Politics Of Self-determination Research Articles

Islands and Self-Determination in the Caribbean: Puerto Rico and Aruba in Comparative Perspective

The politics of self-determination in non-independent Caribbean islands features both common and divergent outcomes. The common outcome is a weakness of secessionism. The divergent outcome is the broader politics over status. Using a comparison of Puerto Rico (where secessionism is weak and the constitutional status is strongly contested) and Aruba (where secessionism is also weak but the status broadly accepted), this article refines arguments found in the literature on why non-independent island territories eschew the pursuit of independence, and it formulates an explanation for variation in the politics over status based on the symbolic value of institutions and historical processes of othering.

How do ethnic groups compete for a new province in a decentralised Indonesia?

ABSTRACT How do ethnic groups compete in a decentralized Indonesia? How do their political competitions to claim a new province lead to open conflict? The Indonesian government devised its massive territorial autonomy (TA) strategy—regional proliferation or pemekaran—as part of expansive decentralization reform in 1999. While scholarship is generally ambiguous regarding the relationship between regional proliferation and conflict, many districts still experience small-scale episodic conflict some of which may be fuelled by ethnic-group competition after pemekaran. This study aims to investigate ethnic groups’ political competition during the initiation stage of non-successful new province campaigns. Using four cases—two new province aspirations, one no-province claim and a null case—I argue that ethnic groups’ political competition can develop to the level of a localized small-scale episodic conflict. The evidence suggests that political competition among ethnic groups may temporarily escalate due issues of the location of the new province’s capital location and the future bid for a new gubernatorial position. This study fills a scholarly gap in the discussion of ethnic groups’ politics and conflict (e.g. Cederman, L.-E., Hug, S., Schädel, A., & Wucherpfennig, J. [2015]. Territorial autonomy in the shadow of conflict: Too little, too late? American Political Science Review, 109(2), 354–370. doi:10.1017/S0003055415000118; Cunningham, K. G. [2014]. Inside the politics of self-determination. Oxford University Press). Furthermore, this study finds support for the effectiveness of a moratorium policy, such as buying-time tactics to reduce the conflict.

Recognition and Redemption: Visions of Safety and Justice in Black Lives Matter

In this paper, I recover and appraise the principal ways in which movements motivated by the ideal of racial justice have sought to transform how questions of police and punishment are imagined and acted upon. The focus of the enquiry is the visions of safety and justice found in Black Lives Matter. I offer an interpretive reconstruction and appraisal of the core claims found with the Black Lives Matter movement and their ideological lineage and affinities. The paper seeks to understand those claims anthropologically, from the inside, trying to offer a best-case rendition of their contexts and appeal. It also seeks to situate these claims politically (while recognizing diversity and avoiding the imposition of some spurious unity) with a view to appraising the normative character of the alternative plausible world that Black Lives Matter projects and seeks to usher into being. My claim is that one finds in Black Lives Matter a tension between a politics of self-determination and a wider politics of transformative redemption.

Between Race and Nation: Marcus Garvey and the Politics of Self-Determination

This essay argues that Marcus Garvey held a constructivist theory of self-determination, one that saw nationalism and transnationalism as mutually necessary and reinforcing ideals. The argument proceeds in three steps. First it recovers Garvey’s transnationalist emphasis by looking at his intellectual debts to other diaspora struggles, namely political Zionism and Irish nationalism. Second it argues that Garvey held a constructivist view of national identity, which also grounds his argument that the black diaspora has a right to collective self-determination. Third it explicates Garvey’s further contention that the right to self-determination and the persistence of oppression give the African diaspora a pro tanto claim to an independent state, which he considered essential to vanquishing white supremacy and realizing collective self-rule.

The hierarchical society: the politics of self-determination and the constitution of new states after 1919

International Relations scholarship disconnects the history of the so-called expansion of international society from the presence of hierarchies within it. In contrast, this article argues that these developments may in fact be premised on hierarchical arrangements whereby new states are subject to international tutelage as the price of acceptance to international society. It shows that hierarchies within international society are deeply entrenched with the politics of self-determination as international society expands. I substantiate this argument with primary and secondary material on the Minority Treaty provisions imposed on the new states in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe admitted to the League of Nations after World War I. The implications of this claim for International Relations scholarship are twofold. First, my argument contributes to debates on the making of the international system of states by showing that the process of expansion of international society is premised on hierarchy, among and within states. Second, it speaks to the growing body of scholarship on hierarchy in world politics by historicising where hierarchies come from, examining how diverse hierarchies are nested and intersect, and revealing how different actors navigate these hierarchies.

Volker Prott, The Politics of Self-Determination: Remaking Territories and National Identities in Europe 1917–1923

Volker Prott, The Politics of Self-Determination: Remaking Territories and National Identities in Europe 1917–1923

Schools of resistance – a brief history of student activism in Kashmir

ABSTRACTThis article traces the unique stance and nature of student politics in Kashmir. Drawing from an historical overview, it will argue that student activism in Kashmir is largely different from activism in India as it does not restrict itself to advocacy of student issues. Rather, it places itself squarely in the people’s struggle for self-determination and counter-colonial sentiment in the Kashmir Valley. Setting out from the pre-colonial era, the article first traces the evolution of Muslim political consciousness and the key role of education in this process. These changes will be drawn against the historical evolution of the Kashmir conflict to highlight the context in which the specificities of student activism in the Valley can be drawn out. The second section, which forms the bulk of the article, traces the history and nature of activism in Kashmir, drawing on major historical events, interviews with erstwhile and contemporary student leaders, and local memoirs. In doing so, the article aims to present the conjoining of student politics and a larger politics of self-determination in Kashmir post-independence, which is an important aspect of the emergence of Muslim identity in conflict with the occupying state.

What does self-determination mean today? The resurgence of nationalism and European integration in question

The paradox of nationalism today in Europe is that while there is ever more demand and opportunities for nationalism it has become more divisive than ever before. Nationalism now divides the nation rather than uniting it. For this reason, its capacity to offer an alternative to the status quo is severely limited. In the past collective self-determination was predicated on the presumption of a defined people who were resisting external domination and sought to bring about a new polity. The world today, especially in Europe, has made this more difficult, if not impossible. There is now an entirely new context for nationalism and the appeal to self-determination in the name of ‘the people’ is no longer able to achieve the same results. The politics of self-determination, as reflected in separatist movements, runs up against the problems of democracy and cultural pluralism, which tend to frustrate the capacity of nationalism to achieve its aims. The argument given in this paper is that the rise of nationalism is de-stabilising for Europeanisation but does not endanger it.

Volker Prott. The Politics of Self-Determination: Remaking Territories and National Identities in Europe, 1917–1923.

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Volker Prott, The Politics of Self-Determination. Remaking Territories and National Identities in Europe, 1917–1923. Oxford, Oxford University Press 2016

Volker Prott, The Politics of Self-Determination. Remaking Territories and National Identities in Europe, 1917–1923. Oxford, Oxford University Press 2016

Internationalism between national questions and imperial considerations: Henry Noel Brailsford and the transformations of Central and Eastern Europe (1898–1919)

ABSTRACTThe article recovers Henry Brailsford’s reflections on south-eastern and east-central Europe in a transformative period in international politics. Although the British journalist has been considered as key influence in the development of international relations in Britain, his commentary on the national questions in eastern Europe has remained relatively unexplored. The article argues that in response to the international politics of the Eastern Question and to concurrent imperial questions in Britain, Brailsford articulated an imperial anti-imperialist vision of international order based on the support for local autonomy and self-government across eastern Europe and the colonial world. It then proceeds to chart his gradual distancing from the politics of self-determination during the Great War and argues that Brailsford’s international thought was influenced by a series of pragmatic considerations regarding the future of central and eastern Europe. The intricacies of Brailsford’s international thought offer an informative case-study of the symbiosis of liberal and socialist varieties of internationalism in early twentieth century Britain.

Inside the Politics of Self-Determination. By Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. 304p. $105.00 cloth, $31.95 paper.

Inside the Politics of Self-Determination. By Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. 304p. $105.00 cloth, $31.95 paper.

Inside the politics of self-determination

Inside the politics of self-determination

The presence of the past: youth, memory making and the politics of self-determination in southeastern Nigeria

This article focuses on recent reconstructions of Igbo ‘memory’ by the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign state of Biafra (MASSOB). MASSOB is a second-generation Igbo separatist movement that draws on a collection of ‘memory repertoires’ to agitate for the self-determination and exit of the Igbo ethnic group from the Nigerian state into an alternative political and administrative arrangement known as the Republic of Biafra. The core issues relate to dual narratives generated by the Nigerian–Biafran War. While the state shapes the official history, memories and narratives of the war to suit its own vision, interests and politics, MASSOB contests these official views as the sole legitimate framework for remembering and interpreting the war, but still connects to the war as a war of Igbo national liberation. These contestations provide the context for the enactment of memory claims and counterclaims, and their association with political violence in contemporary Nigeria.

Peacebuilding, the local and the international: a colonial or a postcolonial rationality?

There is much debate in the peacebuilding literature on the question of agency and its locations. Given the interventionist context of peacebuilding operations and the overwhelming presence of ‘internationals’ on the scene, the ‘local’ factor might easily be seen as being subsumed at best and totally negated at worst. Operations of peacebuilding can be interpreted as being driven by a colonial rationality wherein the imperative to govern precedes and informs practices on the ground. One response is to suggest ‘hybrid agency’ as a form of articulation that questions a dichotomous representation of the local and the liberal/universal. Another is to suggest that peacebuilding practices aim towards capacity-building and hence the enablement of agency in the post-conflict context. The article argues for a conceptualisation of agency that takes its starting point from the ‘international’ as a distinctive location of politics. Doing so enables a differentiation; on the one hand the colonial rationality that places primacy in the governing potentials of external intervention, and on the other a postcolonial rationality that derives its discourse from the postcolonial international and that hence places primacy on the politics of self-determination. How ‘the international’ is invoked hence makes a difference to practices constitutive of responses to conflict: practices of peacebuilding tend towards a focus on the government of populations and remain driven by a late modern form of colonial rationality; while practices that focus on conflict resolution recognise the political subject of postcoloniality and hence focus on the politics of conflict and not its government.

The Politics of Self-Determination: Internal Fractionalization and Bargaining

Disputes over self-determination are some of the most common conflicts in the international system and are among the most difficult to resolve. However, the primary means of compromise over this issue, autonomy for sub-national groups, is difficult to achieve. Why can some pairs of states and self-determination groups implement agreement over autonomy while others are unable to do so. I argue that internal divisions within governments and separatist groups structure incentives and generate constraints for bargaining over autonomy. Divisions within self-determination movements create barriers to settlement when internal resistance cannot be overcome, but also generate incentives for governments to use autonomy strategically to divide and conquer highly fractionalized movements. Divisions within governments both hinder and help chances of settlement by creating internal hurdles for settlement but enhancing the credibility of government commitments to abide by new autonomy agreements. I test this theory on a set of dyads from 1960-2003.

The Limits of Culture in the Politics of Self-Determination

In this article, I take issue with a particular kind of liberal approach to self-determination which I refer to as culturalism. Encompassing both supporters and opponents of the right to self-determination, culturalism assumes that a normative defence of the right to self-determination stands or falls on the question of its instrumental importance to the preservation of a nation's distinctive culture. My argument, in contrast, is that in normative terms self-determination most fundamentally embodies a democratic claim. It is a nation's right to determine its own future as free as possible from external interference or domination by an external power. This is an expression of the political principle that legitimacy flows from the consent of the governed which, in this particular context, means that nations claim the right to choose how and by whom they will be governed, regardless of their cultural distinctiveness. My intention is not to construct a defence of the right to self-determination, but instead to show how culturalists obscure crucial aspects of the claim, thereby reducing our capacity to address the challenge of nationalism in a just and effective manner.

Who Determines the Self in the Politics of Self-Determination? Identity and Preference Formation in Tatarstan's Nationalist Mobilization

In the late 1980s, as the world's oldest socialist state launched a massive program of economic and political reform, nationalism in the Soviet republics contributed not only to the end of reform, but also to the unexpected collapse of the Soviet Union itself. By 1991 fifteen new nation-states were created out of the union republics. National independence for these states represented the crowning moment in ethnonationalist revivals initiated by intellectuals but carried out by mass publics through protest cycles, popular referenda, and, ultimately, elections for independence. At the same time, national revival had also been taking place within the Soviet Union's autonomous republics, the majority of which were located inside Russia.'1 In the Tatar Autonomous Republic nationalist politics was developing along a trajectory similar to that of the most aggressive union republics. In 1988 the nationalist Tatar Public Center (TOTs) was formed, explicitly modeling itself on the Baltic popular front organizations. It began by calling for the protection of Tatar culture and ended up championing full independence for Tatarstan. In 1991 a radical wing broke off from TOTs and formed Ittifak, or Alliance. Ittifak promoted an exclusivist nationalist agenda, openly hostile to Russians in Tatarstan. As Ittifak attempted to win support away from the moderate Tatars, pro-Russian and profederalist groups organized in response. In the radicalization of the Tatar nationalist movement and in the growing popular support for these groups, we observe the origins of an ethnic outbidding scenario. Ethnic outbidding takes place when political entrepreneurs in a multiethnic polity attract political support by advocating a more ethnically exclusivist program than other politicians. In Tatarstan, despite early mobilization, neither outbidding nor mass nationalist mobilization ultimately occurred. Unlike the union republics, the autonomous republics remained a part of the Russian Federation. Popular support for the nationalists in Tatarstan weakened as the more moderate President Shamiev and his government emerged as the political victor. With the conclusion of a bilateral treaty between Tatarstan and Moscow in 1994, the republic backed away from national secession. By 1996 nationalist opposition groups had become practically irrelevant. How can the rise and subsequent wane of nationalist mobilization in Tatarstan be understood? And what can attention to cases of unsuccessful ethnic mobilization illustrate about the phenomenon more generally?