even
sceptical of immigrant groups concentrating in particular locations lest this lead to
ethnically based demands for self-government, and grants of public land were denied to
ethnic groups in order to promote their dispersal (Gordon 1964). In line with nation-
building aims, minorities were required to conform to the culture and identity of the
Anglo-Saxon core. In the case of blacks in the southern states for a century after slavery
was abolished, American federalism facilitated control rather than assimilation: African
Americans would have been better served by centralised political structures than they
were by the restoration of federalism after the failure of reconstruction. Control was
largely dismantled as a result of the combined intervention, starting in the 1950s, of the
federal judicial, executive, and legislative branches of government.
A more ambiguous national federation exists where ethnic, religious, linguistic, or
national minorities are spread out across a number of federal units, in some of which
they may be majorities. National federations of the unambiguous kind may be
impractical in some cases – where the minority in question is so large that it is difficult
to construct the federation’s internal boundaries to deny them majority status in any
federal unit. In these cases, a second-best ‘national federal’ strategy draws internal
boundaries across minority communities rather than between or among them, i.e.
preventing the minority from exercising collective self-government within its own single
unit. Integrationists argue that the advantage of this strategy is that it breaks up the
minority’s national or ‘ethnic’ solidarity, promotes intra-group divisions, and inter- or
trans-group alliances, thus promoting a single overarching national identity coterminous
with the state (Roeder 2007). This thinking appears to have inspired the Nigerian
military nation-builders who divided Nigeria’s original three republics, dominated by
the Ibo, Yoruba, and Hausa–Fulani, respectively, into nine, twelve, and, eventually,
thirty-six republics. Similar thinking is also popular among Sinhalese nation-builders in
Sri Lanka, though they tend to shy away from any use of the term ‘federation’, preferring
the language of decentralisation and devolution. Such national federations, in which
minorities are divided across several units without their consent, and as a result of
purposive ‘nation-building’ by military dictators, external interventionists, or majority
elites, need to be carefully distinguished from federations in which such patterns emerge
organically. In Switzerland, the German and French linguistic communities are divided
across several cantons, but this is a result of Switzerland’s history and the unwillingness
of cantons with the same language to merge. This makes Switzerland an example of a
plural federation, but a plurilingual rather than a plurinational federation.
The second type of federation, which is not pluralist, is the ‘sham’ or pseudo-pluralist
variant. A sham pluralist federation exists where the state is organised ostensibly as a
federation, and nationalities are majorities within federal units, but there is no genuine
self-government. Such federations exist when federal units are either not autonomous,
i.e. the formal constitutional division of powers/rule of law is ignored in practice, or
there is no democracy (freedom of expression, freedom of association, regular
competitive elections and other attributes necessary to produce self-government).
The United States is the paradigmatic example of a national federation, while
the Soviet Union was the most prominent sham pluralist federation. Though its
state structure was federated from early on, real power lay in the tightly
centralised Communist Party (the CPSU), which operated according to the principle
of ‘democratic centralism’. The Union Republics were therefore not autonomous.
Their legislatures (the Soviets), though in theory elected by local populations,
were rubber-stamp bodies nominated by the CPSU. Key institutions, including the
army and police, were controlled by Moscow. No effective judicial review existed to
decide on the division of rights and functional spheres between the centre and the
republics (Lieven and McGarry 1993). Communism has no monopoly on sham
federations. Nigeria and Pakistan during their long bouts of military dictatorship have
been sham federations, and Putin’s Russia, in which governors are appointed by the
centre, and regional parties banned from competing in Russian elections, has moved
substantially in that direction.
Under what conditions is territorial pluralism likely to offer sustainable conflict
settlements?
Given the mixed record of territorial pluralism the proper question for political scientists
is not whether it is bound to fail or succeed, but under what conditions is it likely to
succeed or fail. At least some of the following conditions matter, although further rigorous
empirical testing is required to assess the explanatory validity of these propositions.
First, history matters, even if it is not destiny. Past coercion and conquest, totalitarian
or authoritarian governments, and the historical maltreatment of nationalities render free
political accommodation more difficult. Democratisation may lead to the springtime of
the oppressed nations – as they break free, rejecting the uncertainties of territorial pluralism
for the potential security of independence. Territorial pluralism therefore stands a better
chance if it emerges from past voluntary alliances, and in conjunction with democratisation.
Historically dominant nationalities, with poor track records of accommodation, find it
difficult to persuade other nationalities that they can make credible commitments.
Second, and relatedly, the long-term survival of territorial pluralism is more likely
when there are ‘nested’ or ‘complementary’ identities among the territorially
concentrated nationalities, i.e. where there is some sense of allegiance to the whole state
as well as to the national homeland. This in turn is facilitated by the acceptance of
plurinationalism by the state’s central or federal authorities and, where relevant, its
dominant community. Nested identities are unlikely to exist where the relevant regional
nationality has been harshly treated by the state, or where violent wars have raged.
Critics of territorial pluralism, such as Roeder, may be correct to argue that secession,
what he incorrectly terms ‘partition’, is one of the most sensible options after many civil
wars (Roeder 2007). Equally, complementary identities may be less likely to exist, or
more difficult to nurture, if a region was forcibly incorporated, or reincorporated, into
the state, rather than voluntarily acceding. The Baltic republics were the most eager
secessionists in the former Soviet Union, and the Serbs of Republika Srspka are no
champions of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The importance of complementary identities
suggests that states should react early to popular demands for territorial pluralism,
before relations between nationalities deteriorate. One problem here is what Tim Sisk
calls the ‘timing paradox’. While early accommodation is more likely to work, state
authorities may not be likely to recognise the need for concessions until relations have
polarised and it is too late (Sisk 1996). But the adoption of territorial pluralism in the
United Kingdom, Spain, Canada, Belgium, India, and Switzerland indicates central
authorities are sometimes capable of engaging in self-denying prophecies.
Third, some successful cases of territorial pluralism suggest that, at least with sizable
nationalities, autonomy should be accompanied by consociational power sharing
within central or federal institutions. Such arrangements prevent majoritarianism by
the dominant nationality, and make it more likely that minorities have a stake in the
state. It is a mistake to consider autonomy a simple substitute for inclusive state
institutions. Power sharing may be entrenched in laws or constitutional documents, or,
less attractively from the minority’s perspective, it may be the result of political
conventions or of general election results (that leave minorities holding the balance of
power in central legislatures). Inclusive federal governmental institutions and
conventions have helped keep the Canadian, Swiss, Indian, and Belgian federations
together. Spain’s autonomy regime has been at its most cordial when minority
nationalities have enjoyed influence in Madrid. Conversely, there is evidence that the
absence, or collapse, of inclusive federal or central institutions has contributed to
breakdown and secession. Nigeria’s breakdown into civil war and attempted secession
in 1966–67 followed a coup which led to the centre becoming the preserve of Ibo officers
and a counter-coup in which these officers were overthrown (Suberu 2001). Much of
Nigeria’s post-1970 conflict, including sectarian warfare between Muslims and
Christians and the rise of violent separatism in the oil-rich Delta area, has also been
traced to the lack of inclusiveness at the level of the centre (Suberu and Diamond 2002).
Fourth, the success of territorial pluralism appears to be linked to the nature of the
state’s diversity. Federations with a strong dominant nationality, or a Staatsvolk, are
less likely to break apart than those without (O’Leary 2001b). This is partly because
such dominant communities can deter or prevent secession, and yet may be secure
enough, as the English have shown, to implement territorial pluralism. The Russian
Federation is more likely to stay together than the former Soviet Union, as the Chechens
have discovered, in part because it has more Russians: Russians constitute 80 per cent
of the Russian Federation’s population, but were only 50 per cent of the Soviet Union’s
population. Other prominent cases of states that fell apart, like Yugoslavia, or collapsed
into civil war and military dictatorship, like Nigeria, lacked a Staatsvolk, or even a
majority community. But what the Staatsvolk does with its dominance may be as
importance as its mere existence. When it coerces, supports a totalitarian party or
religion, maltreats minority nationalities, or supports centralist coups and putsches it
will generate antagonistic rather than complementary identities. When it is liberal,
democratic, rights-respecting, and open toward accommodation, then territorial
pluralism has a better prospect of finding co-operative partners.
Fifth, the number of autonomous units matters, though not in obvious ways.
Two-unit, or dyadic, pluralist federations have an abysmal track record (Vile 1982),
with Serbia and Montenegro merely the latest casualty. This may be because divisions
in dyadic federations always take place along the same axis, with floating coalitions
rendered very difficult. Belgium’s continuing survival may owe something to the fact
that it is not a dyadic federation of Flanders and Wallonia. Brussels’ existence as a
separate unit may have prevented the secession of Flanders. Canada’s stability may be
helped by the fact that it is not a two-unit federation of Quebec and English Canada.
Pointing to the advantage of a multiple balance of power is not, however, an argument
for imposing it through a Machiavellian strategy of subdividing regional units belonging
to distinct national communities. But if a multiple balance of power develops organically,
as has happened in Canada, it is helpful. Some dominant communities may accept the
division of their territory into several regions, provided their aspiration to collective
self-government can be expressed within the union, or federal-level, institutions.
Minority nationalities, however, are likely to resist any imposed partition of their
autonomous region, as Iraq’s Kurds would surely have done had the United States or
Baghdad sought to partition Kurdistan (O’Leary et al. 2005).
Sixth, economic prosperity, appropriately dispersed, enhances the prospects of territorial
pluralism. It may allow redistribution from wealthy regions to the less wealthy, binding the
latter to the state without incurring the rancour of the former. The counter-example of
India, until recently not an example of deepening prosperity, suggests that material – or
shared prosperity – is a facilitative, not a necessary, condition for stable territorial
pluralism. The converse hypothesis is that severe distributive conflicts – over natural
resources or fiscal or tariff or subsidy policies – especially if they coincide with national,
ethnic, linguistic, or religious allegiances – may overload territorial pluralist states.
Seventh, the prospects for the success of territorial pluralism are enhanced, even in
otherwise unfavourable circumstances, where international agents, including nearby
powerful states, have a strong interest in holding the relevant state together. Bosnia and
Herzegovina is not destined to fail as long as NATO and the European Union are
determined that it should not. If Iraq’s federation survives, in spite of the complete
absence of a warm Iraqi identity among Kurds and their genocidal treatment by
Saddam’s regime, it will partly be because the United States, Turkey, and Iran are
strongly opposed to an independent Kurdistan. The only scenario in which an
independent Kurdistan looks feasible is if the rest of Iraq collapses – i.e. if it becomes
clear that Iraq has no Arab or Shia Staatsvolk capable of holding it together. Kurdistan’s
political leadership is at present intending to make Iraq work, as a pluralist federation,
because autonomy under the 2005 constitution offers a better and more certain future
than a bid for formal independence (O’Leary 2008c).
This analysis has made an effort to provide a detached treatment of territorial pluralist
arrangements. Such arrangements offer no panacea; politics never ends; and territorially
pluralist arrangements have their pathologies or sore spots. But territorial pluralism has
strong, frequently more important, benefits. It offers some prospects of accommodating
multiple nationalities, religions, languages, and ethnicities, with consent and justice. It
rejects coercive assimilation and control (repression). It involves, more controversially, the
rejection of integration, i.e. the idea that mobilised nationalities can be satisfied with
individual (personal autonomy) rights and that they do not require public institutional
accommodation of their nationality, culture, and identity. Integration is, arguably, the
West’s dominant method of conflict regulation, but there is little evidence that it can work
in plurinational places. Support for territorial pluralism involves rejecting the view that
sizable mobilised nationalities will, given a free choice of options, be satisfied with corporate
forms of autonomy. We also believe that there is no a priori reason why territorial pluralism
should be any more discriminatory than other territorially based institutions, including
those of formally integrationist states. We do not suggest that territorial pluralism
guarantees stability or unity, but think that it is the best inoculation against secession at
present available as institutional medicine in plurinational places. Governments that do
not try territorial pluralism may preside over the death of their state.
Notes
1 States do constitutionalize the right of secession – the right was embedded for Soviet Socialist
Republics in the constitution of the Soviet Union (1936, 1977), though no one anticipated it
would be exercised. Ethiopia’s constitution embeds the right (Art. 47, s. 2.). The United
Kingdom’s treaty with the government of Ireland (1999) lays down the rules under which
Northern Ireland may leave the Union to join Ireland. Canada’s Supreme Court and the
Canadian federal parliament, while not explicitly conceding that Quebec has the right of
secession under Canada’s constitution, have laid down protocols under which a referendum
mandating secession would lay binding negotiating requirements on the federal government.
2 What distinguishes ‘territorial pluralism’ from the expression ‘federal political systems’ used
by Watts and Elazar (Elazar 1987; Watts 1996, 1998), is that it is focused on territorial
autonomy for national, ethnic, linguistic or religious minorities, and ‘territorial pluralism’
does not apply the word ‘federal’ beyond its legitimate semantic extension.
3 Scotland Act 1998, s. 28 (7).
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21 Ethnic accommodation in unitary states
Frans Schrijver
The unitary state is the most prevalent state system worldwide, and just like federal
states, many of the world’s unitary states are places of ethnic conflict. We can connect
the common distinction of state systems between unitary and federal states (Elazar,
1997) with ethnic conflicts in two ways: in the first place, it provides a context, a state
structure as arena in which ethnic conflicts are fought and solutions are introduced.
Ethnic conflicts are located somewhere, and whether they are located in unitary or
federal states matters; difference in state structures influence the actors in the conflict.
Second, the distinction between unitary and federal is part of the accommodation of
ethnic conflict itself. Federalism is not just a context, but is itself an instrument of
pacification and managing ethnic difference (McGarry and O’Leary, 1994). And,
arguably, also the unitary state has been used as instrument in response to ethnic
conflicts and tensions. Particular historical examples of unitary states have been
specifically designed to create national unity and end ethnic conflict by merging rival
ethnic identities into one homogenous state identity. The French republic, with its state
organisation as ‘instruments of unity’ (Lacoste, 1997) aimed at standardisation and
uniformity as introduced after the 1789 revolution, is perhaps the most well known
example of the unitary state as instrument of ethnic homogeneity. However, to regard
all unitary states as such would be a simplification, and unitary states can be contexts
for the recognition and accommodation of ethnic differences too.
This chapter discusses ethnic accommodation within unitary state structures, and
therefore does not pay attention to those modes of ethnic conflict regulation that go
beyond the unitary state, like federalisation or secession. A unitary state can be a
starting point for those policies, but both do not regulate ethnic conflict within the
unitary state. This chapter also does not discuss more crudely coercive tactics of dealing
with ethnic difference like genocide or mass population transfer. While they have been
historically applied in unitary states, they certainly do not accommodate ethnic
difference.
Ethnicity is a concept used widely throughout the social sciences, but it is also one of
the hardest to define, with lively debates over its meaning (Hale, 2004). In contrast to
essentialist and primordialist (e.g. Shils, 1957; Geertz, 1967) views on ethnicity, this
chapter builds on the understanding that ethnicity is not a natural aspect of humanity
but constructed, situational, context-dependent and contested (Barth, 1969; Nagel,
1994). It is particularly that contested nature of ethnicity and ethnic identification and
recognition that is related to those situations that are meant with ‘ethnic conflict’.
Individuals may have a range of groups they belong to (Gore, 1984), several of which
can be defined as ‘ethnic groups’. Sometimes these ethnic identities can overlap, but in
Ethnic accommodation in unitary states 267
contexts of ethnic conflict identification with both groups in conflict with each other
becomes mutually exclusive.
In a context of ethnic conflict ethnicity is relational as well; ethnic groups identify
themselves as such not alone but in relation to one another, distinguishing themselves
from other ethnic groups. But, just as much as the distinction from other groups is
central to the existence of ethnicity, ethnic groups should not be regarded as homogenous.
Not every member of an ethnic group feels loyalties or a sense of belonging to that
group to the same extent, not every member has the same ideas about what it is that
distinguishes the group from other groups, not every member has the same view on the
history or the political and cultural future of the group, and not every member is to the
same degree mobilised in ethnic conflicts.
According to Smith what distinguishes federations is not necessarily their level of
decentralisation, but that in federations regional autonomy is protected by the
constitution (1995, p. 7). Unitary states may be decentralised but lack that constitutional
guarantee. This means that the degree of decentralisation is not necessarily what
distinguishes federations from unitary states. When we consider federalism as a method
of ethnic conflict accommodation, that step is often placed on an ‘autonomy continuum’,
with increasing levels of decentralisation between complete centralism and secession
(Paddison, 1983). On such a continuum federations are normally placed between a
regionalised or decentralised unitary state and a confederation. This implies that
federations allow more regional autonomy than decentralised unitary states. But
because the unique distinguishing feature of a federation is its constitutional guarantee
of regional autonomy, and not the degree or nature of autonomy, that is not always the
case. For instance, the Basque Country and Scotland have high degrees of autonomous
regional policy-making powers within a unitary state (Spain and the United Kingdom
respectively), without having the constitutional guarantee of that autonomy that a
federation would give.
The division between federal and unitary states is not fixed, and states can move
from one category to the other. Historical examples abound of confederations and
federations that moved towards more centralisation (e.g. the Republic of the United
Netherlands evolving into a unitary republic and then a kingdom after 1795) (Elazar,
1982). More recently shifts in the opposite direction of decentralisation are more
prevalent. Sometimes such shifts are slow step-by-step processes of decentralisation,
positioning states ‘in between’ a unitary state and a federation. Spain for example has
been described as being in a process of ‘federalisation’ since the death of its dictator
Francisco Franco in 1975, with the incremental introduction of regional autonomies
partially constitutionally recognised (Moreno, 2001).
Finally, although in most federations the whole state territory is divided into sub-state
regions, federal states, provinces or Länder, that is not necessarily the case. In some
situations only part of the country is federalised, while the rest has remained a unitary
state, creating a situation of asymmetrical autonomy (Keating, 1998). Unitary states
can be decentralised asymmetrically too, with political or cultural regional autonomy
applied to only a part of the state’s territory. This is for instance the case if particular
arrangements to facilitate and stimulate a regional language only apply to the region
where that language is historically spoken. Asymmetrical decentralisation is very
common, especially in reaction to demands of ethnic groups and as a method to
accommodate ethnic conflict.
268 Frans Schrijver
Regionalised unitary states
In unitary states regionalisation (Loughlin, 1993) – the devolution of decision making
powers to regional authorities – is one of the most common ways to accommodate
ethnic conflict, applying territorial autonomy principles similar to federalisation.
Especially when an ethnic minority group lives concentrated in one particular area, has
historical connections to that territory (for instance an era of independence), and claims
regional autonomy or independence, regionalisation is a prevalent solution. Often
regional devolution is considered a compromise solution, falling short of federalisation
or secession, but giving an ethnic minority more say over its territory than centralisation.
The general drift of those who propose regionalisation from a central government
perspective as an effective reaction to claims by separatists is formulated by Bogdanor
(1999, p. 194) writing, rather cynically, that ‘it might well be that the best way to
strengthen national unity is to give way to them a little as to better to disharm them’.
For example, in Britain, New Labour’s 1997 general election manifesto defended its
proposal for devolution stating that ‘the Union will be strengthened and the threat of
separatism removed’ (Labour Party, 1997). Similarly, in 1981 French Minister of the
Interior Gaston Deferre defended President Mitterand’s proposal for regionalisation
claiming that ‘The regionalisation will maintain the national unity. … If we give all the
French regions the statute that the Parti Socialiste proposes, the majority of the regional
demands will be satisfied. That will calm down the situation in the regions concerned’
(cited in Huguenin and Martinat, 1998, p. 22, author’s translation). Such propositions
are based on the idea that most people who might otherwise support separatism will be
satisfied with a compromise that offers regional autonomy and the recognition of
regional distinctiveness. But even if some ethnic movements or political parties aim for
full independence, the majority of the ethnic group they claim to represent or the
regional population as a whole may not want to go as far. In such cases regional
devolution may be an attractive way to accommodate the demands of a regionally
concentrated ethnic minority, and isolate extremists (e.g. Gurr, 1993; McGarry and
O’Leary, 1994; Rudolph and Thomson, 1985).
There is no unambiguous evidence that regionalisation (or federalisation, for that
matter) in itself pacifies an ethnic conflict, either in the long or the short term. In
Northern Ireland the introduction of a directly elected regional Northern Irish Assembly
was part of the 1998 Belfast Agreement and the relatively successful peace process. In
contrast, the establishment of the Basque Country as ‘autonomous community’ in 1979
did not pacify the conflict even in the short term. ETA did not accept the compromise
solution and decided to continue its bombing campaign more or less unchanged. This
shows that regionalisation as instrument of ethnic conflict resolution needs to comply
with certain conditions, such as full involvement and agreement of all major actors, to
be successful in the short term.
Whether regionalisation pacifies ethnic conflicts in the long run is even more
questionable. While regional autonomy does introduce institutions that facilitate the
democratic discussion of grievances and peaceful expression of political claims, those
regional institutions can also function as a platform for the deepening of ethnic
cleavages. Van der Wusten and Knippenberg (2001) have stressed the recursive
dimension of ethnic conflicts, where one stage or ‘episode’ of the conflict ends with
institutional rearrangement and repositioning of relevant actors, but also with a new
political agenda for a next round of ethnic politics. In that light regionalisation, like any
instrument of ethnic conflict accommodation, can be seen as the outcome of a cycle of
ethnic conflict. However, the outcome of one cycle also shapes the starting conditions
of a new round of ethnic conflict. Especially the introduction of regional autonomy
provides a regional ethnic minority with opportunities to emphasise ethnic distinction
and mobilise support for further claims for autonomy or full independence (Schrijver,
2005, 2006). This refers to the institutionalisation process of a region (Paasi, 1991), and
the importance of the presence of regional institutions for the development of ethno-
regional consciousness.
Discussing the accommodation of ethnic conflict, Juan José Linz comments that
‘federalism might create a temporary stability, a framework in which further demands
can be articulated and additional rights can be granted, but it is unlikely to be a once
and for all stable, durable solution’ (1997, p. 22). This would apply even more to a
half-way solution as regionalisation. Regionalisation changes political infrastructures,
providing regional ethnic movements with a base from which to challenge the central
government and put forth further claims (Máiz, 2003). It is much easier for regionally
concentrated ethnic groups to get elected, form part of a government, and use this to
mobilise support at the regional than at state level. In the United Kingdom devolution
has offered the SNP in Scotland and Plaid Cymru in Wales opportunities to take on
governing responsibilities at regional level and become more respectable, established
political parties. However, those new political opportunities, and especially the
possibility to become a mainstream political party at regional level, does inspire a
moderation of the movement as well (Schrijver, 2006). In order to profit from the
opportunities offered by regional elections, and appeal to more voters, ethnic movements
often moderate their main aims, and aim to distance themselves from extremists. This
suggests that regionalisation perhaps is no way to end a conflict, but at least channel it
into a continuation by democratic means and with more moderate claims. Apart from
its effectiveness as conflict resolution instrument, there is a moral case to be made for
regionalisation (and federalisation) in a democracy, if a clear majority of the region’s
population is in favour, expressed in a regional referendum.
Finally, it should be noted that regionalisation is not always about ethnic difference
and the accommodation of the territorial demands of ethnic minorities. That has been
the perspective here, but there are many other possible motivations for regionalisation,
ranging from local administration efficiency, obstacles against totalitarianism, and the
influence of supranational organisations to central government budget cuts and
reactions to global economic restructuring (Sharpe, 1993; Bullmann, 1997; Macleod
and Jones, 2007).
Consociational democracy and state-wide power sharing

Regionalisation (and federalisation) recognises the link between ethnic group and
territory, but not all ethnic conflict is about claims to regional territories, and not all
ethnic groups live concentrated in a particular ‘homeland’. An instrument of ethnic
conflict accommodation allowing non-territorial forms of autonomy and power sharing
between ethnic groups is consociationalism (Lijphart, 1969, 1977), discussed elsewhere
in this volume, which is is often applied to the state as a whole, not just a particular
region associated with an ethnic minority.
With regard to consociationalism, of crucial importance is the co-operation between
elites representing all segments of society. For his concept of consociational democracy
270 Frans Schrijver
Lijphart clearly drew on the system of verzuiling (‘pillarisation’) in his native country,
the Netherlands (Knippenberg, 1999). During much of the twentieth century Dutch
politics, and society in general, were characterised by coalition-building, negotiation,
and co-operation at elite level of those representing deeply divided segments (‘pillars’)
of society. However, it should be noted that in Lijphart’s example of the Netherlands
these different segments of society were not generally recognised as different ethnic
groups, but based on ideological and religious cleavages (Protestant, Catholic, Socialist
and Liberal). Arguably, therefore, Lijphart’s concept of consociationalism was at its
core not a system of ethnic conflict accommodation, but introduced as an alternative
model of representative democracy, in contrast to other models of democracy (e.g. the
Westminster model), designed to deal with pluralism in a very broad sense.
But Lijphart (1977) did argue the applicability of consociationalism to societies
where ethnic conflict was an issue, using case studies of Belgium, Lebanon and Malaysia.
Since then consociational power sharing has found a prominent place in ethnic conflict
resolution literature. Consociationalism has been applied in unitary states such as
Burundi (Lemarchand, 2007), and in regions within unitary states like Northern Ireland
(McGarry and O’Leary, 2004) and South Tyrol (Wolff, 2008; Markusse, 1996). As
instrument of ethnic conflict accommodation consociationalism differs markedly from
assimilationalist approaches. As Donald Horowitz (1985) writes, consociationalism
assumes ‘that it is necessary for ethnically divided states to live with ethnic cleavages
rather than wish them away’ (p. 569). Consociationalism is based on the presence of
institutions that secure the distinctiveness and internal autonomy of segments of society,
and give all segments access to decision-making at the centre. And whereas territorial
autonomy approaches (federalisation or regionalisation) leave the door open for
secession (and arguable create the geographical infrastructure for partition),
consociationalism aims for an enduring solution of power sharing at state level and
within existing state boundaries. This aim for a stable democracy in a plural society is
on the one hand achieved through the facilitation of sub-societies with their own
institutions (political parties, newspapers, schools, sports clubs, etc.), and on the other
hand top-down ethnic conflict accommodation through elite cooperation. Proportional
representation ensures that the connection between a grand coalition at elite level and
the segments of society at grassroots level is not lost, and each segment and their leaders
have access to power at the nation-state level.
Despite significant criticism of consociationalism’s effectiveness (Horowitz, 1985;
Deschouwer, 1994; Barry, 1975) it remains one of the most advocated models of
democratic regulation of ethnic conflict. However, most concrete cases where its
application has been noted more recently (see McGarry and O’Leary, 2006 on Northern
Ireland, Caspersen, 2004 on Bosnia and Herzegovina and Wilson, 2003 on Sri Lanka)
are regarded adapted versions of consociationalism or hybrids with other models, and
have diverged from Lijphart’s original. Consociationalism involves the establishment
of institutions that guarantee internal autonomy for each constituent group. Those
institutions are organised mostly territorially in federations and in regionalised unitary
states. However, consociationalism also requires non-territorial power-sharing
mechanisms among elites, which can exist at state level in federations (e.g. Belgium,
Deschouwer, 2006), but just as well in unitary states like Lijphart’s original example,
the Netherlands. In some unitary states this may involve consociational arrangements
without territorial segmentation, for instance through the political, cultural and social
pillarisation and radical electoral proportional representation of the Netherlands, or
the prescribed balance between Hutu and Tutsi representation in the central and local
government of Burundi (Lemarchand, 2007). However, the territorial segmentation
and consociational institutionalisation in federations and regionalised unitary states
may provide more stability than non-territorial consociatioalism. Many consociational
arrangements in unitary states have not survived beyond temporary, transitional or
post-conflict settlements (e.g. South Africa, Lebanon, Rwanda, Colombia).
Democracies with ethnic majority dominance

While consociationalism is built around co-operation and compromise resulting from
proportionality and access to power of all ethnic groups in a state, there are many
democratic systems where one ethnic group dominates one or more others, coined
‘ethnic democracies’ (Smith 1996; Smooha 1990; Smooha and Hanf 1992). Ethnic
democracies give individual citizens access to political and civil rights, but preserve
collective political and cultural rights to the dominant ethnic majority. This applies to
multi-ethnic democracies where state institutions do not constitute a neutral set of rules
but are controlled by one of the constituent ethnic groups. In some cases this situation
can persist for a long time, with far-reaching institutionalisation of the ethnic dominance
over the state.
Ethnic democracy is a form of what has been called hegemonic control (Lustick,
1979; McGarry and O’Leary 1994), which also applies to authoritarian, imperial and
partially democratic societies. Historically, ethnic control by a hegemonic group has
been the most common way of dealing with ethnic and cultural plurality. The
suppression of ethnic minorities (and sometimes majorities) through coercion or threats
of coercion has been commonplace, achieving varying degrees of stability. However,
the combination of democratisation and the advance of the Age of Nationalism meant
other solutions replaced durable ethnic hegemony as system of choice. On the one
hand, nationalism and the idea that state and nation should coincide resulted in
attempts to eradicate ethnic plurality, through instruments ranging from assimilation
to genocide. On the other hand, in other contexts individual and collective civil and
political rights of liberal democracy introduced opportunities for ethnic minorities to
gain (limited) access to power or political and cultural autonomy. Still, hegemonic
control has retained a presence, especially in non-democratic or partially democratic
states. South Africa between 1948 and 1990 was a clear example of ethnic hegemonic
control, with full access to democracy, citizenship and civil rights restricted to a white
minority.
In states where the principles of liberal democracy apply to the whole population,
ethnic minority control like in South Africa under apartheid is much rarer. A functioning
democracy tends to either give minorities some access to power or to establish majority
rule. The latter means that a majority ethnic group controlling the state institutions
with limited influence for one or more minority ethnic groups is rather common in
democratic societies. For instance, in Israel (Smooha 1990) a Jewish majority has
dominance over an Arab minority, in post-communist Estonia (Pettai and Hallik 2002)
the Estonian majority allows limited influence for an ethnic Russian minority, while in
relatively recent history there were clear situations of majority ethnic control in
functioning democracies in Northern Ireland, the southern United States, and of
aboriginal populations in Canada, Australia and the United States. In such situations
of ethnic democracy the dominance of one group is institutionalised, and the dominant
272 Frans Schrijver
ethnic group gains power disproportionate to its size. This is in contrast to
consociationalism, where proportionality is a key element in maintaining a power
balance between the different segments of society. The most well documented case of
ethnic democracy is Israel, where Arabs with Israeli citizenship can vote in elections but
enjoy restricted political and social rights in practice, for instance through the exclusion
of political parties that negate the principle that ‘the State of Israel is the state of the
Jewish people’ and through the exemption of Israeli Arabs from mandatory military
service, thereby excluding them from the social rights tied to the symbolic importance
of military service (Peled, 1992).
The dominance of one group in ethnic democracies is reflected in a control of political
decision-making, monopolisation of positions in government, and the establishment of
a structure of governance favourable to the leading ethnic group. But it is also
manifested through incorporation of de facto ethnic inequality in unwritten rules, and
through a monopolisation of state symbols by one ethnic group. That is the case when
for instance the language, religion, cultural symbols such as national holidays, and
national aspirations of the hegemonic ethnic group also become those of the state as a
whole, with little room for the national ambitions or iconography of minority ethnic
groups at state level. Take for instance the adoption of Estonian as the only official
language of Estonia and of the initially restrictive language requirements for
naturalisation and electoral candidates, despite the presence of a substantial Russian
minority (Pettai and Hallik, 2002). This institutionalisation of ethnic dominance can
create a situation where the de jure existing political rights and civil liberties of a liberal
democracy covering the whole population become restricted de facto for ethnic minority
groups.
In an ethnic democracy – in contrast to non-democratic or partially democratic
forms of ethnic hegemonic control – there are democratic procedures in place for ethnic
minorities to negotiate better terms of coexistence. However, a situation of ethnic
democracy can only survive through a strict interpretation of democracy as majority
rule with little minority influence. Although this raises questions of injustice, some have
advocated ethnic control as a relatively stable settlement for ethnic conflicts. Ian Lustick
argues that ‘certain forms of control may be preferable to the chaos and bloodshed that
might be the only alternatives’ in ‘particular situations and for limited periods of time’
(1979, p. 344). Whether it is indeed possible in a democracy to introduce ethnic control
for a limited amount of time is doubtful, considering that it might be tempting for the
majority ethnic group to cling to its hegemonic position as long as possible. In reality
what is introduced as temporary solution can easily turn into a stable and permanent
settlement, as retreating from the status quo into a solution requiring more compromise
might become less and less appealing to the dominant majority. Apart from that,
proponents of consociationalism, federalisation or regionalisation would argue that
very rarely are ‘chaos and bloodshed’ truly the only alternatives to hegemonic control.
Assimilation and the quest for national unity

The instruments of ethnic conflict accommodation discussed above work under the
assumption that the most effective way to deal with ethnic conflict is by facilitating
existing ethnic differences, or at least acknowledge them. In contrast, assimilation
policies aim to eradicate ethnic differences in society, to take away the basis for ethnic
conflict. Assimilation is a process whereby an ethnic group gives up the cultural identity
and sense of belonging that distinguish it from other groups (Gordon, 1964), and
adopts those either of another ethnic group or of a newly created transcendent ethnic
identity. This mostly is the outcome of unequal power relations and often involves
some form of coercion. It should, however, be distinguished from other methods that
aim to do away with existing ethnic differences by making ethnic minorities ‘disappear’,
such as genocide, ethnic cleansing or population transfer.
Assimilation as used here is a form of social integration, and both have been mostly
discussed in relation to immigration. The particulars of ethnic conflict related to
immigrants are briefly touched upon below, but assimilation has been widely applied to
deal with non-immigrant ethnic minorities as well. The merger of several ethnic groups
into an overarching national identity, often modelled on that of a dominant group, has
been common in historical processes of nation-building. The classic example of France,
and the nineteenth-century process of turning ‘peasants into Frenchmen’ described by
Weber (1976), demonstrates that in the long run assimilation can be rather successful.
With the exception of parts of Corsica, the French Republic managed to assimilate
most of its many constituent regional identities into one French nation. However, any
success achieved through assimilation policies should be set against the coercion that is
needed to make groups give up their identity. French unity was not achieved without
force, just as the Russification of non-Russian parts of the Soviet Union could be
achieved only by violent means.
Often assimilation through coercion is counterproductive, because it is exactly the
threat of the disappearance of a minority culture that makes ethnic minorities rebel and
causes ethnic conflict. The use of force against an established ethnic group in order to
force them to abandon their way of life can provide references and memories to be used
in the mobilisation of resistance for generations afterwards. Take for example sympathy
for the Basque separatist organisation ETA among significant sections of the population,
partly as result of the attempts in Spain under Franco to oppress Basque cultural
distinctiveness (Lecours, 2008). In Iraq, attempts to eradicate a Kurdish cultural
identity, using brute force, have been similarly unsuccessful (O’Leary and Salih, 2006).
Social integration policies can be more benign, often aiming to take away obstacles
to interaction between ethnic groups and reducing socioeconomic inequalities along
ethnic lines that can go hand in hand with ethnic segregation. Assimilation goes further,
aiming to make cultural differences within a society disappear, or fuse different cultures
into one common culture. Because changing a person’s culture, way of life and group
identification takes time, assimilation is always a long process, mostly taking several
generations of intermarriage and nation-building. It requires consistent efforts of what
Michael Billig (1995) has called ‘banal nationalism’, the constant and habitual
production and reproduction of nations in everyday life. As Billig writes, ‘for such daily
reproductions to occur, one might hypothesise that a whole complex of beliefs,
assumptions, habits, representations and practices must also be reproduced’ (1995, p.
6). This ‘banal’ reproduction of nationalism applies to the everyday maintenance of
existing nations and their populations, but also certainly to the process of assimilation
of minority ethnic groups into a national majority culture.
Ethnic conflict and immigration

The different ways in which ethnic conflict is accommodated in unitary states discussed
above mostly deals with long-established groups that often claim a territory within the
274 Frans Schrijver
state as their homeland. Examples would be the Basques, Québécois, Kurds or Hutus.
But the discussion of assimilation as a response to ethnic conflict already showed that
in public and academic debates concepts like ‘ethnicity’ and ‘minority’ are also
associated with immigrants. And just like ‘native’ ethnic groups can get into conflict
with each other, there can be tensions between a native ethnic majority and immigrant
ethnic minorities. In both cases there can be a similar connection between ethnicity and
access to political power, and claims for political and cultural autonomy from both
national minorities and immigrants.
Regarding political or cultural claims of both types of ethnic minority as a threat to
national unity, in many cases hegemonic state actors tend to treat national minorities
and immigrants in a broadly similar way. In France for instance both the claims for
cultural autonomy of national minorities like the Bretons and Corsicans and of
immigrant minorities are denied with reference to risks of ‘communautarisme’
(Schnapper, 2004), submitting the individual members of a group to the norms of a
cultural minority community. According to this logic, the state should be culturally
neutral, and any recognition of minorities (both native and immigrant) and facilitation
of their culture would diverge from that neutrality. However, one could question
whether the state can indeed be neutral through a strict application of Western liberal
democracy, and in practice this restriction of recognition of cultural expression is
applied much less strictly to the dominant majority.
In contrast, some, like the political philosopher Will Kymlicka, argue for differential
treatment of immigrants and national minorities, suggesting that while the formation
of an autonomous societal culture is viable for territorially concentrated national
minorities, this is not appropriate for immigrant groups, who ‘lack the territorial
concentration or historical institutions needed to sustain a vibrant societal culture’
(Kymlicka, 2001, p. 54; see also Kymlicka, 1995).
The debate over whether or not claims of national minorities should be met with the
same state response as those of immigrant minorities reaches a particular level of
complexity in the case of immigration into the territories of national minorities (Carens,
2000; Zapata-Barrero, 2007). Territories like Quebec, Catalonia, Flanders and Scotland
are not only the regions or ‘homelands’ of ethnic minorities within their respective
states, but also increasingly places of immigration. In those situations an established
ethnic conflict can be further complicated, with the ethnic minority at state level
(Catalans, Flemish, etc.) turned into an ethnic majority at regional level, facing a choice
of responses to immigrant ethnic minorities themselves. In federal states this may
involve far-reaching choices over immigration policy, but in unitary states this will
mostly be limited to minor adaptations of state-wide immigration policies. Take for
instance the arrangement in federal Canada that allows the government of Quebec to
apply its own immigration selection criteria, and recruit immigrants from French-
speaking countries, compared to the introduction in the unitary United Kingdom of
the option for immigrants in Wales to take citizenship tests in Welsh.
Conclusion
The enormous variation of unitary states worldwide means that it is impossible to
distinguish a single type of response to ethnic conflict chosen by unitary states. It is true
that the ideal-type unitary state emphasises the importance of the protection of the
unity of the state, its territory, and its single and homogeneous nation, and views ethnic
conflict and claims of ethnic minorities as a threat to that unity. It follows that the
stereotypical unitary state response to ethnic conflict and difference is one of
assimilation, with the elimination of ethnic difference as objective, or accommodation
from a perspective of ‘damage control’. But, although some states come close to that
ideal type, the ethnically and nationally completely homogeneous state does not exist.
Some unitary states have followed pluralist policies that provide ethnic minorities with
a far-reaching degree of autonomy, whereas some of the most brutal policies aimed at
the eradication of ethnic difference have been used in federal states.
Ethnic conflict has produced two sovereign states and new members of the United
Nations in the twenty-first century at the time of writing: Montenegro and Timor-
Leste. Both are unitary states, as is the overwhelming majority of new independent
states that emerged from the break-up of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. The choice
for a unitary state system often reflects a desire to maintain, or establish, national unity
after gaining independence. However, many of those states that were born out of ethnic
conflict are in turn confronted with ethnic minorities within their own borders and the
need to formulate policies in response to their political and cultural claims. These
situations offer fruitful case studies for the further exploration of the dynamics and
tensions of dealing with plurality in unitary states.
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22 National cultural autonomy
David J. Smith
In the first two to three decades after World War II it was widely, though mistakenly,
assumed that ethnicity had ceased to be a significant factor in European politics. Increasingly
challenged from the 1970s, this view lost any remaining credence following the end of the
Cold War. Ethnic politics has been a particularly visible feature of the former socialist
countries since the turn of the 1990s. Nearly all of the states in this region are home to a
diverse array not just of ethnic groups, but of established societal cultures. The economic
turbulence of the late socialist period, coupled with a collective memory of past oppression
and the absence of any strongly rooted tradition of democratic institutions, created fertile
terrain for ethnic conflicts. This was especially so in the countries that were created or
reconstituted following the demise of the Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia. Here,
‘stateness’ appeared particularly insecure. To many outsiders, the bloodshed that occurred
in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo merely confirmed a view of Eastern
Europe as a backward locus of intolerant ethnic nationalism. Parallels could, after all,
readily be found with the period from 1878 to 1945, when the region’s ‘national question’
contributed in no small measure to the outbreak of two world wars. This stereotype,
however, obscures a rich tradition of multicultural thought within the region, which has
produced innovative approaches to the democratic management of ethnic diversity.
A good example is the concept of national cultural autonomy (NCA, also known as
non-territorial cultural autonomy), which was first devised at the turn of the twentieth
century by the Austrian social democrats Karl Renner (1870–1950) and Otto Bauer
(1881–1938). These ‘Austro-Marxists’ sought to transform the then Habsburg
monarchy into a democratic multinational federation based on ‘personal, not territorial
characteristics’ (Renner 2005, p. 32). Their ideas also attained widespread currency
within the western provinces of the neighbouring Tsarist empire. Renner and Bauer’s
vision was overtaken by the tumultuous events of 1914–23, when multi-ethnic empires
gave way to a belt of new nation-states and – farther east – to the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics (a very different kind of ‘federation’ from the one envisaged by the
Austro-Marxists). The NCA concept was nevertheless carried over into the democratic
‘New Europe’ of the post-First World War era: during the 1920s it informed laws on
minority rights adopted by Estonia and Lithuania and also became the guiding principle
of the Congress of European Minorities, a transnational lobby group that sought to
reform the League of Nations and challenge the primacy of the indivisibly sovereign
nation-state within international relations. These inter-war developments could easily
be dismissed as a quaint experiment belonging to a bygone age were it not for the fact
that laws on NCA have been adopted in a range of Central and East European countries
since 1991, as well as forming part of Belgium’s federalist model.
National cultural autonomy 279
‘Austro-Marxism’ and the origins of national cultural autonomy
As Aviel Roshwald (2001, p. 5) has observed, the rise of nationalism as an ideology and
political movement during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries exerted a
centrifugal force within the ethnically complex territories of Central and Eastern
Europe. This posed a challenge not just for imperial rulers, but also for those liberal
and socialist circles that were committed to halting rising demands for national
territorial sovereignty amongst the empires’ subject nationalities and realising
universalist principles of democracy and social equality within existing territorial
boundaries. Whereas orthodox Marxists tended to dismiss the entire concept of
nationality as a form of bourgeois false consciousness, Renner and Bauer’s everyday
experience of politics in late imperial Austria convinced them that demands for cultural
recognition by the various nationalities would have to be addressed if the solidarity of
the socialist movement was to be maintained. In 1899, Renner set out his vision in an
article entitled ‘Staat und Nation’. Bauer followed suit with The National Question and
Social Democracy, published in 1907. A lawyer by training, Renner saw the rule of law
as integral to solving the ‘national question’. By making each ‘national group’ a
‘collective juridical subject in the constitutional order’ (Bowring 2005, p. 191) and
according cultural autonomy on that basis, ethnicity would cease to be a bone of
political contention. In this way, it would be possible to engineer a shift towards ‘a
more progressive agenda of political action unhampered by nationalist division’
(Schwarzmantel 2005, p. 64).
The novelty of NCA lies above all in its non-territorial approach to the issue of
national self-determination. The model is founded on the ‘personality principle’, which
holds that ‘totalities of persons are divisible only according to personal, not territorial
characteristics’ (Renner 2005, p. 32). Under Renner’s scheme, the state would allow
representatives of national groups to set up public corporations and elect their own
cultural self-governments. Bauer in particular recognised that ethno-national groups
are, to a large extent, historically developed communities of fate and character and thus
bear something of an inherited, deterministic quality. A democratic approach to the
issue nevertheless dictated that ethnicity – rather like religion – be treated as a matter of
personal conviction and ‘a feature of the legal status of the individual’ (Renner 2005, p.
22). In an extension of the ‘personality principle’, membership of the proposed public
corporations was to be on the basis of individuals freely determining their ethnicity and
voluntarily enrolling on a national register. Those signing up in this way would be
eligible to elect the representatives of the cultural self-government, but would also be
liable to pay cultural taxes to the corporation, to supplement funding provided by state
and municipal authorities. Once constituted, the cultural self-governments could
assume full control over schooling in the relevant language and other issues of specific
concern to the group. The jurisdiction of the aforementioned bodies would not be
confined to particular territorial sub-regions of the state, but would extend to all citizens
who professed belonging to the relevant nationality, regardless of where they lived.
Territory had ‘a significant role to play as an organisational principle’ within Renner’s
federal scheme, which envisaged the subdivision of the Habsburg realms into eight
economic regions. However, the personality principle alone could form ‘the constitutive
principle which brings about the separation of the nationalities and the union of
individuals’ (Renner 2005, p. 29). In the highly complex ethnic environment of Central
and Eastern Europe, any effort to resolve the national question solely on the basis of
territorial sovereignty for different groups was doomed to failure, for, regardless of
280 David J. Smith
how territorial boundaries were drawn, national and political space would never be
entirely congruent. A system of non-territorially based representation was therefore
necessary to cater for those citizens who wished to preserve their distinct ethnic identity
but who constituted a cultural minority within their region of residence. Otherwise, the
territorial principle would dictate that ‘if you live in my territory, you are subject to my
domination, my law and my language!’ (Renner 2005, pp. 27–28). Oppression of
minorities, rather than equal rights, would continue to be the order of the day, and
national conflicts would be localised but not definitively regulated.
Inter-war experiments and debates

Contemporary critics frequently dismissed the entire NCA vision as ‘utopian’. However,
as Renner asked in his original article, why should it be seen as any more so than
German and Czech national programmes based on territorial sovereignty? The rightness
of this view was confirmed after 1918, when attempts to realise national self-determination
on a territorial basis simply recreated the problems of the old empires in miniature:
each of the ‘successor states’ in the region contained significant ethnic minority
populations. The NCA principle did, however, live on within the three Baltic States.
These states rested on the concept of self-determination for the ethnic Estonian, Latvian
and Lithuanian nations; however, the specific circumstances of their creation ensured
that the liberal federalist ideas of the late and immediate post-tsarist period were carried
over into the new constitutional provisions that they adopted.
Thus, the 1918 declarations of Baltic independence were addressed to everyone
residing within the boundaries of the new states. In the case of Latvia, the 1922
constitution made reference to a single political ‘nation of Latvia’, while stating that
ethnic Latvians were only one of a number of ‘sovereign and autonomous’ ethnic
communities entitled to preserve their distinct cultural heritage, religion and language
(Plakans 1995, p. 127). In 1925, Estonia adopted a law giving representatives of the
country’s largest ethnic minorities the right to establish their own public legal
corporations, on the basis of citizens freely entering their names on a national register.
The first step under the law was to register at least half of the members of the designated
ethnic minority; if this was achieved, elections could be organised for a cultural council,
in which at least half of the registered voters had to take part. Once the cultural council
was in place a two-thirds majority vote by its members was required in order to
implement cultural autonomy and appoint a cultural self-government with control over
those schools teaching in the relevant minority language. As Karl Aun (1949, p. 241)
has observed, the constituency of minority cultural self-government in Estonia thus
derived from ‘the deliberate personal will of individual nationals living within the state
territory’. Once cultural autonomy had been established, everyone enrolled on the
national register was required to pay additional taxes to the cultural self-government.
This supplemented existing funding provided by the state, which continued to exercise
a broad supervisory role. Anyone unwilling to fulfil this added obligation, however,
could withdraw from the respective national register by means of a simple written
declaration. If the number of those enrolled on the register fell below 50 per cent of
those belonging to the relevant minority (as established by national census), the state
could dissolve the institutions of minority self-government.
Estonia’s 1925 law on cultural autonomy was promptly implemented by the country’s
German and Jewish minorities, whose small size and dispersed settlement meant that
existing municipalities were not always obliged to offer them native-language schooling.
The 1925 legislation was, however, highly complex. In order to implement and sustain
it, minority groups necessarily had to bring to bear considerable financial and human
resources. In this respect, Estonia’s German and Jewish minorities were also more
sociopolitically cohesive, and generally more highly educated and better-off, than other
minority groups eligible for cultural autonomy. In this regard, the fact that Estonia’s
Russian population never implemented the law was mainly down to the unwillingness
of a predominantly rural and impoverished population to pay additional taxes for the
purposes of education (Smith 1999). This was compounded by political in-fighting
amongst the ethnic Russian political elite, and the sheer practical difficulties of enrolling
45,000 ethnic Russian voters on to a national register, all this in the face of high levels
of illiteracy in rural areas.
The failure by Estonia’s Russians to implement NCA obviously undermined
arguments that were made regarding the more general applicability of this model to
Central and Eastern Europe’s diverse ethno-national groups. Such arguments were
frequently advanced from 1925 onwards by the Congress of European Minorities.
Established largely on the initiative of ethnic Germans from Estonia and Latvia, the
CEM lobbied the League of Nations for the establishment of a pan-European guarantee
of minority rights based upon the NCA principle. In 1931 the League Minority
Secretariat did produce a report on NCA, but it was highly dismissive.
Of greatest concern to League officials was the profoundly ‘anti-modernist’ character
of Baltic legislation. The NCA scheme was very much at odds with prevailing Western
orthodoxies, which regarded the unitary ‘atomist-centrist’ model of nation-statehood
as the only viable template for the future development of Central and Eastern Europe.
In the aftermath of World War I, the League of Nations and the dominant Western
European powers at its heart had espoused the concept of minority rights in their
dealings with the new successor states. Minority protection treaties stipulated that
persons belonging to ‘non-titular’ ethnic minorities should enjoy equal treatment as
well as certain positive rights relating to the practice of their language and culture, such
as the right to receive primary education in their mother tongue and to form their own
private cultural organisations. Any violation of these provisions – which fell far short of
the autonomy accorded in Estonia and Latvia – could be reported to the League of
Nations by means of a petition. In reality, however, the minority procedures of the
League were such as to ensure that the sovereignty of individual states was scrupulously
respected and upheld. Minorities, by contrast, were reduced to objects rather than
subjects of international law.
In sum, the minority provisions of the peace settlement were envisaged as little more
than a transitional stage in a process leading to the eventual assimilation of non-titular
national groups into a single dominant societal culture. Any suggestion of creating
public institutions for minorities as an intermediary between individual citizens and the
state was therefore distrusted and seen as likely to undermine the sovereignty and
cohesion of new countries by encouraging the formation of ‘states within states’.
According to one League official:
the ‘complete’ solution to the minorities problem rests on the development, in

countries of mixed population, of a spirit of national tolerance and liberalism, a
development which will be no less long and painful than that which took place in
the sphere of religious tolerance, but which will become all the more difficult if a
282 David J. Smith
system of separatism in certain branches of the common life of the state becomes
generalised.
(Krabbe 1931)
The activists of the Minorities Congress retorted that in the specific context of Central
and Eastern Europe, where the emergence of popular (ethno-)national consciousness
had preceded that of the modern state, cultural self-government was essential precisely
in order to forestall the potential emergence of irredentist nationalism. In support of
their arguments, they pointed to the example of Estonia, where practical experience of
NCA during 1925–30 had shown previous fears of a ‘state within a state’ to be wholly
exaggerated. Policies predicated on assimilation, by contrast, seemed only to be fuelling
ethnic antagonism and conflicts across the region.
While League officials were certainly misguided in their support for assimilation,
they were right to underline the importance of a shared public space uniting all ethnic
groups living within a particular territory. Cultural autonomy may help to encourage
loyalty to a state, but it is obviously not the be-all and end-all in the construction of an
integrated multi-ethnic political community. Equally, if not more important are
guarantees of equal rights and opportunities for all citizens, regardless of ethnicity, the
possibility for all ethnic groups to participate meaningfully in decision-making and the
emergence of a cross-ethnic civil society that ensures continuous dialogue across
community boundaries. In the absence of this, there is a potential danger that cultural
autonomy could reinforce ethnic particularity and become conducive to ghettoisation
and marginalisation of particular groups, particularly if ethnic and socioeconomic
boundaries coincide.
In Renner and Bauer’s original proposals, NCA was to be completed by a
consociational-style, power-sharing government, which would contain elected
representatives of all the various ethnic groups living within the state. It was further
envisaged that German would function as a unifying lingua franca at the level of state
administration, while the state would exercise broad supervision of all schools in order
to ensure the attainment of common standards across the various nationally organised
systems of education. Generally, however, the proposals were vague on how inter-
ethnic interaction was to be ensured. The assumption here seems to have been that the
attainment of a socialist order would necessarily guarantee equality of all citizens,
regardless of ethnicity, and that this would remove any remaining scope for disputes
between different groups.
The successor states that emerged in the region between Germany and the Soviet
Union – with the partial and ambiguous exceptions of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia
– were configured as unitary nation-states. Political decision-making power was
necessarily weighted towards the ‘titular’ ethnic majority, even in countries like Estonia,
where non-titular minorities had been granted considerable cultural autonomy. League
of Nations procedures were supposed to offer guarantees against any ‘nationalising’
practices on the part of these states, but these procedures were, as already noted,
essentially toothless. This explains why the Congress of European Minorities lobbied
so hard for a change in League Institutions that would give minority representatives
subjectivity alongside representatives of state governments. The ultimate aim was to
end the primacy of the indivisibly sovereign state within the international system and to
create a Europe of nationalities alongside the existing Europe of territorial states. Yet
the liberal activists that headed the Congress in the late 1920s also realised that the
ethnic harmony so essential to European unity could not be engendered through
negotiations at the state level – it had to be fostered more organically from below. The
Congress leaders thus urged representatives of minority groups to eschew all talk of
border revisions and to engage positively with the political process within the states
they inhabited. Only in this way would they win the trust of the ethnic majority and
engender a more inclusive and multicultural concept of political community.
The inter-war period, however, represented a thoroughly unpropitious context for
realising the Congress vision of a Europe ‘beyond the nation-state’. In a situation where
the ‘national question’ was essentially viewed as a security rather than a cultural issue,
it was hard to counteract the power of ethnic politics within the new states. Not
surprisingly, the NCA system was to the profound distaste of nationalists, not just
amongst the titular ethnic majority, but also within minority communities themselves.
Even though Baltic German activists within Estonia played a key role in pushing
through the 1925 NCA law, more conservative and reactionary circles within this ethnic
group dismissed the model as unworthy of a group that had traditionally constituted
the political, economic and cultural elite within the territories concerned.
Estonian nationalists for their part were aggrieved that under the 1925 law, persons
born into the now titular ethnic group were still able to opt for German nationality and/
or cultural orientation – this following decades of struggle for cultural recognition
within the old empires and the creation of a sovereign Estonian republic. As was the
case in neighbouring Latvia, calls to create a more ‘complete’ nation-state persisted
throughout the 1920s and later intensified during the Great Depression, when attention
was drawn to the prominent position that minority groups still occupied within the
local economy. The authoritarian regimes that were installed in Estonia and Latvia
during 1934 significantly restricted the individual freedom to choose nationality and
language of instruction, while seeking to prioritise the needs of the titular ethnicity
within the economic sphere. This ‘nationalising’ turn was frequently justified not only
by reference to past injustices, but also to perceptions of external threat following the
rise to power of Hitler in Germany and the penetration of Nazi influences into the
Baltic German milieu.
NCA in post-Cold War Europe

The NCA experiments of the 1920s, however, cannot simply be dismissed as an
historical dead end. Since the end of the Cold War governments in Central and Eastern
Europe and international organisations working within the region have again been
faced with the ‘dilemma of ethno-cultural diversity’ (Roshwald 2008) – how to ensure
equal treatment and adequate cultural recognition for different ethnic groups without
undermining state cohesion. Compared to the inter-war period, the discourse of
multiculturalism and minority rights is today a more established feature of the
international political agenda, while the rise of ethno-regionalist movements in many
Western European states has seen a trend towards devolution and regional
self-government during recent years. Territorially based devolution, however, is not
generally regarded as being similarly applicable to Central and Eastern Europe.
Although ethnic conflicts have not materialised to the extent predicted at the start of
the 1990s, the legacy of past conflicts means that nationality issues are still securitised
to a far greater degree than in the western part of Europe. Appeals for greater autonomy
by Hungarians living in Transylvania or southern Slovakia or Russians living in
284 David J. Smith
north-east Estonia are thus regarded as masking an irredentist agenda. It is against this
background that NCA has come back into the equation: autonomy based on personal
characteristics is seen as far less politically contentious than the territorially based
alternative, which can all too easily be construed as posing a threat to the integrity of
the state. NCA has also been seen as having particular relevance for the region’s Roma
minority: rather like the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe between the wars, the
Roma are a prime example of a territorially dispersed ‘stateless nation’ for whom
minority rights could not readily be realised on a territorial basis.
National cultural autonomy has thus been applied in a variety of contexts in Central
and Eastern Europe since the 1990s, with mixed results. In early 2005 the Estonian
model of cultural autonomy was invoked as part of discussions on a new draft minority
law in Romania. Mindful of ethnic Romanians’ historically rooted sensitivities over
Transylvania, the ethnic Hungarian initiators of the draft law felt that a proposal to
grant a non-territorial form of autonomy to Hungarians and other minorities living in
that region (and in Romania more broadly) would stand a better chance of being
accepted by parliament. A similar concern to buttress the territorial integrity of the
state lay behind Russia’s NCA law, adopted in 1996. In the view of those who drafted
the law, the inherited Soviet model of ethno-territorial federalism increased the potential
for separatism and undermined the prospects for building a new Russian (Rossiiskii)
political community within Russia’s existing territorial boundaries. A shift to
non-territorial autonomy, it was argued, would help to strengthen a popular sense of
belonging to a single, multi-ethnic state community; introducing such a system appeared
all the more logical given that a considerable proportion of Russia’s ‘non-titulars’
actually resided outside their designated territorial homeland (Tolz 2001, pp. 249–56).
The draft NCA law in Romania failed, however, to make it on to the statute book,
as a majority of deputies felt that the proposed powers to be accorded to minority
self-governments contravened the terms of the Romanian constitution (Decker 2008).
In the case of Russia, the 1996 law gave rise to a considerable number of new autonomous
bodies; yet the limited powers and resources accorded to these meant that, in practical
terms, there was little to distinguish them from existing non-governmental organisations.
In the original conception of NCA, the territoriality at the heart of the Soviet model
was to be subordinated to individual human rights and national cultural autonomy.
The new institutions were to have a legal standing equal to that of the national republics
within the Federation. What actually emerged in 1996 was a much watered down
variant, in which NCAs functioned as a supplement to an essentially unchanged system
of territorial autonomy. The existing leaders of Russia’s ethnic republics had thus
proved adept in defending the status quo. Russia’s NCA experiment appeared to have
run its course by 2004, since when national autonomy in all of its forms has seemed
increasingly under threat from a more directive and ‘nationalising’ central government
(Bowring 2008).
According to some commentators, the example of Russia undermines the contention
that NCA might serve as a ‘catch-all’ model applicable to all of the states and minorities
of Central and Eastern Europe. Obviously, in the case of territorially dispersed
minorities, NCA represents the only viable option. However, Will Kymlicka (2008, p.
52) has argued that in the case of other, more compactly settled ethnic communities ‘the
link between national identities and territory’ runs very deep ‘and is central to
self-understanding, histories and aspirations’. The fact that national territorial
autonomy is today an established feature of many Western democracies, Kymlicka
argues, makes it all the more difficult to deny this right to corresponding minorities
living within the post-socialist east. As such, cultural autonomy should be viewed as a
complement rather than an alternative to territorially based approaches.
Arguably the most successful example of contemporary NCA can be found in
Hungary, which in 1993 became the first of the post-socialist states to adopt a national
minority law along these lines. Given the very small proportion of national minorities
within Hungary’s population, the introduction of a minority law proved relatively
uncontroversial, while the territorially dispersed nature of minority settlement lent
itself to non-territorial autonomy. The law was also adopted partly with an eye to
gaining membership of European international organisations, and to the needs of
Hungarians living in neighbouring countries, which, it was hoped, might follow
Hungary’s example by adopting corresponding laws towards their own non-titular
minorities. Introduced amidst much fanfare, the 1993 law has since been widely
implemented: as many as 1,200 minority self-governments – half of them Roma – have
been established. The Hungarian case has, however, highlighted a number of practical
issues surrounding the implementation of cultural autonomy, issues which will seem
familiar to anyone familiar with the NCA debates of the 1920s.
Central to Renner and Bauer’s original scheme was of course the entry of one’s name
on a national register. Memories of negative historical experiences, however (including
forced migration of Germans after World War II and (involuntary) Slovak–Hungarian
population exchanges), meant that minority representatives were unwilling to support
a law on that basis (Dobos 2008, p. 121). This issue was perhaps of greatest concern to
Hungary’s Roma. Subject to past persecution by dint of their ethnicity and mostly
disadvantaged in socioeconomic terms, many Roma have feared that asserting their
own cultural identity might lead to their being identified as a caste apart and singled out
for differential treatment (Dobos 2008, p. 122). Consequently, the original law adopted
in 1993 specified that local-level minority cultural self-governments were to be elected
by all voters within a particular district, regardless of ethnic provenance. In certain
instances, this provision has boosted the system of minority self-government, since it
has opened up the possibility for so-called ‘sympathy votes’ from other voters who do
not belong to a particular minority group but nevertheless feel well disposed towards it.
On the other hand, it has at times eroded the legitimacy of elected self-governments:
even where voters from other groups are well disposed, they are not necessarily well
versed in the affairs of the relevant minority or familiar with its representatives. This
necessarily led to flawed outcomes as far as the representativeness of particular minority
self-governments was concerned. For instance, a tendency was observed whereby most
votes flowed to the first name indicated on the alphabetically arranged list of candidates.
This had predictable consequences in terms of the behaviour of particular groups when
drawing up their electoral lists.
Since candidates for minority self-governments were also not required to publicly
declare their ethnicity, the 1993 law also opened up scope for so-called ‘ethno-business’
– the manipulation of the system by political entrepreneurs who had little obvious
affiliation to the minority group concerned. In some cases, those putting themselves
forward as ‘German’ or ‘Romanian’ representatives were actively seeking to acquire
the benefits of office in terms of social capital and finances; in another case concerning
the Roma, the local Hungarian population was able to engineer the election of mostly
non-Roma candidates to a ‘Roma’ minority government, thereby thwarting the
establishment of a genuinely representative minority body (Dobos 2008, p. 124). As a
286 David J. Smith
result of these anomalies, the cultural autonomy law was eventually amended in 2005,
and an obligatory system of enrolment on national registers – for candidates and voters
alike – was introduced. The reform also introduced a new system of proportional
representation for the election of local minority self-governments, after complaints that
the previous single majority voting system had served to exclude entire interest groups
from the structures that were supposed to be speaking on behalf of an entire local
minority (Dobos 2008, p. 125).
The problems of implementing NCA in a contemporary setting, however, do not
detract from the essential validity of Renner and Bauer’s original argument – namely
that in the ethnically complex environment of Central and Eastern Europe the principle
of national territorial sovereignty cannot in itself bring about a lasting regulation of the
nationalities question. Some nationalities remain stateless, and even where a national
group has an obvious historical link with a particular territory, some of its members
will invariably fall outside the ‘ethnic homeland’. As Ephraim Nimni (2000, p. vii) has
observed, it was the great merit of Renner and Bauer that they foresaw the misery that
would ensue from efforts to carve out nation-states for aggrieved subject peoples within
the former empires. The limitations of the culturally homogenising, indivisibly sovereign
nation-state model became painfully apparent in Central and Eastern Europe between
the wars, and the longer-term viability of this approach appears similarly questionable
in today’s setting. In this respect, as the OSCE Commissioner for National Minorities,
Max Van der Stoel (1999, p. 172), observed back in 1999, insufficient attention has still
been paid to non-territorial forms of autonomy as part of a package of targeted minority
rights in CEE. As European governments and international organisations grapple with
the question of how to embed ethnicity within a liberal democratic framework of state
and supranational institutions, Renner and Bauer’s original ideas – as well as the 1920s
debates and experiences around NCA – still seem well worth revisiting. For, despite all
the potential pitfalls of the NCA scheme, its critics have yet to come up with any better
alternative for addressing the ‘national question’ (McGarry and Moore 2005).
Further reading
K. Aun (1949) On the Spirit of the Estonian Minorities Law (Stockholm: Societas Litteratum
Estonia in Svecia).
O. Bauer (2000) The Question of Nationalities and Social Democracy (Minneapolis MN:
University of Minnesota Press).
J. Hiden (2004) Defender of Minorities. Paul Schiemann, 1876–1944 (London: Hurst).
E. Nimni (ed.) (2005) National Cultural Autonomy and its Contemporary Critics (London and
New York: Routledge).
K. Renner (1899/2005) ‘State and Nation’ in E. Nimni (ed.) National Cultural Autonomy and its
Contemporary Critics (London and New York: Routledge).
D. J. Smith and K. Cordell (eds) (2008) Cultural Autonomy in Contemporary Europe (London
and New York: Routledge).
References
K. Aun (1949) On the Spirit of the Estonian Minorities Law (Stockholm: Societas Litteratum
Estonica in Svecia).
B. Bowring (2005) ‘Burial and Resurrection: Karl Renner’s Controversial Influence on the
“National Question” in Russia’ in E. Nimni (ed.) National Cultural Autonomy and its
Contemporary Critics (Abingdon and New York: Routledge), pp. 191–206.
—(2008) ‘The Tatars of the Russian Federation and National Cultural Autonomy: A
Contradiction in Terms’ in D. J. Smith and K. Cordell (eds) Cultural Autonomy in
Contemporary Europe (London and New York: Routledge).
D. Christopher Decker (2008) ‘The Use of Cultural Autonomy to Prevent Conflict and Meet the
Copenhagen Criteria: The Case of Romania’ in D. J. Smith and K. Cordell (eds) Cultural
Autonomy in Contemporary Europe (London and New York: Routledge).
B. Dobos (2008) ‘The Development and Function of Cultural Autonomy in Hungary’ in D. J.
Smith and K. Cordell (eds) Cultural Autonomy in Contemporary Europe (London and New
York: Routledge).
L. Krabbe (1931) ‘L’autonomie culturelle comme solution du problème des minorités. Note de
M. Krabbe au date du 18 novembre 1931’, League of Nations Archives, Geneva, R2175 4
32835.
W. Kymlicka (2008) ‘National Cultural Autonomy and International Minority Rights Norms’ in
D. J. Smith and K. Cordell (eds) Cultural Autonomy in Contemporary Europe (London and
New York: Routledge).
J. McGarry and M. Moore (2005) ‘Karl Renner, Power-sharing and Non-territorial autonomy’
in E. Nimni (ed.) National Cultural Autonomy and its Contemporary Critics (Abingdon and
New York: Routledge), pp. 74–94.
E. Nimni (2000) ‘Introduction for the English-reading Audience’ in O. Bauer, The Question of
Nationalities and Social Democracy (Minneapolis MN: University of Minnesota Press).
A. Plakans (1995) The Latvians: a Short History (Stanford CA: Hoover Institution Press).
K. Renner (2005) ‘State and Nation’ in E. Nimni (ed.) National Cultural Autonomy and its
Contemporary Critics (Abingdon and New York: Routledge), pp.15–48.
A. Roshwald (2001) Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires: Central Europe, Russia and the
Middle East, 1914–1923 (London and New York: Taylor & Francis).
—(2008) ‘Between Balkanisation and Banalisation: Dilemmas of Ethno-cultural Diversity’ in D.
J. Smith and Karl Cordell (eds) Cultural Autonomy in Contemporary Europe (London and
New York: Taylor & Francis).
J. Schwarzmantel (2005) ‘Karl Renner and the Problem of Multiculturalism’ in E. Nimni (ed.)
National Cultural Autonomy and its Contemporary Critics (Abingdon and New York:
Routledge), pp. 63–73.
D. J. Smith (1999) ‘Retracing Estonia’s Russians: Mikhail Kurchinskii and Inter-war Cultural
Autonomy’, Nationalities Papers, 27: 3, pp. 455–74.
V. Tolz (2001) Russia: Inventing the Nation (London: Arnold)
M. Van der Stoel (1999) Peace and Stability through Human and Minority Rights: Speeches by the
OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities (Baden-Baden: Nomos).
23 Centripetalism
Benjamin Reilly
Two major political trends since the end of the Cold War have been the ongoing spread
of democracy over autocracy as a form of government, and the growing prominence of
intrastate rather than interstate forms of violent conflict. Between them, these
countervailing forces defined world politics for much of the post-Cold War period.
Beginning with the collapse of authoritarian regimes in Spain and Portugal in 1974 and
working its way through Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia, what
Samuel Huntington dubbed the ‘third wave’ of democracy led to a threefold increase in
the number of democracies around the globe. At the same time, however, the world
also witnessed a drastic change in the expression of large-scale conflict, towards internal
violence, rather than the wars between states of the past. Simply put, democratisation
and internal conflict comprise two of the most important currents of political change in
the contemporary world.1
This reality has led to a renewed focus in both scholarly and policy worlds on the
optimal democratic designs for conflict-prone societies. As third wave democracies
drafted new constitutions and forged new political systems, there was a tremendous
upsurge of interest in optimal strategies for democratic consolidation in post-conflict or
transitional states. Accompanying this was a change in the dynamics of international
development assistance and the role of multilateral institutions such as the United
Nations. Spurred by the liberalisation of previously autocratic states in Africa, Asia,
Eastern Europe and Latin America, the international community has invested heavily
in concepts of democracy promotion, electoral support and ‘good governance’ as key
elements in the creation of stable and peaceful states.
The past decade has seen an explosion of interest in issues of institutional design in
new democracies, particularly those in which the international community is heavily
invested. Scholars interested in the management of ethnic conflict advocated overt
‘political engineering’ as a means of promoting stable democracy in deeply divided
societies. Amongst advocates, several contrasting approaches to political engineering
for the management of social cleavages exist. One is the scholarly orthodoxy of
consociationalism, discussed elsewhere in this volume, which relies on elite co-operation
between leaders of different communities, and draws on a wealth of studies of (mostly)
European countries by scholars following in the tradition of Arend Lijphart. Under
this model, specific democratic institutions – such as grand coalition cabinets,
proportional representation elections, minority veto powers and communal autonomy
– collectively maximise the independence and influence of each main ethnic group.
Taken to an extreme, entire political systems can be structured around ethnic interests,
Centripetalism 289
thereby becoming examples of communalism, in which explicit ethnic criteria of
representation such as ethnically predetermined seat ratios or voter rolls are used.
An alternative prescription for divided societies to consociationalism and
communalism is what has been called centripetalism – so called ‘because the explicit aim
is to engineer a centripetal spin to the political system – to pull the parties towards
moderate, compromising policies and to discover and reinforce the centre of a deeply
divided political spectrum’.2 As a shorthand for a political system or strategy designed
to focus competition at the moderate centre rather than the extremes, centripetalism
eschews the reification of ethnic identity inherent in consociationalism and
communalism, instead advocating the need for aggregative, centrist and inter-ethnic
politics in divided societies. Prominent centripetal scholars such as Donald Horowitz
argued that deeply divided societies such as post-apartheid South Africa should seek to
foster intercommunal moderation by promoting multi-ethnic political parties which
can encourage inter-group accommodation.3 In the same vein, my own work has
highlighted how centripetal reforms centred around cross-cutting electoral incentives
have lowered electoral violence in highly fragmented states such as Papua New Guinea.4
The competing claims of different institutional models of ethnic conflict management
stimulated one of the great political science debates of the 1990s, and had a significant
impact on constitutional choices in a range of post-conflict societies. While proponents
of both consociational and centripetal models can point to some successes (and more
failures), developments over the past decade have seen a bifurcation in terms of the ‘real
world’ experience of each model. On the one hand, high-profile cases of post-conflict
peace-building such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Northern Ireland and most recently
Iraq have all adopted broadly consociational political settlements. On the other hand,
many emerging democracies in Africa, Asia and Latin America have adopted broadly
centripetal reforms when refashioning their own domestic institutions. This chapter
examines the key institutional elements of centripetalism as a model of political
engineering in such developing democracies, focusing particularly on the key democratic
institutions such as electoral systems, political parties and other mechanisms of
representation.
Centripetalism compared
In terms of political engineering, both centripetalist and consociationalists focus on
core democratic institutions such as political parties, electoral systems, and cabinet
governments, and on the territorial division of state powers via federalism. However,
their specific recommendations regarding each of these institutions differ enormously.
In terms of the development of political parties and party systems, for instance, the
two approaches are almost diametrically opposed. Consociationalists favour
parties which represent social cleavages explicitly, via ‘bonding’ rather than
‘bridging’ strategies – that is, parties which ‘focus upon gaining votes from a narrower
home-base among particular segmented sectors of the electorate’.5 The ideal
consociational party system is one in which individual parties are based around clear
social cleavages, and in which all significant social groups, including minorities, can
‘define themselves’ into ethnically based political parties. Only by parties formed
around segmental cleavages, consociationalists contend, can political elites negotiate
delicate ethnic issues effectively.6
290 Benjamin Reilly
Centripetalists reject this elite-driven approach, and the reification of ethnicity which
goes with it. Rather than ‘making plural societies more truly plural’7 as consociationalism
proposes, centripetalists instead seek to dilute the ethnic character of competitive politics
and promote multi-ethnic outcomes. For instance, rather than focusing on the fair
representation of ethnically defined political parties, centripetalists place a premium on
promoting multi-ethnic parties and cross-ethnic activity instead. In so doing, they
emphasise the importance of institutional designs which encourage co-operation,
accommodation and integration across ethnic divides, thus working to break down the
salience of ethnicity rather than fostering its representation institutionally. In direct
opposition to consociational theory, centripetalism maintains that the best way to
manage democracy in divided societies is not to replicate existing ethnic divisions in the
legislature and other representative organs, but rather to depoliticise ethnicity by putting
in place institutional incentives for cross-ethnic behaviour, in order to encourage a
degree of accommodation between rival groups.
Both consociational and centripetal proposals for conflict management tend to focus
on electoral systems, political parties and other mechanisms of representation as
offering the most potential for effective political engineering. Again, however,
centripetal recommendations run sharply counter to the prevailing orthodoxy. Perhaps
the clearest distinction between the two approaches is in relation to electoral system
design. One of the most fundamental relationships in political science is that between
electoral and party systems, and specifically between fair representation of minorities
and proportional electoral systems. For this reason, proportional representation is
frequently advocated as a key reform in ethnically plural societies, so as to ensure fair
representation of minorities and majorities alike. However, there is a difference between
representation and power: a minority can be fairly represented in a legislature but
completely shut out of political power in government. In addition, PR tends to fragment
the party system and encourage parties to craft their appeals around narrow sectarian
interests, such as ethnicity – precisely because they can be secure in gaining election by
appealing to a relatively narrow section of society.
For this reason, centripetal strategies endorse electoral rules that make politicians
reciprocally dependent on the votes of members of groups other than their own, and
advocate more broadly the creation of multi-ethnic political parties and other
representative bodies. Specific institutional devices to achieve this outcome include the
use of preferential or cross-regional voting rules, political party laws which require
multi-regional party organisation, and legislative selection procedures which encourage
median, centrist outcomes. Institutions which give parties and candidates electoral
incentives to ‘pool votes’ across ethnic lines, centripetalists such as Horowitz contend,
can encourage vote-seeking politicians to reach across the ethnic divide and, in so
doing, help take the heat out of ethnic politics.8
How can such desirable outcomes be encouraged? In an earlier book on electoral
engineering for divided societies, I examined the record of centripetalism as a conflict
management strategy, and identified three facilitating components:
• The presentation of electoral incentives for campaigning politicians to reach out to

and attract votes from a range of ethnic groups other than their own, thus encouraging
candidates to moderate their political rhetoric on potentially divisive issues and
forcing them to broaden their policy positions.
Centripetalism 291
• The presence of multi-ethnic arenas of bargaining such as parliamentary and
executive forums, in which political actors representing different identity groups
have an incentive to come together and cut deals on reciprocal electoral support, and
hence potentially on other more substantial policy issues as well.
• The development of centrist, aggregative and multi-ethnic political parties or coalitions
of parties which are capable of making cross-ethnic appeals and presenting a complex
and diverse range of policy options to the electorate.9
These components of centripetalism should, ideally, be self-reinforcing: parties and

candidates that adopt conciliatory policy positions and make compromises in the
search for electoral victory will be more likely to pick up a broader share of votes than
those who choose to maintain a narrowly focused, sectarian approach. If the votes
gained by so doing can outweigh the votes lost to the extremes by being moderate (a big
if in deeply divided societies), then electoral rewards should accrue to those who occupy
the political centre. To attract such support, candidates may need to make cross-ethnic
appeals and demonstrate their capacity to represent groups other than their own. In
other cases, where a moderate or non-ethnic ‘middle’ of the electorate exists, candidates
may need to move to the centre on policy issues to attract these voters, or to accommodate
fringe issues into their broader policy. Either way, elected candidates will be dependent
to a certain extent upon the votes of groups other than their own core support base for
their electoral success, and can be expected to serve the needs of these groups as well as
their own ethnic group if they are to establish their positions and gain re-election. In
short, those candidates who can successfully sell themselves as a good median choice
should, under sensitively designed electoral systems, be rewarded with a greater vote
share than those with more polarised support.
By what specific institutional designs can such desirable outcomes be encouraged in
divided societies, where co-operation across social cleavages is, by definition, lacking?
One approach is to structure electoral processes so as to require successful candidates
to gain support across different regions of a country, thus helping to break down the
appeal of narrow parochialism or regionalism. Another is to give campaigning
politicians incentives to seek the second-preference votes of rival electors under
vote-transfer electoral systems which allow the expression of a gradation of political
preferences. A third is to require multi-ethnicity within political parties and other
representative bodies, via requirements for heterogeneous party lists or cross-regional
party organisation, thus making parties themselves a potential site for multi-ethnic
bargaining. While having very different impacts and effects, these all represent
centripetal forms of institutional design, in that they all seek to nudge representative
democracy away from the politics of ethnic solidarity towards greater interethnicity.
Institutional designs
The ‘distribution requirement’ applied at presidential elections in Nigeria, Kenya and
Indonesia is an example of the first kind of approach, which seeks to encourage cross-
regional politics by requiring winning presidential candidates to gain not just a majority
of the vote, but a spread of the vote across most parts of the country, in order to be
elected. First introduced in Nigeria in 1979, distribution requirements have been mostly
used for presidential elections in large, ethnically diverse states in order to ensure that
winning candidates receive a sufficiently broad spread of votes, rather than drawing
292 Benjamin Reilly
their support from a few regions only. Nigeria, for instance, requires a President to win
a majority overall and at least one-third of the vote in at least two-thirds of all states.
The Kenyan constitution provides a similar threshold, requiring successful candidates
to win a plurality of the vote overall as well as one-quarter of valid votes cast in at least
five of the eight provinces. In Indonesia, the winners of presidential elections have to
gain over 50 per cent of all votes nationally as well as at least 20 per cent in half of all
provinces to avoid a second-round run-off.
There is disagreement amongst scholars as to the utility of such devices, with some
interpreting them as impotent or even harmful interferences with the democratic
process, while others see them as important mechanisms for muting ethnic conflict and
ensuring the election of broad, pan-ethnic presidents.10 The empirical evidence to date
reflects this divergence of opinion. In both Kenya and Nigeria, problems have arisen
with the operation of the system when no candidate has met the required cross-national
vote spread, as has occurred in both countries. But despite these problems, distribution
requirements have remained a feature of national electoral politics, and in Nigeria have
been extended to parliamentary elections as well as via a rule that makes national party
registration dependent on their vote share at local elections.11 In Indonesia, distribution
laws have proved more successful. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono won a
landslide first-round election victory in 2009, easily amassing the necessary distribution
of votes across the archipelago. Indeed, S.B.Y. (as he is commonly known) provides a
good example of the kind of president centripetalists endorse: centrist, moderate, with
broad-based support from a range of different regions and groups. For this reason,
distribution requirements have also been proposed for presidential elections in Iraq.12
A more direct and potentially more powerful centripetal approach to electoral system
design is to use preferential, rank-order electoral systems such as the alternative vote
(AV) or the single transferable vote (STV), which require voters to declare not only
their first choice of candidate, but also their second, third and subsequent choices
amongst all candidates standing. Under AV rules, if no one gains an outright majority,
these votes are transferred according to their rankings in order to elect a majority-
supported winner. STV, as a proportional system, uses a quota rather than a majority
threshold for election, but the same basic principle applies. While the best known
examples of such vote-transfer systems are the established democracies of Australia
and Ireland, such systems have also been used in a number of ethnically divided
developing democracies, including Papua New Guinea, Northern Ireland and Fiji, as
well as one-off uses at parliamentary elections in Estonia (1990) and sub-regional
presidential polls in Bosnia and Herzegovina (2000). AV and STV systems also have a
history of use in several Canadian provinces and US cities. Other related systems
include the supplementary vote for presidential elections in Sri Lanka and London
mayoral elections, and variants of the Borda count for parliamentary elections in
Nauru and some seats in Slovenia.13
Because they enable politicians to make deals for reciprocal vote transfers from their
rivals, in ethnically diverse societies such systems present vote-maximising candidates
with incentives to attract secondary preference votes from groups other than their own,
so as to ensure the broadest possible range of support for their candidacy. To obtain
such cross-ethnic support, candidates must behave accommodatively on core issues,
tempering their rhetorical and policy positions so as to attract broad support. There is
evidence of this practice occurring in very different types of multi-ethnic societies,
including Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Northern Ireland, at different times.14 However,
Centripetalism 293
the utility of using such systems in deeply divided societies remains a subject of debate:
the accommodation-inducing potential of ‘preference swapping’ is dependent on a
range of facilitating conditions, including a competitive party system, an ethnically
heterogeneous electorate and a degree of moderate sentiment existing in the community
at large. For this reason, critics have pointed to the difficulties of inducing
accommodation via electoral engineering, and questioned whether vote transfers have
indeed promoted moderate outcomes in cases such as Northern Ireland and Fiji.15
Other centripetal electoral reforms seek to undercut the logic of ethnic politics by
requiring political parties to present ethnically mixed slates of candidates for ‘at large’
elections, thus making voter choice contingent, at some level, upon issues other than
ethnicity. In multi-ethnic societies as diverse as Singapore, Lebanon and Djibouti,
electoral laws require parties to include ethnic minorities on their candidate lists in
multi-member districts, meaning that some degree of cross-ethnic voting is mandated
by the electoral system. However, these kinds of stipulations are often more tokenistic
than substantive. In Singapore, for instance, parties and alliances contesting the
fourteen multi-member ‘Group Representation Constituencies’ must include candidates
from designated ethnic minorities on their ticket – an arrangement which requires only
a minimal degree of cross-ethnic voting while guaranteeing that nine seats in the
Singaporean parliament will be occupied by Malays and five by Indians or other
minorities. In Africa, the island states of the Comoros and Mauritius have also
introduced measures to ensure ethnic minority representation via ‘best loser’ schemes
for members of underrepresented groups or parties.
Other cross-voting schemes mix centripetal and communal incentives. Lebanon’s
‘confessional’ political system, in which parliamentary seats are equally divided between
Christian and Muslim members, with key executive offices such as the President and
Prime Minister also allocated on a sectarian basis, is perhaps the best-known example.
There, the composition of the 128 seat national assembly is preordained, with an even
split between Christians and Muslims, as well as specified seat balances for Sunni, Shi’a,
Maronite, Druze and other ‘confessional’ groups within each religious community.
Key executive offices such as the presidency, prime ministership and the parliamentary
speaker are also allocated on a sectarian basis. Elections are contested by inter-ethnic
(or, more accurately, inter-confessional) electoral alliances which match the preordained
confessional structure of each multi-member electoral district. In practice, this requires
all electors to engage in a degree of cross-voting by choosing candidates who hail from
outside as well as within their own confessional identity group. But the Lebanese model
also has real drawbacks, fixing ethnic identities in place and making communal
affiliation the basis of the entire political system.
Fiji provides another, even more complex, example of a cross-voting in the shape of
the political system which existed there from independence in 1970 until the ethnically
motivated coup of 1987. Like Lebanon, the ethnic balance of the parliament was
pre-determined, with twenty-two seats reserved for Fijians, twenty-two seats reserved
for Indo-Fijians and the remaining eight seats reserved for ‘General Electors’ (i.e.
Europeans, Chinese and others). Of these fifty-two seats, twenty-three were designated
as ‘national’ seats which required voters from one ethnic community to vote for
candidates from a different community, in order to ensure that elected members from
these seats would have to draw a degree of cross-communal support from all groups.
To do this, the system required each elector in Fiji to cast no fewer than four votes: one
for their communal (co-ethnic) representative, and one each for a ‘national’ candidate
294 Benjamin Reilly
from each of the other three designated communal groups. An indigenous Fijian voter,
for example, would vote for a Fijian candidate in his or her communal electorate, and
then cast three additional votes – one for a Fijian, one for an Indo-Fijian and one for a
General Elector – in the appropriate national electorates.
There is also the intriguing case of the ‘constituency pooling’ model proposed (but
never implemented) in Uganda in the 1970s. According to Matthijs Bogaards, this was
first introduced in the Ugandan electoral law of 1971 as a means of overcoming regional,
ethnic and religious differences and of encouraging the creation of national political
parties. Under this proposal, candidates would stand for election in four different
electoral districts at the same time: their ‘basic’ district and three ‘national’ districts.
The country was divided into four regions (North, East, West and South) and each
district belonged to a different region. Lots were drawn to link constituencies from the
four regions to each other. In each basic district, two to three candidates of the single
party were allowed to stand. The candidate who received the largest overall percentage
of votes, combining the ‘basic’ constituency and the ‘national’ constituencies, would
win the seat in the basic constituency. As in Fiji, each elector had four votes: one for a
candidate in their basic constituency, plus three for national candidates. Unfortunately
for comparative purposes, Idi Amin seized power in a military coup and cancelled the
elections. However, the cross-voting nature of this proposal clearly makes it another
example of centripetal electoral system design.16
A final area of focus by political engineers attempting to promote centripetal
outcomes has been through direct attempts at shaping the nature of political parties
and party systems. Indeed, efforts to foster larger, aggregative parties, while actively
discouraging sectional or minority groups, have been a distinctive feature of
democratisation in Africa, Asia and Latin America.17 Again, one of the clearest
examples is to be found in Indonesia – the world’s most populous emerging democracy
and largest Muslim country. There, parties must establish an organisational network in
two-thirds of the provinces across the archipelago, and in two-thirds of the municipalities
within those provinces, before they can compete in national elections, while a separate
threshold has also been introduced to limit the representation of splinter parties. These
rules are intended not just to make it difficult for regionally based or secessionist
movements to organise (although an exception has been made for local parties in Aceh
under the terms of the 2005 peace deal there), but also to promote the development of
nationally focussed political parties.18 As such, the party law shares a common
centripetal logic with Indonesia’s presidential electoral system, which also includes
(weaker) incentives for cross-regional support.
Political party engineering is also popular in other regions. In Africa, some twenty-
two countries have introduced requirements that parties maintain a national presence,
as part of what Bogaards (in an important contribution) refers to as strategies of
‘aggregation’.19 But most of these are also accompanied by overt bans on ethnic parties,
which tend to have little if any impact on actual party development. In Latin America,
ethnic parties are not a major issue, but there have been similar attempts to encourage
aggregative and nationally oriented parties with a cross-regional organisational base.
States such as Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Mexico, and
Peru have all introduced spatial registration rules for political parties. In Mexico, for
example, parties must have at least 3,000 affiliates in ten out of the thirty-two states, or
one-third of federal districts, while in Ecuador and Peru parties must meet officially
inscribed membership levels in at least half of all provinces. However, Ecuador, which
Centripetalism 295
introduced spatial registration rules in the 1970s to combat party fragmentation, also
provides a cautionary tale. There, the introduction of spatial rules helped consolidate
the party system, but at the cost of wiping out Ecuador’s nascent indigenous parties,
which relied on regionally concentrated Amerindian support.20
As these divergent examples suggest, political engineering and institutional design to
encourage centripetal outcomes is an uncertain process fraught with unintended
consequences. Nonetheless, measures to promote cross-ethnic politics and political
aggregation – two key centripetal outcomes – appear to be growing in popularity,
particularly in new democracies. The attractiveness of such reforms can be explained by
several factors. Theoretically, centripetalism draws upon core political science ideas
about the nature of social cleavages, particularly Seymour Martin Lipset’s classic
arguments about the virtues of cross-cutting cleavages for promoting stable democracy.
Normatively, the virtues of political aggregation and centrism are advocated by many
scholars, particularly those schooled in the Anglo-American tradition of two-party
politics. Empirically, centripetal reforms are also more compatible with majoritarian
political models than alternatives such as consociationalism, and thus are attractive for
political reformers looking to promote more aggregative, stable political systems – a
frequently expressed desire in many new democracies.
Critiques
Centripetalism has attracted significant criticism on empirical and conceptual grounds.
Empirically, critics point to the paucity of centripetal models in the real world; the
limited application of cross-voting electoral systems, distribution requirements and
other favoured devices; the difficulty in both forming and sustaining multi-ethnic
political parties and coalitions in divided societies; and the ambiguous real-world
experience of particular institutions such as the alternative vote.21 However, many of
these critiques focus on the experience of a few high-profile cases such as Northern
Ireland or (recently) Fiji, but tend to ignore other larger but less well known examples
of centripetalism in action such as Indonesia or Papua New Guinea. For instance, the
reintroduction of AV laws in Papua New Guinea and the subsequent reduction in
electoral conflicts at the 2007 national elections has yet to be incorporated into
comparative discussions of centripetalism. Neither has the success of the peacemaking
process in Bougainville, which includes a number of centripetal reforms such as cross-
voting reserved seats for women, youth and ex-combatants as well as AV presidential
elections.22
As noted above, centripetalism is also criticised for being essentially majoritarian in
nature. As the logic of centripetalism is focused above all on the potential benefits of
aggregation – of votes, of opinions, of parties – at one level, this is correct. G. Bingham
Powell, for example, notes that political aggregation lies at the heart of what he calls the
‘majoritarian vision’ of democracy: ‘the majoritarian view favours much greater
aggregation, while the proportional view emphasises the importance of equitable
reflection of all points of view into the legislature’.23 For this reason, critics of
centripetalism have often identified the majoritarian nature of its institutional
recommendations as a key weakness.24 Centripetalists respond that they favour ‘a
majoritarian democracy that will produce more fluid, shifting majorities that do not
lock ascriptive minorities firmly out of power’.25 In other words, while centripetalism is
indeed a majoritarian model, it is a majoritarianism of broad-based parties and inclusive
296 Benjamin Reilly
coalitions – not a majoritarianism of ‘ins’ and ‘outs’, of ethnically defined majorities
and minorities. By contrast, centripetalists ideally favour an aggregative party system,
in which ‘one or two broadly based, centrist parties fight for the middle ground’,26 and
therefore endorse the development of multi-ethnic parties or coalitions. Over time, it is
argued, the presence of such party constellations can serve to depoliticise social cleavages
and foster more fluid, cross-cutting affiliations. In practice, this means that rather than
advocating proportional elections, as per the scholarly orthodoxy, centripetal
approaches instead favour an aggregative majoritarianism, with more emphasis on the
process by which different groups work together than strict fairness of outcomes.
Interestingly, the majoritarian themes of the centripetal approach and their emphasis
on aggregative, ‘bridging’ political parties are echoed by and find support in a quite
separate scholarly literature, on the political economy of development. Both literatures,
for example, advocate aggregative political institutions, majoritarian electoral processes
and broad-based ‘catch-all’ parties or coalitions. These same recommendations are also
prominent in the ‘developmental state’ literature on the optimum political arrangements
for economic development in new democracies. Thus, various works co-authored by
Stephan Haggard have consistently argued that a system of two large parties or
coalitions is the most propitious arrangement for democratic durability during periods
of economic adjustment while fragmented or polarised party systems represent a major
barrier to achieving economic reform.27 Such recommendations suggest a growing
convergence amongst different political science sub-disciplines on the benefits of
centripetal institutions for political development and stability.
Conclusion
In practice, the political engineering models of consociationalism, centripetalism and
communalism should probably be seen more as ideal types rather than coherent,
all-encompassing prescriptions. Indeed, many countries use combinations of each
approach. Table 23.1 sets out the key recommendations of each approach.
Table 23.1 Consociationalism, centripetalism and communalism compared
Consociationalism Centripetalism Communalism
Elections
List PR lists in large districts to Vote-pooling to make Communal electoral rolls;
maximise proportional politicians dependent on sectarian division of parliament
outcomes communities other than their
own
Parties
Ethnic parties each Non-ethnic or multiethnic Ethnic parties for communal
representing their own ethnic parties or party coalitions element of elections
group
Cabinets
Grand coalition governments; Multiethnic coalition Formal power-sharing
minority veto on important governments. No minority arrangements based on vote or
issues vetoes seat share
Centripetalism 297
Despite their differences, there is some agreement on some broader issues. For
instance, there is a general consensus on the capacity of political institutions to change
political outcomes, and hence on the utility of political engineering. Common ground
is also found in the central role ascribed to political parties and electoral systems as key
institutional variables influencing the reduction – or escalation – of communal tensions
in ethnically diverse societies. A third area of agreement is the broad acceptance of the
need in divided societies to deal with the political effects of ethnicity directly, rather
than wishing them away. At a minimum, this means some type of government
arrangement that gives all significant groups access to power, either directly or
indirectly. For this reason, multi-ethnic coalitions are favoured by both consociationalists
and centripetalists as a desirable form of power sharing for divided societies.
The contemporary experience of these different approaches has varied depending on
the severity of the conflicts at stake. In deeply divided post-war scenarios such as Bosnia
and Herzegovina, Northern Ireland and most recently Iraq, consociationalism remains
the dominant approach. However, this trend is party driven by the United Nations’
standard model of post-conflict democratisation, which favours the use of PR elections
and power-sharing governments in the immediate aftermath of a conflict. Elsewhere, in
less catastrophic cases, the trend in many regions has been away from the ethnically
based approach of consociationalism towards more fluid, centripetal models. Thus,
there has been a marked shift away towards centripetalism in many parts of the
developing world, particularly Asia and the Pacific, in recent years.28
Notes
1 Perhaps the best known exposition of this is Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave:
Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman OK: University of Oklahoma Press,
1991).
2 See Timothy D. Sisk, Democratization in South Africa: The Elusive Social Contract (Princeton
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 19.
3 See Donald L. Horowitz, A Democratic South Africa? Constitutional Engineering in a Divided
Society (Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 1991).
4 Benjamin Reilly, Democracy in Divided Societies: Electoral Engineering for Conflict
Management (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
5 Pippa Norris, Electoral Engineering: Voting Rules and Political Behavior (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004), 10.
6 See Arend Lijphart, ‘Self-determination versus pre-determination of ethnic minorities in
power-sharing systems’ in Will Kymlicka (ed.), The Rights of Minority Cultures (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1995). Similarly, consociationalists also favour ethnic federalism. As
with political parties, a key presumption is that constituent units should be as ethnically
homogeneous as possible in order to maximise each group’s control over their own interests
and resources.
7 Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration (New Haven CT:
Yale University Press, 1977), 42.
8 For surveys of these see Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, 597–600.
9 Reilly, Democracy in Divided Societies, 11.
10 See Timothy D. Sisk, Power Sharing and International Mediation in Ethnic Conflicts
(Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1996), 55.
11 Matthijs Bogaards, ‘Comparative strategies of political party regulation’, in Benjamin Reilly
and Per Nordlund (eds), Political Parties in Conflict-prone Societies: Regulation, Engineering
and Democratic Development (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2008), 54.
298 Benjamin Reilly
12 Andreas Wimmer, ‘Democracy and ethno-religious conflict in Iraq’, Survival 45: 4 (2003),
122.
13 Benjamin Reilly, ‘The global spread of preferential voting: Australian institutional
imperialism?’ Australian Journal of Political Science 39: 2 (2004), 253–66.
14 See Reilly, Democracy in Divided Societies, chapters 4–6.
15 John Coakley and Jon Fraenkel, ‘Do Preference Transfers assist Moderates in deeply divided
Societies? Evidence from Northern Ireland and Fiji’, paper presented at the annual meeting of
the American Political Science Association, Toronto, 2009.
16 See Matthijs Bogaards, ‘Electoral choices for divided societies: multi-ethnic parties and
constituency pooling in Africa’, Commonwealth & Comparative Politics 41: 3 (2003), 59–80.
17 See Reilly and Nordlund, Political Parties in Conflict-prone Societies.
18 For instance, at the April 2004 parliamentary elections most of these major parties were able
to attract a significant spread of votes across western, central and eastern Indonesia. While
there were clear regional strongholds (the Islamic parties dominated in Sumatra, PDI did best
in Java/Bali, while GOLKAR remained strong in eastern Indonesia), these were less
pronounced than in 1999, prior to the new party laws.
19 Matthijs Bogaards, ‘Comparative strategies of political party regulation’, in Reilly and
Nordlund, Political Parties in Conflict-prone Societies, 48–66.
20 See Jóhanna Kristín Birnir, ‘Stabilizing party systems and excluding segments of society? The
effects of formation costs on new party foundation in Latin America’, Studies in Comparative
International Development 39: 3 (2004), 3–27.
21 See Arend Lijphart, ‘The alternative vote: a realistic alternative for South Africa?’ Politikon
18: 2 (1991), 91–101; Andrew Reynolds, ‘Constitutional engineering in Southern Africa’,
Journal of Democracy 6: 2 (1995), 86–100; Jon Fraenkel, ‘The alternative vote system in Fiji:
electoral engineering or ballot-rigging?’ Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 39: 1 (2001),
1–31; Arend Lijphart, ‘Constitutional design for divided societies’, Journal of Democracy 15:
2 (2004), 96–109; Jon Fraenkel and Bernard Grofman, ‘A neo-Downsian model of the
alternative vote as a mechanism for mitigating ethnic conflict in plural societies’, Public Choice
121 (2004), 487–506.
22 See Benjamin Reilly, ‘Political Engineering in the Asia-Pacific’, Journal of Democracy 18: 1
(2007), 58–72.
23 Powell, G. Bingham, Elections as Instruments of Democracy: Majoritarian and Proportional
Visions (New Haven CT and London: Yale University Press, 2000), 26.
24 See, for example, Arend Lijphart, ‘Multiethnic democracy’ in Seymour Martin Lipset (ed.),
The Encyclopedia of Democracy (Washington DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1995),
863–64; Andrew Reynolds, Electoral Systems and Democratization in Southern Africa (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1999), 108–10.
25 Horowitz, A Democratic South Africa? 176.
26 Larry Diamond, ‘Toward democratic consolidation’, in Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner
(eds), The Global Resurgence of Democracy (Baltimore MD and London: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1996), 239.
27 See Stephan Haggard and Steven B. Webb, Voting for Reform: Democracy, Political
Liberalization and Economic Adjustment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Stephan
Haggard and Robert Kaufman, The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions (Princeton
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995).
28 See Benjamin Reilly, Democracy and Diversity: Political Engineering in the Asia-Pacific
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Further reading
Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, (Berkeley CA: University of California Press,
2000)
Centripetalism 299
Pippa Norris, Electoral Engineering: Voting Rules and Political Behavior (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004)
Benjamin Reilly, Democracy and Diversity: Political Engineering in the Asia-Pacific (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2006)
—Democracy in Divided Societies: Electoral Engineering for Conflict Management (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001)
Timothy D. Sisk, Power Sharing and International Mediation in Ethnic Conflicts (Washington
DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1996)
24 Power sharing
Stefan Wolff and Karl Cordell
Power sharing: an intellectual and empirical history

John Stuart Mill’s scepticism with regard to the possibility of democracy ‘in a country
made up of different nationalities’ (Mill 1861: 230) is perhaps the best-known and most
widely cited scholarly reflection of a phenomenon empirically all too often observable
as violent ethnic conflict. Yet, Mill’s scepticism has not, to date, resulted in either ever
more homogeneous democratic states or in an inability of heterogeneous countries to
become democratic polities. Rather, Mill’s dictum has been taken up as a challenge by
scholars and practitioners of institutional design in divided societies to find ways in
which democracy and diversity can be married in stable and democratic ways. The
answers given in theory and practice are vastly different, and a debate thus continues
unabated over which institutional design is best able to provide sustainable democracy
in ethnically heterogeneous societies. One such answer is ‘consociational democracy’,
prominently associated with the work of Arend Lijphart, as well as more recently with
that of John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary. Lijphart began to examine this particular
type of democratic system in greater detail for the first time in the late 1960s, when
making reference to the political systems of Scandinavian countries and of the
Netherlands and Belgium (Lijphart 1968, 1969). He followed up with further studies of
political stability in cases of severely socially fragmented societies, eventually leading to
his ground-breaking work Democracy in Plural Societies (Lijphart 1977). The
phenomenon Lijphart was describing, however, was not new. As a pattern of social
structure, characterising a society fragmented by religious, linguistic, ideological, or
other cultural segmentation, it had existed and been studied (albeit not as extensively)
long before the 1960s. These structural aspects, studied among others by Lorwin (1971),
were not the primary concern of Lijphart, who was more interested in why, despite their
fragmentation, such societies maintained a stable political process, and identified the
behaviour of political elites as the main, but not the only, reason for stability.
Furthermore, Lijphart (1977: 25–52) identified four features shared by consociational
systems – a grand coalition government (between parties from different segments of
society), segmental autonomy (in the cultural sector), proportionality (in the voting
system and in public sector employment), and minority veto. These characteristics,
more or less prominently, were exhibited by all the classic examples of consociationalism:
Lebanon, Cyprus, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, Fiji and Malaysia.
Some of these consociations – Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, and (so far)
Belgium – have provided long periods of democratic political stability, while others –
Lebanon, Cyprus, Fiji and Malaysia – have not. Lijphart also established conditions
Power sharing 301
conducive to consociational democracy. These included overarching, i.e. territorial,
loyalties, a small number of political parties in each segment, segments of about equal
size, and the existence of some cross-cutting cleavages with otherwise segmental
isolation. This latter point is important, as the absence of cross-cutting cleavages seems
to be a commonality in those countries in which consociation has not succeeded. In
addition to Cyprus and Lebanon being examples of failed consociation, Belgium’s most
recent experience of protracted government formation brings it close to failure, albeit
clearly not with the same violent aftermath that consociational failures in Cyprus and
Lebanon had. It is striking to note that in all three examples society had become
polarised around a single fault line: respectively an ethno-religious, linguistic and
religious cleavage.
Lijphart’s assumptions and prescriptions did not, of course, go unchallenged. He and
other advocates of consociational approaches to the political accommodation of
cultural diversity responded in two ways – by offering a robust defence of their views
and by gradually developing consociational theory further. Lijphart himself engaged
his critics most comprehensively in his book Power Sharing in South Africa (1985:
83–117) and in his contribution to Andrew Reynolds’s The Architecture of Democracy
(Lijphart 2002: 39–45). In the latter, he also offers a substantive revision of his original
approach, now describing power sharing and autonomy (i.e. grand coalition government
and segmental autonomy) as primary characteristics, while relegating proportionality
and minority veto to ‘secondary characteristics’ (2002: 39). Yet, in relation to his grand
coalition requirement, Lijphart maintains his earlier position that such executive power
sharing means ‘participation of representatives of all significant groups in political
decision making’ (2002: 41).
Subsequent developments of consociational theory, especially by John McGarry and
Brendan O’Leary (McGarry 2006; McGarry and O’Leary 2004a, b; O’Leary 2005a, b),
whilst acknowledging the importance of Lijphart’s oeuvre, have made one important
modification in particular in this respect. O’Leary contends that ‘grand coalition’ (in
the sense of an executive encompassing all leaders of all significant parties of all
significant communities) is not a necessary criterion; rather, he demonstrates that what
matters for a democratic consociation ‘is meaningful cross-community executive power
sharing in which each significant segment is represented in the government with at least
plurality levels of support within its segment’ (O’Leary 2005a: 13, and below).
In order to appreciate fully the current state of consociational theory, it is useful to
examine John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary’s The Northern Ireland Conflict:
Consociational Engagements (2004a, a collection of their joint and individual writings
on this conflict from 1987 to 2002), in particular its co-authored introduction on the
lessons that Northern Ireland holds for consociational theory more broadly. The
arguments put forward by McGarry and O’Leary here have also been rehearsed
elsewhere (e.g. McGarry and O’Leary 2006a,b; 2009a, b). These arguments are offered
arguments as a basis for a broad discussion among scholars on the merits of consociation
(and other techniques of conflict settlement).
Northern Ireland and its 1998 Agreement, McGarry and O’Leary maintain, ‘highlights
six important weaknesses in traditional consociational theory’ (McGarry and O’Leary
2004b: 5). These are the failure to address the role of external actors; the trans-state
nature of some self-determination disputes and the necessary institutional arrangements
to address them; the increasing complexity of conflict settlements in which consociational
arrangements form an important element but require complementary mechanisms to
302 Stefan Wolff and Karl Cordell
deal with ‘the design of the police, demilitarization, the return of exiles to their homes,
the management of prisoners, education reform, economic policy, and the promotion of
language and other group rights’ (2004b: 13); terminological and conceptual inaccuracies,
primarily associated with Lijphart’s grand coalition requirement; the merits of
preferential proportional electoral systems, e.g. Single Transferable Vote (STV); and the
allocation of Cabinet positions by means of sequential proportionality rules, i.e. the
d’Hondt mechanism. In dealing with these weaknesses, McGarry and O’Leary offer
both refinements of, and advancements to, traditional consociational theory. The
refinements relate, first, to the technical side of consociational institutions, where the
authors recommend STV instead of List-Proportional Representation as an electoral
system, as it militates against the proliferation of micro-parties. Second, McGarry and
O’Leary elaborate the usefulness of sequential proportionality rules, such as the d’Hondt
mechanism or the Sainte-Laguë method, in the allocation of Cabinet positions in order
to avoid protracted bargaining between parties and increase parties’ incentives to remain
part of cross-communal coalitions.
Before considering the remainder of O’Leary and McGarry’s recommendations, it
might be useful to pause at this juncture and consider the practical implications of their
recommendations as applied to Northern Ireland, a case that has informed much of
their writing. Examination of election results indicates that what may be of crucial
importance is not so much the employment of STV or List-PR, but how the remainders
are calculated. Although the electoral system employed in Northern Ireland Assembly
elections is designed to be inclusive, it inadvertently contributed to the demise of the
Ulster Democratic Party and failed to foster the Progressive Unionist Party as a serious
political force within wider Unionist politics. In turn it would not be unreasonable to
suggest that continued Loyalist violence was legitimised in the eyes of core supporters
of such groups, by virtue of the fact that the (aforementioned) parties had links with the
Loyalist paramilitaries and had no (sub-) national platform on which they could
articulate their grievances.
That to one side, and to return to the main theme, the advancements to traditional
consociational theory offered here, as well as elsewhere in their recent writings (e.g.
O’Leary 2005a, b; McGarry 2006), are a significant step forward in that they address
both long-standing criticisms of consociationalism and a gap between consociational
theory and conflict resolution practice. McGarry’s and O’Leary’s observations on
external actors bring consociational theory in line with an established debate in
international relations on the role of third parties in conflict resolution (see, for example,
contributions in Otunnu and Doyle 1998; Walter and Snyder 1999; Thakur and
Schnabel 2001; Carment and Schnabel 2003; Diehl and Lepgold 2003; Pugh and Singh
2003; Weller and Wolff 2008; Wolff and van Houten 2008). Equally important, their
discussion of the provisions in the 1998 Agreement that go beyond domestic institutions
and address the specific ‘Irish dimension’ of the Northern Ireland conflict reflect a
growing awareness among scholars and practitioners of conflict resolution that many
ethnic conflicts have causes and consequences beyond the boundaries of the states in
which they occur and that, for settlements to be durable and stable, these dimensions
need addressing as well. In the case of the 1998 Agreement for Northern Ireland,
McGarry and O’Leary highlight three dimensions: cross-border institutions which
formalise co-operation between the Northern Ireland Executive and the Irish
government (the so-called North–South Ministerial Council) and renew British–Irish
intergovernmental co-operation (the British–Irish Intergovernmental Conference); the
Power sharing 303
explicit recognition by the two governments of the right to self-determination of the
people in Northern Ireland and the Republic, i.e. the possibility for them to bring
about, in separate referendums, a united Ireland if that is the wish of the respective
majorities; and new institutions of regional co-operation, incorporating the UK and
Irish governments and the executive organs of the other two devolved regions in the
United Kingdom and its three dependent island territories in the Channel and the
Irish Sea.
These arrangements have earlier precedents in the history of conflict settlement in
Northern Ireland, but they are not unique to this case alone. Institutions of cross-
border co-operation have been utilised as part of comprehensive peace settlements
elsewhere as well – for example, in South Tyrol and Bosnia and Herzegovina – and
exist, of course, in less conflict-prone situations as part of arrangements between
sovereign states and/or sub-state entities – for example, in the European Union’s
Euro-regions. If we elaborate these points, we find that the diverging fortunes of South
Tyrol and Bosnia and Herzegovina vindicate O’Leary and McGarry’s point about the
importance of external actors. The positive support given by both Italy and Austria to
the Autonomy Statute for South Tyrol has been crucial in the process of facilitating the
accommodation of South Tyroleans within wider Italian society, and in diffusing what
could have become a very nasty conflict. With regard to Bosnia and Herzegovina, we
find the opposite to be true. Here, the relevant kin states, namely Croatia and Serbia,
pay little more than lip service to the agreements that established their neighbour and,
consciously or otherwise, encourage separatism that could still bring about the collapse
of state structures in Bosnia and Herzegovina. As for the European Union, it is an
example of one of the more successful cases of regional integration (albeit among
‘equal’ partners at the state or sub-state level), while the Nordic Council offers
arrangements similar to the British–Irish Council in bringing together sovereign states
and self-governing territories within them (cf. Danspeckgruber 2005; Nauclér 2005).
As far as the possibility of future status changes are concerned, such possibilities are
not unique to Northern Ireland or indeed the 1998 Agreement. In recent Northern
Ireland history a so-called border poll took place in 1973 but was almost completely
boycotted by nationalists and republicans. There had been an initial British commitment
to hold such polls at ten-year intervals, but this was unceremoniously and quietly
abandoned when it was seen to have inadvertently strengthened the hand of hard-liners
within the Unionist spectrum. Farther afield, the people of the Autonomous Republic
of Gagauzia in Moldova would have a one-off opportunity to exercise their right to
(external) self-determination if Moldova were to join Romania. The Comprehensive
Peace Agreement for Sudan offers the people in the South a referendum on independence
after six years (cf. Weller 2005), while the Bougainville Peace Agreement includes a
clause that envisages a referendum on independence to be held in Bougainville after ten
to fifteen years. Crucially, in all these situations, and including Northern Ireland, the
signatory parties have committed to respecting the outcome of these referendums.
A final, and perhaps the most significant, advancement of consociational theory is
McGarry and O’Leary’s contention that Lijphart’s grand coalition requirement is
overstated, as ‘what makes consociations feasible and work is joint consent across the
significant communities, with the emphasis on jointness’ (McGarry and O’Leary 2004b:
15). On that basis, they distinguish ‘unanimous consociations (grand coalitions),
concurrent consociations (in which the executive has majority support in each significant
segment) and weak consociations (where the executive may have only a plurality level
of support amongst one or more segments)’ (ibid.). The subsequent assertion, also
repeated in other writings, that ‘[c]onsociations become undemocratic when elites
govern with factional or lower levels of support within their segments’ (McGarry and
O’Leary 2004b: 15) is not fully convincing either theoretically or empirically, however.
Theoretically, assuming that ‘support’ means electoral support, a consociation is
democratic or not if its executive emerges in free and fair elections, not if it fulfils certain
numerical tests. Implicitly, what seems to be at stake is less the democratic credentials
of the arrangement, but its consociational nature, especially the criterion of jointness,
as jointness, more generally, implies equality and co-operation across blocs and some
genuine consent among the relevant mass publics for a democratic consociation and
thus excludes just any coalition, as well as co-optation of unrepresentative minority
‘leaders.’ By extension, an arrangement in which elites govern with low levels of support
from within their segments might also prove less stable compared to one in which an
executive can rely on broader levels of support. This was certainly true of Lebanon by
the early 1970s, where for a variety of reasons the unreformed consociational
mechanisms that had been in place since independence from France could no longer
satisfy significant sections of Lebanese society.
Insisting that plurality support is a minimum requirement for democratic
consociations is also empirically not without difficulties. In South Tyrol, for example,
the only formal requirement for the provincial executive is that it must reflect the
numerical strength of the linguistic groups as represented in the provincial parliament.
This means that an Italian party with less than plurality support can become a coalition
partner of a German party as long as it sends sufficient numbers of Ministers into the
provincial Cabinet that reflect the total numerical strength of all Italian parties in the
provincial parliament and provided that this government commands the required
majority in parliament.
The more recent writings by Lijphart, McGarry and O’Leary also indicate a clear
move from corporate toward liberal consociational power sharing. Corporate
consociationalism, however, is still evident to some extent in political practice: for
example, Bosnia and Herzegovina, under the original Dayton Accords, Northern
Ireland under the 1998 Agreement, Lebanon under the National Pact and under the
1989 Ta’if Accord, Cyprus under the 1960 constitution and proposed (but rejected)
Annan Plan all display features of predetermined arrangements based on ascriptive
identities. The main difference between the two is that a ‘corporate consociation
accommodates groups according to ascriptive criteria, and rests on the assumption that
group identities are fixed, and that groups are both internally homogeneous and
externally bounded,’ while ‘liberal … consociation … rewards whatever salient political
identities emerge in democratic elections, whether these are based on ethnic groups, or
on sub-group or trans-group identities’ (McGarry 2006: 3; see also Lijphart 1995;
O’Leary 2005a). This is another important modification of consociational theory that
addresses one of its more profound, and empirically more valid, criticisms, namely that
(corporate) consociations further entrench and institutionalise pre-existing, and often
conflict-hardened, ethnic identities, thus decreasing the incentives for elites to moderate
(e.g. Horowitz 1985: 566–76, 1991: 167 ff., 2003: 119). Once again Lebanon provides a
useful example. Here ethno-religious identities are so entrenched within the fabric of
the state that it is virtually impossible legally to leave one community and join another.
Similarly, although in Northern Ireland the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 has
certainly delivered at one level, at another it has not. While political institutions,
Power sharing 305
contrary to many predictions, continue to function, social segregation remains high. In
fact, given the political programmes of the two governing parties and their mutually
exclusive ideological profiles, it makes little sense for them to promote integration, as
opposed to co-operation across the divide. In the case of Lebanon in the 1970s, elites
both fed and succumbed to pressures from below, eventually causing the collapse of
political institutions, the state itself, and ultimately civil war. There is no sign of this
being apparent in Northern Ireland. However, as stated, neither is there any real sign
that mental and physical barriers are diminishing.
Beyond power sharing? The complementarity of power sharing with other

conflict settlement approaches
Territorial self-governance is an accepted feature within the liberal consociational
approach emphasising that the self-governing territory should define itself from the
bottom up, rather than be prescribed top-down. In the context of Iraq, for example,
McGarry (2006: 6–7) explains how this process has been enshrined in the Iraqi
constitution:
Kirkuk can choose to join Kurdistan if its people want. Governorates in other
parts of the country are permitted to amalgamate, forming regions, if there is
democratic support in each governorate. In this case, a twin democratic threshold
is proposed: a vote within a governorate’s assembly and a referendum. … It is also
possible for Shi’a-dominated governorates that do not accept SCIRI’s vision to
remain separate, and, indeed for any governorate that may be, or may become,
dominated by secularists to avoid inclusion in a sharia-ruled Shiastan or Sunnistan.
Liberal consociationalists also support the principle of asymmetric devolution of

powers, i.e. the possibility for some self-governing entities to enjoy more (or fewer)
competences than others, depending on the preferences of their populations (cf.
McGarry 2007). However, in order to be genuine, self-governance needs to be
complemented with what liberal consociationalists term ‘shared rule’, i.e. the exercise
of power at and by the centre and across the state as a whole. Yet we must distinguish
between theory and practice. For example, Russia is characterised by asymmetric
devolution of powers and indeed purports to be federal in character. However, the
practice of politics in Russia tells us that presidential (and prime ministerial) caprice
and whim count for more than does the constitution. While grand coalitions,
proportionality and minority veto rights continue to be favoured by liberal
consociationalists, when it comes to power sharing the emphasis is on co-operation and
consensus among democratically legitimised elites, regardless of whether they emerge
on the basis of group identities, ideology or other common interest. They thus favour
parliamentary systems, while acknowledging the merit and frequency of collective or
rotating presidencies in existing functioning consociations, proportional (PR list) or
proportional preferential (STV) electoral systems, decision-making procedures that
require qualified and/or concurrent majorities, and have also advocated, at times, the
application of the d’Hondt rule for the formation of executives (cf. Lijphart 2004;
O’Leary 2005a; O’Leary et al. 2005; see also Wolff 2003).
This means that liberal consociationalists prefer what O’Leary refers to as ‘pluralist
federations,’ in which co-sovereign sub-state and central governments have clearly
defined exclusive competences (albeit with the possibility of some concurrent
competences) whose assignment to either level of authority is constitutionally and,
ideally, internationally protected, in which decision making at the centre is consensual
(between self-governing entities and the centre, and among elites representing different
interest groups), and which recognise and protect the presence of different self-determined
identities (O’Leary 2005b). This preference for pluralist federations, however, remains
context-dependent, and is not per se part of liberal consociational thinking. In some
circumstances, e.g. where ethnic communities are not ethnonationalist (i.e. demanding
their own governance institutions), it is quite possible that a unitary state with power
sharing at the centre will suffice as a mechanism to settle conflicts.
In order to protect individuals against the abuse of power by majorities at the state
level or the level of self-governing entities, liberal consociationalism offers two remedies
– the replication of its core institutional prescriptions within the self-governing entity,
and the establishment and enforcement of strong human and minority rights regimes at
both the state and sub-state levels. Canada provides us with a good example of such
practices. Not only is the state federal, but Quebec enjoys a unique relationship with the
remainder of the federation, and with the creation of Nunavut special (administrative)
provision for at least some of Canada’s indigenous peoples exist within a federal
framework that is reinforced by a robust minority rights regime. As the example of
Canada further shows, the rights of communities – minorities and majorities alike – are
best protected in a liberal consociational system if its key provisions are enshrined in
the constitution and if the interpretation and upholding of the constitution are left to
an independent and representative constitutional court whose decisions are binding on
executive and legislature (cf. O’Leary 2005b: 55–58).
Key to liberal consociational prescriptions of institutional design in divided societies is,
therefore, the emphasis on the protection of self-determined (rather than predetermined)
identity groups through ensuring both their representation and effective participation in
decision making especially in the legislature and executive. The underlying assumption
here is that representation and participation together will ensure that different identity
groups recognise that their aims can be achieved, and interests protected, by political
means and do not require recourse to violence. This point reinforces our earlier comment
that consociations are most vulnerable either to violence or effective disintegration when
the consociation has been constructed in a society that lacks cross-cutting cleavages.
The examples of Belgium and Lebanon are instructive with regard to this point.
Although both possessed the ingredients necessary for the development of cross-cutting
cleavages, both failed to do so. Instead society became polarised around two major
fault lines. In the case of Lebanon civil war resulted, and in the case of Belgium it could
be argued that a post-consociational system is now in place that has full separation as
its probable logical conclusion.
A striking feature of contemporary conflict resolution practice is that a large number
of actual and proposed settlements involve a broad range of different conflict settlement
mechanisms compatible with liberal consociational prescriptions, as empirically
illustrated by Weller and Metzger (2008) and Wolff (2008a, b, 2009a, b, in press). This
reflects the assumption that a combination of consociational and other mechanisms can
indeed provide institutional solutions that are both acceptable to negotiators and
conducive to accommodating conflict parties in an institutional framework in which
they can settle their disputes by peaceful means. The need to combine a range of different
mechanisms has been increasingly understood by practitioners of conflict resolution and
Power sharing 307
has led to an emerging practice of conflict settlement that can be referred to as ‘complex
power sharing’. The term ‘complex power sharing’ was first used and conceptualised in
a research project funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York (‘Resolving
Self-determination Disputes through Complex Power Sharing Arrangements’). There,
complex power sharing regimes were distinguished ‘in that they no longer depend solely
on consociational theory, or solely upon integrative theory’, involve international actors
that ‘are often key in designing, or bringing experience to bear upon, the structure of the
eventual agreement, or its implementation’ and ‘consider a far broader range of issues …
and … address structural issues as diverse as economic management, civil–military
relations and human and minority rights, and…do so at many different levels of
government’, thus recognising ‘that at different levels of government, different strategies
may be more, or less, applicable, and consequently more, or less, successful, in
engendering peace and stability’ (Kettley et al. 2001: 4–5; Weller 2008). In a somewhat
similar vein, O’Leary (2005a: 34–35) uses the term ‘complex consociation’.
Complex power sharing, thus, describes a practice of conflict settlement that requires
a relatively complex institutional structure across different layers of authority from the
centre down to local government units and that cannot be reduced to autonomy/
(ethno-)federation, (traditional) models of power sharing, centripetalism or power
dividing, but rather represents a combination of them. Bosnia and Herzegovina provide
us with a good example of such practices, and also neatly illustrate the short-
term advantages and long-term drawbacks of such practices. However, liberal
consociationalism, both as a theory and as a set of policy prescriptions, is open to
incorporation of elements from other approaches, including, for example, centripetalism
and territorial pluralism. Within a liberal consociational framework, there is room (and
a recognised need) for a range of strategies not traditionally part of the core
consociational prescription, including a strong role for judicial entrenchment and
enforcement mechanisms, and universally applicable and enforceable human rights
legislation. Liberal consociationalism is also open to a vertical division of power on the
basis of non-ascriptive, i.e., non-ethnic, criteria without ruling out that self-determined
entities on that basis emerge and desire territorial or corporate self-governance.
Yet, liberal consociationalism is not synonymous with complex power sharing, even
though it offers a promising point of departure for a new research agenda on conflict
resolution theory. In order to make a significant contribution to existing debates, a
theory of complex power sharing would need to accomplish several tasks. First, most
existing theories of conflict resolution are consequence-focused, i.e. they seek to explain
why certain institutional designs offer the prospect of sustainable peace and stability,
while others do not. They do this by offering normative and pragmatic accounts of the
desirability and feasibility of particular institutions in divided societies, but these are
not always, let alone successfully, grounded in theories of conflict, nor are the
assumptions made about the drivers of conflict always fully spelt out. Yet it is essential
to understand the causes of conflict before viable prescriptions for its resolution can be
offered. This is not to suggest that any single theory of conflict will be able to explain
every distinct conflict, but rather that more reflection is needed about what institutions
can address what causes. Fear requires a different response than deprivation, and
people driven to violence by their desire for power need to be dealt with in a different
way than those who fear the loss of their culture.
In other words, a theory of complex power sharing would need to explain why we
find empirically a greater mix of institutions than existing theories recommend.
Factoring in causes of conflict is one aspect of this, but two others are equally important.
The first one has been examined at some length already and relates to the process of
settlement, that is, the structure of negotiations and the nature of the different actors
participating in them (e.g. Horowitz 2002, 2008; Eklund et al. 2005; Galbraith 2005).
The second one is a more careful consideration of ‘objective’ factors that might privilege
certain institutions in their presence. For example, as O’Leary and McGarry illustrate
in the case of Northern Ireland, the fact that this region is territorially distinct and
clearly delineated, ethnically mixed, and that its two major groups have strong
preferences for links with different actors outside their region, created a path toward a
regional consociation embedded in two cross-border arrangements – the North–South
Ministerial Council and the Council of the British Isles (cf. McGarry and O’Leary
2004b). McGarry et al. (2008) also briefly discuss structural conditions under which
integration (in this chapter’s terminology: mechanisms of centripetalism and power
dividing) and accommodation (in this chapter’s terminology: mechanisms of territorial
self-governance and power sharing) are appropriate conflict settlement strategies, while
Wolff (in press) develops an argument based on structural factors more systematically
and applies it to a broader range of cases.
Apart from the question why complex power-sharing settlements emerge, a proper
theory of conflict resolution also needs to be able to explain why they fail or succeed,
i.e. it needs to identify the conditions under which they can provide long-term peace
and stability in divided societies. Ultimately, this can only be done empirically and thus
requires a definition of what can be considered complex power-sharing settlements, the
identification of relevant cases, and their analysis against standards of success and
failure. On the basis of such a comprehensive theory of complex power sharing that
enables us to understand why they emerge and why they succeed or fail, sensible policy
recommendations for conflict settlement can be made.
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25 Playing the ethnic card
Liberal democratic and authoritarian practices
compared
Sandra Barkhof
In this chapter we shall focus on analysing the differences between liberal democratic
and authoritarian systems with regard to ethnic policy. In particular we will stress
the persistence of authoritarian practices with regard to ethnicity and ethnic
minorities in both established liberal democracies and in ‘new democracies’, especially
the ones that have emerged from former Eastern Europe communist systems. We
shall explore the extent to which the ‘ethnicity card’ is used and manipulated by
the established elites to further their own interests and goals. Finally, this chapter
will discuss the role of ethnic movements in the transition from authoritarian to
democratic rule.
Liberal democracies and authoritarian systems: some comparisons

It has been argued elsewhere in this volume that one of the basic principles of liberal
democracy is equality, whereby each member of a liberal democracy has essentially
the same protected rights, freedoms and liberties including the freedom of speech,
press, religion, assembly and so forth. At the other end of the political spectrum we
find authoritarian regimes, which are usually characterised by infringements of
these civil liberties and political rights. Authoritarian regimes often implement
some sort of limitations on political competition (indeed such competition might
be missing completely), overt use of coercion, and often an important role for
ideology. In between the idealised notions of ‘democracy’ and ‘autocracy’, which
hardly ever exist in their pure form, we find various political systems that need to be
classified as hybrid or transitional systems. Some states can be described as
‘semi-authoritarian’, which may respect some civil liberties but have only ‘show’
elections. Others are often referred to as ‘competitive authoritarian regimes’, which (in
contrast to true authoritarian regimes) actually have weak legislatures that serve as
focal points for opposition (Way 2006: 148). Some states, including many of the new
states emerging from the former Soviet Union, especially in Central Asia, still linger in
a transitional phase between the former authoritarian communist system and an
aspired-to democratic system (whereby sometimes this ‘aspiration’ is little more than a
legitimisation for continued authoritarian practices, as shall be discussed below). On
the other hand, while some authoritarian systems use limited ‘liberal’ policies such as
mass participation to legitimise their rule, many of the established Western liberal
democracies feature exclusive or restrictive political policies that clash with their general
liberal democratic framework. We shall discuss examples of this in relation to ethnic
minority policy in this chapter.
312 Sandra Barkhof
Ethnic minorities and authoritarian systems
Authoritarian states are often unable to cope with ethnic tensions or conflict in
non-violent ways. As pointed out above, authoritarian regimes lack meaningful
competitive elections and division of power. Stability in these regimes means the rooting
out of opposition and preservation of the privileges of the ruling elite. Their strategy
with regard to ethnic minorities is often enforced assimilation or even expulsion or
elimination of minority groups (non-nationals). Using such measures, strong autocratic
regimes may be able, for some time at least, to suppress ethnic or ethno-national
movements.
Authoritarian regimes can also be associated with minority ethnic dominance,
whereby an ethnic minority occupies a privileged position and access to political power,
which is exercised despite the fact that the ruling ethnicity is demographically
outnumbered. The goal of such elites is to keep the circle of power as small as possible
in order to maximise the benefits associated with that position of power. This includes
suppressing the dominant ethnicity and excluding it from political power, a strategy
that is becoming more and more difficult to sustain, given the general global trend
towards democratic transition (Kaufmann and Haklai 2008: 746). Thus dominant
minority regimes have become rarer and are now largely limited to authoritarian and
semi-authoritarian regimes. Historically, some of these regimes emerged from
colonialism, whereby either the white settlers formed this dominant minority or they
appointed a favoured minority to have exclusive access to political power and
administration. An example would be Iraq, where the British created Iraq out of three
former provinces of the Ottoman Empire. They installed Faisal, an allied Syrian leader,
as king and included the minority Sunni Arab elites in the administration, who then
came to dominate military and administrative authority, at least until the revolution in
1958 (Farouk-Slugett and Slugett 1987: 12). Another example is of course South Africa,
where the white settlers formed the privileged minority that dominated political power.
Maintaining minority dominance usually has to rely on extensive use of coercive
measures and exclusion of the majorities from political decision-making and
representation. Again, we can refer to South Africa, where under apartheid policies the
large majority of non-whites were disenfranchised. Usually, such measures needed to
go hand in hand with extensive military and security police presence to ensure the
marginalisation of the rest of the population, including the suppression of any form of
political opposition or activism. This policy has been more successful in some cases
than in others. Maintaining a large-scale military and police presence costs money, and
those regimes without the necessary resources struggled to maintain order and their
position (Kaufmann and Haklai 2008: 751). Thus oil-rich regimes such as Saudi Arabia
and Syria had more access to resources and thus fared better than, for example,
Burundi, where numerous uprisings and revolts occurred until an internationally
brokered agreement in 2003 (the Burundi Global Peace Accords of November 2003)
paved the way for a fitful transition to a more democratic system (Rothchild 2007: 83).
Coercion, however, is not the only way to maintain minority rule. Many autocratic
regimes have used concepts of national and ethno-national ideology to broaden
their support base. The vehicle for this is often the construction of a one-party
state with vast networks of associations to extend the outreach of the party and thus
the ruling elite (similar to the fascist networks of Nazi Germany or Mussolini’s
Italy). Party membership and association can mean better access to social
Playing the ethnic card 313
welfare provisions, education, etc., thus providing incentives for people to identify
with and support the state. The message used to legitimise the regime was often
worded along nationalist or ethno-nationalist lines, thus using the ‘ethnic card’ as a tool
to control the majority. To encompass both the minority and the majority ethnicity, it
is necessary to appeal to a ‘higher order’. For example, respective regimes in Iraq, Syria,
Jordan and Egypt have often attempted to promote a pan-Arab identity, making their
nation the leader for a wider idea. Such supra-ethnic ideologies are often coupled with
a continued domestic suppression of the majority ethnicity (Kaufmann and Haklai
2008: 754).
Seemingly, some new states, especially parts of the former Soviet Union in Central
Asia, have reverted to authoritarianism, partly because the legacies of commingled
ethnic groups, convoluted borders and emerging national identities all posed severe
challenges to the stability of Central Asia (Roudik 2007: 154). In addition, Schatz
(2005: 232) points to the importance and continued significance of sub-ethnic clans and
kinship politics, which further complicate the transition in the post-communist period.
For example, Schatz (2005: 232) notes that sub-ethnic clans were among the main
actors as Tajikistan descended into civil war in the 1990s, while in Uzbekistan local
identities related to kinship dominate rural areas, thus adding to the multi-ethnic
dynamic in the region.
To take the example of Uzbekistan, after the fall of communism, an authoritarian
presidential system emerged. Some opposition parties were allowed to give the illusion
of democracies, but these parties all supported the ruling party (People’s Democracy
Party, PDP). Other opposition groups including ethnic opposition groups have been
restricted or prohibited, in order to ensure inter-ethnic ‘harmony’ in the country
(Kubicek 1998: 32). The political elite hereby portrayed themselves as guardians of the
motherland (although President Karimov announced in 2005 a move away from the
presidential system, giving more powers to the Prime Minister and the other branches
of government).
A similar situation arose in Kazakhstan, where the post-independence political
system could at first be characterised as ‘semi-democratic authoritarianism’, although
after 1995 most observers would describe it as a typical authoritarian regime as the
consolidation of presidential power under Nazarbaev began (Oka 2009: 4). The
emergence of a delegative democracy meant that an elected President ruled practically
unrestricted, and many members of the ruling elite believe that popular participation is
overrated and that the popular will should instead be shaped through ideological
indoctrination (Brill Olcott 2002: 21). The argument is that democratisation would
bring with it ethnic mobilisation, which might result in political instability, since the
different claims of the various ethnic groups would be difficult to reconcile, especially
given the acute socioeconomic crisis in many of the Central Asian states (Kubicek 1998:
35–36). Again, opposition including ethnic opposition has been curtailed to avoid
ethnic or national tensions and conflict and to preserve national unity. Kazakhstan is
unique among the former Soviet Republics as the only one without a majority
nationality. After independence, the main risk to Kazakh domination of state organs
was considered to be opposition by ethnic Russians (Oka 2009: 3). Considering that
ethnic Kazakhs make up under half of the population, the ruling elite gave priority to
the consolidation of the political community and creating Kazakh patriotism rather
than to establishing democracy. Subsequently, the new constitution in 1993 defined the
state as a ‘self-determined Kazakh nation’ (Alexandrov 1999: 99).
314 Sandra Barkhof
Ethnic diversity in liberal democracies
The basis of political systems or states is usually the ‘nation’, a somewhat contentious
and ambiguous concept that has been analysed in greater detail in previous chapters. In
modern European political theory, the constitutional concept of a sovereign nation has
always been trapped between ethos and demos. In the political sense, the nation is the
entity living in the state’s territory and under its administrative control. This conflicts
with the ethnic concept of nation, which reflects the differences and often tensions
between different ethnic groups living in a state’s territory (Přibáň 2004: 417). Ethnic
minorities hereby often claim a nationality that is somewhat different from that of the
core ethnic group in the state (Gallagher 2005: 32).
In general, there are different ways in which states can respond to ethnic diversity.
Eide (2004: 60) broadly categorised these approaches as (1) assimilation and integration
or (2) separation and exclusion. The former is normally associated with liberal
democracies, the latter with authoritarian regimes. Ideally, the liberal democratic state
should make no distinction between different ethnic groups, seeking to encompass all
of them in the form of a common civil society whereby all members should share
sovereignty as citizens eligible to vote and be represented in government. In addition,
liberal democracies should protect ethnic minorities, either through positive minority
rights and/or anti-discriminatory measures. The accommodation of ethnic diversity
thus becomes an intrinsic part of the modern liberal-democratic reality (Přibáň 2004:
418–19). However, as Riggs (1995) points out, democratic government in itself does not
automatically resolve ethnic conflicts, and liberal democracies, for various reasons, do
not or cannot always adhere to the norms they aspire to as will be illustrated by the
following examples.
Common strategies of ethnic policy in liberal democracies include seeking to
assimilate minority groups by non-coercive means. An easy way to accommodate the
concerns and issues of ethnic minorities is to empower them within the established
political system and for example permit political organisation, thus paving the way for
legislative representation. The success of ethnic minorities hereby depends to some
degree on the political and electoral system. Political systems based on proportional
representation usually make it easier for ethnic minorities to gain representation than
those where only one candidate per district is elected (for example, ‘first past the post’
in UK national elections), especially if an ethnic minority is dispersed. Thus ethnic
minorities have a greater chance of access to political power as part of a governing
coalition in PR systems than in majoritarian systems (Koslowski 1994: 392).
Political representation, however, is a political right based on citizenship, and many
liberal-democratic states employ citizenship laws that can lead to exclusion of ethnic
minorities from political rights and political representation. In general, we need to
distinguish between countries employing citizenship laws based on the principles of jus
sanguinis (ancestral lineage) and those using the principle of jus soli (birthplace). Ireland
and the United Kingdom are often cited as examples of countries using the principle of
jus soli for both ascription of citizenship and naturalisation. On the European continent,
as Koslowski (1994: 371) points out, jus sanguinis became the norm for ascription,
although the rules governing naturalisation tended to vary greatly. Germany used to be
a prime example of a liberal democracy (after 1949) where the principle of jus sanguinis
(in place since 1913) governed both ascription of citizenship and naturalisation, leading
to the existence of (1) an understanding of nationhood as an ethno-cultural concept and
(2) a growing number of permanent resident aliens without political citizenship rights.
Since jus sanguinis also applied to naturalisation, ‘alien’ status was in effect hereditary;
for example, the majority of the children of Turkish migrant workers born in Germany
were unable to acquire German citizenship. Thus the German citizenship laws
challenged the liberal-democratic framework of the state by denying political rights to
a considerable ethnic minority despite the fact that many of Germany’s ‘aliens’ belong
now to the third generation born in Germany. As Radtke (1997: 253) explains, without
political rights, the migrant workers (and their children) needed (German) advocates
and became an enduring topic of discourse for the majority, who often labelled migrants
as either illegitimate participants in the social welfare system or as victims of
discrimination.
After 1992, Germany (and other EU member states based on jus sanguinis) were
themselves challenged by the new EU citizenship which is, in the case of local and MEP
elections, based on jus soli, that is, every EU citizen can vote for local and European
elections in their EU country of residence, even if they are ‘aliens’ in that country and
cannot vote there in national elections. In this changing European political climate,
with its encroachment on national sovereignty and changing understanding of the role
of the nation-state (at least within the European Union), it is perhaps not surprising
that since the early 1990s there has been a general move towards some form of jus soli
in many European countries. In Germany, as pointed out above, the existence of large
numbers of permanent aliens led to demands for easier access to citizenship. As the New
York Times (1997) stated, one in five babies born in Germany was ‘foreign’. Thus,
naturalisation policies were revised through the amended Nationality Act (2000) and
the Immigration Act (2005). Now children born in Germany to foreign parents may
acquire German citizenship if certain conditions are met, although they have to decide
between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three whether they wish to retain German
nationality or the nationality of their parents. Furthermore, foreigners have now the
right to become naturalised after eight years of habitual residence (fifteen years
previously) if they meet certain conditions, including adequate knowledge of the
German language. In general dual nationality is not accepted, although certain
exceptions apply.
On the other hand, however, some countries such as France have moved in the
opposite direction. In France, ascription used to be based on jus sanguinis, while jus soli
was used extensively in naturalisation, thus reflecting a more state-centred and
assimilationist national self-understanding than in ethno-cultural Germany (Brubaker
1996: 169). Thus, a person born in France to foreign parents used to acquire French
citizenship by virtue of place of birth. However, by the 1980s this policy led to the
existence of large immigrant communities, generating a rightist campaign for more
restrictive naturalisation laws. In 1993, the French government pushed through a bill
that eliminated the automatic extension of French citizenship and nationality to
children of foreigners once they reach the age of eighteen. Under the new legislation,
children of foreigners have to apply for French citizenship between the ages of sixteen
and twenty-one.
Citizenship policies are not the only form of disenfranchisement in liberal democracies,
which can also occur through indirect measures including cumbersome electoral
registration, disproportionate electoral districts (a feature of pre-1972 Northern
Ireland), poll taxes or literary tests, as in the southern United States prior to 1965,
which can make it difficult or near impossible for certain groups to vote or gain
316 Sandra Barkhof
representation. Such indirect techniques can maintain a de facto dominant ethnicity
and discrimination against ethnic minorities or other foreigners. Both post-communist
Latvia and Estonia have been criticised for denying citizenship and thus political rights
to ethnic Russians who have failed to pass language tests or other bureaucratic hurdles
(Jurado, in Kaufmann and Haklai 2008: 759–60).
Ethnic movements
On the other hand, because democracy permits freedom of speech and association, it
also enables discontented people, including ethnic minorities, to organise themselves
and lobby their interests. Thus ethnic movements tend to flourish in democracies,
especially in new democracies where ethnic minorities have, for the first time, the
opportunity to express their demands. Ethnic movements also have opportunities in
weak authoritarian regimes, where the governing elite is unable to handle or suppress
demands. In addition, ethnic movements tend to be especially active among ethnic
groups living in enclaves (territorially concentrated). Here, the main aim of ethnic
movements is often to achieve a degree of autonomy or self-determination.
An example is the German-speaking South Tyrol, which became part of Italy after
the First World War. Since 1945, the German minority in South Tyrol has often been
cited as one of the most successful forms of ethnic mobilisation, in the form of the
Südtiroler Volkspartei (SVP, South Tyrolean People’s Party). The SVP represented the
German minority’s fight against the enforced ‘Italianisation’ of the region and lobbied
for the protection of German ethnic minority rights (although the German ‘minority’
continued to constitute around two-thirds of the population in South Tyrol after 1945).
As Panayi (2000: 161) points out, the German population of South Tyrol became
completely politicised in the process, and the SVP regularly took over 90 per cent of the
German vote. A final agreement with the Italian government was signed in 1992,
resulting in the autonomy of the region, an exemplary success for a regional ethnic
movement in Europe which managed to safeguard its main aims (self-determination
and language protection for the German ethnic group). Other examples of autonomy,
whereby the ethnic group can administer its own domestic affairs, include, for example,
the Swedish-speaking Åland islands in Finland, Greenland (granted autonomy by
Denmark in 1979) and a number of regions in Spain, including the Basque and Catalan
regions. Here again, we note the importance of ethno-nationalist political parties and
movements in achieving ethnic minority rights.
New democracies and ethnic policy

So far, we have looked largely at established liberal democracies in Western Europe.
There is, however, also a host of new democracies, which have emerged out of
authoritarian regimes. Therefore, we shall now shift focus toward former Central and
Eastern European communist countries. It is often argued that transitional regimes or
newly democratised regimes, especially in multi-ethnic countries, are particularly prone
to ethnic tensions as ethnic groups redefine their identity in political terms thereby
challenging the existing elites and processes. Ethno-nationalist movements played an
important role in the break-up of communism and the former Soviet Union. After
1985, there were protests in almost every Soviet Republic against official policies of
Russification, including the suppression of local languages and cultures (Inder Singh
2001: 33). Perestroika allowed the expression of strong nationalist pressures, with some
ethno-national groups such as Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians or Georgians calling
for independence. Ukrainian nationalism, for example, developed in stages during and
since the Stalin era. In 1980 a Ukrainian Patriotic Movement was founded, and by 1989
around 30,000 national and cultural organisations had developed, many of them calling
for independence (Panayi 2000: 165), which was achieved in 1991. In the three Baltic
States, to give another example, popular ethno-nationalist movements and parties,
such as the Estonian National Front or the Latvian Popular Front, played an equally
important role in achieving independence.1
The emerging democratic systems in the former European communist bloc found
themselves under pressure to condemn the abandoned past, codify future aims and
principles and commit the nation and the new constitutional institutions to these
principles (Přibáň 2004: 409). Part of this transitional process involved the rebuilding of
political identities and civil society, which was necessarily composed of these new
principles as well as older civil and ethnic traditions. An important part of the
constitution-making processes and rebuilding of political identity was the rebuilding of
national identity in the sense of a cultural and ethnic identity, much of which had
previously been manipulated or suppressed by the communist regimes. Thus, in East
Central Europe, we often find very close links between civil and ethnic politics.
For instance the new Hungarian constitution of 1989, although based internally on a
civic concept of nationhood, also contains an article (Article 6/3) which makes a
constitutional commitment to ethnic Hungarians living outside of Hungary’s borders
(causing negative reactions from surrounding states with large Hungarian minorities).
In addition, in 1993, Hungary adopted new citizenship legislation based on the
principles of jus sanguinis meaning that the main prerequisite for the acquisition of
Hungarian citizenship would be Hungarian descent (although political rights were at
the same time also guaranteed to ethnic minorities living in Hungary). The ‘ethnic card’
was played again under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán (1998–2002), when ethnic
Hungarians living outside Hungary were granted special access to Hungary’s social
welfare. Originally intended to be a political symbol of the cohesion of ethnic Hungarians
and their identification with the Hungarian state, the legislation was widely criticised by
the EU and neighbouring countries due to its alleged inherent ethno-national
discrimination and potential violation of other states’ sovereignty. Nevertheless, the
legislation came into force in 2002, albeit in slightly modified and limited form.
Afterwards, the conservative party led by Orbán (after 2002 in the opposition) continued
to campaign for granting Hungarian citizenship to ethnic Hungarians in neighbouring
countries, although a referendum on this failed in 2004. As this example shows,
Hungary’s transition to liberal democracy remains influenced by ethnic concepts of the
nation (Přibáň 2004: 424).
We have already discussed the role of ethnic movements and parties in securing or
pressing for minority ethnic rights. A prime example for this in the new democracies of
Eastern Europe would be the Slovak parties that emerged after the 1989 revolution in
the former Czechoslovakia, demanding Slovak autonomy or even independence. The
most prominent, the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (MDS) negotiated the
so-called ‘Velvet Divorce’ which came into effect in 1993. Shortly after the separation
into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, both states drafted new constitutions, which
displayed a different understanding of ‘the nation’. In Slovakia, the constitution
addressed primarily the ethnic Slovaks, thus opening opportunities for ethnic
318 Sandra Barkhof
marginalisation, which did occur under Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar (1994–98),
leader of the HZDS (Movement for a Democratic Slovakia), who used historical
resentment and recent fears of Hungarian nationalism to isolate the Hungarian minority
in Slovakia. Mečiar, whose party governed together with the extreme nationalists (the
SNS) and the ‘reds’ (the extreme left Association of Workers of Slovakia), pursued a
two-track ethnic minority policy. On the one hand they successfully negotiated
reconciliation with Hungary, while internally a series of anti-Hungarian measures were
passed (Fowkes 2002: 125). It was only after 1998 that more balanced legislation
protecting ethnic minorities was implemented, based on the special section of the
Slovak constitution which protects ethnic and minority rights. The example shows how
Mečiar used the ‘ethnic card’ to address populist fears of Hungarian nationalism as
part of a much bigger political agenda and political power struggles in Slovakia (Přibáň
2004: 426).
The Czech constitution of 1992 on the other hand largely ignores ethnic diversity2
and defines nationhood almost exclusively in terms of citizenship and civil society while
also including a section on the protection of ethnic and minority rights. It has been
argued that this approach in itself was an ‘ethnic card’, played in view of the accession
negotiations with the EU, which would have been hindered by ethnic conflict and
ethno-national tensions. This civic interpretation of nation has not, however, prevented
local discrimination against the Roma minority in the 1990s, which was highlighted by
the so-called ‘Bratinka report’ in 1997, which identified anti-Romani discrimination as
a crucial problem in the Czech Republic (Vermeersch 2006: 83). This illustrates that the
adoption of a civic concept of nationhood does not necessarily prevent discriminatory
policies, while on the other hand the adoption of an ethnic concept of nationhood does
not rule out a co-operative and inclusive ethnic policy as in the case of Slovakia after
1998 (Přibáň 2004: 428). Nevertheless, Miller et al. (2001: 181) note that general inter-
ethnic alienation was comparatively high in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia,
with over 90 per cent of the population exhibiting unfavourable feelings towards
the Roma.
As a final point, it must be noted that in some cases, where the transition to democracy
has mobilised marginalised ethnic communities to pursue a more equitable treatment,
this has led to the implementation of reactive policies by the established elites or more
privileged communities. A frequent reaction is one of a turn toward neo-traditionalist
or ultra-nationalist ideas and parties, sometimes aiming to subordinate minority
communities. Explicit ethnic nationalism tends to persist mostly among far-right and
ultra-nationalist parties who use the ‘ethnic card’ in the form of ethno-nationalist ideas
largely to appeal to populist fears of immigration and multiculturalism. In Bulgaria,
the far right Ataka (Attack) party has risen in popularity since 2005 (with the slogan
‘Bulgaria back to the Bulgarians’), while in Romania, the Greater Romania Party has
attracted many Romanian voters with its anti-minority slogans, attacking ethnic
Hungarians, Roma, Jews and others. In Hungary, the far right Movement for a Better
Hungary came in third in the European elections of 2009, and in Slovakia the Slovak
National Party joined the ruling government in 2006.
Such a nationalist-rightist reaction, however, is by no means restricted to new
democracies. We have already noted the role of rightist campaigners in changing
citizenship laws in France from inclusive naturalisation to more exclusive policies.
Similar rightist parties exist for example in the United Kingdom and Germany, lobbying
for example for stricter immigration controls. In the Netherlands, the Dutch Freedom
Party with its anti-immigration policy was the second strongest party there in the 2009
European elections, and in the United Kingdom the British National Party won its first
ever seat in the European parliament in the same election. Thus we witness a general
rise of rightist nationalist parties across Europe, which is of course linked to the
prevailing economic crisis. Rightist parties often use the ‘ethnic card’ in the form of
arguments of ‘ethnic minority threat to scarce economic resources’ to mobilise voters,
especially during times of economic downturn and in new democracies with weakly
developed market economies. Stefanovic (2008: 1214) suggests that the success of the
transition to democracy may be helped considerably by the development and
maintenance of efficient welfare systems which might reduce the electoral appeal of
authoritarian ultra-nationalists.
Conclusion
This chapter has analysed some aspects of ethnic policy in liberal democratic and
authoritarian systems. We have seen that on the one hand, liberal democracy entails the
policies of compromise and negotiation and thus in theory a reconciliation of ethnic
and state claims (Brown 1996: 309). However, many liberal democracies operate ethnic
policies that either directly or indirectly promote exclusivity. We must hereby distinguish
between politically and ethnically exclusionary policies. Liberal democracies, especially
majoritarian systems or those operating citizenship systems based on jus sanguinis,
often produce more ethnically exclusive societies than some semi-authoritarian regimes.
In addition, the ‘ethnic card’ is popular with both nationalist and liberal democratic
elites and as we have seen, is used widely in the domestic context, for example during
election campaigns, and within the international context in terms of foreign policy with
regard to other states and indeed international organisations.
Notes
1 Although we should note that the restructuring and transition in the former Soviet Union has
led to a new wave of ethnic tensions, as most of the newly independent states are themselves
multi-ethnic. Recent tensions include the secessionist demands of South Ossetia (from
Georgia), for example, and Chechnya (from Russia).
2 We should point out that the Czech Republic is ethnically rather homogeneous apart from its
Roma minority.
Further reading
Cordell, K. (1999) Ethnicity and Democratisation in the new Europe, London, New York:
Routledge
Daftary, F. and Troebst, S. (eds) (2005) Radical Ethnic Movements in Contemporary Europe,
Oxford and New York: Berghahn
Fowkes, B. (2002) Ethnicity and Ethnic Conflict in the Post-communist World, Basingstoke:
Palgrave
Guibernau, M. and Rex, J. (eds) (1997) The Ethnicity Reader, Oxford and Malden MA: Polity
Press
Hutcheson, D. S. and Korosteleva, E. A. (eds) (2006) The Quality of Democracy in Post-
communist Europe, London and New York: Routledge
Inder Singh, A. (2001) Democracy, Ethnic Diversity, and Security in Post-communist Europe,
Westport CT: Praeger
320 Sandra Barkhof
Panayi, P. (2000) An Ethnic History of Europe since 1945, Harlow: Pearson
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Index
Page numbers in italics denotes a table
Abdulmutallab, U.F. 2 Association of South East Asian Nations

Abkhazia: expulsion of Georgians 113 see ASEAN
Abu Sayyaf 2–3 Association for the Study of Ethnicity and
Abyei 147 Nationalism 52
Acehnese 2 Assyrians, ancient 112
Adelman, H. 173 asylum-seekers 49
Africa 72, 79, 93, 294 asymmetrical governance: and stateless
African Union see AU nations 61–3
African-Americans 96 Ataka party (Bulgaria) 318
Agenda for Peace 171, 175, 179, 201, 203, AU (African Union) 129; and conflict
204 prevention 176, 177–8, 177; Panel of the
agrarian society: transition to industrial Wise 176
society 17 Auer, S. 51
Ajello, A. 202 Australia 292
Akayezu decision (1998) 127–8 Australian Aborigines 93
Akenson, D.H. 68 authoritarian systems 10, 311–19; and
al-Bashir, O. 129 ethnic minorities 312–13; and ethnic
al-Qaeda 2, 135 movements 316
Åland Islands 238 autonomy: corporate 255–8; personal 255;
Albanians 99, 100, 112 see also NCA (national cultural
Algerian revolt 134 autonomy)
Aligarh (India) 230
Alternative Vote (AV) system 292, 295 Badinter Commission 238
Althusser, L. 31, 32, 38 Bakongo 164
Amin, I. 294 Bali bombings (2002) 2
anarchism 31 Baluch 163, 165
ancient times 91, 133 banal nationalism 37–8, 273
Anderson, B. 15, 17, 46, 72 Bandaranaike, S.W.R.D. 97
Anglo-Irish Treaty 149 Bangladesh 159; secession of (1971) 150,
Annan, K. 176 151, 166
anti-communism 125 Banton, M. 82, 85
Arab-Israeli wars 150 Barthes, R. 26
Arana y Goiri, S. 36 Bartov, O. 116
Arendt, H. 28, 130 Basque Country 267, 268
ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Basque nationalism 36, 50, 69
Nations): and conflict prevention 177, 177 Bauer, O. 256, 278, 279, 282, 286
assimilation 236, 272–3, 282, 314; linguistic Bauman, Z. 130
20–1, 22 Beetham, D. 106, 108
Index 323
Belgium 97, 253, 261; and Carnegie Corporation of New York 307
consociationalism 256, 301, 306 Carrington, Lord 238
Beneš Decrees (1946) 114 Catalonia 50, 56, 63, 73, 274
Bengal/Bengalis 143, 144, 147, 148, 150, Catholics/Catholicism 71, 72, 230
160–1, 166 Center for International Development and
Benjamin, W. 68 Conflict Management 172
Berlin Wall: fall of 6, 38 Central and Eastern Europe 6, 256, 278,
Biafra 159 282, 316–17; and national cultural
Billig, M. 37, 38, 273 autonomy 283–6; new democracies and
Black, R. 116 transitional process 316–18
Blair, T. 128 centripetalism 9, 249, 288–97; advantages
Boer War 134 295; comparison with consociationalism
Bogaards, M. 294 289–91, 296; critiques 295–6; electoral
Bogdanor, V. 268 system design 290–4; and
border adjustments 7, 140, 151 majoritarianism 296; and political
border disputes 160 parties 289–90, 294, 296
Bosnia and Herzegovina 99, 100, 117, 126, Chalk, F. 130
140–1, 142, 231–2, 238, 244, 245, 262, charismatic leadership: and genocide 132
289, 303, 304, 307 Chechnya 134
Bosnian Muslims 69, 99, 100, 115, 128, 192, citizenship laws 314–15
252 civic nationalism 44–52
Bosnian war 100, 112, 116, 242 civic/ethnic dichotomy 5, 8
Bouchard-Taylor Commission 63 civil associations 225–33
Bougainville 295 civil society 28, 225–33; and conflict
Bougainville Peace Agreement 303 prevention 179–80; definition 227–8; and
Boutros-Ghali, B. 171, 191, 200, 201, 204 democracy 225–7, 228, 231; difficulties
Boyne, Battle of the (1690) 96 with 228–31; dispositional dimension
Brahimi Report 175 229–31; and international community
brainwashing 32 231–2; positional dimension 228–9;
Bratinka report (1997) 318 relationship with state 228, 232–3;
Breuilly, J. 49 solutions to problems 231–3
Brewer, J. 68 civil society organizations see CSOs
Britain 19, 48; and devolution 56, 268, 269; civil wars, ethnic 98–100
and Protestantism 71; race/ethnicity Clinton, B. 129
discourse 83 Cold War 125; peacekeeping 199–201
British Empire 143 Collier, P.104, 105, 106
British National Party 319 colonialism 72, 136
Brown, D. 50 Commission on Security and Cooperation
Brown, M. 85 in Europe see CSCE
Browning, C.R. 117, 118 communalism 289, 296
Brubaker, R. 50, 51–2, 82, 85, 86 communism: collapse of 103, 240, 316
Bruce, S. 67, 72–3 Community Relations Council (Northern
Bulgaria 109, 318 Ireland) 232
Burundi 176, 270; Hutu-Tutsi conflict 94, complex power sharing 307–8
125 Concerned Citizens for Peace (CCP) 180
confederation 253
Calvinism 67 conflict management 7–8, 187–94, 242–4;
Cambodia: genocide in 125–6 assessing the efficacy of strategies 191–4;
Canada 56, 69, 251, 253, 257, 274, 306 criteria for success of intervention 193;
capitalism 27–8 definition 187; governance-based
324 Index
approaches 189; and humanitarian 301–3, 304–5; and pluralist federations
intervention 191–3; liberal approaches 305–6; and political parties 289–90; and
188, 189–90; and mediation 188–9, power sharing 9–10, 270, 300–11;
193–4; and military intervention 188; protecting of individuals against abuse
and NGOs 189, 194; primary purpose of power by majorities 306; and
187; realist approaches 188–9; self-governance 35; and unitary states
social-psychological approaches 188, 269–71
190–1 ‘constituency pooling’ model 294
conflict prevention 7, 8, 169–81; agencies constructivist theory: and post-conflict
and organizations 174–5; causes of reconstruction 216
ethnic conflict and structural 171–3; civil Convention on the Prevention and
society organizations (CSOs) 179–80; Punishment of Genocide see Genocide
conceptual aspects 170–1; constraints on Convention
174; definition 170; economic measures Copenhagen Document (1990) 257
178–9; financial capacity building 174; corporate autonomy 255–8
future directions 180–1; military Cote d’Ivoire: sanctions against 178–9
measures 179; need for timely and Council of Europe 240
correct analysis 173–5, 181; and NGOs counter-insurgency 134
179, 190; operational 175–80; political counter-state nationalism 51–2
measures and instruments 176–8; and covenantal peoples 68
preventative diplomacy 170, 171; and Croatia 99, 100, 117, 238, 242, 278, 303
regional organizations 176–8, 177; and Croats 98, 99, 100, 116, 142, 252, 54
Responsibility to Protect (R2P) report Cromwell, O. 136
(2001) 176–7 cross-border co-operation 303
conflict resolution 4, 9, 59, 187, 198–209, cross-border territorial arrangements 9,
306–7; actors and their function in 249, 254–5
multilateral frameworks 204–7; civilian cross-voting schemes 293–4, 295
component 207; and civilian police 207; CSCE (Commission on Security and
and Cold War peacekeeping 199–201; Cooperation in Europe) 240
and development aid 205; involvement CSOs (civil society organizations)
of human rights and humanitarian 179–80
agencies 205; multilateral approaches cultural autonomy 9, 249; see also
198–209; organizations dealing with 203; corporate autonomy; NCA (national
and peace settlement 243–4; and cultural autonomy)
post-Cold War peacekeeping 201–4 cultural diversity 236, 241
conflict settlement 7–8, 242–4; and complex cultural genocide 115
power sharing 307; complementarity of cultural hegemony 31
power sharing with other approaches to cultural recognition: demands for by
305–8 stateless nations 57
Congress of European Minorities 278, 281, Cyprus 69, 152, 251, 301, 304; partition of
282–3 16, 112–13, 147, 149, 150–1;
Connor, W. 17, 19, 33, 58 post-partition 151
consociationalism 60, 249, 256, 269–71, Czech Republic 317, 318
272, 288–9, 297, 300–4; comparison
with centripetalism 289–91, 296; Darfur 129, 136
conditions conducive to 300–1; Dayton settlement (1995) 142, 244, 304
corporate and liberal 304; criticism and De Nevers, R. 104
weaknesses of 301–2, 304; electoral decentralisation 9, 249, 250–1, 267
system design 290–1; examples of 300–1; Declaration of the Rights of Man and of
liberal 304, 305–7; and Northern Ireland the Citizen (1789) 16, 29
Index 325
decolonisation 16 electoral systems: centripetalism and
democracy 6, 8, 56, 103–10, 172–3, 288; and consociationalism compared 290–1;
civil society 225–7, 228, 231; ‘constituency pooling’ model 294;
consociational see consociationalism; cross-voting schemes 293–4, 295; and
and elections 105; ethnic 271–2; and distribution requirements 291–2, 295;
liberalism 106; majoritarian view of 295; and post-conflict reconstruction 215–16;
and majority rule 106–7 vote-transfer systems 292–3
democratisation 6, 20, 103–10; challenges enoughism 38
to successful 106–7; factors in process of equality: and nationalism 38
107–8; and marginalised groups 109–10; Erdut Agreement (1995) 245
as peace-building 103–5; and Ermolov, General 134
post-conflict reconstruction 213, 216–17; Escribà-Folch, A. 178
preconditions necessary for successful Estimirova, N. 35
108–9; and territorial pluralism 260; Estonia 205, 271, 272, 292; and corporate
‘third wave’ of 9, 288 autonomy 256, 257; and cultural
Department for International Development autonomy 280–1, 283, 284
see DfID Estonian Centre Party 205
development aid 205 ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna) 268, 273
developmentalism 33–5 Ethiopia 163
devolution 57, 250–1, 253, 268, 283 ethnic cleansing 6–7, 56, 100, 112–19, 126,
DfID (Department for International 239, 242; as an elite-driven project
Development) 173, 174, 175 117–18, 119; definitions 112, 113;
d’Hondt mechanism 302 distinction between genocide and
Di Palma, G. 107–8 population transfers and 113–14, 119;
Diamond, L. 105, 226, 227, 230 drivers of 116–19; and ethnic removal
distribution requirement: and electoral 115; history 112–13; in international law
systems 291–2, 295 and public opinion 114–15; resettlement
Downes, A.B. 118 of dominant group to homes of
Duffy Toft, M. 3 displaced minorities 115–16; solutions to
Dutch Freedom Party 319 119; tactics used 115–16
ethnic conflict: as an international security
East Timor 207 challenge 2–3; causes 6, 190; causes of
‘Eastern’ nationalism 45, 46 and linkages to structural prevention
economic aid 244–5 171–3; consequences of 1, 6, 11;
Economic Community of West African definition 3–4, 91–3; life cycle of 241–5;
States see ECOWAS responses to 7–8; statistics 3, 94
economic issues: and ethnic conflict 95, ethnic democracy 271–2
171–2 ethnic diversity: in liberal democracies
economic measures: and conflict prevention 314–16
178–9 ethnic group 80, 84
ECOWAS (Economic Community of West ethnic identity: as instrumental 91, 92; and
African States): and conflict prevention myth-symbol complex 93, 96; as
177, 178 primordial 92; as socially constructed
Ecrehos islands 147 92–3
Ecuador 295 ethnic minorities: and authoritarian regimes
Eichmann, A. 124 312–13; and liberal democracies 314–16
Eide, A. 314 ethnic movements: and authoritarian
El Salvador 202 regimes 316; and liberal democracies 316
elections 172–3, 190; and democracy/ ethnic nationalism 44–52
democratisation 105 ethnic politics 103, 107
326 Index
ethnic removal 115 France 249, 274; and assimilation 273; and
ethnic riots 97–8 citizenship 48, 315, 318
ethnicity 3, 5, 266–7; definitions 68, 92; Freeden, M. 33
features of 68, 92; as a generator of French Revolution 29–31, 40, 48, 266
conflict 91–100; as generator of Furedi, F. 84
non-violent conflict 94–7; modernist futurism 34
approach 22; primordial approach 22–3;
and race 5–6, 79–87; and religion 5, Gans, C. 50
67–75 Gaza Strip 189
ethno-mobilisation 241–2, 244, 245 Gellner, E. 15, 17, 27, 46, 51, 57, 230
ethno-nationalism 237, 316–17 genocide 6, 7, 31, 34, 113, 119, 122–37, 239,
ethnopolitics: and human rights 236–45 242; acts of 125; and ancient era 133;
ethno-symbolism 19, 36, 46, 68 areas of contention 122; attitude
EU (European Union) 55, 176, 177, 241, towards during Cold War 125; causes
253, 255, 303 129–36; and charismatic leadership 132;
European Charter for Regional and and colonialism 136; and Darfur 129;
Minority Languages 240 definitions 122–9; and ethical cleansing
European Convention on Human Rights 126; as feature of war 133–4; heads of
240 government prosecuted for 127; and
European Union see EU Holocaust 123, 130, 132–3, 135;
Euskadi Ta Askatasuna see ETA intentionalist approach 131–2; and
Euzkadi 56 international criminal courts/tribunals
Ewe 164 123, 126, 127–8, 239; and international
expulsions, ethnic 7, 91, 112, 114, 115, law 123–4; and judicial activism 126–7;
116–17, 119, 126, 141–2, 144, 147, and mass society 132–3; and modernity
149–51, 191 122, 130–1; and nationalism 130; and
external development assistance 172 non-governmental organisations
(NGOs) 124–5; and Nuremberg Trials
fascism: and developmentalism 34–5 123; obstacles to prosecution 126–7; and
FCNM (Framework Convention for the plural societies 131; and rape 127;
Protection of National Minorities) 240, relationship between military culture
241 and 133–4; Rwanda see Rwandan
Feder, G. 33 genocide; and the state 130–1; structural
federacy 9, 249, 253–4 approach 130–1; and technological
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) advances 133; and threat perception 135;
238–9; see also Yugoslavian wars use of euphemisms and metaphors to
federations 251–3, 267; distinction from cloak 135; Whitaker Report 24, 128; and
unitary states 266, 267; national 258–9; Yugoslavian civil wars 126, 127–9
pluralist 9, 249, 251–3, 305–6; sham Genocide Convention (1951) 123–4, 127,
pluralist 259 128
Feetham, R. 148–9 Genocide Watch 125
Fein, H. 130 Gerber, H. 73
Fenton, S. 80, 81 Germans: deporting of from East European
Fiji 292, 293 countries 114
Finland: dispute with Sweden over Åland Germany 135; citizenship laws 315;
Islands 238 displacement and extermination of the
Fox, J. 70 Herero and Nama peoples 134; and
Fox, L. 44 nationalism 46, 49; unification
Framework Convention for the Protection movement (1848) 23
of National Minorities see FCNM Global Compact 170
Index 327
Global Partnership for the Prevention of developments in 237–41; in life cycle of
Armed Conflict (GPPAC) 180 ethnic conflict 241–5; and post-conflict
globalisation 37, 38–9 reconstruction 244–5; and pre-conflict
globalism 39 phase 241–2
Goldhagen, D.J. 117 humanitarian intervention 125, 128, 191–3,
Good Friday Agreement (1998) 254, 255, 208, 239, 242
301–3, 304 Hungary 153, 256, 285–6, 317
governance-based approaches: and conflict Hunter, E. 32
management 189 Huntington, S. 288
Government of Ireland Act (1920) 251, 254 Hutu-Tutsi conflict: Burundi 94, 125;
Gramsci, A. 31 Rwanda see Rwandan genocide (1994)
‘great transformation’ 16, 17
Greater Romania Party 318 Ibo 160–1
Greco-Turkish population transfers 114 ICC (International Criminal Court) 128,
Greece 109–10 129
Greenfeld, L. 4, 29, 35, 48 ICESCR (International Covenant on
Greider, W. 39 Economic, Social and Cultural Rights)
Gross, J. 117, 133 (1966) 238
groupism 85–6 ICPPR (International Covenant on Civil
Guatemala 125 and Political Rights) 238
Gurr, T.R. 122, 201 ICTR (International Criminal Tribunal for
Rwanda) 126, 127–8
Habsburg Empire 60, 151, 278, 279 ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for
Haggard, S. 296 the former Yugoslavia) 126, 127, 128,
Haiti 112, 191 129
Hamas 189 ideology 26–40; and consumerism 38;
Harff, B 122 definitions 26, 31, 37; discrediting of
Harper, S. 56 32–3; ‘end of’ 38; and globalisation 39;
Hastings, A. 17, 18–19 and Marxism 31; and modernism 28;
Hausa 161 nationalism as an 27, 32–3, 39–40; and
Hayden, R.M. 114 violence 32
Hayes, C. 36 Ieng Sary 126
HCNM (High Commissioner on National Ignatieff, M. 5, 45
Minorities) 240 illiberal democracies 106
head scarves issue 96 immigration 273–4
High Commissioner on National Minorities imperialism 72
see HCNM India 141; and Bangladesh’s independence
High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges 166; constitution 252; features akin to
and Change 175 devolution in a unitary state 250;
historicist argument: and partition 140–1, Hindu–Muslim conflict 97–8; partition
142 of (1947) 112, 143–4, 145–6, 147, 149;
history teaching 245 post-partition 151; and Sri Lankan
Hitler, A. 34, 118, 132, 136 Tamils 162, 163, 165; wars with Pakistan
Hobsbawm, E. 49 150, 166
Holocaust 7, 93, 117, 122, 123, 130, 132–3, indigenous peoples 58
135 Indonesia 2, 125; and East Timor 207; and
Holodomor famine genocide (Ukraine) 124 political parties 294; presidential
homogenization 160; and partition 151–2 elections 292
human rights 8, 106, 123, 236–45; conflict inequality 172
and conflict settlement 242–4; legal Inglehart, R. 67
328 Index
institutional designs 8–9, 191–5, 288–9, Japan: Koreans in 93–4
291–5 Jefferson, T. 136
instrumentalist approaches 6, 91, 93, 98 Jemaah Islamiyah 2–3
intellectuals 35–8; and nationalism 36–7 Jentleson, B. 169, 179
intentionalist approach: and genocide Jews 48, 131; expulsion of 112,
131–2 extermination of by Nazis 118, 123, 132;
internally displaced persons (IDPs) 116 see also Holocaust
International Commission on Intervention Jonassohn, K. 130
and State Sovereignty (ICISS) 239; The journalists 35–6, 81
Responsibility to Protect report 176–7, Judt, T. 57
191 Jungmann, J. 21
International Court of Justice 147, 201 Jurgen, M. 118
International Covenant on Civil and jus sanguinis 314–15, 317, 319
Political Rights see ICPPR jus soli 314, 315
International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights see ICESCR Kakar, S. 68
International Criminal Court see ICC Kambanda, J. 127
International Criminal Tribunal for the Karadzić, R. 127
former Yugoslavia see ICTY Kashmir 59, 94, 135, 150, 201, 251
International Criminal Tribunal for Katona, S. 21
Rwanda see ICTR Kaufmann, C. 115, 147, 149
international criminal/military tribunals Kazakhstan 313
123, 126, 127–8, 213–14, 239, 245 Kedourie, E. 15, 16–17, 18, 21–2, 27, 35, 36
International Institute for Democracy and Kenya 292; Kikuyu-Luo violence at
Electoral Assistance (International elections (2007) 109, 176, 180
IDEA) 105 Khmer Rouge 125–6
international trusteeship 208 Kibaki, M. 109
Inuit 56 Kim Jong Il 26
Iran 2, 161, 162 Kiplagat, B. 180
Iraq 69, 116, 125, 154, 253, 262, 273, 289, Knippenberg, H. 268
305, 312 Kohn, H. 5, 36, 45–6 47, 50
Ireland 141; partition of 147, 149, 152; see Korais, A. 21
also Northern Ireland Korean War 201
Irish Boundary Commission 147–8 Koser, K. 116
Irish Free State 148, 151, 152 Kosovo 19, 24, 99, 112, 145, 239, 245
irredentism/irredentas 6, 7, 22, 158–67, Kosovo Field, Battle of (1389) 93, 99
254–5; aid to 163; convertibility of Kosovo war 116, 128, 129, 208, 243
160–2; definition 7, 158, 159; frequency Krishnamurthy, R. 79
and reasons for 159–60, 162–5; and Kulaks 123–4, 131, 135
leadership interests 163–4; opportunities Kundera, M. 24, 36–7
and constraints 163–4; strength of Kuper, L. 124, 131, 133, 137
movement 165–6 Kurdistan 159, 161, 262
Islam 73, 95 Kurds (in Iraq) 113, 125, 159, 161, 162, 164,
Islamist extremism 135 191, 262, 273
Israel 141, 149, 151, 153, 271, 272 Kurds (in Turkey) 159, 257
Israeli–Palestinian conflict 57, 59, 69, 118; Kymlicka, W. 57, 274, 284–5
and Oslo Accords (1993) 194
Itsekiri 96 language 20–2; disputes about use of 94–5,
100; modernist and premordialist
Jacobins 30 responses to 20–2
Index 329
Lasch, C. 29 Mečiar, V. 318
last resort argument: and partition 141 mediation: and conflict management 188–9,
Latin America: political party engineering 193–4
294 Meinecke, F. 45
Latvia 280, 283 Mendez, J.E. 129
League of Nations 208, 238, 278, 281, 282 Mexico: political parties 294–5
Lebanon 69; and consociationalism 301, migrants 49
304, 305, 306; electoral system 293 Miles, R. 85
Lemkin, R. 122–3, 128 Milgram, S. 117
Levene, M. 131 military intervention: and conflict
liberal approaches: and conflict management 188; and conflict
management 188, 189–90 prevention 179
liberal democracies 10, 106; comparison Mill, J.S. 9, 58, 225, 300; On Representative
with authoritarian systems 311–19; Government 20
ethnic diversity in 314–16; and ethnic Miller, D. 47
movements 316; transition to in Central Miller, W.L. 318
and Eastern Europe 316–18 millet system 60, 255
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam 99 Milošević, S. 93, 99, 100, 116, 127
Liberia 178 Minahan, J. 55
Lijphart, A. 60, 144, 270, 288, 300, 301 Mindanao (Philippines) 98
linguistic assimilation 20–1, 22 Minogue, K. 35
Linz, J.J. 269 minority protection: legal developments
Lund, M. 170, 175 237–41
Lund Recommendations on the Effective Mladić, General R. 128
Participation of National Minorities in modernity/modernism 28, 29, 35; and
Public Life (1999) 61 developmentalism 33–4; and ethnicity
Lustick, I. 272 22; and genocide 122, 130–1; and
Luttwak, E. 153 ideology 28; and language 20–2; and
Lybarger, L.D. 73 nationalism 5, 16–17, 20, 29–30, 35, 39;
and origin of ‘nations’ 15–17, 18, 20, 24;
Maastricht Treaty 253 and progress 29
McAllion, J. 44 Moldova 92, 96, 303
McCrone, D. 50–1 Montenegro 261, 275
Macedonia 69, 109, 176, 179 Moreno-Ocampo, L. 129
‘Macedonian syndrome’ 254 Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF)
McNamara, R. 125 162, 163
‘mad scientist’ paradigm 28 Mostar 115
majoritarianism 295 Mountbatten, L. 143
majority rule: and democracy 106–7 Movement for a Better Hungary 318
Malays: in southern Thailand 162, 165 Movement for a Democratic Slovakia
Malaysia 14, 69, 97 (MDS) 317
Mann, M. 56, 116, 130 Movement for Rights and Freedom (MRF)
market economy: and post-conflict 109
reconstruction 216–17 Mozambique: and conflict resolution
Marshall, M. 201 202–3, 204, 205
Martin, T. 118 Mueller, J. 117
Marxism: demise of 31 multiculturalism 48, 59, 63
Mau Mau rebellion 134 multilateral approaches: and conflict
Mayall, J. 18 resolution 198–209
Mearsheimer, J.J. 141, 145 multination-states 56, 58, 60, 62, 63
330 Index
Muro, D. 50 New People’s Army 98
Muslim League 141, 146 new racism 80–1
myth-symbol complex 93, 96, 99 New Zealand 256
NGOs (non-governmental organizations)
Nagorno Karabakh war 113 173–4; and conflict management 189,
Namibia 202, 204 194; and conflict prevention 179, 190;
Napoleon 26 and conflict resolution 205; and genocide
nation-states 5, 16, 19, 31, 44–52, 55, 236; 124–5
and stateless nations 55–63 Nicolaïdis, K. 171
national cultural autonomy see NCA Nigeria 69, 97, 159, 259, 261, 291, 292
national federations 258–9 non-governmental organisations see NGOs
nationalism 5, 15, 16, 26–40, 57–9, 279; as non-violent conflict: ethnicity as generator
an ideology 27, 32–3, 39–40; banal 37–8, of 94–7
273; civic and ethnic 44–52; criticism of Nordic Council 303
33; definition 26; and developmentalism Norris, P. 67
33; Eastern and Western 45, 46–7, 51, North–South Ministerial Council see
52; and equality 38; and French NSMC
Revolution 29–30; and genocide 130; Northern Ireland 56, 57, 60, 69, 71, 85, 96,
and globalisation 38–9; and intellectuals 150, 151, 152, 153, 229, 252, 289, 308;
36–7; and modernism/modernity 5, civil society organisations 229;
16–17, 20, 29–30, 35, 39; primordial Community Relations Council 232; and
position 18–19, 20; state-formed and consociationalism 301–3, 304–5;
counter-state dichotomy 51–2; and devolution 250, 251; and Good Friday
stateless nations 57–9 Agreement (1998) 254, 255, 268, 301–3,
nationalists: and partition 145–6 304; and Irishness 83; Orange Order
nationality principle 236 parades 96
nationhood 37 NSMC (North–South Ministerial Council)
nation(s) 4–5, 15–24, 314; definitions 15; 255, 302, 308
and ethnicity 22–3; ethno-symbolism Nunavut (Canada) 56
approach 19; and language issue 20–2; Nuremberg Trials 123
materialist view of 17; modernist view of
15–17, 18, 20, 24; number of 55; OAS (Organization of American States):
primordialist theories 17–19, 20, 24; role and conflict prevention 177, 177
of vernacular media in rise of 17; Obradovic, D. 21
stateless 55–63; and states 55–6, 63 observation missions, UN 201
Native Americans 112, 136 OECD (Organization for Economic
NATO: intervention in Kosovo war 129 Cooperation and Development) 175;
naturalisation 314–15 Development Aid Committee 174
Nazis 118, 132 Office of the Coordinator for
NCA (national cultural autonomy) 60, Reconstruction and Stabilization see S/
278–86; ‘Austro-Marxism’ and origins CRS
of 278, 279–80; and the Baltic states Office of the Status of Women in South
280–1, 283; and Hungary 285–6; Africa 233
inter-war experiments and debates Orbán, V. 317
280–3; and personality principle 279; in organised crime: and ethnic conflict 3
post-Cold War Europe 283–6 Organization of American States see OAS
neo-liberalism 39 Organization for Economic Cooperation
net benefit argument: and partition 141–2 and Development see OECD
Netherlands 270, 319 Organization for Security and
new democracies: and ethnic policy 316–19 Co-operation in Europe see OSCE
Index 331
Orwell, G. 48 multidimensional operations 206;
OSCE High Commissioner on National missions 200; non-UN operations 200,
Minorities 205 204; parties/organizations involved in
OSCE (Organisation for Security and 202; post-Cold War 201–4; and
Co-operation in Europe) 105, 176, 177, post-conflict reconstruction 213, 215;
178, 244 and UN 200–3, 204, 206, 209
Oslo Accords (1993) 194 Peel Commission 147, 153
Ottoman Empire 60, 116 personal autonomy 255
Owen, D. 142 personality principle 279
Philippines 2–3, 134, 162, 163
Paisley, Reverend Dr I. 75 Plamenatz, J. 51
Pakistan 153, 166, 259; post-partition 151, pluralist federation 9, 249, 251–3, 305–6
152; and Sikh independence movement Pol Pot 125, 127, 132
165; wars with India 150, 166 Poland 112
Palestine: partition of 143, 147, 149, 150, political conflicts: and ethnic divisions
153; post-partition 152 96–7
Pape, R.A. 141 political elites: use of religion 68
Pappe, I. 118 political engineering 288–90, 293, 294–5,
Papua New Guinea 289, 292, 295 296–7, 297
partition 6, 7, 59, 115, 140–54, 188, 237, political parties 173, 294–5; and
243, 260; arguments against 145–53; centripetalism 289–90, 294, 296; and
arguments for 140–5, 154; better consociationalism 289–90
tomorrow argument 142; criteria for fair political reconstruction 213
143–4; damage to successor states 152; political representation 314
definition 140; disorder and violence political will: and conflict prevention 170,
149–51; historicist argument 140–1, 142; 173, 174, 178, 179, 180, 181
impossibility of just 146–9; and last politics of recognition 63
resort argument 141; and Politkovskaia, A. 35
multinationalists 145, 146; and Popov, G. 256
nationalists 145–6; net benefit argument Popper, K. 142
141–2; and paternalists 145; and population transfers 113, 113–15, 119, 126,
proceduralists 143–4; realist rigor 141, 243
argument 142, 143; receding goal of post-conflict reconciliation 245
homogenization 151–2; reversibility 154; post-conflict reconstruction 8, 103, 212–18,
and rupturing of territorial unity 145–6; 244–5; and constructivist theory 216;
and Solomon’s agenda 148; worsening and democracy 213, 216–17; in ethically
of compactness 152–3 divided societies 214–16; facilitating
Pasolini, P.P. 27 identity-related and attitudinal changes
paternalists: and partition 145 216; future research 218; institutionalist
patriotism 31 perspective 215–16; liberal
PCIA (Peace and Conflict Impact internationalist approach 216–17, 218;
Assessment) 172, 174 neo-realist perspective 214–15; political
Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment see 213; psychosocial 213–14; and security
PCIA dilemma 213, 214–15; socioeconomic
peace settlements 8, 243–4, 245 214; and strategic liberalisation 217–18;
peace support operations see PSO and voting systems 215–16
peace-building: and democracy/ poverty: as source of economic conflict 172
democratisation 103–5 Powell, G. B. 295
peacekeeping 198–9, 209, 213; Cold War power sharing 7, 9, 190, 215, 249, 260,
199–201; failures in 206–7; functions of 300–8
332 Index
presidential elections: and distribution religion (and ethnicity) 5, 67–75; and
requirement 291–2 colonialism 72; concepts of 68–71; in
preventative diplomacy 170, 171, 199, 201 conflict situations/regions 68, 69–70;
Prevention of Armed Conflict report (2001) ethno-symbolist perspective 68; everyday
179 68, 74–5; geohistorical sequences and
primordial approach: and ethnic identity creation of peoples 71–2; as sources of
93; and ethnicity 22–3; and language group solidarity and as political
20–2; and origin of ‘nations’ 17–19 resources 72–4; use of by political elites
proceduralists: and partition 143–4 68
Protazanov, S. 35 RENAMO (Resisténcia Nacional
Protestants/Protestantism 71, 72 Moçambicana) 203, 205
PSO (peace support operations) 207 Renan, E. 37, 48
psychocultural theory 6, 91, 96 Renner, K. 256, 257, 278, 279, 280, 282, 286
psychosocial reconstruction 213–14 Resisténcia Nacional Moçambicana see
Puerto Rico 58 RENAMO
Responsibility to Protect (R2P) report
Quebec 56, 63, 274, 306 (2001) 176–7, 191
Quinn, D. 3 Reynolds, A. 301
Quiroga, A. 50 rightist nationalist parties 318–19
rights 105, 106; see also human rights
race (and ethnicity) 5–6, 79–87; and riots, ethnic 97–8
categories of practice 82; concepts Rokkan, S. 71, 72
79–81; as constructs 85–6; in context Roma 48, 109, 110, 112, 257, 284, 285, 318
81–4; distinction between culture and Romania 283, 318
physical features as markers of 80; and Roshwald, A. 279
everyday talk 81–2; and groupism 85–6; Russia 35, 95, 305; and Chechen campaigns
historical context 83–4; as slippery 134; and corporate autonomy 256; and
terms 79–81, 84, 85, 86–7; spatial national cultural autonomy 284
contexts 83 Russian Federation 261
race relations 85 Rwandan genocide (1994) 34, 95, 109, 117,
racial discrimination 95 126, 127, 131, 132, 133, 136, 173, 192,
racial superiority 132; discrediting of idea 206–7
of 83–4
racialisation 85 S/CRS (Office of the Coordinator for
racism 6, 79, 133, 136, 237; institutional 95; Reconstruction and Stabilization) 175
new 80–1 SAARC (South Asian Association for
Radcliffe Commissions 147–8, 150 Regional Cooperation): and conflict
Radtke, F.-O. 315 prevention 177, 178
rape: ethnic 115; and genocide 127 Sabah 162, 163
realist approaches: and conflict Saddam Hussein 125
management 188–9 Saideman, S. 3
reconstruction, post-conflict see St Bartholomew’s massacre (1572) 29–30
post-conflict reconstruction sanctions 178–9
Reformation 71 Saudi Arabia 2
refugees 49 Schatz, E. 313
regional organizations: and conflict Scotland: and devolution 250, 267, 269
prevention 176–8, 177 Scotland Act (1998) 44
regionalisation: and unitary states 268–9 secession 6, 7, 22, 158–67, 239, 260; and aid
religion: conflict over 95, 99, 100; 163; convertibility of 160–2; definition 7,
definitions 68 140, 158–9; frequency of and reasons for
Index 333
159–60, 162–5; and leadership interests Spanish nationalism 50
163–4; opportunities and constraints Special Adviser on the Prevention of
163–4; and stateless nations 61; strength Genocide 176–7
of movement 165–6 Spencer, P. 49
security dilemma 59, 135–6, 188, 189; and Squire, V. 49
partition 141, 143, 147, 150–1; and Srebrenica: massacre in 128, 207
post-conflict reconstruction 213, 214–15 Sri Lanka 69, 97, 99, 159, 259
self-determination 237–9; and national Staatsvolk 261
cultural autonomy 279; and stateless Stagirite 140
nations 60–1 Stalin, J. 118, 123–4, 132, 135
self-governance 305 state-formed nationalism 51–2
Semelin, J. 132 stateless nations 5, 15, 55–63; and
Serbia 24, 93, 99, 100, 129, 238, 254, 261, asymmetrical modes of governance
303 61–3; and consociationalism 60; and
Serbs 91, 93, 99, 100, 112, 115–16, 207, 238, demands for cultural recognition 57; and
239, 254 Lund international standards 61; models
sham pluralist federation 259 for self-determination of 60–1; and
Shulman, S. 47 national cultural autonomy (NCA)
Sikh independence movement 165, 166 model 60; and nationalism 57–9; and
Singapore 293 secession 61
single transferable vote (STV) system 292, state-nation 236
302, 305 states: and nations 55–6, 63
Slavonia 245 Stefanovic, D. 319
‘Sleeping Beauty’ thesis 18 Stegear, M.B. 39
Slovak National Party 318 Stepan, A. 252
Slovakia 317–18; State Language Law strategic liberalisation: and post-conflict
(1995) 21 reconstruction 217–18
Slovenia 100 Straus, S. 117
Smith, A. 16, 17, 19, 27, 29, 33, 36, 45, structural approach: and genocide 130–1
46–7, 49, 57–8, 68, 73, 92 Sudan 69, 99, 147, 159, 161, 303;
Smith, D. 39 Comprehensive Peace Agreement for
social constructivist view 85, 92–3 303
social integration policies 273 Suez crisis (1956) 199
social mobilization approaches: and ethnic Suhrke, A. 173
civil wars 98–9 suicide bombing 67
social-psychological approach 97, 99, 188, Sunstein, C. 228–9
190–1 SVP (South Tyrolean People’s Party) 316
socioeconomic reconstruction 214 Sweden: dispute with Finland over Åland
Solomon’s agenda 148 Islands 238
Somalia 159, 162, 191, 192, 205 symbolic politics theory 96, 99; see also
Sontag, S. 28 ethno-symbolism
Sørensen, G. 106
Soto, A. de 202 Tajikistan 35, 203, 313
South Africa 95–6, 109, 271, 289, 312 Tamils 161, 162, 163, 165–6
South Asian Association for Regional Taylorism 34
Cooperation see SAARC technological advances: and genocide 133
South Tyrol 303, 304, 316 Telangana movement 159
Soviet Union 6, 34, 92, 123–4, 259; see also territorial pluralism 9, 249–62; benefits 262;
Russia conditions for success 260–2; cross-
Spain 261, 267 border territorial links 254–5; and
334 Index
democratisation 260; devolution/ between federal states and 266; and
decentralisation in unitary state 250–1; ethnic democracy 271–2; and
distinguishing from other forms of immigration 273–4; and regionalisation
autonomy 255–9; and economic 268–9
prosperity 261–2; federacy 9, 249, 253–4; United Middle Belt Congress 159
plural federation 9, 249, 251–3 United Nations see UN
terrorism 67; link with ethnic conflict 2–3 United States 48, 96, 258; as national
Teson, F. 191 federation 258–9; race/ethnicity
Thailand 2 discourse 83; support of genocidal
Thucydides 133 regimes 125
Timor-Leste 275 ‘us versus them’ mentality 190
Tito, J.B. 99 Ustashe 99, 100
Todt, F. 33 Uzbekistan 95, 313
Tolstoy, L. 31
totalitarianism 33, 34–5, 37, 130 Valentino, B.A. 118
Touval, S. 193 Valmy, Battle of (1792) 30, 34
tribal 79 van den Berghe, P. 80
tribunals see international criminal/military van der Stoel, M. 15, 237, 286
tribunals van der Wusten, H. 268
truth and reconciliation commissions/ Vance, C. 142
tribunals 189, 213, 216, 245 Varshney, A. 230
Tullberg, J.and B. 144 Veblen, T. 38
Turkey 135 Vendée uprising (1793–96) 31
Vietnam War 125, 134
Uganda 294 violence: and ideology 32; and partition
Ukrainian nationalism 317 149–51
UN (United Nations) 105, 143, 175, 179, Volkan, V. 93
189, 198; and conflict management vote-transfer systems 292–3
191–2, 194; and humanitarian voting systems see electoral systems
intervention 208; military responses 201;
observer missions 201; and peacekeeping Wales, devolution 250, 269
200–3, 204, 206, 209; and post-conflict Wannsee Conference (1942) 135
reconstruction 212; problems regarding ‘war on terror’ 28
preventative capacity 205 ‘Western’ nationalism 45, 46
UN Charter 61, 178, 198–9, 205, 208, 238 Whitaker Report 124, 128
UN Emergency Force (UNEF) 199 Wilkinson, P. 207
UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET) Wollman, H. 49
207 World Bank 174–5; Post-conflict
UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) 208, 239 Reconstruction Unit 205
UN Preventative Deployment
(UNPREDEP) 179 Yemen 2
UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) 179 Yudhoyono, S.B. 292
UN Security Council 178, 199 Yugoslavian wars (1990s) 69, 92, 98,
UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of 99–100, 114, 126, 127, 128
Genocide 129
UN Transition Assistance Group Zakaria, F. 106
(UNTAG) 202 Zartman, I.W. 193
unitary states 9, 266–75, 306; and Zeitgeist 28
assimilation 272–3; and Zionists/Zionism 70, 141
consociationalism 269–71; distinction

Routledge Handbook of Ethnic Conflict

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What are some of the main causes and consequences of ethnic conflict discussed in the document?

What are some of the main causes and consequences of ethnic conflict discussed in the document?

How does the document describe approaches to preventing and resolving ethnic conflicts?

How does the document describe approaches to preventing and resolving ethnic conflicts?

Routledge Handbook of

Karl Cordell is Professor of Politics at the University of Plymouth. He co-edits the

Stefan Wolff is Professor of International Security at the University of Birmingham.

Edited by Karl Cordell and Stefan Wolff

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

ISBN 0-203-84549-8 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN: 978-0-415-47625-6 (hbk)

1 The study of ethnic conflict: an introduction 1

2 Origins of ‘nations’: contested beginnings, contested futures 15

3 Ideology and nationalism 26

4 The nation-state: civic and ethnic dimensions 44

5 Stateless nations in a world of nation-states 55

6 Ethnicity and religion 67

7 Race and ethnicity 79

8 Ethnicity as a generator of conflict 91

10 The causes and consequences of ethnic cleansing 112

12 Debating partition: evaluating the standard justifications 140

13 Irredentas and secessions: adjacent phenomena, neglected connections 158

14 Conflict prevention: a policy in search of a theory or a theory in

15 Managing and settling ethnic conflict 187

16 Multilateral frameworks for conflict resolution 198

17 Post-conflict reconstruction in ethnically divided societies 212

18 Deepening democracy: the role of civil society 225

19 Human rights and ethnopolitics 236

20 Territorial approaches to ethnic conflict settlement 249

21 Ethnic accommodation in unitary states 266

22 National cultural autonomy 278

24 Power sharing 300

25 Playing the ethnic card: liberal democratic and authoritarian practices

14.1 Regional organizations’ reflection of R2P prevention principles 177

Sandra Barkhof is Lecturer in History at the Faculty of Arts, University of Plymouth.

David Carment is a full Professor of International Affairs at the Norman Paterson

Colin Clark is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Strathclyde. His

Daniele Conversi is Ikerbasque Foundation Research Professor, University of the

Jenny Engström is an independent researcher on Balkan politics, peace and conflict

Martin Fischer is a doctoral candidate at the Norman Paterson School of International

Monika Heupel is a Research Associate in the Transnational Conflicts and International

James Hughes is Professor of Comparative Politics in the Department of Government

Jennifer Jackson-Preece is Senior Lecturer in Nationalism at the London School of

Erin K. Jenne is Associate Professor at the International Relations and European

Stuart J. Kaufman is Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the

John McGarry is Professor of Political Studies and Canada Research Chair in

Ephraim Nimni is Reader at the School of Politics, International Studies, at Queen’s

Brendan O’Leary is Lauder Professor of Political Science at the University of

Benjamin Reilly is Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University.

Joseph Ruane is Professor in the Department of Sociology, University College Cork.

Frans Schrijver is a teaching fellow in Political Geography at the University of Sheffield.

Asaf Siniver is Lecturer in International Security at the Department of Political Science

Jennifer Todd is Professor in the School of Politics and International Relations,

Ethnic conflict as an international security challenge

Conceptualising the study of ethnic conflict

Ethnic conflict: what we know (and can do) about it

Any discussion of ‘nations’ and nationalism is immediately confronted by the continued

‘Nations’ and modernity