“Concede not suppress”: the state’s choice of policy in the face of the threat of secession
https://doi.org/10.31249/poln/2025.03.04
Abstract
When cross-territorial heterogeneity, typical of modern states, acquire political significance, this gives rise to political-territorial conflicts, self-determination movements (SDM) and may be accompanied by the threat of secession. In the context of a threat of secession, the state can ignore the demands of the SDM or suppress it or / and carry out reforms-concessions. The study of the impact of state policy and some other factors on the threat of secession, carried out by logistic regression on the empirical data of 171 politically significant SDMs in 77 countries from 1991 to 2020, confirms theoretical expectations that the likelihood of a strong threat of secession is positively influenced by the resources that SDMs have for political mobilization: ethnic identity of the territory and lost statehood, favorable geographical location, access to power at the regional level, especially in autonomous regions. At the same time, state policy also has a significant effect. In general, the implementation of reforms- concessions reduces the likelihood of a strong threat of secession, but if such reforms are accompanied by suppression of the movement by the state, this has the opposite effect: odds ratio in favor to strong threat of secession increases several times.
About the Author
P. V. Panov
Perm Research Centre of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Science
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Panov Petr
Perm
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