Separatist Conflict in Eurasia and Beyond: Exploring Communist Bloc Exceptionalism

33 Pages Posted: 19 Jul 2010 Last revised: 25 Feb 2014

Date Written: 2010

Abstract

In the two decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the study of separatist conflict has been dominated both geographically and theoretically by post-communist cases (see for example Hale 2008; Jenne 2007; Roeder 2007; Toft 2003). Frequently, however, the efforts to extend arguments based on the post-communist experience to the post-colonial world come up short. I argue in this essay that the lack of fit is due largely to the mechanisms by which coherent, durable ethnic identities emerged and were contested inside and outside the communist bloc. Inside the communist bloc, ethno-federalism combined with heavy-handed direct rule generated or reinforced ethnic identities at the titular republican level. On the contrary, ethno-federalism in the post-colonial world (i.e. India and Ethiopia) has generally been a post-colonial state response to early separatist mobilization rather than a cause of it. Moreover, the same early post-colonial rebellions against direct rule have catalyzed long-term trajectories of contentious ethnic politics, but did so only in the context of vertical ethnic ties that enabled collective action in the absence of political organizations. Drawing on two different global datasets and a number of original variables, I show a modest cross-regional difference in the role of past rebellion in shaping separatism and a strong cross-regional difference in the effect of ethno-federalism on nation-state crisis inside and outside the former communist bloc. Where prominent post-Soviet studies find ethno-federal institutions to be at the “front” of their explanations, I suggest that, in the post-colonial world, such institutions have nearly always been endogenous to nationalist mobilization.

Suggested Citation

Smith, Ben, Separatist Conflict in Eurasia and Beyond: Exploring Communist Bloc Exceptionalism (2010). APSA 2010 Annual Meeting Paper, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1642623

Ben Smith (Contact Author)

University of Florida ( email )

PO Box 117165, 201 Stuzin Hall
Gainesville, FL 32610-0496
United States
3522732345 (Phone)

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