McGarry, J. and O’Leary, B. (1993) ‘Introduction: the macro-political regulation of ethnic conflict’, in J. McGarry and B. O’Leary, The Politics of Ethnic Conflict Regulation, London, Routledge, 1-40.

1. Ethnic consciousness and conflict resurgent after the end of the Cold War.
2. Focus on causes of ethnic conflict, but above all on “methods used to manage, control or terminate ethnic conflict” (2): work of classification.
3. Taxonomy of eight modes of ethnic conflict resolution mapping out empirical forms of  macro-political ethnic conflict regulation (ie both termination and management): aim to examine effectiveness and merits of these methods.
   1. Eliminating differences:
      • Genocide;
      • Forced mass population transfers;
      • Partition / secession (self-determination);
      • Integration / assimilation.
   2. Managing differences:
      • Hegemonic control;
      • Arbitration;
      • Cantonisation / federation;
      • Consociationalism / power-sharing.
4. Genocide
   1. Victims share ascriptive traits (#politicide)
   2. “Systematic mass-killing of an ethnic collectivity” (6)
   3. Still practiced today
   4. One-sided – intended to terminate ethnic conflict.
   5. Conducive factors:
      • Empire-building
      • Lack of geopolitical resources
      • Vulnerable ethnic group in disintegrating polities
      • Economic superiority & cultural identifiability, but no military & political power.
      • Frontier genocide: settlers, not directly state.
      • Presence of racial ideology
5. Forced mass-population transfers
   1. One ethnic community forcefully removed & compelled to live elsewhere.
   2. Imperial consolidation tragedy.
6. Partition/secession (self-determination)
   1. Compatible with liberal democratic institutions and values;
   2. Rare between 1948 and 1991; ubiquitous since.
   3. Driven by the principle of self-determination; but key questions remain:
      • Who are the people?
      • What is the territory?
      • Which majority is relevant?
      • Where do we stop with fragmentation?
   4. Population movements, violence and civil wars are often the consequence.
   5. Ivor Jennings: “Let the people decide… [But] the people cannot decide until somebody decides who are the people”.
   6. There is no accepted ‘right of secession’, but globalization has destabilized borders.
   7. Three factors affect secession:
      • Nature of inter-state system (permissive / restrictive);
      • Aftermath of wars;
      • Disintegration of empires.
   8. Sovereignty also results from desire for power, prestige and perks among nationalist elites.
   9. Global democratization favors secession movements. It pits civic nationalists (statists) vs. ethnic nationalists (communitarianists). Most often these two don’t coincide in practice.
   10. Democratisation demands defining the ‘people’:
       • Citizenship
       • Franchise
       • Boundaries
       • Institutions
   11. Political entrepreneurs use these issues to create political parties based on ethnic cleavages and redefine rules of the game of existing states based on zero-sum conflicts of identity, nationality, language, territory (TIRN).
   12. Destabilization can be contained if state affected in part of a liberal democratic community of states and if internal factors are favorable).
7. Integration / assimilation
   1. Objective: creating a civic nation – patriotism, but ultimately ‘to create a common ethnic identity through the merging of differences’ (17)
   2. Liberal integrationism and ‘big-tent’ political parties.
   3. Policies usually targeted at migrants and assume they are willing to adapt to their new country’s culture and accept a new civic identity.
   4. Also used to unite different communities against a common foe,
   5. Ethnic communities living in their homelands are much less responsive.
   6. Can result in ethnocide: ‘the destruction of a people’s culture as opposed to physical liquidation of its members’ (19).
   7. Often, multicultural policies make more sense than integration / assimilation.
   8. Division between liberal integrationists and liberal multi-culturalists.
   9. Political engineers advocate ‘electoral integration’ (21): “…the belief that one can generate parties with such effects through heroic acts of will is fundamentally utopian, especially if the relevant ethnic communities have already been mobilized behind different conceptions of nationalism”.
   10. Backlash against integration / assimilation from less advantaged majority members also possible.
8. Hegemonic control:
   1. First developed by Lustick (1979).
   2. Coercive domination and elite co-option through control of relevant coercive apparatuses (23): “authoritarian containment” (Lemarchand) makes “unworkable an ethnic challenge to the state order”.
   3. Aim is either to eradicate ethnic differences or, more likely, their politicization.
   4. Less feasible in liberal democracies, unless a minority controls the state.
   5. However, “‘majority rule’ can become an instrument of hegemonic control” (25) (ex: N. Ireland, US ‘Deep South c. 1870-1964).
   6. Majoritarian system of government in liberal democracies is no guarantee of liberty for ethnic minorities.
   7. Lustick: hegemonic control is normatively defensible if it’s the only alterenative to continuous civil war. Very controversial argument.
9. Arbitration (third-party intervention)
   1. Three methods:
      • Internal and external aarbitration;
      • O’Leary (1989) ‘cooperative internationalisation’;
      • Forceful intervention by self-appointed umpire to bring stability to a region.
   2. Usually means ‘intervention of a disinterested ‘neutral’, bi-partisan or multi-partisan authority’, capable of gaining trust and support of parties involved (27) and making relevant decisions.
   3. Can establish conditions for long-term conflict-resolution.
10.  Cantonisation / federalization
    1. Fully compatible with liberal democratic norms.
    2. Cantonisation: “devolution organized on an ethno-territorial basis” (31): recognition of ethnic differences and asymmetric relations: subsidiarity.
    3. Federalism: central and provincial governments enjoy separate domains of power. Requires geographic clustering of ethnic communities to be successful.
    4. No example of successful dyadic federations except Belgium.
11. Consociation (power-sharing)
    1. State-wide or regional (Holland and Lebanon); theorized by Lijphart (1977).
       • Grand coalition government;
       • Proportional representation, employment, expenditure rules;
       • Community autonomy;
       • Constitutional vetoes.
    2. Acceptance of ethnic pluralism: aims to secure rights, identities, freedoms and opportunities of all ethnic communities and create corresponding political institutions: equality without assimilation (36).
    3. Easily destabilized unless three conditions present:
       • No commitment to internal assimilation or secession by ethnic segments;
       • Successive generations of politicians must remain committed to this model;
       • Leaders of ethnic communities must enjoy political autonomy to make appropriate decisions and compromises without being accused of treachery – danger of ‘outflanking’ (37)
    4. Only practicable in moderately divided societies where separate national identities do not dominate political discourse.
12. Task: classification and comparative evaluation of morality, feasibility, consequences: “hard-headed but ethnical analyses of ways of resolving ethnic conflict” (38).

Kymlicka, W. (1995) ‘The Politics of Multiculturalism’, in W. Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, Oxford, OUP, 10-33.

1. Two broad patterns of diversity: national minorities: aim for autonomy, ie. survival as distinct societies and (immigrant) ethnic groups: aim for accommodation, ie wish to integrate into the larger society.
2. Patriotism: sense of allegiance to a state, # from nationalism: sense of belonging to a national group.
3. Immigrants have no ‘specific homelands’ in host state: they reject assimilation but do not want to build a parallel society, as many national minorities do.
4. Colonization is different from immigration: goal is to create ‘an institutionally complete society’ (15).
5. Cultural pluralism: multinational and polyethnic. Canada recognizes it is both.
6. National membership is not racial, but cultural – should be open in theory to anyone wishing to integrate and participate in it.
7. Universal protection of individual civil and political rights (liberal) vs. group-specific rights: ‘differentiated citizenship’ (I. Young, 1989)
8. Three forms of group-differentiated rights:
   1. Self-government rights: limited recognition in international law; federalism is an accommodation option: challenge of asymmetrical federalism’ (Canada/Quebec); non-territorial autonomy (NTA) is more complex.
   2. Polyethnic rights: aim to toot out discrimination and prejudice – public funding for cultural activities, exemption from some laws on religious grounds, as well as promote integration into larger society.
   3. Special representation rights: democratic representative institutions are unrepresentative: fail to reflect diversity of population: reserved seats, quotas.
9. These are ideal types: in reality, they often overlap.