Fighting for Statehood: The Perverse Incentives of the International Community Open Access

Abstract

Why do some secessionist movements succeed while others fail? Another central question is what causes rebels to target civilians? The international community has professed a strong preference that separatist movements respect human rights, but at the same time it has recognized the independence of a number of violent secessionist organizations granting legitimacy to their new states. This thesis proposes a new explanation of state formation. Secessionist groups target civilians as a catalytic strategy to incentivize third-party intervention, which helps relatively weak movements defeat existing states. Using a novel measure of civilian targeting and an expansive universe of secessionist movements from 1970 to 2011, survival analysis provides support for the relationship between violence against noncombatants and external intervention, but not for that of third-party involvement and statehood. The international community responds to secessionist groups that engage in violence, but not peaceful ones. By prioritizing security over justice, the international community may have created a perverse set of incentives for secessionist groups to target civilians and it should work to develop a mechanism to facilitate independence for non-violent groups or face more violent conflicts in the future.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………1

2 Explaining Statehood…..…………………………………………………………………………………………………2

3 Explaining Civilian Targeting……………..……………………………………………………………………………8

4 Civilian Targeting: A Catalytic Strategy………………………………………………………………………….14

5 Methods……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….23

6 Results……………….………………………………………………………………………………………………………..34

7 Discussion……………..…………………………………………………………………………………………………..…44

8 Case Illustration: South Sudan………………………………………………….………………………………….50

9 Conclusion…………………..…………………………………………………………………………………………….…55

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	Political Science
Degree	B.A.
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Political Science, International Relations
Keyword	secession legitimacy intrastate war civil war nonstate actors
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Dan Reiter, Emory University
Committee Members	Dabney Evans, Emory University Danielle Jung, Emory University

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