This book analyses how national independence movements’ rhetoric can inflame or dampen ethnic violence. It examines the extent to the power of words matters when a region tries to break away to become a nation state. Using discourse analysis, this book examines how the process of secession affects internal ethnic relations and analyses how politicians interpret events and present arguments with the intention to mobilize their constituencies for independence. With in-depth case studies on the Slovenian, the Croatian and the Montenegrin independence movements, and by looking at cases from Indonesia and Spain, the author investigates how rhetoric affect internal ethnic relations during secession and how events and debate shape each other. The author demonstrates how in some cases of self-determination elites push for a higher level of sovereignty in the name of economic advancement, whereas in other cases, self-determination movements refer to ethnic identity and human rights issues. Explaining how and why certain discourses dominate some independence movements and not others, Secessionist Movements and Ethnic Conflict will be of interest to students and scholars of politics, history, nationalism, ethnic conflict and discourse analysis.

In Secession and Security, Ahsan I. Butt argues that states rather than separatists determine whether a secessionist struggle will be peaceful, violent, or genocidal. He investigates the strategies, ranging from negotiated concessions to large-scale repression, adopted by states in response to separatist movements. Variations in the external security environment, Butt argues, influenced the leaders of the Ottoman Empire to use peaceful concessions against Armenians in 1908 but escalated to genocide against the same community in 1915; caused Israel to reject a Palestinian state in the 1990s; and shaped peaceful splits in Czechoslovakia in 1993 and the Norway-Sweden union in 1905. Butt focuses on two main cases—Pakistani reactions to Bengali and Baloch demands for independence in the 1970s and India's responses to secessionist movements in Kashmir, Punjab, and Assam in the 1980s and 1990s. Butt's deep historical approach to his subject will appeal to policymakers and observers interested in the last five decades of geopolitics in South Asia, the contemporary Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and ethno-national conflict, separatism, and nationalism more generally.

This book seeks to examine secessionist ethics in South and Southeast Asia in a theoretically informed way and from a comparative perspective. Looking in depth at conflicts in such places as East Timor, Kashmir, and Mindanao, this book is the first attempt to study secessionist ethnic conflicts systematically and comparatively in the Asian context.

An examination of the reasons independence movements remain peaceful or become violent

Separatist Movements: A Global Reference uniquely profiles in detail 59 ongoing separatist movements across six major regions around the world, with attention given to not only prominent movements, such as the Tamils in Sri Lanka and the Sikhs in India, but also lesser-known peoples such as the Saami in the Arctic and the Inuit in Canada. Each of the movement essays includes a description of the people and a summary of their core aspirations––political, cultural and economic; the movement’s history, stretching back decades and, in some cases, centuries; leadership––political parties, individuals, and militant groups; and current status. A selection of maps accompany the movement essays. Valuable features for researchers in this reference include: Introductions to each of the six major regions A table of contents by country A table of contents by movements A table of contents by region A table of contents by movement leaders 24 biographies of key movement leaders An appendix of self-determination treaties A bibliography

This volume explores the varied outcomes that self-determination movements around the world have achieved, and in particular seeks to understand what factors promote better outcomes and what factors promote worse ones. Rather than focusing on the metric of achieving independence, the project evaluates the quality of societies after independence, including such elements as economic strength and political resilience, and it analyzes what factors contribute to different outcomes. The study finds that the single most determinative factor in the success of any independence movement is frequently beyond the control of such a movement, often relating to the global and historical contexts in which the movement finds itself. However, a whole host of factors are within the control of such a movement, but movements do not always seek to act on many of them. Activists become so convinced in the justness of the independence cause that they do not focus on actions that would contribute to greater success after independence.

Attempts to resolve why self-determination disputes between governments and ethnic minorities so often result in civil war.