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Political Exclusion, Lost Autonomy, and Escalating Conflict over Self-Determination

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2020

Micha Germann Open the ORCID record for Micha Germann [Opens in a new window]  and
Nicholas Sambanis Open the ORCID record for Nicholas Sambanis [Opens in a new window]
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Abstract

Most civil wars are preceded by nonviolent forms of conflict. While it is often assumed that violent and nonviolent conflicts are qualitatively different and have different causes, that assumption is rarely tested empirically. We use a two-step approach to explore whether political exclusion and lost autonomy—two common causes of civil war according to extant literature—are associated with the emergence of nonviolent separatist claims, with the escalation of nonviolent separatist claims to war, or both. Our analysis suggests that different types of grievances matter more at different stages of conflict escalation. We find that political exclusion is a significant correlate of the escalation of nonviolent claims for self-determination to violence, while its association with the emergence of nonviolent separatist claims is weaker. By contrast, lost autonomy is correlated with both the emergence of nonviolent separatist claims and, if autonomy revocations are recent, their escalation to violence. We argue that these results are consistent with both grievance- and opportunity-based theories of conflict.

Keywords

Civil warconflict escalationnonviolent claimsseparatismself-determination conflicts

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Type
Research Note
Information
International Organization , Volume 75 , Issue 1 , Winter 2021 , pp. 178 - 203
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 2020

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Lost autonomy

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SDM Coding Notes_v072018

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SDM2EPR

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