TERRITORIAL PARTITION

Is territorial partition a potentially useful instrument for conflict resolution? Why is it used so rarely?

Is territorial partition a potentially useful instrument for conflict resolution? Why is it used so rarely?

Introduction

The main focus of the report is to analyzes the territorial partition a potentially useful instrument for conflict resolution. Why is it used so rarely? In some ways, a multiethnic state with arbitrary borders is analogous to a miserable marriage. In both cases, mismatched people are ending up living together and fighting over their irreconcilable differences. While some couples try marriage counseling, this does not always help them to resolve their issues with each other. In the same way, negotiations between conflicting ethnic groups often end in deadlock. When all else fails, married couples might opt for a divorce, a separation that they hope will ultimately enable them to stop fighting. Likewise, one group within a multiethnic state could push for secession or some other form of territorial partition. While some divorces leave both individuals happier and better off than before, others are messy, drawn-out affairs causing enormous pain and suffering for all parties involved. Similarly, the historical record of partition as a conflict resolution strategy is mixed; in some cases, it has been able to prevent ethnic groups from picking up arms against each other while in others it has not.

Discussion

Professors Thomas Chapman and Philip Roeder, from Old Dominion University and the University of California San Diego, respectively, made an institutional argument in favor of partition, stating that partition simplifies post-war bargaining by reducing the number of decisions that have to be made jointly by the two groups. Byman makes a similar argument: partition can eliminate many of the problems that occur when groups live side by side by giving a group a state of its own. Partition can fulfill status aspirations, satisfy hegemony aspirations, relax security concerns, and provide a venue to power for ambitious elites. Other scholars, however, believe that partition does more harm than good. Empirical study of all civil wars between 1945 and 1999, Nicholas Sambanis (a professor of political science at Yale University) found partition does not knowingly prevent the recurrence of conflict between ethnic groups, and that in most cases, partition also had a negligible effect on levels of ethnic violence short of war. In this way, partition might simply transform a civil war into an international war. Incomplete partitions might also increase the likelihood of further civil war in each of the successor states.

According to Byman, successor states are almost never perfectly homogenous which can create a new security dilemma in which the residual minority in each state fears domination by the majority. Critics of partition also argue that the humanitarian cost of partition resulting from the forced relocation of ethnic minorities (i.e. deaths during population transfers, the loss of homes and livelihoods, etc.) is another reason to avoid this strategy. To do this, Johnson constructed the Post-partition Ethnic Homogeneity Index (PEHI) which captured the degree to which ethnic ...