¹ Gurr, Ted Robert, “Ethnic Warfare on the Wane,” Foreign Affairs 79 (May-June 2000), 53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² Significant works on nationalism and ethnic conflict include Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 2d ed. (London: Verso, 1991)Google Scholar; Gellner, Ernest, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988)Google Scholar; Smith, Anthony D., The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986)Google Scholar; Horowitz, Donald, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Gurr, Ted R., Why Men Rebel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Gurr, , Peoples versus States: Minorities at Risk in the New Century (Washington, D.C.: USIP Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

³ In other instances, however, ethnic demands are not for “exit”—autonomy or secession—but for greater participation in the government of the central state, particularly when settlement patterns overlap.

⁴ It must be noted, however, that ethnic conflict in such situations is possible, and when it does occur, it is likely to be significantly more severe than in cases of less intermingled settlement patterns. Conflict in intermingled states would tend not to be over a part of the state's territory and its affiliation but over the control of the state apparatus, that is, the entire territory of the state. The emergence of violent conflict in such situations would be significantly more likely to lead to large-scale ethnic cleansing and/or genocide: a geographic partition line being much more difficult to draw, the conflict is likely to take place not on a warfront between two organized military formations but in civilian-inhabited areas over a much larger tract of territory. Moreover, the knowledge that a clean territorial break is impossible or very difficult encourages the urge to displace or eliminate members of the other group and even the perception that it is necessary. A political solution would also imply that one would continue to live intermingled with members of the other group. This is in turn interpreted as a security threat to the own group and again increases the urge to expel or eliminate the other group, actions that are even conceptualized as defensive and indispensable for the own group's well-being. This situation is referred to as the “security dilemma”. See, for example, Posen, Barry, “The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict,” Survival 35, no. 1 (1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, “Weak States, Rough Terrain, and Large-Scale Ethnic Violence since 1945” (Paper presented at the annual meetings of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta, September 2–5, 1999), 16Google Scholar, emphasis in original.

⁶ Gurr, Ted Robert, “Peoples against States: Ethnopolitical Conflict and the Changing World System,” International Studies Quarterly 38 (Fall 1994), 366Google Scholar.

⁷ Nordquist, Kjell-Åke, “Autonomy as a Conflict-Solving Mechanism: An Overview,” in Suksi, Markku, ed., Autonomy: Applications and Implications (The Hague: Kluwer, 1998), 59Google Scholar.

⁸ Interestingly, in certain instances the central government, in particular in states trying to build a civic national identity, argues that granting autonomy to a minority population would be tantamount to defining that population as second-class citizens. The Turkish government, for example, sticks to its refusal for special rights to citizens of Kurdish origin, on the grounds that they are already enjoying all existing rights as first-class citizens of the Turkish republic; any special rights would imply their segregation from the rest of the population and by extension their diminishment to second-class status.

⁹ See Lapidoth, Ruth, Autonomy: Flexible Solutions to Ethnic Conflict (Washington, D.C.: USIP Press, 1996), 203Google Scholar. By the same token it can be argued that the refusal to grant autonomy could be an even stronger incentive for a state affiliated with the minority to intervene.

¹⁰ Meyer, David J., “A Place of Our Own: Does the Ethnicization of Territorial Control Create Incentives for Elites to Conduct Ethno-Political Mobilization? Cases from the Caucasus in Comparative Perspective” (Paper presented at the Fifth Annual Convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities, New York, April 2000)Google Scholar. See, for example, Elazar, Daniel J., Federalism and the Way to Peace (Kingston: Queens University, 1994)Google Scholar; also Lapidoth (fn. 9).

¹¹ See, for example, Hale, Henry, “Ethnofederalism and Theories of Secession: Getting More from the Soviet Cases” (Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Nationalities, New York, April 1999)Google Scholar; Dorff, Robert, “Federalism in Eastern Europe: Part of the Solution or Part of the Problem?” Publius: The Journal of Federalism 24 (Spring 1994)Google Scholar.

¹² See, for example, Brubaker, Rogers, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Roeder, Philip G., “Soviet Federalism and Ethnic Mobilization,” World Politics 43 (January 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a recent treatment of the subject, see Leff, Carol Skalnik, “Democratization and Disintegration in Multinational States: The Breakup of the Communist Federations,” World Politics 51 (January 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³ Hans-Joachim Heintze, “On the Legal Understanding of Autonomy,” in Suksi (fn. 7), 7.

¹⁴ Steiner, Henry J., “Ideals and Counter-Ideals in the Struggle over Autonomy Regimes for Minorities.” Notre Dame Law Review 66 (1991), 1542Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Ibid., 1542.

¹⁶ Heintze (fn. 13), 7.

¹⁷⁸ UN Information Organization, Documents of the UN Conference on International Organization, vol. 6 (New York, 1945), 296, cited in Heintze (fn. 13), 9Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Steiner (fn. 14), 1550.

¹⁹ Ibid.

²⁰ Ibid., 1552.

²¹ See Sanders, Douglas, “Collective Rights,” Human Rights Quarterly 13 (August 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²² See Brems, M., Die Politische Integration Etnischer Minderheiten (The political integration of ethnic minorities) (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1995), 142Google Scholar.

²³ Lyck, L., “Lessons to be Learned on Autonomy from the Faeroese Situation since 1992,” Nordic Journal of International Law 64 (Fall 1995), 481–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁴ Ilishev, Ildus G., “Russian Federalism: Political, Legal and Ethnolingual Aspects—A View from the Republic of Bashkortostan,” Nationalities Papers 26 (Fall 1998), 724–759CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Reproduced as an appendix to the article is the Treaty on the Mutual Derogation of Powers between the State Organs of the Russian Federation and the State Organs of the Republic of Bashkortostan, in Stanovlenie Dogovornykh Otnosheniy Respubliku Bashkortostan i Rossiyskoy Federatsii, 1990–1996 gg., Sbornik Dokumentov (Ufa, 1997).

²⁵ Group cohesion, willingness to act, and capacity to act have been identified as the major categories of factors leading to conflict in the literature on ethnopolitical conflict. See, for example, Gurr (fn. 2, 2000).

²⁶ Winichakul, Thongchai, Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of Siam (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

²⁷ Anderson (fn. 2), 175.

²⁸ Gurr (fn. 2,2000).

²⁹ Gorenburg, Dmitry, “Nationalism for the Masses: Popular Support for Nationalism in Russia's Ethnic Republics,” Europe-Asia Studies 53 (January 2001), 74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁰ Meyer (fn. 10), 2.

³¹ Ibid.

³² Leff (fn. 12), 210.

³³ Here minority is defined as an ethnically defined population group under the jurisdiction of a territorial unit with a distinct titular nationality. Hence, in the South Caucasus, the Nakhjivan Autonomous Republic is left outside the scope of the study since the population of Nakhjivan was and remains homogeneously Azerbaijani-populated (93 percent) and under the jurisdiction of Azerbaijan.

³⁴ For a detailed overview of the conflicts in the Caucasus, see Cornell, Svante E., Small Nations and Great Powers: A Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict in the Caucasus (Richmond, UK: Curzon Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

³⁵ The Meskhetian Turks of Southern Georgia were deported in 1943 but have not yet been allowed to return to their native lands.

³⁶ Fearon and Laitin find that “mountain groups were six times more likely to see large-scale fighting with the state following the Soviet collapse.” As they note, moreover, rough terrain is a useful tool to explain how minorities with small numbers can “sustain significant guerrilla conflicts with the state.” Fearon and Laitin (fn. 5), 18–20.

³⁷ Ethnic mobilization does not automatically carry with it ethnic conflict; conflict only occurs if the central government decides to answer the minority's challenge by force. Secession, of course, can take place peacefully, if the government simply lets go of the province in question; however, cases of peaceful secession are diminutively few. Another option is the cooptation of the minority elite either through integration in the central government or simply through bribery. In the final analysis, it is nevertheless the norm and not the exception that a minority challenge on the subject of territory is answered by force on the part of the central government.

³⁸ The full supporting information and the coding of factors and cases relevant to this study, including tables for each factor, is available at http://www.cornellcaspian.com/autonomy.html.

³⁹ For a detailed overview of the conflict, see Cornell (fn. 34), 142–96.

⁴⁰ See, for example, Current Digest of the Soviet Press 41, no. 29 (1989), 14–16Google Scholar.

⁴¹ BBC Monitoring Service, June 18, 1992, quoting Russian television “Rossiya,”June 16, 1992Google Scholar.

⁴² “Georgia: Abkhazia ‘Strong Enough to Fight Georgia,’“BBC Monitoring Service, July 30, 1992Google Scholar.

⁴³ BBC Monitoring Service, July 25, 1992Google Scholar. The 1925 constitution did stipulate that Abkhazia was tied to Georgia by a special union treaty, but de facto it amounted to a secession from Georgia and was certainly perceived as such in Tbilisi.

⁴⁴ See Slider, Darrell, “Democratization in Georgia,” in Dawisha, Karen and Parrott, Bruce, eds., Conflict, Cleavage and Change in Central Asia and the Caucasus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 170Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ See Cornell (fn. 34), chap. 4.

⁴⁶ Ibid., 142–96.

⁴⁷ See Fuller, Elizabeth, “Draft ‘State Program’ on Georgian Language Published,” Radio Liberty Research Report no. 559/88, December 12, 1988Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ See Dale, Catherine, “Abkhazia and South Ossetia: Dynamics of the Conflicts,” in Baev, Pavel and Berthelsen, Ole, eds., Conflicts in the Caucasus, Report no. 3 (Oslo: International Peace Research Institute, 1996), 13–26Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ See Fuller, Elizabeth, “South Ossetia: Analysis of a Permanent Crisis,” Report on the USSR, February 15, 1991, 21Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ Ibid.

⁵¹ See Birch, Julian, “The Georgian/South Ossetian Territorial and Boundary Dispute,” in , J. Wright et al. , eds., Transcaucasian Boundaries (London: SOAS, 1995), 182Google Scholar. Tskhinvali is the capital of the South Ossetian Autonomous Region.

⁵² See Fuller, Elizabeth, “Georgian Parliament Votes to Abolish Ossetian Autonomy,” Report on the USSR, December 21,1990,8Google Scholar; Denber, Rachel, Bloodshed in the Caucasus: Violations of Humanitarian Law and Human Rights in the Georgia-South Ossetia Conflict (New York: Helsinki Watch, 1992)Google Scholar.

⁵³ See Zverev, Alexei, “Ethnic Conflicts in the Caucasus, 1988–94,” in Coppetiers, Bruno, ed., Contested Borders in the Caucasus (Brussels: VUB Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ For overviews of the issue, see Guretski, Voitsekh, “The Question of Javakheti,” Caucasian Regional Studies 3, no. 1 (1998)Google Scholar (poli.vub.ac.be/publi/crs/eng/0301–05.htm, accessed October 2001); Akinci, Ugur, “Javakhetia: The Bottle-Neck of the Baku-Ceyhan Pipeline,” Silk Road: A Journal of West Asian Studies 1 (December 1997)Google Scholar; Rotar, Igor, “Tbilisi Has Only Partial Control over Georgia's Armenian Regions,” Jamestown Prism 4 (May 15, 1998)Google Scholar; Sevunts, Levon, “Squeeze Play in the Caucasus: Russia Could Tighten Its Grip as Georgia, Armenia Break Out of Bear Hug,” The Gazette (Montreal), November 29,1999Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ See Kazemzadeh, Firuz, The Struggle for Transcaucasia, 1917–1921 (Oxford: George Ronald, 1951)Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ The Azerbaijanis are a Turkic people speaking a language closely related to Anatolian Turkish, but for the overwhelming part of their history they have been politically separated from Turkey and have had closer relationships to Iran.

⁵⁷ Annotated Headlines of the Georgian Press, September 21–22,1998.

⁵⁸ Guretski(fn. 54).

⁵⁹ Author interviews in Tbilisi and Marneuli, 1998.

⁶⁰ See Judith Hin, “Ajaria. Authoritarian Governance, Favorable Economic Location, and Minor Ethnic Tensions: The Interests of the Local Potentate in Keeping Violent Conflict at Bay” (Paper presented at the Fifth Annual Convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities, New York, April 2000). The paper was based on unpublished data from the Brown University research project, “Can Deadly Conflicts Be Prevented,” funded by the Carnegie Corporation.

⁶¹ Fairbanks, Charles H. Jr., “Party, Ideology and the Public World in the Former Soviet Space,” in Meltzer, Arthur M., Einberger, Jerry, and Zinman, M. Richard, eds., Politics at the End of the Century (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), 252Google Scholar.

⁶² Cornell (fn. 34), 184–85.