Referendums and Ethnic Conflict

Referendums and Ethnic Conflict Qvortrup, M. Published PDF deposited in Curve January 2016 Original citation: Qvortrup, M. (2014) Referendums and Ethnic Conflict. Pittsburgh: University of Pennsylvania Press URL: http://curve.coventry.ac.uk/open/items/2a872c72-401f-464c-811b-0cdd461590a3/1/ Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of scholarly citation, none of this work may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. For information address the University of Pennsylvania Press, 3905 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112. Copyright © and Moral Rights are retained by the author(s) and/ or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This item cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder(s). The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. CURVE is the Institutional Repository for Coventry University http://curve.coventry.ac.uk/open Referendums and Ethnic Conflict ................. 18480$ $$FM 09-05-13 12:19:12 PS PAGE i National and Ethnic Conflict in the Twenty-First Century Brendan O’Leary, Series Editor A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher. ................. 18480$ $$FM 09-05-13 12:19:12 PS PAGE ii Referendums and Matt Qvortrup UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS PHILADELPHIA ................. 18480$ $$FM 09-05-13 12:19:13 PS PAGE iii Copyright ᭧ 2014 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10987654321 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data ISBN 978-0-8122-4580-6 ................. 18480$ $$FM 09-05-13 12:19:13 PS PAGE iv The existence of a nation is a daily plebiscite —Ernest Renan, Qu’est-ce qu’une nation? Lex est quod populus iubet atque constituit. —Gaius, Institutiones The History of the world is not the theatre of happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for they are periods of harmony,—periods when the antithesis is in abeyance. —G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History A Citizen in general is someone who is capable of being a ruler and a subject. —Aristotle, Politics ................. 18480$ $$FM 09-05-13 12:19:14 PS PAGE v ................. 18480$ $$FM 09-05-13 12:19:14 PS PAGE vi Contents Introduction 1 1. The History and Logic of Ethnonational Referendums, 1791–1945 000 2. Difference-Managing Referendums 000 3. Secession and Partition 000 4. Ethnonational Referendums in Constitutional Law 000 5. Right-Sizing Referendums 000 6. Difference-Eliminating Referendums: E Pluribus Unum? 000 7. EU Referendums: Nationalism and the Politics of Supranational Integration 000 8. Regulation of Ethnonational Referendums: A Comparative Overview 000 Conclusion. Patterns and Tendencies in Ethnonational Referendums 000 Appendix. Legislation and Litigation 000 Notes 000 Bibliography 000 Index 000 Acknowledgments 000 ................. 18480$ CNTS 09-05-13 12:19:15 PS PAGE vii ................. 18480$ CNTS 09-05-13 12:19:15 PS PAGE viii Introduction The core problem in political theory is that fundamental and equally axio- matic principles often collide. A paradox can almost be defined as a clash of two equally incontestable maxims of truth. Two such ‘‘truths’’ are (1) that each nation has a right to determine its own affairs and (2) that the majority has a right to govern. Admittedly these ‘‘rights’’ are tempered by the recognition that no nation and no majority may ride roughshod over minorities. But this caveat notwithstanding, national self-determination and majority rule are principles to which few fundamentally object. Indeed, defending the reverse positions would appear politically absurd. But the problem is that the two principles often are incompatible. To understand why, it might be useful to consider a distinction used in ancient Greek. The Greeks make a distinction between the people as a nation (ethnos) and the people as a body of citizens (demos).1 In the classical city-state—or polis— the two were congruent, and in some present-day nation-states, such as Norway and Luxembourg, the same is broadly true. But more often than not, the two concepts are in conflict. To take an example, small-town English politician, the Conservative councilor Rob McKella from Corby in Northamptonshire, believes that people in England should be given a right to vote on Scottish independence.2 After all, he argues, the voters are citizens in the United Kingdom and collectively constitute the demos. How- ever, most people in Scotland, by contrast, believe that only people living north of the border should be allowed to vote as these people—perhaps alongside Scots living in the diaspora—constitute the ethnos and hence have a right to self-determination. As will come to be obvious, these two worldviews, both based on solid arguments, do not combine. This book is about this conflict between the ethnos and the demos, and about the problems that are raised when solutions to ethnic and national issues and conflicts are sought through referendums. Our main focus is to ................. 18480$ INTR 09-05-13 12:19:22 PS PAGE 1 2 Introduction determine when different kinds and types of referendums on ethnonational issues occur and also to determine if they lead to exacerbation of conflict or the opposite—if balloting can stop bullets. Referendums have often been perceived to be incompatible with nationalism. William Sumner Maine—a conservative writer from the end of the Victorian age—once mused that ‘‘democracies are quite paralyzed by the plea of nationality. There is no more effective way of attacking them than by admitting the right of the majority to govern, but denying that the majority so entitled is the particular majority which claims the right’’ (Maine 1897: 88). This book looks at these conflicts through a comprehensive study of all the referendums held on ethnic and nationalist issues from the French Revolution to the 2012 referendum on statehood for Puerto Rico. It’s a controversial topic. Some scholars have supported these referendums on the basis of philosophical conviction and because they believe that they confer legitimacy upon decisions made by elites. Ju¨rgen Habermas, for example, took this view. In light of resentment following new boundaries after the Cold War he found that referendums on sovereignty issues—given certain safeguards—could be ‘‘a way of proceeding which permitted a broader discussion and opinion formation as well as a more extensive— and, above all, better prepared—participation,’’ which would give the voters ‘‘the eventual responsibility for the process’’ (Habermas 1996: 12). If the people were given the responsibility through referendums they would not be able to complain later on, as ‘‘it would have been the people’s own mistake that they would have had to cope with’’ (Habermas 1996: 12). These issues are interesting and important from a philosophical point of view, but they are ultimately issues for political theory and not the primary concern of the comparative and empirical political scientist. Hence these normative issues are not the focus of this study. The questions we look at are positive issues of when and why referendums on various national and ethnic issues occur. These polls have played an important role in attempts to resolve ethnic conflicts for centuries. But it is fair to say that scholars of ethnic and national conflict—as well as political scientists—have had reservations about these plebiscites and referendums. Michael Gallagher, writing about the experience in Europe, concluded that ‘‘the referendum is least useful if applied to an issue that runs along the lines of a major cleavage in society’’ (Gallagher 1996: 246), and recently Jonathan Wheatley wrote about the ................. 18480$ INTR 09-05-13 12:19:22 PS PAGE 2 Introduction 3 ‘‘disruptive potential of direct democracy in deeply divided societies’’ (Wheatley 2012: 64). While critical, Wheatley was not as dismissive of referendums as Roger Mac Ginty, who noted, ‘‘The principal problem with referendums in situations of profound ethnic conflict is that they are zero- sum, creating winners and losers. Simple majoritarian devices do little to help manage the complexity of conflict. Instead they validate the position of one side and reject that of another. Often, they do little other than delimit and quantify division’’ (Mac Ginty 2003: 3). This interpretation may have been correct in the case of the 1973 Border Poll in Northern Ireland (Osborne 1982: 154) and, indeed, in the case of many of the referendums held in former Yugoslavia in the 1990s (Terret 2000). But Mac Ginty’s conclusion that ‘‘the blunt reductionism of a referendum (for example the perception that a conflict is about a line on a map and little else)’’ (Mac Ginty 2003, 3) is perhaps a little bit cavalier and perhaps ignores the fact that the Schleswigian conflict, which caused two wars between Denmark and Germany, was resolved by a referendum (Laponce 2010 24). Indeed, Sarah Wambaugh noted in her much-quoted study Plebiscites Since the World War that ‘‘the plebiscite was so fair and excellently administered that the Schleswig question, which caused three wars in the 19th Century and rent of councils of Europe for some seventy years, has ceased to exist’’ (Wambaugh 1933: 98). A referendum is admittedly unlikely to work on its own, and referendums have been followed by violence (the case of East Timor in 1999 comes to mind).

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