Dawn Brancati Decentralization

The authors worst argument is that without a large Republic, the country will not be unified. This argument is the worst because each state has it’s own priorities and problems. For

This does not mean to exclude those economic and other related institutions, but focuses this dissatisfaction on the political institutions as key to this process. This dissatisfaction is only exacerbated by the government’s inability or unwillingness to engage with this segment of the population in order to resolve the emerging conflict early in its development. Instead, the government ignores or even attempts to repress this expression of dissatisfaction, resulting in allegations of human rights abuses, among other symptoms. This only fuels a greater desire for secession in this marginalized and underrepresented segment(s) of society, as secessionism is seen as the only option available for the group to alleviate the injustices it feels is levied against it. This results in a “balkanization” of ethnic and religious groups as the

One of the most dangerous global issues today is the growth of separatism. There are variety causes of separatism in many countries.

They note that there are more successful parliamentary governments than presidential ones. “Aside from the United States, only Chile has managed a century and a half of relatively undisturbed constitutional continuity under presidential government” (Linz 52). They also argue that presidentialism is more likely to engage in gridlock, which is when there is too much disagreement within a government system and the passage of laws is slowed or stymied as a result. They attribute this to the “winner‐takes‐all logic and is particularly prone to institutional deadlock…[that] may result in the marginalization of ethnic groups, thus fostering violent reactions by the losing group” (Basedau 171). They also like to discuss how fractionalized the legislature can become under presidentialism. In fact, “extreme fractionalization—in which no party controls more than a third of the seats—is more frequent under presidentialism (occurring 18 percent of the time) than under parliamentarism (where it occurs only 8.9 percent of the time)”(Cheibub et al. 45). Lastly, one can notice that a lot of scholars in this camp tackle presidentialism by being skeptical of the style of politics it encourages. To them, since the executive must appeal to the masses for votes and not the legislative, the campaign for the executive (the president) turns into a personality contest and is devoid of

The overall goal of partition is to eliminate conflict and produce long-lasting safety via the separation of the conflicting communities (Kaufmann as cited in Tir 265). Safety is in the form of the removal of threats relating to ethnic murder, expropriation, or expulsion (Kaufmann as cited in Tir 265). As, in situations where ethnic communities do not have a strong and impartial centralized state, ethnic groups in fear of upcoming civil conflict rally together and become defensive (Posen as cited in Kauffman 122). Furthermore, this creates a security dilemma, as ethnic groups cannot provide for their own safety and security without undermining the safety and security of other groups (Posen as cited in Kauffman 122). This dilemma stems from

Secession occurs due minorities wanting independence or sovereignty for political-cultural identity reasons. Self-determination, which is the idea that a people that possess some sort of unanimous identity have the right to pursue their own political interests and form their own state, is most commonly considered the primary justification for secession (Clark 739). However, there is an ongoing debate as to when a people can put this notion of self-determination into practice. The ‘extent’ of self-determination that a people has is one of the major factors that determines whether or not a secession can be successful. However, there are many other contributing determinants of success. In particular, this paper will demonstrate that state systems and their power structures are an equally important aspect of secession that can ultimately impact and alter its outcome and success. It will contend that secessionist movements are more likely to achieve a favourable outcome or be considered successful if the parent state is governed as a federation rather than a unitary state.

Authors such as John Lederach, Jarat Chopra, and Tanja Hohe explain that one of the worst ways to go about building peace in a post conflict country is to approach it with an overly westernized strategy. Doing so leads to a failure to create public support for the new government and an ultimate failure to create lasting peace. Jarat Chopra, and Tanja Hohe explain that a far more effective strategy is one of integration. They believe that it is irresponsible to eliminate traditional structures of governance if they have been successful in the past at promoting peace. The goal of integration is to take traditional local sources of governance and use them to establish a better refined national government.

The “Right of Secession” has become a major political issue in the world. In the USA history, during civil war, the southern states seceded from the union because they wanted to preserve the institution of slavery. The civil war fought from 1861 to 1865 until the USA resolved the issue of secession. On the hand, today, the case of secession is growing movement in the world. Many people want secede from their government and form their own nation. Many conflicts around the world today are between the central government and ethnic groups. Some parts of the world governments are not properly representative of all the constituent ethnic groups within its inequity between majorities and minorities. For these reasons the UN and the human Rights

In examining the multiple possible causes of civil wars and how to code them there has been plenty of debate. Despite all the differences and variations in definitions of civil wars and focuses on causes, authors Fearon, Laitin (2003), Collier and Hoeffler (2004) and Sambanis (2004) all manage to agree that income level and population size have a significant effect on the probability a country has on going into a civil war.

In this day and age, we find ourselves at odds with our “identity” as we find that not only are we representing ourselves, but we also have ties to religion, sect, tribe, and family (Angrist). This shows that despite the cohesiveness and threads that attach us, it has the power to pull people, families, and in some cases countries apart. This conflict comes to a head when religion and ethnicity are interwoven. Hence when divisions occur, this can lead to violent wars that destroy trust between individuals. This can ingrain a sense of uneasiness and distrust that plagues people’s ideas and leaves a country divided. This is particularly evident in Lebanon. Ethnic and religious division led to the festering of feelings of marginalization and discrimination, which boiled over into the Lebanese civil war, a war that claimed the lives of 150,000 people (Szekely). The anger and frustration birthed from this to chaos, and conflict has in turn increased the division between ethnic and religious factions and led to the crumbling of Lebanese nationalism. This essay is specifically aimed at assessing the relationships between ethnic and religious divisions in Lebanon and explores how it contributed to the civil war. This is done by identifying and analyzing the main actors and makes an explanation of the historical divisions stemming from the National Pact, branching out to include the consequences of the civil war on the political structures and the identities of the

Michael Banton looks into the issues concerning topics such as ethnic dimension, mobilisation, ethnicity, race and conflict. In this article Banton focuses on conflicts which are considered to be ethnical conflicts; these conflicts are derived by certain types of motivations. Baton looks at secondary data demonstrating surveys of 92 armed conflicts within the years of 1945-89. Through these data the author recognises that many of the ethnic conflicts had come about at the time that imperial powers were no longer able to support political frameworks which they had placed upon the country. Overall the author suggest that within shared ethnics there is a collective action in achieving a common shared goal. This is achieved through collective shared

In this essay I am going to compare and contrast the governments of Japan and Mexico. I want to analyze the effects and ramifications of political institutions within these countries. This essay will contain but is not limited to discussing the following institutions: electoral systems, legislative structures, and parties, executives, and federalism and subnational units.

Among academics, political leaders, and government representatives differences of opinion and concern abound: differences about the most beneficial structure of self-government, about who controls what, about when self-government should be implemented, about whether or not a true form self-government can ever be achieved.

Hence, federalism douses the tensions that might arise among and between levels of government in such a way that none colours the existence of other or dominates the workings of the other. The duo further posit that federalism gives minorities the opportunity of governance even though there is the risk of fragmenting sub-national governments and subjecting them to hostilities. They also argue that federalism paves way for cross-ethnic co-operation, especially in countries where ethnic groups and regions are closely tied. Also, by multiplying rewards in politics, federalism reduces the pressure for capturing the central government. Imuetinyan and Ogbeide further posited that federalism is indeed one of the several worthy devices that have been explored as part of the process of national integration in plural

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate Henry Hale’s article “Divided we Stand: Institutional Sources for Ethno federal State Survival and Collapse”. Hale’s attempts to respond to the criticism leveled against ethnofederalism, which posits that ethnofederal institutional arrangement leads to secession and consequently failure of central state. He argues that existence of a core ethnic region facilitates separatism and secessionism, which if addressed will resolve the misconception about ethnofederalism. His theory of a state’s collapse is solid and well argued. However, there are some contradictions in its casual mechanism, which can be perfected with further research. This review proceeds as follows. The first section provides a brief summary of the article. The second section discusses the articles methodology, and the last section provides critique of the article.