CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2016
| Author | Peral, Natalia Andrea |
|---|---|
| Title | The Politics of Post-war Reintegration |
| Summary | Abstract At war’s end, the international community faces the challenge of a massive displacement of population and the legacy of divided societies. These challenges have been tackled with either partitioning territories, or making institutional power-sharing arrangements among conflicting parties. Nevertheless, proponents of those solutions cannot explain the variation of post-war realities across time and space that observe societal divisions, as much as reintegrated societies. This work wonders why some societies remain divided, while others reintegrate? To what extent and under which conditions is ethnic reintegration possible after internecine conflict? Drawing on existing theoretical arguments, I develop a theory of post-war reintegration to explain that societies remain divided because political elites of majority and minority groups have incentives to maintain those societies divided in homogenous or enclaved scenarios. To do so, those elites develop a majorization pattern through which they circulate existing resources within patronage networks, obstruct minority return and participation to exclude non-groups from those resources, and manipulate displaced co-ethnics to shore up their power base. Moreover I argue that their ethnic kin (national elites, host states and kin-states) have incentives to support such pattern. I further argue that timely third party intervention in disrupting such majorization process, and in challenging their respective ethnic kin support, is necessary in conditions of homogeneity to move towards reintegration. Failure to disrupt this pattern on time is likely result in an assimilated scenario. In societies divided in an enclaved scenario, the timing for third party intervention is less relevant to advance reintegration than the disruption of the ethnic kin support that feeds the enclave with resources. Thus, moving towards a reintegrated scenario demands the engagement of third parties in challenging ethnic kin support. The theory also expects that lacking resources within the enclave, local political elites will opt for reintegration as a way to survive politically in post-war settings. To investigate my research questions I conducted ethnographic field research and intensive historical analysis via process-tracing in order to identify the sources of variable post-war reintegration in the cases of Bugojno and Jajce (in the Central Canton of Bosnia and Herzegovina), between 1995 and 2012. I also generalize findings to the Serb enclave cases in Northern and Southern Kosovo, between 1999 and 2015. I found support to my argument that third party intervention in disrupting the majorization pattern established by political elites and their respective ethnic kin support, is necessary for moving toward reintegration. Likewise, this work demonstrates that what deter societies from reintegration is more related to the role assumed by political elites in post-war scenarios, than to societal mistrust and fears. Thus, post-war reintegration is not only a desirable conflict management strategy to pursue, but also a feasible one. |
| Supervisor | Jenne, Erin Kristin |
| Department | International Relations PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2016/peral_natalia-andrea.pdf |
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