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Partition as a Solution to Wars of Nationalism: The Importance of Institutions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2007

THOMAS CHAPMAN  and
PHILIP G. ROEDER
THOMAS CHAPMAN
Affiliation:
Chapman Sustainable Business and Development
PHILIP G. ROEDER
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
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Abstract

Civil war settlements create institutional arrangements that in turn shape postsettlement politics among the parties to the previous conflict. Following civil wars that involve competing nation-state projects, partition is more likely than alternative institutional arrangements—specifically, unitarism, de facto separation, and autonomy arrangements—to preserve the peace and facilitate democratization. A theory of domestic political institutions as a constraint on reescalation of conflict explains this unexpected relationship through four intermediate effects—specifically, the likelihood that each institutional arrangement will reinforce incompatible national identities, focus the pursuit of greed and grievance on a single zero-sum conflict over the allocation of decision rights, empower the parties to the previous conflict with multiple escalatory options, and foster incompatible expectations of victory. The theory's predictions stand up under statistical tests that use four alternative datasets.

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ARTICLES
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American Political Science Review , Volume 101 , Issue 4 , November 2007 , pp. 677 - 691
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© 2007 by the American Political Science Association

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