Institutional Outcomes of Territorial Contestation: Lessons from Post-Communist Europe, 1989–2012

Since 1989, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have experienced major institutional transformations. As part of that process, territorial contestations between states and ethnic minorities engendered three outcomes: negotiated territorial self-government (TSG) arrangements; the denial of such arrangements; and the emergence of de-facto states. Through a qualitative comparative analysis of twenty-four minority TSG claims in seventeen post-communist CEE states, we find that: (i) TSG arrangements emerged as externally facilitated instruments for managing or preventing violent conflict in predominantly low-capacity, only partially democratic states; (ii) peacefully pursued TSG claims were most likely to be denied in high-capacity consolidated democracies; and (iii) de-facto states emerged where patron-states intervened in violent conflicts in low-capacity states. These findings defy widely held expectations about the influence of Europeanization, coupled with democratic consolidation, on the accommodation of minority claims; and they offer new insights into the significance of external intervention for the institutional outcomes of ethnic minority TSG claims.