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

2004/01/01 by Henry E. Hale · 2 citations
Social Sciences · #Culture, Economy, and Development Studies #Political Conflict and Governance #Religion and Society Interactions

paper · doi:10.1353/wp.2004.0011

openalex publication_date 2004/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01

Abstract

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.

Citations

• Why Africa's Weak States Persist: The Empirical and the Juridical in Statehood
• The Political Foundations of Democracy and the Rule of the Law
• Autonomy as a Source of Conflict: Caucasian Conflicts in Theoretical Perspective
• Soviet Federalism and Ethnic Mobilization
• The USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism
• Explaining Ethnicity

Cited by

• The Political Science of Federalism
• Federalism [wikipedia]