Institutional Outcomes of Territorial Contestation: Lessons from Post-Communist Europe, 1989–2012

Zsuzsa Csergő, Philippe Roseberry and Stefan Wolff

Publius: The Journal of Federalism, 2017, vol. 47, issue 4, 491-521

Abstract: Since 1989, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have experienced major institutional transformations. As part of that process, territorial contestations between states and ethnic minorities engendered three outcomes: negotiated territorial self-government (TSG) arrangements; the denial of such arrangements; and the emergence of de-facto states. Through a qualitative comparative analysis of twenty-four minority TSG claims in seventeen post-communist CEE states, we find that: (i) TSG arrangements emerged as externally facilitated instruments for managing or preventing violent conflict in predominantly low-capacity, only partially democratic states; (ii) peacefully pursued TSG claims were most likely to be denied in high-capacity consolidated democracies; and (iii) de-facto states emerged where patron-states intervened in violent conflicts in low-capacity states. These findings defy widely held expectations about the influence of Europeanization, coupled with democratic consolidation, on the accommodation of minority claims; and they offer new insights into the significance of external intervention for the institutional outcomes of ethnic minority TSG claims.

Date: 2017
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