Territorial autonomy is widely promoted to protect peace in multi-ethnic states, but cross-national evidence on its effects at the subnational level is limited. Growing concern exists that autonomy might simply redirect ethnic violence from the national to the subnational arena.
📊 New time-variant subnational data and a global 1989–2019 design
- Time-variant measures were assembled for subnational boundaries, territorial autonomy, and ethnically attributed violence.
- A systematic analysis covers all multi-ethnic countries from 1989 to 2019.
- Causal leverage is sought through instrumental variable analyses, and mechanisms are probed via tests of intermediate implications.
🔍 How autonomy can lead to local conflict — and when it does not
- Territorial autonomy generates tensions over control of subnational governments and the distribution of local economic goods.
- Whether those tensions become violent depends on ethnic representation in the central government.
- Unequal central representation raises the likelihood of violent escalation because of:
- information and commitment problems between groups and governments, and
- subnational majoritarian dynamics that empower local winners to exclude minorities.
🧾 Key findings
- Autonomy on its own can increase tensions at the subnational level and, under certain conditions, redirect ethnic violence downward.
- The risk of violent escalation is substantially higher when ethnically defined groups are unequally represented in the central government.
- Instrumental variable analyses and tests of intermediate implications support the proposed causal mechanism linking central representation, autonomy, and subnational violence.
🧭 Why this matters
- The results indicate that territorial autonomy should be paired with inclusive central institutions: autonomy without central-level inclusion can heighten subnational violence risk.
- Policy and scholarly debates about power-sharing and decentralization must account for the interaction between local institutions and central representation to assess peace outcomes accurately.
