https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7105-3420
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ABSTRACT
Scholarship on the advisability of territorial accommodation in conflict-torn societies prioritises attention to the political and identity-based factors that fuel societal divisions and often complicate the success of such forms of accommodation. Yet these divisions are themselves shaped by the boundaries that delineate who lives within the territory being accommodated. Here we focus on the critical question of whether the borders of the territorial unit to potentially receive autonomy are clearly demarcated when peace is established or, instead, form an essential and continued part of the post-conflict space. Where demarcation remains unsettled, elites will encourage perceptions of societal differences – among identity groups, insurgent factions, and political networks – that subsequently lead to conflict continuation or re-emergence. To evaluate this argument, we leverage two similar cases – Aceh in Indonesia and Mindanao in the Philippines – where much of the conventional wisdom fails to explain divergent outcomes in trajectories of peace and conflict.
Acknowledgement
For helpful comments on this paper, the authors are grateful to Meredith Weiss, the participants in the Comparative Politics/IR Workshop at UC Santa Cruz, and two anonymous reviewers.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Jan Erik and Lawrence Anderson, ‘The Paradox of Federalism’, Regional & Federal Studies 19, no. 2 (2009): 191–202.
2 Ugo Amoretti and Nancy Bermeo, eds., Federalism and Territorial Cleavages (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004); Donald Horowitz, ‘The Many Uses of Federalism’, Drake Law Review 55 (2006): 953; and Alfred Stepan, Arguing Comparative Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
3 Dawn Brancati, ‘Decentralization: Fueling the Fire or Dampening the Flames of Ethnic Conflict and Secessionism?’, International Organization 60 (2006): 651–85; Valerie Bunce, Subversive Institutions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Svante Cornell, ‘Autonomy as a Source of Conflict’, World Politics 54, no. 2 (2002): 245–76; and Philip Roeder, ‘Ethnofederalism and the Mismanagement of Conflicting Nationalism’, Regional & Federal Studies 19, no. 2 (2009): 203–19.
4 Dawn Walsh and John Doyle, ‘External Actors in Consociational Arrangements: A Re-Examination of Lijphart’s Negative Assumptions’, Ethnopolitics 17, no. 1 (2018): 21–36.
5 Lars-Erik Cederman, Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, and Julian Wucherpfennig, ‘The Diffusion of Inclusion: An Open-Polity Model of Ethnic Power Sharing’, Comparative Political Studies 51, no. 10 (2017): 1279–313.
6 Felix Schulte, ‘The More, the Better?: Assessing the Scope of Regional Autonomy as a Key Condition for Ethnic Conflict Regulation’, International Journal on Minority and Group Rights 25, no. 1 (2018): 84–111.
7 Edward Aspinall, Islam and Nation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009); and Paul Hutchcroft, ed., Mindanao: The Long Journey to Peace and Prosperity (Singapore: Anvil Publishing, 2018), xv.
8 Hanna Leonardsson and Gustav Rudd, ‘The “Local Turn” in Peacebuilding’, Third World Quarterly 36 (2015): 825–39.
9 Michael Findley, ‘Bargaining and the Interdependent Stages of Civil War Resolution’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 57, no. 5 (2013): 905–32.
10 Caroline Hartzell, Matthew Hoddie, and Donald Rothchild, ‘Stabilizing the Peace after Civil War’, International Organization 55, no. 1 (2001): 183–208.
11 David Cunningham, Barriers to Peace in Civil War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
12 James Fearon, ‘Why Do Some Civil Wars Last So Much Longer than Others?’, Journal of Peace Research 41, no. 3 (2004): 275–301; James Fearon and David Laitin, ‘Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War’, American Political Science Review 97, no. 1 (2003): 75–90; Barbara Walter, ‘Designing Transitions from Civil War’, International Security 24, no. 1 (1999): 127–55; and Barbara Walter, Committing to Peace (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).
13 See for example Amoretti and Bermeo, Federalism; Alain-G. Gagnon and Michael Keating, eds., Political Autonomy and Divided Societies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Michel Seymour and Alain-G. Gagnon, eds., Multinational Federalism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Andrew Reynolds, ed., The Architecture of Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); and Marc Weller and Katherine Nobbs, eds., Asymmetric Autonomy and the Settlement of Ethnic Conflicts (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010).
14 Donald Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); and Kristin Bakke and Erik Wibbels, ‘Diversity, Disparity, and Civil Conflict in Federal States’, World Politics 59 (2006): 1–50.
15 Sarah Shair-Rosenfield, ‘Shared Rule as a Signal of Central State Commitment to Self-Rule’, Regional & Federal Studies 32, no. 3 (2022): 375–92.
16 Jacques Bertrand, Democracy and Nationalism in Southeast Asia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021).
17 Paul Hutchcroft, Booty Capitalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998); and Erik Kuhonta, ‘Studying States in Southeast Asia’, in Southeast Asia in Political Science, ed. Erik Kuhonta, Dan Slater, and Tuong Vu (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), 30–54.
18 Aspinall, Islam and Nation, 34–39.
19 Priyambudi Sulistiyanto, ‘Whither Aceh?’, Third World Quarterly 22, no. 3 (2001): 437–52.
20 Aspinall, Islam and Nation, 54.
21 Aijaz Ahmad, ‘Class and Colony in Mindanao’, in Rebels, Warlords and Ulama, ed. Eric Gutierrez (Quezon City: Philippines Institute for Popular Democracy, 2000), 14.
22 World Bank Group Engagement in Situations of Fragility, Conflict, and Violence (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2016), 32.
23 Bertrand, Democracy and Nationalism.
24 Law No. 11/2006 on Aceh Special Autonomy.
25 Miriam Ferrer, ‘Forging a Peace Settlement for the Bangsamoro’; Abhoud Lingga, ‘Building the Bangsamoro Government’; and Hutchcroft, ed., Mindanao.
26 Sarah Shair-Rosenfield, Electoral Reform and the Fate of New Democracies: Lessons from the Indonesian Case (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2019), 51–52.
27 Ferrer, ‘Forging a Peace’, 119–21.
28 Moshe Yegar, Between Integration and Secession (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2002), 246.
29 Patricio Abinales, ‘War and Peace in Muslim Mindanao’; Hutchcroft, ed., Mindanao, 50; and Ahmad, ‘Class and Colony’, 33.
30 Yegar, Between Integration, 246.
31 Marites Vitug and Glenda Gloria, Under the Crescent Moon (Manila: Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, 2000), 40.
32 Authors’ own elaboration.
33 Timothy Williams, ‘The MOA-AD Debacle’, Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs 29, no. 1 (2010): 121–44.
34 Ferrer, ‘Forging a Peace’, 119.
35 International Crisis Group, ‘Southern Philippines: Tackling Clan Politics in the Bangsamoro’, Report No. 306 (2020), 15.
36 See note 32 above.
37 Yegar, Between Integration, 187.
38 Ibid., 352.
39 Ibid, 352.
40 International Crisis Group, ‘Southern Philippines’, 17.
41 Ibid., 13.
42 In 2020, the governorship transferred to Nova Iransyiah of the Democratic Party when then-governor and former GAM leader Irwandi Yusuf was arrested by the Indonesian Corruption Eradication Commission.
43 Francisco Lara, Insurgents, Clans, and States (Manila: Ateneo University Press, 2014); Hutchcroft, Booty Capitalism; Alfred McCoy, An Anarchy of Families (Manila: Ateneo University Press, 1994); and John Sidel, Capital, Coercion, and Crime (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999).
44 Thomas McKenna, Muslim Rulers and Rebels (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).
45 Robert Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Kent Eaton
Kent Eaton is a Distinguished Professor of Politics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His research examines the interplay between politics and territory, focusing on the territorial (re)organization of states that is taking place around the world today.
Sarah Shair-Rosenfield
Sarah Shair-Rosenfield is a Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of York. Her research focuses on political institutions – with a particular emphasis on decentralization and subnational politics – politics and gender, and Southeast Asian politics and policy.