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Autonomy as a Source of Conflict: Caucasian Conflicts in Theoretical Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Svante E. Cornell
Svante E. Cornell
Affiliation:
Central Asia-Caucasus Institute of the Johns Hopkins University's, Uppsala University, Sweden
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Extract

The granting of autonomous status to minority populations has gained support among academics and practitioners alike as a way to solve, manage, and even preempt ethnic conflict. In spite of the enthusiasm for ethnofederalism, however, the provision of autonomy to minorities may actually increase rather than decrease the likelihood of conflict. Under certain political conditions, autonomy promotes the separate identity of the minority and increases its motivation and capacity to seek separation from the central state. This article presents a rudimentary theoretical framework identifying which qualities of autonomy solutions increase the likelihood of conflict. It discusses how autonomy relates to other factors conducive to conflict by studying minorities in the South Caucasus and examines the case of Georgia. In Georgia, there were five ethnic minority populations, two of whom—the Abkhaz and the South Ossetians—enjoyed autonomous status and were the only minorities to engage in armed conflict with the Georgian government. This article shows how autonomy, by empowering ethnic elites with control of statelike institutions and by enhancing factors such as leadership, economic viability, and external support, played a crucial role in the escalation of the conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Conversely, the absence of autonomy mitigated separatist and secessionist sentiments among two of Georgia's other minority groups—Javakheti's Armenian and Kvemo Kartli's Azeri populations.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 54 , Issue 2 , January 2002 , pp. 245 - 276
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 2002

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References

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3 In other instances, however, ethnic demands are not for “exit”—autonomy or secession—but for greater participation in the government of the central state, particularly when settlement patterns overlap.

4 It must be noted, however, that ethnic conflict in such situations is possible, and when it does occur, it is likely to be significantly more severe than in cases of less intermingled settlement patterns. Conflict in intermingled states would tend not to be over a part of the state's territory and its affiliation but over the control of the state apparatus, that is, the entire territory of the state. The emergence of violent conflict in such situations would be significantly more likely to lead to large-scale ethnic cleansing and/or genocide: a geographic partition line being much more difficult to draw, the conflict is likely to take place not on a warfront between two organized military formations but in civilian-inhabited areas over a much larger tract of territory. Moreover, the knowledge that a clean territorial break is impossible or very difficult encourages the urge to displace or eliminate members of the other group and even the perception that it is necessary. A political solution would also imply that one would continue to live intermingled with members of the other group. This is in turn interpreted as a security threat to the own group and again increases the urge to expel or eliminate the other group, actions that are even conceptualized as defensive and indispensable for the own group's well-being. This situation is referred to as the “security dilemma”. See, for example, Posen, Barry, “The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict,” Survival 35, no. 1 (1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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8 Interestingly, in certain instances the central government, in particular in states trying to build a civic national identity, argues that granting autonomy to a minority population would be tantamount to defining that population as second-class citizens. The Turkish government, for example, sticks to its refusal for special rights to citizens of Kurdish origin, on the grounds that they are already enjoying all existing rights as first-class citizens of the Turkish republic; any special rights would imply their segregation from the rest of the population and by extension their diminishment to second-class status.

9 See Lapidoth, Ruth, Autonomy: Flexible Solutions to Ethnic Conflict (Washington, D.C.: USIP Press, 1996), 203Google Scholar. By the same token it can be argued that the refusal to grant autonomy could be an even stronger incentive for a state affiliated with the minority to intervene.

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24 Ilishev, Ildus G., “Russian Federalism: Political, Legal and Ethnolingual Aspects—A View from the Republic of Bashkortostan,” Nationalities Papers 26 (Fall 1998), 724–759CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Reproduced as an appendix to the article is the Treaty on the Mutual Derogation of Powers between the State Organs of the Russian Federation and the State Organs of the Republic of Bashkortostan, in Stanovlenie Dogovornykh Otnosheniy Respubliku Bashkortostan i Rossiyskoy Federatsii, 1990–1996 gg., Sbornik Dokumentov (Ufa, 1997).

25 Group cohesion, willingness to act, and capacity to act have been identified as the major categories of factors leading to conflict in the literature on ethnopolitical conflict. See, for example, Gurr (fn. 2, 2000).

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28 Gurr (fn. 2,2000).

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31 Ibid.

32 Leff (fn. 12), 210.

33 Here minority is defined as an ethnically defined population group under the jurisdiction of a territorial unit with a distinct titular nationality. Hence, in the South Caucasus, the Nakhjivan Autonomous Republic is left outside the scope of the study since the population of Nakhjivan was and remains homogeneously Azerbaijani-populated (93 percent) and under the jurisdiction of Azerbaijan.

34 For a detailed overview of the conflicts in the Caucasus, see Cornell, Svante E., Small Nations and Great Powers: A Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict in the Caucasus (Richmond, UK: Curzon Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

35 The Meskhetian Turks of Southern Georgia were deported in 1943 but have not yet been allowed to return to their native lands.

36 Fearon and Laitin find that “mountain groups were six times more likely to see large-scale fighting with the state following the Soviet collapse.” As they note, moreover, rough terrain is a useful tool to explain how minorities with small numbers can “sustain significant guerrilla conflicts with the state.” Fearon and Laitin (fn. 5), 18–20.

37 Ethnic mobilization does not automatically carry with it ethnic conflict; conflict only occurs if the central government decides to answer the minority's challenge by force. Secession, of course, can take place peacefully, if the government simply lets go of the province in question; however, cases of peaceful secession are diminutively few. Another option is the cooptation of the minority elite either through integration in the central government or simply through bribery. In the final analysis, it is nevertheless the norm and not the exception that a minority challenge on the subject of territory is answered by force on the part of the central government.

38 The full supporting information and the coding of factors and cases relevant to this study, including tables for each factor, is available at http://www.cornellcaspian.com/autonomy.html.

39 For a detailed overview of the conflict, see Cornell (fn. 34), 142–96.

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49 See Fuller, Elizabeth, “South Ossetia: Analysis of a Permanent Crisis,” Report on the USSR, February 15, 1991, 21Google Scholar.

50 Ibid.

51 See Birch, Julian, “The Georgian/South Ossetian Territorial and Boundary Dispute,” in , J. Wright et al. , eds., Transcaucasian Boundaries (London: SOAS, 1995), 182Google Scholar. Tskhinvali is the capital of the South Ossetian Autonomous Region.

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55 See Kazemzadeh, Firuz, The Struggle for Transcaucasia, 1917–1921 (Oxford: George Ronald, 1951)Google Scholar.

56 The Azerbaijanis are a Turkic people speaking a language closely related to Anatolian Turkish, but for the overwhelming part of their history they have been politically separated from Turkey and have had closer relationships to Iran.

57 Annotated Headlines of the Georgian Press, September 21–22,1998.

58 Guretski(fn. 54).

59 Author interviews in Tbilisi and Marneuli, 1998.

60 See Judith Hin, “Ajaria. Authoritarian Governance, Favorable Economic Location, and Minor Ethnic Tensions: The Interests of the Local Potentate in Keeping Violent Conflict at Bay” (Paper presented at the Fifth Annual Convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities, New York, April 2000). The paper was based on unpublished data from the Brown University research project, “Can Deadly Conflicts Be Prevented,” funded by the Carnegie Corporation.

61 Fairbanks, Charles H. Jr., “Party, Ideology and the Public World in the Former Soviet Space,” in Meltzer, Arthur M., Einberger, Jerry, and Zinman, M. Richard, eds., Politics at the End of the Century (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), 252Google Scholar.

62 Cornell (fn. 34), 184–85.