De Facto States: Survival and Disappearance (1945–2011)

Abstract

De facto states-polities, such as Abkhazia (Georgia) or the Donetsk People's Republic (Ukraine), that appropriate many trappings of statehood without securing the status of full states-have been a constant presence in the postwar international order. Some de facto states, such as Northern Cyprus, survive for a long period of time. Others, including Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka, are forcefully reintegrated into their parent states. Still others, such as Aceh in Indonesia, disappear as a result of peacemaking. A few, such as Eritrea, successfully transition to full statehood. What explains these very different outcomes? I argue that four factors account for much of this variation: the extent of military assistance that separatists receive from outside actors, the governance activities conducted by separatist insurgents, the fragmentation of the rebel movement, and the influence of government veto players. My analysis relies on an original dataset that includes all breakaway enclaves from 1945 to 2011. The findings enhance our understanding of separatist institutional outcomes, rebel governance, and of the conditions that sustain nonstate territorial actors. * Author's note: I am grateful to Karen Rasler, William R. Thompson, Robert Urbatsch, three anonymous reviewers, and the ISQ editors for their comments and suggestions. Supplementary materials, including the dataset, codebook, and replication files, are available on the ISQ website.

Rebel governance in de facto states

“…The burgeoning research on rebel governance overwhelmingly concentrates on the redistributive aspect of insurgents' behavioral repertoire. Current large-N and qualitative studies of rebel rule mainly seek to explain public goods provision in rebel-held territory and the processes through which redistributive rebel activities impact conflict outcomes, such as duration, termination, post-war democratization, or civilian victimization (Arjona, 2016;Florea, 2017;Heger and Jung, 2016;Huang, 2016a;Stewart, 2018). However, the act of 'governing' observed across de facto states and other armed nonstate actors pursuing different objectives (such as government overthrow) goes beyond redistribution/public goods provision and involves a broader array of institutional practices (Clunan and Trinkunas, 2010;Risse, 2010).…”

“…By contrast, where the threat to their grip on territory is less acute, they will likely be more invested in developing a comprehensive governance system. The burgeoning literature on de facto states (Caspersen, 2012;Florea, 2017;Keating, 2018;Lynch, 2004;Toal, 2017) suggests that two key factors fundamentally shape the threat environment in which they operate and, hence, their ability to secure a violence monopoly: the extent of external military support from third parties and the presence of peacekeepers on their territory. safe havens (Byman, 2005).…”

Statehood Conflicts

“…Indicative of the importance of these two tenants of statehood is that a growing number of researchers focus on conflicts that relate to sustained efforts at building states (internal statehood) despite their lack of recognition (external statehood). Works on this type of entities have steadily increased, looking at a range of different issues, including overviews of the phenomenon (e.g., Pegg 1998;Kolstø 2006;Geldenhuys 2009;Caspersen 2012;Florea 2017), the impact of those entities on the conflict (King 2001) and how these conflicts are accommodated or not in the international system (Anderson 2011), the way in which international actors have reacted to these entities (e.g., Pegg 1998;Lynch 2004;Newman and Visoka 2018), and their internal dynamics (e.g., Ó Beacháin et al 2016;Berg and Mölder 2012;Kolstø and Blakkisrud 2008), also with reference to democratization (e.g., Caspersen 2011; Voller 2013).…”

Introduction to Inconvenient Realities: The Emergence and Resilience of Parastates

“…Status aside, one critically important boon to a parastate's stability and longevity is acquiring a powerful "patron state" to support their existence and speak on their behalf in international circles, as is already noted in existing studies on de facto states. In many respects, patron states provide an economic lifeline, a political voice, and most importantly a military defense (Florea 2017). While this does affirm a significant degree of dependency and in more than a few cases turns the parastate into a veritable colony of its international sponsors, it does help explain why parastates last as long as they do.…”