Article

Internal drivers of self-rule referendums

Authors:
To read the full-text of this research, you can request a copy directly from the authors.

Abstract

From Catalonia to Kurdistan to Scotland, referendums have increasingly become popular strategies of self-rule movements. Despite this, many referendums are considered failures by the movements (revealing a dearth of support), some are marred by violence, and few garner external backing. Given this, when are they likely to be employed? We argue that internal competition serves as one driving force for actors to use referendums as a way to gain or uphold status within the movement. Using novel data and two case studies, we highlight the ways these movements arrive at a vote for self-rule, underscoring the role of internal competition.

No full-text available

Request Full-text Paper PDF

To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.

ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.
Article
Full-text available
Anticipated trade, insurance, and fiscal shocks from independence structure preferences for secession independently from nonmaterial considerations. To test this claim, we draw from an original survey conducted in Catalonia before the 2017 regional election , which followed a suspended declaration of independence. Trade shocks produce differential effects depending on market specialization: Respondents working in sectors and at firms specializing in the host state market disproportionately oppose secession, whereas those specializing in foreign markets show no aversion to independence. Exclusion from public insurance strengthens preference for secession among the long-term unemployed. Support for secession also increases with skill levels but not because of expected postindependence factor returns. The skilled population show better understanding of the institutional design of interterritorial redistribution. In a context of autonomy retraction, this group is more skeptical of the accommodation of regional demands within the union. Overall, we advance an individual-level materialistic approach to the study of secession.
Book
Full-text available
How can we understand the strategic interaction between secessionist movements and sovereign states? A casual review of the many secessionist struggles around the world, both violent and peaceful, shows a variety of types. Some, like Catalonia, are pursuing their ends using combinations of electoral capture and civil demonstrations, just as the Spanish government is working to delegitimize these efforts and defeat them in the polls. Regions like Nagorno Karabakh (Artsakh) lack the same institutional connectivity with the larger state of Azerbaijan and are relegated to a de facto (but unrecognized) status where defense, deterrence, and diplomacy are critical. For its part, Azerbaijan invokes its territorial integrity and attempts to deny all forms of recognition to the breakaway region. Other regions from West Papua to Tibet are faced with the hard choice between civil resistance and the use of violence, and their states are keen to suppress their efforts and hide them from the world. What features are common across all of these examples, and how do they differ? This volume synthesizes a number of theories and theoretical approaches that purport to explain the strategies of secession and counter-secession. This is an important topic. Apart from the many legal and cartographical issues that attend secessionist activity, the potential for conflict is a very real concern. Estimates put the share of civil wars driven by secessionism at about 50%,1 and according to Barbara Walter secessionism is the chief source of violence in the world today.2 Secessionism is destabilizing because, at the least, it presents a direct challenge to existing political systems. Yet surprisingly, the strategic interaction between states and secessionists is an area in which we have incomplete understanding.
Book
Full-text available
The book focuses on current developments on territorial changes in International law. The study inquiries about whether according to international law, the referendum is a sufficient or a necessary condition for secession, or both. Through main “cases study”, the book finds that there is no sufficient practice and opinio juris to support the existence of an international rule according to which the referendum is a sufficient element to legitimize the birth of a new entity. Nevertheless, there are at least some elements supporting the view that the referendum is becoming a necessary tool in the process for secession, provided that it complies with certain procedural standards.
Article
Full-text available
Rebel groups employ a number of strategies beyond violence, and these alternative tactics are often thought to improve the reputation and legitimacy of rebel actors. How powerful states (and their publics) view rebels can affect their chances of international recognition, inclusion in peace talks, and whether they are eventually successful at achieving their objectives. This study employs two experiments to test the link between rebel tactics and opinions of these rebels held by external audiences. We examine the impact of six rebel behaviors on American public opinion: (a) nonviolent demonstrations, (b) nonviolent interventions (such as blockades and sit ins), (c) social noncooperation (such as hunger strikes), (d) terrorism, (e) stone throwing, and (f) the use of local democratic practice (elections) in rebel groups. We find that the use of elections within rebel actors, demonstrations, and hunger strikes improve positive perceptions of rebels, whereas rebel use of terrorism decreases support.
Article
Full-text available
Using the case study of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) and the 2017 independence referendum, this article examines the nexus between independence referendums, nationalism and political power. It argues that the referendum in the KRI was held due to internal political competition and growing rebellion from the population against the poor economic performance and political situation rather than because the time was right for independence referendum. Focusing on the poor political and financial dynamics, as well as the lack of regional and international support for Kurdish independence, the article argues that independence was not a realistic goal and was rather used as a distraction amid internal turmoil. The example of the referendum in the KRI poses questions about the democratic credibility of such referenda, as the population were voting for an unachievable result and the referendum itself became a tool of internal political competition.
Article
Full-text available
The Kurdistan region of Iraq has a substantial number of the customary signs of political system, including the various main branches of the state institutions such as executive, courts, and assembly. Since 1991, the Region has established as certain political system that adheres to a commonly acknowledged type of system of government. Some contend that the political system in the region is a presidential system, however with parliament having had the ability to vote the President in or out for quite a while. Political division, explicitly between the political parties, has ended up being a veritable obstruction to the political advancement and strength of the Region and to concocting a bound together type of political system. The region has suffered from lack of constitution; this has caused political conflicts over the law of the presidency of the region and the ways of electing the President. Therefore, when Barzani's presidency term ended in August 2015, the political parties except the KDP attempted to amend the presidential law and make another law to elect the president inside the parliament until writing the constitution for the Region in which the political parties can agree on the form of the political system and the way of electing the President. This article contends that there is a connection between the nature and structure of the political parties and the political systems that have been proposed as a ruling model for the region. The article also concludes by identifying potential systems of government available to the KRI and the potential consequences of each.
Article
Full-text available
Following an ambiguous constitutional compromise for democratization, the territorial decentralization of the Spanish state developed by means of political party competition, exchanges, and bargaining. Hence, the so-called state of autonomies was characterized as " non-institutional federalism " [Colomer, Josep M. 1998. " The Spanish 'State of Autonomies': Non-institutional Federalism. " West European Politics 21 (4): 40–52]. In the most recent period, competition and instability have intensified. New developments include, on one side, attempts at recentralizating the state and, on the other side, demands and mobilizations for Catexit, that is, the independence of Catalonia from Spain, which resulted in sustained inter-territorial conflict. This article addresses these recent changes with a focus on the relations between the Spanish and the Catalan governments. The political changes were analyzed as a result of opportunities and incentives offered by a loose institutional framework and the subsequent competitive strategies of extreme party leaders.
Book
Full-text available
Many of the world's states—from Algeria to Ireland to the United States—are the result of robust national movements that achieved independence. Many other national movements have failed in their attempts to achieve statehood, including the Basques, the Kurds, and the Palestinians. In Rebel Power, Peter Krause offers a powerful new theory to explain this variation focusing on the internal balance of power among nationalist groups, who cooperate with each other to establish a new state while simultaneously competing to lead it. The most powerful groups push to achieve states while they are in position to rule them, whereas weaker groups unlikely to gain the spoils of office are likely to become spoilers, employing risky, escalatory violence to forestall victory while they improve their position in the movement hierarchy. Hegemonic movements with one dominant group are therefore more likely to achieve statehood than internally competitive, fragmented movements due to their greater pursuit of victory and lesser use of counterproductive violence. Krause conducted years of fieldwork in government and nationalist group archives as well as more than 150 interviews with participants in the Palestinian, Zionist, Algerian, and Irish national movements. This research generated comparative longitudinal analyses of these four national movements involving 40 groups in 44 campaigns over a combined 140 years of struggle. Krause identifies new turning points in the history of these movements and provides fresh explanations for their use of violent and nonviolent strategies, as well as their numerous successes and failures. Rebel Power is essential reading for understanding not only the history of national movements but also the causes and consequences of contentious collective action today, from the Arab Spring to the civil wars and insurgencies in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and beyond.
Article
Full-text available
Who supports secession in a multiethnic country? What factors lead to secessionist or separatist attitudes? Despite the substantial interest in secessionist movements, the micro-level factors and dynamics behind mass support for secession have been understudied. Using original and comprehensive data derived from two public opinion surveys, conducted in 2011 and 2013 with nationwide, representative samples, this study investigates the determinants of separatist attitudes among Turkey's Kurds. The empirical results show that perceptions of discrimination, ideological factors (i.e. a left-right division and partisanship), region and religious sect do affect support for secession. Our findings provide strong support for the grievance theory and, further, show that ideology is an important factor. However, the results call into question arguments drawing attention to the role of modernisation (i.e. socio-economic status) and of religiosity. The study also discusses some practical implications of the empirical findings.
Book
Full-text available
Although referendums have been used for centuries to settle ethnonational conflicts, there has yet been no systematic study or generalized theory concerning their effectiveness. Referendums and Ethnic Conflict fills the gap with a comparative and empirical analysis of all the referendums held on ethnic and national issues from the French Revolution to the 2012 referendum on statehood for Puerto Rico. Drawing on political theory and descriptive case studies, Matt Qvortrup creates typologies of referendums that are held to endorse secession, redraw disputed borders, legitimize a policy of homogenization, or otherwise manage ethnic or national differences. He considers the circumstances that compel politicians to resort to direct democracy, such as regime change, and the conditions that might exacerbate a violent response.
Article
Full-text available
Despite its strong legal and historical claims to sovereignty, the Republic of Somaliland remains entirely unrecognized by the international community more than 20 years after it proclaimed independence from Somalia in 1991. Paradoxically, Somaliland’s lack of external legitimacy has, in some ways, facilitated the growth and development of its internal legitimacy. In contrast, Somalia enjoys widespread external recognition from the international community but has very little domestic legitimacy and largely fails to govern effectively the territory it claims. Somaliland’s high degree of domestic legitimacy and its strong desire for external recognition increasingly come into conflict with one another both in the eastern parts of Somaliland and in the continued democratic development of its hybrid domestic political institutions. The safest prediction for Somaliland is continued de facto statehood where its strong internal legitimacy enables it to survive in a hostile external environment but fails to translate into widespread sovereign recognition of its significant domestic accomplishments. Ultimately, though, Somaliland’s ability to deliver the “goods” on economic development and poverty reduction for its citizens will be significantly hampered without external recognition of its domestic achievements.
Article
Full-text available
Why do some autocracies remain stable while others collapse? This article presents a theoretical framework that seeks to explain the longevity of autocracies by referring to three pillars of stability: legitimation, repression, and co-optation. These three causal factors are derived by distilling and synthesizing the main arguments of classic and more recent research efforts. Particular emphasis is paid to re-incorporate legitimation in the explanation of stable autocracies. The article conceptionalizes the three pillars and discusses methods of concrete measurement. It then moves on to explain the stabilization process. How do these pillars develop their stabilizing effect? It is argued that reinforcement processes take place both within and between the pillars. They take the form of exogenous reinforcement, self-reinforcement, and reciprocal reinforcement. To illustrate the inner logic of these processes, I draw on empirical examples. I also state what we would need to observe empirically and how we can approach the three pillars methodically. A theoretical framework of this nature has two advantages: it is able to take the complexity of autocratic regimes into account while remaining parsimonious enough to be applicable to all autocratic regimes, irrespective of their subtype; and it integrates a static view to explain stability, with the emphasis on the underlying stabilization mechanisms and facilitates within-case and cross-case comparisons.
Article
Full-text available
How do we conceptualize the fragmentation of internally divided movements? And how does variation in fragmentation affect the probability and patterns of infighting? The internal politics of non-state groups have received increasing attention, with recent research demonstrating the importance of cohesion and fragmentation for understanding conflict dynamics. Yet there is little con-sensus on how to conceptualize fragmentation, the concept at the center of this agenda, with authors using different definitions and measures. In this paper we conceptualize fragmentation along three constitutive dimensions: the number of organizations in the movement; the degree of institutionalization across these organizations; and the distribution of power among them. We then show how variation across these dimensions can explain variation in important conflict processes, focusing on infighting.
Article
Full-text available
This article argues that referendums in societies coming out of war often fit into the conflict resolution rather than the conflict transformation paradigm. As conflict resolution devices, they may be one-off events rather than part of a longer term attempt to recalibrate relationships between antagonistic groups. Using a number of case studies, the article argues that unless the ground is prepared beforehand, referendums may have a limited ability to bring about reconciliation. Some well-timed referendums have advanced peace processes at critical moments, but these are exceptions and we should be cautious in recommending them as exemplars to other cases. The article highlights three common contextual issues that limit the conflict amelioration possibility of referendums: the exclusion of key constituencies from debates on the referendum process, a lack of voter education, and generalized insecurity.
Article
Territorial debates complicate the politics of the affected regions, as parties decide whether to compete on a territorial dimension alongside other longstanding important issues. Yet, empirical evidence is scarce regarding how much voters politically weigh territorial issues against others. We theorize that in contexts when such issues are salient, they have a greater weight relative to others due to their identity-oriented nature. We present evidence from conjoint experiments from three European regions with active territorial debates: Catalonia, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. We find that territorial preferences matter more than others for candidate choice, as the reward (punishment) of congruent (incongruent) candidates is greater, and individuals are less willing to trade off on this issue. Our results have comparative implications for political competition in multidimensional spaces.
Book
Who is the ‘real’ IRA? The Real IRA, the Continuity IRA, the Irish National Liberation Army, the Official IRA and the Provisional IRA have all assumed responsibility for the struggle for Irish freedom over the course of the late-twentieth century. Yet, as recently as 1969, there was only one Irish Republican Army trying to unify Ireland using physical force. This book explains how and why the transition from one IRA to several IRAs occurred, analysing all the dissident factions that have emerged since the outbreak of the Northern Ireland troubles. It looks at why these groups emerged, what their respective purposes are and why, in an era of relative peace and stability in Northern Ireland, they seek to prolong the violence that has cost over 3,500 lives. The book includes interviews with members of all dissident and mainstream republican organizations, all loyalist factions and security force sources, and shows the influence of Irish America in provoking dissent within republicanism.
Article
The international community increasingly promotes referendums as it intervenes in self-determination conflicts around the world. However, the ability of self-determination referendums to bring about peace remains uncertain. This paper develops the argument that the conflict resolution potential of self-determination referendums is conditional, depending on whether or not they are held under the mutual agreement of the relevant minority and majority groups. When mutually agreed, self-determination referendums are likely to generate shared perceptions of fair decision-making and thereby increase chances for peace. By contrast, unilateral self-determination referendums are likely to increase ethnic grievances and, therefore, the risk of separatist violence. I find support for this argument in a global statistical analysis, short case studies, and a survey experiment. Overall, this study suggests that self-determination referendums can make a positive contribution to peace, but only if the conditions for a partial compromise on a referendum, including its terms, are ripe.
Article
This article explores the strategic functions of independence referendums. These referendums are normally framed as popular decisions on statehood over a certain territory. However, I argue that the popular will does not always have the decisory function that plebiscitarian theories suggest. In fact, actual decision referendums are rare; often independence referendums are instead used strategically as a leverage and signalling tactic. The article is structured as follows. First, I propose two key criteria to classify independence referendums regarding actors and timing. Through the application of these criteria, I build a typology proposing four main uses of referendums: leverage, signalling, decision and ratification. Second, I focus on the specific case of leverage referendums. I argue that analyzing the outcomes of leverage referendums can provide some clues about why secessionists still call for these referendums even though they almost never result in internationally recognized statehood. Finally, I conclude by discussing the implications of my findings.
Article
What is the value of using referendums as part of independence movements? By considering recent prominent secession movements, this article theorizes that referendums provide several strategic advantages to distinct communities seeking territorial independence. First, the referendum is a key event that transfers power away from political elites and towards citizens, who are given responsibility for deciding independence. Second, the referendum forces the central government to act by creating a date when independence will be decided (a self-created window of opportunity). Third, the referendum frames independence in terms of democracy and the right to self-determination, making it difficult for the central government to challenge. Fourth, referendum campaigns can help solidify the identity of a distinct community (or ‘resurrect’ it), thus increasing the number of citizens concerned with secession. While not always successful, secession referendums provide advantages to those groups that control their deployment.
Article
This article introduces the Strategies of Resistance Data Project (SRDP), a global dataset on organizational behavior in self-determination disputes. This dataset is actor-focused and spans periods of relative peace and violence in self-determination conflicts. By linking tactics to specific actors in broader campaigns for political change, we can better understand how these struggles unfold over time, and the conditions under which organizations use conventional politics, violent tactics, nonviolent tactics, or some combination of these. SRDP comprises 1,124 organizations participating in movements for greater national self-determination around the world, from 1960 to 2005. Despite the fact that few self-determination movements engage in mass nonviolent campaigns, SRDP shows that more organizations employ nonviolent tactics at some point in time (about 40%) than employ violence (about 30%). Many organizations switch among tactics or use both at the same time. This dataset will allow analysts to examine the use of different combinations of tactics and patterns of change. We compare the data with the most-used dataset on nonviolence, the NAVCO 2.0 Data Project, to demonstrate what we gain by employing an organization-level dataset on tactics. We present a set of descriptive analyses highlighting the utility of the SRDP, including an examination of tactic switching. We show that more organizations change from violence to nonviolence than the reverse – challenging the widely held assumption that organizations ‘resort’ to violence. SRDP allows scholars to examine organizational choices about tactics, and trends in these tactics, with much greater nuance.
Article
An extensive literature in political science and sociology has analyzed how state repression shapes attempts by social movements to pursue political objectives. Less studied, however, is the effect that state repression of activists has on the broader public. Understanding public responses to repression is important, as both states and social movements take action with an eye toward (de)mobilizing broader constituencies. This letter analyzes this dynamic in the context of contemporary Catalonia, where the Spanish state cracked down on efforts by Catalan activists to hold a public referendum on independence. Matching poll respondents in the months before and after the crackdown in late 2017, the study finds that repression increased public sympathy for independence for a short period, and heightened animosity towards actors perceived to be associated or complicit with the Spanish state. The findings speak to the potential for state repression of nonviolent movements to create windows of opportunity for broader mobilization.
Article
Rebel actors engage in a number of behaviors beyond violent conflict, including social service provision, diplomacy, and establishing local governance. This article centers on an oft-overlooked aspect of rebel behavior and governance: rebel groups conducting popular elections in wartime. We argue that rebel elections are a means through which rebels can strengthen both local and international legitimacy, but that there are risks to employing elections (such as logistical failures or publicized disconnect from civilians). We hypothesize that rebels that are pursuing legitimacy (local and international) in other ways are likely to set up rebel elections and that rebel groups with greater organizational capacity are more likely to introduce elections because they are well placed to manage the risks elections entail. Using a global data set of rebel use of elections where local civilians vote to elect rebel representatives at various levels of organizational hierarchy, we find empirical support for these propositions.
Article
This article analyses the factors conducive to recognising independence referendums and to winning these votes. After a tour d’horizon of the history of referendums on independence and a summary of the legal position, this article argues that independence referendums are most likely to be implemented when this is in the interest of the three Western powers on the UN Security Council. While there is a statistically significant correlation between the support for independence (the yes-vote) and international recognition, this is much lower than the 100% association between support of the three permanent Western powers on the Security Council and international recognition. Countries may cite legal, democratic and philosophical principles, but the statistical and historical facts suggest that these are of secondary importance when it comes to recognising states after independence referendums.
Article
The use of referendums to forge, ratify and enact peace agreements is on the rise. In growing numbers, peacemakers have organized referendums in order to aid peace talks and ameliorate post-settlement peacebuilding. Despite this increasingly common practice, there is little consensus on whether referendums help or hurt peace. Such votes can be uniquely powerful tools for addressing sovereignty incompatibilities driving armed conflict. However, dangerous outcomes include mass violence, intensified polarization, and the undermining peace agreement implementation. Based on 31 case studies and elite interviews conducted in Colombia, Cyprus, East Timor, Indonesia, and South Sudan, this article elaborates an analytical framework for the uses of referendums in peace processes and identifies specific benefits and risks associated with differing types. I argue that referendums can improve peacemaking and conditions for implementing negotiated settlements when they are well-designed and well-implemented.
Article
Recent research shows that campaigns of nonviolent resistance are much more successful in producing radical political change than armed rebellion. I argue that the study of nonviolent resistance has paid insufficient attention to a key condition for success—a shared ethnic identity between challengers and government. When challengers and incumbent belong to different ethnic groups, the prospects of campaign success are drastically curtailed, as this situation of “ethnic conflict” inhibits the mechanisms through which nonviolent resistance enables success: emergence of a critical mass of challengers, defection of segments of the security apparatus and the regime inner circle, and development of feelings of sympathy for the opposition cause among key government decision makers. Statistical analysis of all nonviolent campaigns from 1945 to 2006 supports my argument. Nonviolent ethnic campaigns are significantly and substantially less likely to succeed and draw both fewer participants and government defectors than their nonethnic counterparts.
Article
On 7 June 2017, the former Kurdistan president Massoud Barzani called a meeting between 15 Kurdish political parties to seek their approval for a referendum on Iraqi Kurdish independence. Despite many adverse circumstances – the proroguing of the Kurdistan parliament, the strained relations among the Kurdish political parties, and the general political stalemate in Iraqi Kurdistan – the meeting agreed that a referendum should take place on 25 September 2017. However, both the Gorran Movement (Gorran) and the Kurdistan Islamic Group (Komal) refused to take part in the meeting and instead requested that the government's main focus be on restoring the political environment and restarting the Kurdistan parliament before any discussions take place on the issue of a Kurdish referendum. Notwithstanding internal, regional and international pressures, the Kurdistan Regional Government pressed ahead and held its referendum on 25 September 2017. The central question that remains about the Kurdistan referendum is what really motivated Kurdish politicians, in particular those of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) to hold the poll? This article argues that the KDP has a number of different public and private motivations in holding the independence referendum, which need to be explored.
Chapter
The chapter argues that a significant amount of law has been developed over the past twenty years in order to constitutionalize secession. The legacy of the Canadian Quebec Secession Reference has been remarkable and has permeated, implicitly or explicitly, several legal systems, especially through their courts. However, the legal regulation of secessionist claims has so far been focusing almost exclusively on referendums, often not assisted by additional safeguards against plebiscitary (ab)use. At the same time, the legal regulation of political phenomena, which is the typical trend of constitutionalism, is clearly emerging with regard to secession too, and several instruments are being or can be employed to achieve a more effective, legally guaranteed and democratic comparative constitutional law of secession. Albeit sometimes unaware, these instruments are being developed. In its final session, the paper presents and discusses them.
Article
How does foreign support for separatists influence conflict escalation with the central government? What types of miscalculations over foreign support encourage separatists to take risky gambles and lead to surprising losses? Existing research indicates that armed non-state actors may initiate or escalate conflict with the central government when existing or anticipated gains in foreign support favorably alters their likelihood for success. This article sheds light on an additional but equally important catalyst for conflict escalation: rebel, or separatist, beliefs about net losses of foreign support in their gamble for more autonomy. Even if groups have perfect information on potential gains in foreign support, miscalculations over potential losses can also lead to risky gambles. To illustrate the distinction between separatist miscalculations over gains and losses in foreign support, this paper compares two episodes of Iraqi Kurdish escalation: the 1991 uprising against Saddam Hussein in the aftermath of the Gulf War, and the 2017 independence referendum after three years of war against the Islamic State. While the former case is a classic example of escalation based on miscalculating gains in foreign support, the latter case represents a miscalculation over potential losses of foreign support in response to the vote.
Article
An extensive literature in political science and sociology has analyzed how state repression shapes attempts by social movements to pursue political objectives. Less studied, however, is the effect that state repression of activists has on the broader public. Understanding public responses to repression is important as both states and social movements take action with an eye toward (de)mobilizing broader constituencies. We analyze this dynamic in the context of contemporary Catalonia, where the Spanish state cracked down on efforts by Catalan activists to hold a public referendum on independence. Matching poll respondents in the months before and after the crackdown in late 2017, we find that repression increased public sympathy for independence for a short period, and also heightened animosity towards actors seen as associated or complicit with the Spanish state. The findings speak to the potential for state repression of nonviolent movements to create windows of opportunity for broader mobilization.
Article
Recent research suggests that the strategic use of violence may increase a group’s chance of gaining independence. We investigate this topic using comprehensive data on all secessionist movements between 1900 and 2006 and an original data set on the institutional and extrainstitutional methods that secessionists have used from 1946 to 2011. Our analysis yields several important findings. First, strategy depends on context. Not all secessionist movements are the same, and many have legal and/or institutional routes to independence that shape the methods that they employ. Second, no secessionist movement challenging a contiguous state has won its sovereignty without using institutional methods, either exclusively or in combination with extrainstitutional methods. Finally, we identify four successful combinations of secessionist methods and discuss how these movements develop in relation to their strategic setting. Overall, we find no evidence that violence helps a secessionist movement to gain independence.
Article
On 25th September 2017, the eligible voters of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq were given the opportunity to respond ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the question, posed in Kurdish, Turkmen, Arabic and Assyrian: “Do you want the Kurdistan Region and the Kurdistani areas outside the administration of the Region to become an independent state?” The aim of this note is to give an empirically focussed account of the independence referendum. The note has been written by four members of a delegation who spent one week in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) with the purpose of observing the referendum. The key point that we draw from these observations is that the referendum and the associated aspiration for independence, which potentially could have unified the different political factions in the KRI, has in fact cruelly exposed divisions.
Article
Self-determination claims have abounded in the international system since the end of World War II. But these claims have not emerged everywhere. About half of the states in the international system face some challenge related to self-determination today. Why do some states face these demands while others do not? We argue that ethno-national self-determination is one of many identities with which individuals can find affinity. While an international norm related to self-determination has developed globally, its use as a basis for political claims has diffused regionally. Diffusion of self-determination occurs through observation of others using self-determination as a basis of organization, generating a sense of legitimacy, sensitivity to related grievance, and perceptions of tangible benefits related to self-determination identification. We test this empirically on global data on self-determination claims from 1960 to 2005 and find evidence of spatial diffusion, suggesting that self-determination is, to some extent, contagious.
Book
The strategic use of referendums by leaders often confers legitimacy but it may also reflect the power struggle between leaders, groups, and institutions and in doing so not provide a democratic result for the citizenry of a country.
Book
Would the 'real' IRA please stand up? Why, and how, the IRA splintered. The Real IRA, the Continuity IRA, the Irish National Liberation Army, the Official IRA and the Provisional IRA have all assumed responsibility for the struggle for Irish freedom over the course of the late-20th century. Yet as recently as 1969 there was only one Irish Republican Army trying to unify Ireland using physical force. Andrew Sanders explains how and why the transition from one IRA to several IRAs occurred, analysing all the dissident factions that have emerged since the outbreak of the Northern Ireland troubles. He looks at why these groups emerged, what their respective purposes are, and why, in an era of relative peace and stability in Northern Ireland, they seek to prolong the violence that cost over 3500 lives. Key Features. • Exclusive interviews with members of all dissident and mainstream republican organizations, all loyalist factions and security force sources • Extensive archival research • The first scholarly analysis of Irish republican division • Shows influence of Irish-America in provoking dissent within republicanism.
Thesis
The topic of this thesis is Tatarstan's post-Soviet leadership, analysed through its politics of Tatar nationalism and Russian federalism between 1992 and 1999. The main question of the thesis is how Tatarstan's leadership has succeeded in maintaining political power and gaining economic wealth without provoking a backlash both from Moscow and the local Russian population. The thesis argues that Tatarstan's leadership succeeded in maintaining political power and gaining economic wealth through promoting neither the civic nationalism of participating citizens in Tatarstan nor the ethnic nationalism of the Tatar nation bound together by common culture and history, but pragmatic nomenklatura nationalism which demands national autonomy for the Tatars as the only formula for Tatarstan's leadership to secure regional stability against ethnic nationalisms of the Tatars and the Russians in Tatarstan and the adverse regional effects of the federal policies. The thesis considers the weaknesses of the Russian federal centre and Tatarstan's civil society as the main factors enabling Tatarstan's leadership to pursue a politics of survival through manipulating Tatar nationalism and Russian federalism. The thesis begins with an introduction setting out the approach and the argument. The first main chapter examines the historical evolution of Russia's relations with the Tatar elites both in the Tsarist and the Soviet periods. Chapter Two analyses the President of Tatarstan Mintimer Shaimiev's discourse of Tatar nationalism, and demonstrates how Shaimiev's policies served to Tatarise the leading positions in Tatarstan without a backlash from the Russians. Chapter Three deals with Shaimiev's politics of Tatar nationalism vis-A-vis Moscow before and after the conclusion of the power-sharing treaty between Moscow and Tatarstan in 1994. Chapter Four explores society and culture in Tatarstant o account for the weaknesses of Tatar and Russian ethnic nationalisms.The fifth chapter evaluates the stability of Tatarstan's arrangements with Moscow in terms of the trends at the intergovernmental and interethnic levels. The thesis concludes by showing how Tatar nationalism under Shaimiev has accommodated itself with Russian federalism.
Article
The recent proliferation of referendums on sovereignty matters has fuelled growing scholarly interest. However, comparative research is hindered by the weaknesses of current compilations, which tend to suffer from conceptual vagueness, varied coding decisions, incomplete coverage and ad hoc categorizations. Based on an improved conceptualization and theory-driven typology, this article presents a new dataset of 602 sovereignty referendums from 1776–2012, more than double the number in existing lists. In an exploratory analysis, it uncovers eight distinctive clusters of sovereignty referendums and identifies patterns of activity over time and space as well as outcomes produced.
Article
This special issue explores the production of political legitimacy, approached from the angle of the legitimacy claims of the governing authorities of anomalous geopolitical spaces. Legitimacy sits at the heart of theories of sovereign power, a position that has drawn a range of scholars - be they political geographers, political anthropologists, international lawyers or political scientists - to focus on the state as a primary source of political legitimacy. This special issue starts from a different premise: namely, that by studying alternative sites of legitimacy, so-called de facto states, annexed territories, governments-in-exile, liberation movements or unrecognised governments, we may shine a light on the wider arena of political actors, forms of agency and sites of contestation through which legitimacy is produced. This special issue introduction draws attention to, first, the centrality of questions of legitimacy to the enactment of political authority; second, the plural disciplinary and political interpretations of legitimacy, staking a claim for why this study has interdisciplinary significance; and, third, the spatial and temporal importance of studying anomalous geopolitical spaces. The latter are presented as zones that have often been neglected areas of comparative study but may hold the key to understanding the complexities of political legitimacy in the modern world. The introduction concludes with an overview of the themes contained within the individual papers that comprise this special issue.
Article
Prior to the takeover of Mosul by the Islamic State of Iraq and alSham (ISIS) in June 2014, political pundits, the media, and some Kurds were predicting imminent Kurdish statehood. They argued that Kurds do not feel attached to Iraq but to their own distinct territory, language, peshmerga (militia) forces, resources, and political institutions. A variety of factors fuelled these predictions including the dysfunctional Iraqi state, Syrian crisis, shifts in Turkish policy toward Iraqi Kurds, and a ‘booming’ Kurdish economy powered by hydrocarbons development. Yet instead of secession, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has reaffirmed its commitment to a federal Iraq. Not only have KRG leaders agreed, once again, to sell Kurdish crude via the Iraqi State Oil Marketing Company (SOMO) even in part, but they are coordinating with the U.S.-led Coalition, Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), and Shi’a militias to counter ISIS. What explains this political shift, and what does it imply about Baghdad– Erbil relations and the Kurdistan Region’s strategic role in Iraq and the region? Dramatic swings in the Kurdistan Region’s behavior underline its condition as a quasi-state, a political entity with no external sovereignty but large internal sovereignty. Like other quasi-states of its kind, it thrives off a weak central government, nationalist sentiment, external patronage, and international recognition. 1 The particularities of its geopolitical context also shape Kurdish
Article
From Kurdistan to Somaliland, Xinjiang to South Yemen, all secessionist movements hope to secure newly independent states of their own. Most will not prevail. The existing scholarly wisdom provides one explanation for success, based on authority and control within the nascent states. With the aid of an expansive new dataset and detailed case studies, this book provides an alternative account. It argues that the strongest members of the international community have a decisive influence over whether today's secessionists become countries tomorrow and that, most often, their support is conditioned on parochial political considerations.
Article
On two occasions (1980 and 1995), Quebeckers rejected the Quebec government's sovereignty proposal. Many lessons can be drawn from the Quebec referendum experience. The purpose of this article is to shed light on the origins and motivations of the independence movement. It focuses more specifically on the 1980 and 1995 referendums, examining in both cases the political context, the judicial–institutional framework within which these public consultations were held and the arguments raised during the referendum campaigns. Furthermore, it analyses the results as well as the political, constitutional and juridical consequences of the federalist victories. The article concludes that attempts by Quebec sovereignists to question the Canadian political system have invariably resulted in a stronger and more consolidated central state while significantly weakening the Quebec state's ability to determine its own political future.
Article
Unrecognised states, such as Abkhazia, Nagorno Karabakh, Northern Cyprus, Somaliland and Transnistria are denied (widespread) international recognition, and have therefore tended to be viewed as illegitimate entities by the international community. This is despite much recent academic literature which has rejected binary conceptions of sovereignty and has demonstrated both the varying levels of international engagement available to non-state actors and the degrees of statehood and legitimacy that can be achieved without (external) sovereignty. Taking this literature as its starting point, but based on a reconceptualization of existing approaches to legitimacy in the context of non-recognition, this article analyses legitimation strategies adopted by unrecognised states and how these affect their degree of internal and external legitimacy. Drawing on evidence from several case studies, it finds that there is often a fraught relationship between different forms of legitimacy. Both external and internal legitimacy are crucial if unrecognised states are to survive, but external legitimacy is always problematic in the absence of recognition and attempts to garner external support risk undermining the internal legitimacy achieved. Strategies for ensuring internal legitimacy can similarly undermine attempts to achieve external support. These tensions affect both the type of governance found in these entities and their ability to survive.
Article
This arose as part of an ongoing project on ‘Visions of Governance for the Twenty‐first Century’ initiated in 1996 at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, which aims to explore what people want from government, the public sector, and non‐profit organizations. A first volume from the ‘Visions’ project (Why People Don’t Trust Government) was published by Harvard University Press in 1997; this second volume analyses a series of interrelated questions. The first two are diagnostic: how far are there legitimate grounds for concern about public support for democracy worldwide; and are trends towards growing cynicism found in the US evident in many established and newer democracies? The second concern is analytical: what are the main political, economic, and cultural factors driving the dynamics of support for democratic government? The final questions are prescriptive: what are the consequences of this analysis and what are the implications for strengthening democratic governance? The book brings together a distinguished group of international scholars who develop a global analysis of these issues by looking at trends in established and newer democracies towards the end of the twentieth century. Chapters draw upon the third wave (1995–1997) World Values Survey as well as using an extensive range of comparative empirical evidence. Challenging the conventional wisdom, the book concludes that accounts of a democratic ‘crisis’ are greatly exaggerated. By the mid‐1990s most citizens worldwide shared widespread aspirations to the ideals and principles of democratic government, although at the same time there remains a marked gap between evaluations of the ideal and the practice of democracy. The publics in many newer democracies in Central and Eastern Europe and in Latin America have proved deeply critical of the performance of their governing regimes, and during the 1980s many established democracies saw a decline in public confidence in the core institutions of representative democracy, including parliaments, the legal system, and political parties. The book considers the causes and consequences of the development of critical citizens in three main parts: cross‐national trends in confidence in governance; testing theories with case studies; and explanations of trends.
Article
To survive in office, dictators need to establish power-sharing arrangements with their ruling coalitions, which are often not credible. If dictators cannot commit to not abusing their “loyal friends”—those who choose to invest in the existing autocratic institutions rather than in forming subversive coalitions— they will be in permanent danger of being overthrown, both by members of the ruling elite and by outside rivals. This article explores the role of autocratic political parties and elections (both one-party and multiparty) in mitigating the commitment problem, making power-sharing between the dictator and his ruling coalition possible.