Sambanis, N. (2000) ‘Partition as a Solution to Ethnic War: An Empirical Critique of the Theoretical Literature’, World Politics 52 (4), 437-483

1. Partition theorists have not produced operational criteria for applying their theories consistently across cases.
2. Empirical testing could help elucidate these theoretical debates.
3. Focus on claims that once ethnic violence starts, civil politics can only be restored if ethnic groups are demographically separated into ‘defensible enclaves’ (438) and solutions aiming to restore multi-ethnic civil politics will not work because they do not resolve existing security dilemmas (‘SD’).
4. SDs are at heart of partition theory: when communities distrust each other, one community’s actions to increase its own security is seen as threatening to security of others.
5. Therefore, the claim is that partition in homogenous separate regions becomes inevitable to end conflict.
6. No proof for this has been provided.
7. Will test three core hypotheses:
   1. Partitions facilitate post-war democratization;
   2. Partitions prevent war recurrence;
   3. Partitions significantly reduce low-level ethnic violence.
8. Result: Partitions do not prevent recurrence of ethnic war and may not even be necessary to stop low-level ethnic violence.
9. Criticism of partition:
   1. too limiting a solution: ethnic cooperation may be possible even after a civil war.
   2. too severe a solution: forced population movements cause tremendous human suffering.
   3. Will create undemocratic successor states: repression of residual minorities.
   4. Endorsing some partition will encourage others, leading to wars: not true; this is rare.
10. SD ignores the fact that conflict is often due not to ethnic groups’ security needs, but to ‘predatory’ goals of their leaders; therefore, partition will not solve the SD of partitioned ethnic groups if it exacerbates ‘predatory’ incentives of predecessor states.
11. Civil wars tend not to end in negotiated settlements, unless supported by external security guarantees that prevent predatory predecessor states from restarting wars against successor states (442).
12. Alternative to both Partition (‘P’) and creating a new balance of power is to create a regional hegemon responsible for regional peace.
13. Ethnic diffusion might mitigate the SD (Byman) because it reduces the possibility that a single ethnic group might become dominant (443): ‘ethnic balancing’ against threatening groups is both possible and stabilizing.
14. “The probability of civil war drops significantly at very high levels of ethnic diversity and it is greatest in ethnically polarised societies” (443).
15. Four key questions related to partition must be investigated:
    1. What are the main determinants of P?
    2. Does P create democratic or undemocratic states?
    3. Does P prevent war recurrence?
    4. Does P end low-level ethnic violence?
16. Complied data set with 125 civil wars and 21 partitions.
17. Testable hypotheses.
18. Findings:
    1. Type of war is a significant determinant of partition: ethnicity matters for the onset of partition.
    2. As ethnic heterogeneity increases, probability of partition decreases significantly; as size of ethnic groups increase, so does likelihood of partition.
    3. Partitions are positively and significantly correlated with levels of violence; but violence may well be caused by partition itself.
    4. “Partition is more likely after identity than ideological war, after truce or rebel victory following war, in a country with large ethnic groups and little heterogeneity, and higher levels of economic development.
19. Three critical hypotheses of P theory:
    1. Ps create successor states that are at least as democratic as predecessors: evidence unclear; more research needed.
    2. Ps reduce risk of war recurrence: evidence does not support this. Therefore, separating ethnic groups does not resolve the problem of violent ethnic antagonism.
    3. Ps reduce low-level ethnic violence after war ends: very weak evidence in favor.
20. Ps are coerced, painful, costly, may saw seeds for future conflicts. International policy towards P must rely on rigorous, empirical testing and arguments.
21. New Hypothesis: “The strategy of supporting ethnic diffusion by combining rather than partitioning large ethnic groups may be worth pursuing” after a civil war: “If borders can be credibly and securely redrawn, then combining several large ethnic groups in a larger multiethnic state may reduce the probability of new wars” (479).
22. “Partition, as we have seen, does not help reduce the risk of war recurrence. Partitions are in fact positively (though not significantly) associated with recurrence of ethnic war. The probability of a new war rises in tandem with the human toll of the previous war and with non-decisive outcomes to the war” (480).
23. “Negotiated settlements, a strong government army, and a lengthy previous war all reduce the probability of war recurrence” (481).
24. “To reduce residual violence, it is important to prevent war recurrence, as patterns of large-scale violence over time seem to encourage lower-level violence” (481).
25. “Strategies to support the government’s prewar institutions and its military may also achieve peace, but they may do so at the expense of justice” (481).
26. Empirically-derived strategy for resolving ethnic war: “This strategy demands action by the international community, which must promote democracy as its number one conflict-prevention strategy. If violence does erupt, its priority should be to facilitate a negotiated settlement, as well as to integrate and downsize the government’s military… If border redefinition is a viable option – and it should be an option only if it does not assist one party at the expense of another – then ethnic integration rather than ethnic partition may be a winning strategy. In addition to having the potential for greater success than partition, this strategy is also not loaded with subjective and arbitrary assumptions about the necessity for ethnically pure states and about the futility of interethnic cooperation” (481).
27. “On average, partition may be an impossible solution to ethnic civil war” (482).

Kumar, R. (1997) “The Troubled History of Partition’, Foreign Affairs 76 (1) (Jan./Feb. 1997), 22-34.

1. 1995 Dayton Peace Accord: a partition agreement with an exit clause for outside powers.
2. Claim that partitions as solutions to ethnic conflicts save lives, safeguard rights of contending ethnic groups through intervention of impartial outside power, and create homogenous territories through population transfers.
3. Instead of doing so, partitions “fomented further violence and forced mass migration” (24).
4. Partition assumes irreconcilable ethnic identities and capacity to separate ethnic groups.
5. Usually, partitions are “driven by considerations extraneous to the needs and desires of the people displaced” and “end up stimulating further and even new conflict” (26).
6. Case studies of Cyprus, Palestine, Northern Ireland, India, Bosnia show that partitions are seen as temporary solutions to crises; however, once implemented “ethnic partitions have never been reversed; their implementation has inexorably driven communities further apart”. (33).
7. Ethnic partition can hamper development of postwar economies.
8. “Divide and Quit” approach rarely works: it turns into “Divide and Be forced to stay” (34).
9. “Investment in reintegration may be discovered as the easier route to withdrawal.” (34)

Horowitz, D.L. (2003) ‘The Cracked Foundations of the Right to Secede’, Journal of Democracy 14 (2), 5-17.

1. Two international legal developments in regulation of conflict and warfare between ethnic groups:
   1. Tribunals to punish genocide and crimes against humanity;
   2. Elaboration of various doctrines of human rights, including a possible right of ethnic groups to secede.
2. Such a right is ill-considered and dangerous.
3. Certain theorists see secession as answer to problems of ethnic conflict and violence; that is wrong: it is likely to make such problems worse.
4. Secession does not create homogenous successor states or reduce conflict, violence, or minority oppression in successor states (5-6).
5. Minorities’ condition can best be improved by devising institutions to increase their satisfaction within existing states.
6. “Partition can be accomplished reluctantly, as a matter of prudence, without recognizing a right to secede” 96).
7. Atlantic Charter, 1941: self-determination limited to peoples living under foreign domination, resulting in decolonization.
8. From the end of WWII to end of Cold War territorial boundaries were remarkably stable.
9. After the end of the Cold War boundaries became less stable. Badinter Commission on Yugoslavia legitimised breakup of this federation.
10. Various theories of self-determination leading to secession:
    1. An integral right of peoples to be free of authoritarian oppression: right to live under a democratic regime;
    2. Right of people in general of with common group characteristics to choose with whom they wish to associate politically – although collective identity fluctuates;
    3. Remedial right: last-ditch response to discrimination or oppression by central government;
    4. All assume secession can result in homogenous successor states or at least ones that will guarantee minority rights.
11. Treatment of minorities in new states will not improve if minorities were not respected in undivided state.
12. “Secession merely proliferates the arenas in which the problem of intergroup political accommodation must be faced” (9).
13. Secession encourages the former minority, now a majority, to cleanse the secessionist state of its own minorities and induces the rump state to do the same.
14. There are no truly natural boundaries that secession can institutionalise.
15. Secessions and partitions convert domestic ethnic disputes into more dangerous international ones and trigger irredentist claims that often are followed by ethnic cleansing.
16. A right to secede will undermine efforts to achieve interethnic accommodation within states (10).
17. Devolution efforts are most effectively undermined by a right, recognised under international law, to secession.
18. “A right to secession effectively advantages militant members of ethnic groups at the expense of conciliators.” (11)
19. A right to secession grounded in extreme oppression of minorities derives from an alleged commitment of international law to democracy. Such a commitment is tenuous at best.
20. Self-determination for peoples or groups within a state is to be achieved by participation in its constitutional system, on the basis of respect for its territorial integrity.
21. Secession is an anti-state movement and undermines the very foundation of current international legal order – state sovereignty.
22. Solution is to foster interethnic accommodation within states, through institutions that can mitigate conflict:
    1. Consociational democracy: neglect of democratic opposition and propensity for excessively limited government and immobilism; it is attractive to minorities, not majorities.
    2. Use of political incentives to encourage ethnic moderation: electoral systems capable of inducing moderate behaviour by politicians.
23. Political engineering can work in specific circumstances, but is no panacea.
24. “Efforts at conciliation will not be helped by providing either a liberal or constrained right to secede” (15).