The risk of domino secessions : interdependent secessions and lessons from the Western Balkans

Prezelj, Iztok (author), Ramsay, Kristopher (author)

The resurgence of nationalist tendencies around the world has brought new attention to the problem of smaller regions seceding from larger states. While research exists regarding the contagious nature of self-determination, ethnic conflict and civil wars, the interrelationships among various secessionist conflicts have not been systematically studied. We show that the circumstances of secession conflicts in different countries are interconnected by the perceptions of elites and that outcomes in one case may, therefore, influence expectations, motivations, strategies and outcomes in others. We also identified several indicators of interconnectivity among secessionist conflicts in the Western Balkans and visualised the strength of the links among them using social network analysis tools (Pajek – Spider). After the outbreak of a secession conflict, several inter-secession effects will be directly transferred to the most interconnected cases, and the greatest domino risk results from the combined impacts of direct and indirect nth-order effects.

• Language: English
• Keywords: secession, independence, interdependency, Western Balkans, Balkanisation, security
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FDV - Faculty of Social Sciences
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2024
• Number of pages: Str. 126-149
• Numbering: Vol. 33, no. 1
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-145712
• UDC: 327
• ISSN on article: 0966-2839
• DOI: 10.1080/09662839.2023.2201880
• COBISS.SI-ID: 151111939
• Publication date in RUL: 10.05.2023

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: European security
• Shortened title: Eur. secur.
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• ISSN: 0966-2839
• COBISS.SI-ID: 169053

Licences

• License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
• Description: The most restrictive Creative Commons license. This only allows people to download and share the work for no commercial gain and for no other purposes.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: odcepitev, politične vede, osamosvojitev, Balkanski polotok

Projects

• Funder: ARRS - Slovenian Research Agency
• Project number: BI-US/18-19-047