The risk of domino secessions: interdependent secessions and lessons from the Western Balkans

ABSTRACT

The resurgence of nationalist tendencies around the world has brought new attention to the problem of smaller regions seceding from larger states. While research exists regarding the contagious nature of self-determination, ethnic conflict and civil wars, the interrelationships among various secessionist conflicts have not been systematically studied. We show that the circumstances of secession conflicts in different countries are interconnected by the perceptions of elites and that outcomes in one case may, therefore, influence expectations, motivations, strategies and outcomes in others. We also identified several indicators of interconnectivity among secessionist conflicts in the Western Balkans and visualised the strength of the links among them using social network analysis tools (Pajek – Spider). After the outbreak of a secession conflict, several inter-secession effects will be directly transferred to the most interconnected cases, and the greatest domino risk results from the combined impacts of direct and indirect nth-order effects.

KEYWORDS:

• Secession
• independence
• interdependency
• Western Balkans
• Balkanisation
• security

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in Social Science Data Archives (ADP) at https://doi.org/10.17898/ADP_SOZB18_V1, reference number [ADP – IDNo: SOZB18].

Notes

1 In the empirical part, we use articles from recognised foreign media in the English language (EU Observer, SE Times, The Kosovo Times, BBC) and also recognised regional media in local languages (Delo, B92, 24ur).

2 Vojvodina is used more as a control case in our study. There, secessionism was never particularly strong and was more financially driven. However, as an autonomous republic in the former Yugoslavia, it was legally in a similar position to Kosovo. Under the 1974 constitution, like other republics it held many rights, except the right of secession (see Ker-Lindsay 2012, p. 33).

3 The Democratic League of Kosovo, led by Ibrahim Rugova, was a mainstream secessionist party modelled on the Polish Solidarity, which organised a shadow government and attempted to secede by peaceful means. After the international community’s refusal to include the Kosovo issue in the Dayton Peace Agreement because Kosovo was not a former administrative unit of Yugoslavia, and after other disappointments, the KLA, as a radical and minor secession movement, started a more direct and violent rebellion, attracting many new members and supporters (see Pavkovic and Radan 2016a, p. 153; Sakwa and Pavkovic 2016, p. 161; Kubo 2016, p. 177, Coggins 2014, p. 110, 116).

4 The theory of international relations of secession shows that states respond to ethnic conflicts in other states based on their own vulnerability to secession, domestic politics and logic of power. Empirical studies relying on the Minorities and Potential Supporters Dataset also show that countries facing separatism at home are more likely to assist separatists, especially in proximate weaker states and according to their ethnic similarity (see Saideman 2016). Recognition is vital for secessionist entities and also includes the legitimacy conferred by membership or participation in a number of international organisations (Ker-Lindsay 2012, p. 6). Recognition can be bi-lateral or collective. In the latter case, states coordinate and consult with each other, and observe, wait for each other in the process of recognising (Ker-Lindsay 2012, p. 10, 13, Coggins 2014, p. 38). The trend is toward collective recognition, as clearly demonstrated in the case of the former Yugoslavia (see Oeter 2014).

5 Participation in sporting events and associations can often be a source of competition between the parent state and the breakaway territories. Kosovo has been blocked by Serbia in several important sports associations (Ker-Lindsay 2012, pp. 152–155).

6 The full list of interviewees is provided in the supplementary file.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Javna Agencija za Raziskovalno Dejavnost RS: [Grant Number BI-US/18-19-047].