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Divided We Stand: Institutional Sources of Ethnofederal State Survival and Collapse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Henry E. Hale
Affiliation:
Indiana University

Abstract

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Federal states in which component regions are invested with distinct ethnic content are more likely to collapse when they contain a core ethnic region, a single ethnic region enjoying pronounced superiority in population. Dividing a dominant group into multiple federal regions reduces these dangers. A study of world casesfindsthat all ethnofederal states that have collapsed have possessed core ethnic regions. Thus, ethnofederalism, so long as it is instituted without a core ethnic region, may represent a viable way of avoiding the most deadly forms of conflict while maintaining state unity in ethnically divided countries.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 2004

References

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