Keeping the Peace after Secession

Abstract

Secession is an attempt to resolve a domestically based territorial dispute by dividing a country's homeland territory into new, secessionist (e.g., Eritrea) and rump (e.g., Ethiopia) states. Yet, the secession may not have resolved the original dispute to the states' satisfaction. In the aftermath of a secession, the leader of the rump state is motivated to use force by the benefits of retaking (some of) the land lost to the secessionist state, while the secessionist state's leader is motivated by the benefits of acquiring even more land. The peaceful versus violent secession process further affects whether these desires escalate into the use of force. The results—based on the examination of the consequences of all twentieth-century secessions—reveal that ethnically based territorial disputes play a much greater role in conflict onset than do their economically or strategically based counterparts and that peaceful secessions lead to peaceful relations.