“It is not what is, but what people perceive as is that has behavioral consequences.” — Walker Conner
One of the enduring issues of the modern state is how it deals with its inevitable ethnic minority populations. Recent issues between the Spanish government and the semi-autonomous Catalan government highlight the volatility and precariousness of this relationship. While the Catalan issue is currently dominating the press at the moment, it is just one of many ethnonational conflicts across Europe and throughout the world. It seems no corner of the globe is immune to this issue, from Catalan, Crimea, and Szelker to Kurdistan, Mindanao, and Tibet, minority populations are reinvigorating the question of how to accommodate the diverse populations that exist within the modern state. On common solution to appease minority population’s desire for self-rule is territorial autonomy. However, despite the promise of territorial autonomy as a viable solution to resolving ethnonational conflicts, it actually winds up acting as an obstacle.
Ethnonational conflicts are typically long-standing and potentially bloody struggles that exhaust parent state resources and fracture ethnic nationalist’s power. One popular way states try to solve these conflicts is through granting territorial autonomy to a region. Territorial autonomy — a solution where non-state nationalists receive certain rights and freedoms in lieu of abandoning their pursuit of independence — endeavors to end the zero-sum nature of armed conflict by keeping the territorial integrity of the state while simultaneously recognizing the right to ethnic claims of self-determination. Although there are benefits derived from granting autonomy as it de-militarizes the conflict and keeps the territorial integrity of the state, there are downsides that act as an obstacle to resolving ethnonational conflict.
Though philosophically promising, there are limitations to territorial autonomy.
Autonomy fails to address the root causes of the conflict; it potentially strengthens secessionist claims by creating spoilers and providing access to legitimate political authority; and it lacks definition and is often characterized by the desires and capabilities of the parent state, as much as it is by the demands of the ethnic nationalists. Autonomy is usually only considered an alternative when prolonged military action fails to produce a definitive result. Exhausted parties that are naturally distrustful of one another enter into autonomous agreements that do more to diffuse a situation than actually solve a problem. Certainly, the self-administration that accompanies autonomy leaves some ethnic nationalists feeling victorious and the parent state relieved of the burden of a protracted and costly conflict.
However, too often government concessions in the form of autonomy arrangements come too late in the conflict after years of repression, rhetoric, and atrocities. This makes constructive dialogue about the root causes of the conflict very unlikely, which impedes resolution of the conflict. Even when the parties do engage in dialogue there is often a lack of clear authority within the non-state entity because a unified opposition rarely exists after years of conflict. Different factions may play the spoiler in an autonomy arrangement, seeing any arrangement as undermining their power or disagreeing with the negotiated terms wholesale. This may lead these spoilers to renew secessionist claims or convince the new rulers of the autonomous state to use their new access to the political process to do so.
Lastly, many autonomy arrangements framework allow the incompatible identities that existed as the basis for the conflict to remain, alongside the ethnic politics and social relationships that led to the grievances. For example, autonomous arrangements do not necessarily involve proper resource allocations or a stake in the central government’s political process. As Henry Hale mentions, the core ethnic group may have enough control of the central government that they prevent any policies that they perceive as favoring the ethnic minority of the autonomous region. In short, the people who disliked one another to the extent that they entered into an armed conflict still live together. Since autonomy agreements often fail to include inter-ethnic mechanisms for cooperation, they fail to resolve the conflict.
Without conflict resolution, territorial autonomy becomes an obstacle to resolving ethnonational conflicts.
So, while conflict is not a desirable condition for a state and any means to bring it to an end has its merits, granting territorial autonomy, with all its limitations, oftentimes acts as an obstacle to definitively ending ethnonational conflicts. Considering the violence and rhetoric that likely precedes autonomy agreements, contentious dialogue after the settlement is likely and will do little to force either side to pursue long lasting solutions to the root causes of the conflict. Moreover, territorial autonomy lacks formal definition, allowing claims of false implementation by ethnic nationalists and manipulation by the parent state. This lack of conflict resolution, the potential for renewed secessionist claims, and the prospect of increased violence make territorial autonomy an obstacle to resolving ethnonational conflicts.
