This book seeks to examine secessionist ethics in South and Southeast Asia in a theoretically informed way and from a comparative perspective. Looking in depth at conflicts in such places as East Timor, Kashmir, and Mindanao, this book is the first attempt to study secessionist ethnic conflicts systematically and comparatively in the Asian context.

From Chechnya in Russia to Kashmir in India to the Basque region in Spain, secessionist movements remain a serious threat to international security. Despite the importance of this issue, the causes that bring about external military intervention in a secessionist war have not, until now, been adequately addressed. In this book, Dos Santos identifies the conditions that make international military intervention in a secessionist war more or less likely. South Asia, being fraught with secessionist movements—Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Kashmir, and Punjab—provides an ideal laboratory for the examination of this compelling issue. Dos Santos argues that a shift in the balance of power between a secessionist group and its central government will lead to a preventive war on the secessionists by the central government. In turn, a preventive war of this nature may lead to an alliance between the secessionist group and an external power. The stronger the alliance, the greater the chances of an international military intervention. Understanding the conditions under which secessionist movements expand, become secessionist wars, and invite international military intervention on behalf of the secessionists has strong policy implications. It can go a long way toward guiding policymakers who may want to mitigate or avoid these conditions in their states. Dos Santos views both states and secessionist groups as primary actors, and she examines both the distribution of power among states and the balance of power between central government and groups within states.

This book examines the impact of the federal restructuring of Ethiopia on ethnic conflicts. The adoption of ethnic federalism in Ethiopia was closely related with the problem of creating a state structure that could be used as instrument of managing the complex ethno-linguistic diversity of the country. Ethiopia is a multinational country with about 85 ethno-linguistic groups and since the 1960s, it suffered from ethno-regional conflicts. The book considers multiple governance and state factors that could explain the difficulties Ethiopian federalism faces to realise its objectives. These include lack of political pluralism and the use of ethnicity as the sole instrument of state organisation. Federalism and Ethnic Conflict in Ethiopia will be of interest to students and scholars of federal studies, ethnic conflict and regionalism.

This book uses empirical evidence from various case studies to examine the relationship between territorial and regional autonomy, the nation-state and ethnic conflict resolution in South and South-East Asia. The concept of territorial or regional autonomy holds centre stage in the literature on ethnic conflict settlement because it is supposed to be able to reconcile two paradoxical objectives: the preservation of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the state, and the satisfaction of ethnic minorities’ right to national self-determination. Critics argue, however, that autonomy may not be the panacea for ethnic conflict in all cases. The contributing authors begin with the concept of territorial or regional autonomy and subject it to a rigorous empirical analysis, which provides reliable evidence regarding the suitability of the autonomy solution to intractable ethnic conflicts. Drawing upon case studies from Kashmir, Assam, Sri Lanka, Aceh, Mindanao and Southern Thailand, this edited volume argues that autonomy arrangements may at best work to resolve only a handful of separatist ethnic conflicts in South and South-East Asia. This book will be of much interest to students of South and South-East Asia, Asian security, ethnic conflict, peace studies and IR in general.

Ethnicity is one of the most salient and enduring topics of social science, not least with regard to its potential link to political conflict/violence. Despite, or perhaps because of, the concept’s significant use, all too seldom has the field paused to consider the state of our knowledge. For example, how do we define and conceive of ethnicity within the context of political conflict? What do we really know about the causal determinants of ethnic conflict? What has been the most useful development within this literature, and why? This volume comprises reflections from an international range of prominent political scientists all engaged in the study of ethnicity and conflict/violence. They attempt to synthesize what the field does and does not know with regard to ethnic conflict, as well as draw out the research directions for the immediate future in unique and interesting ways. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Ethnopolitics.

The boundaries between secessionism and separatism are often blurred, and in many cases study of secessionism encompasses that of separatism and vice versa. Recognising this inherent relationship, this book provides a comparative survey of recent attempts at secession and separatist movements from across Europe and Asia, and assesses the responses of the respective host governments. The essays address two main questions which arise from the relationship between state governments and secessionist movements: first, how secessionist or separatist movements gather support and mobilize their target populations and second, how central political authorities respond to the challenges that secessionist or separatist movements pose to their capacity to control the country. With political analysis of recent cases ranging from the Balkans, the USSR, the UK and the Basque Country, to Sri Lanka, Burma, China, Tibet and Taiwan, the authors identify both similarities and differences in the processes and outcomes of secessionist and separatist movements across the two distinct regions. This volume will be an invaluable resource for those who wish to understand the dynamics of secessionist movements and as such will appeal to students and scholars of Asian and European politics, comparative politics, international relations and conflict studies. It will also be helpful to practitioners and policy-makers who wish to understand and contribute to the resolution of such conflicts.

Understanding Ethnic Conflict provides all the key concepts needed to understand conflict among ethnic groups. Including approaches from both comparative politics and international relations, this text offers a model of ethnic conflict's internationalization by showing how domestic and international actors influence a country's ethnic and sectarian divisions. Illustrating this model in five original case studies, the unique combination of theory and application in Understanding Ethnic Conflict facilitates more critical analysis of contemporary ethnic conflicts and the world's response to them.

Since decolonization began in the late 1940s, a series of often lengthy and destructive separatist insurgencies have imposed severe financial, economic and human costs upon the states of South Asia. Whereas previous analyses of these conflicts have typically focussed upon the parent state or separatist group as the relevant unit of analysis, this book adopts a broader framework, arguing that separatism cannot be understood in isolation from the concept of state sovereignty. This book explores the motives, tactics, successes and failures of South Asia’s separatist movements by deconstructing sovereignty into its constituent components and offers an explanation for why separatism, but not political violence, has recently declined in the region. Taking a comparative explanatory viewpoint, it offers a comprehensive review of relevant explanatory theories dominant in the scholarly literature on separatism and an examination of their application to the South Asian states of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. As a thought-provoking discussion of statehood and sovereignty, this book will be of interest to students of political theory, comparative politics, international relations and South Asian politics.

Wilkinson.--William Crawley "Asian Affairs"

Armed separatist insurgencies have created a real dilemma for many national governments of how much freedom to grant aggrieved minorities without releasing territorial sovereignty over the nation-state. This book examines different approaches that have been taken by seven states in South and Southeast Asia to try and resolve this dilemma through various offers of autonomy. Providing new insights into the conditions under which autonomy arrangements exacerbate or alleviate the problem of armed separatism, this comprehensive book includes in-depth analysis of the circumstances that lead men and women to take up arms in an effort to remove themselves from the state's borders by creating their own independent polity.