Territorial wars and absolute outcomes

Why do some wars end with an absolute outcome, with state death or regime change? I argue that we are more likely to see absolute outcomes when we have territorial disputes with the potential for credible commitment problems and asymmetric disputants. In the absence of credible commitment problems, disputes are less likely to recur, and states are unlikely to seek to absorb the opponent state or remove its government. Among more symmetric disputants, states cannot impose an absolute outcome, and we are more likely to see recurrent disputes in the face of credible commitment problems. Only in very asymmetric dyads are we likely to have both the required willingness and opportunity to impose absolute outcomes to attempt to solve a credible commitment problem over territorial conflict.

Latent territorial threat and democratic regime reversals

Why do some democracies revert to non-democratic forms of governance? We develop an explanation of democratic reversals that emphasizes the influence of states’ external border relations on domestic politics. Latent threats to a state’s territory encourage political centralization of authority in the executive to defend against danger to the homeland. Latent territorial threat also facilitates the construction and maintenance of large land armies to fight threatening neighbors. Combined, latent territorial threat increases leaders’ domestic power, weakens democratic institutions, encourages other conditions threatening democratic survival, and, ultimately, leads to democratic reversals. Synthesizing prior research on territorial conflict, we generate a quantitative, continuous measure of latent territorial threat against all democracies with contiguous neighbors from 1946 to 2016, using Bayesian estimation. Empirical tests accounting for measurement uncertainty and other common determinants of reversals as well as brief reviews of individual cases of reversal provide robust evidence that democracy failed at higher rates in countries facing high levels of threats to their territory from neighbors. Our study implies that a complete account of the development of democratic institutions should emphasize that domestic factors alone fall short of explaining why democracies fail.

Syrian-Israeli Conflict: Route Not Traveled.

The article says that in the second half of the twentieth century, the Golan Heights became an objective factor of contradictions in the Syrian-Israeli conflict. It is noted that the combination of the need to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict and, at the same time, the territorial conflict with Syria created additional obstacles to ensuring security in the Middle East region; it does not work without diplomatic agreements with Syria. It is important to understand that from the very beginning of the negotiation process, Syria, whose position was characterized by extreme bias, believed that the Golan Heights was an end in itself, to which its interests were locked, while Israel focuses on diplomacy, focusing its attention on finding adequate means settlement of the SyrianIsraeli conflict, and not just on goals. It is especially obvious that the paradigm of conflict settlement on the basis of the principle of “territory for peace” adopted in the negotiation process became repetitive (frozen) at the level of form, which did not happen spontaneously, but only as a result of the absence of any shifts in its settlement. Moreover, the Syrian-Israeli conflict has no solution within the framework of this formula, since the time of simple and at the same time correct approaches to its settlement has passed. The adherence to this undoubtedly authoritative paradigm, as a kind of ritual, began to restrain the emergence of new unexpected forms aimed at resolving the Syrian-Israeli conflict, which is increasingly saturated with complex uncertainty. The article focuses on the fact that it is critically important to understand that today a different interpretation of the place and role of the Golan Heights in the Syrian-Israeli diplomatic dialogue is re- http://www.hist-edu.ru Историческая и социально-образовательная мысль. Toм 13 №3, 2021 Historical and Social-Educational Idea. Volume 13 #3, 2021 81 quired, the scale of which should not be overestimated and which, moreover, continues to be in a state of stagnation. Therefore, modern diplomacy must proceed from a critical understanding of a new complex reality - the Civil War in Syria, which makes it as difficult as possible to find and change the paradigm of a Syrian-Israeli settlement of the conflict.

Administrative and Territorial Organization of the State as a Tool of Ethnic Politics:The Example of the Republic of Croatia

The article focuses on the issue of Croatia’s ethnic policy towards minorities at the level of administrative and territorial organization. It attempts to answer the question whether and to what extent the ethnic and territorial conflict in the 1990s influenced the processes of transformation of the administrative and territorial organization of the state. The Croatian state, given as an example, at the time of declaring its independence in 1991 had to face the threat of territorial disintegration from the Serb minority living in its territory. The Italian minority was also suspected of such tendencies, but it soon turned out that these suspicions were groundless. The Serbian community could, however, threaten the unification of the state, which initially happened as a result of an armed conflict. After its end, fears did not diminish, especially in the face of the changes in territorial borders that took place until the end of the first decade of the 21st century. The threat could be reduced using one of the tools, which was the local government administration and the shape of its territorial units. The Author analyses this issue basing on the projects of Croatian experts dealing with the issues of administrative and territorial organization of the last three decades and at various stages of Croatian statehood, data on demographic changes and laws regulating the functioning of local and regional local governments as well as regulations concerning the position of national minorities in the state.

Mapuche cosmovision and territorial rights: An interdisciplinary approach to understand the conflict of Wallmapu, Chile

The indigenous population of Latin America has been suffering from a sense of alienation since the arrival of Columbus in 1492 who referred to this land as “Nuevo Mundo”. There is a long history of environmental exploitation in Chile which has severely strained the relationship amongst the Mapuche community, the State and private entities (hydroelectric and timber industry). Although this conflict seems to be economic-productive associated with land, wherein land attains a “tangible material good”, in the Mapuche cosmovision, land (Mapu means land in Mapudungun, the language of Mapuche) acquires a connotation of “intangible material and immaterial good”. There is a profound imperceptible connection between nature and Mapuche and their traditions and culture are strongly rooted in the land. The industrial expansion has promoted a series of negative externalities like habitat fragmentation, loss of native forest, biodiversity reduction, water availability, etc. These affect the “idiosyncrasy” of this community (Mapuche-Nature relationship) and loss of their land could represent an identity loss. The Chilean indigenous policy appears to be inadequate and fail to recognize the socio-cultural and territorial rights for all indigenous peoples, including Mapuche, given the multidimensionality of the land under the indigenous cosmovision. The socio-political measures imposed by the Chilean government until now to make their life “modern” boomeranged alienating them further from society. This paper proposes to look at the territorial rights of the Mapuche with an interdisciplinary approach and focuses on developing the conceptual framework of Mapuche cosmovision of land and territory. The study follows a brief analysis of the historical context of the territorial conflict between the Chilean State and the Mapuche people and how the implementation of national and international normative framework on indigenous rights has not been effective in resolving this territorial conflict. The study tries to synthesize and talks about integrating the Mapuche land cosmovision in the socio-political discourse and be considered while formulating any land policy involving Mapuche and other indigenous peoples inhabiting in Chile in future. The discussions and analysis have been carried out through a comprehensive literature review and integrate an interdisciplinary approach to look at this issue, both from the philosophical perspective and from the socio-political policy framework of government.

Conflicto territorial y cambios en la cultura política: Cataluña-España

The aim of this article is to explore the relationship between the changes that have occurred in political culture and the social and territorial crisis that has developed in Spain since 2011. For this, we will focus on the analysis of the evolution of the historical series of traditional indicators of political culture, in order to show how, coinciding with the outbreak of the economic crisis, secular trends were altered and how these changes could have influenced the double process of rupture. Finally, it will be discussed how this rupture was channeled in Spain through the transformation of the party system, while in Catalonia it took the form of territorial conflict.

Who Rules the Language?

Greater attention is paid to oral language by the new prescriptive grammar of Catalan recently issued by the Institut d'Estudis Catalans, and several prescriptive or guiding texts on the same topic published by Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua have put under focus a territorial conflict on language authority and raised questions on the limits between external authority and personal competence in a field (spoken language) especially favorable for the persistence of diversity. This chapter offers a discussion on prescriptivism and standardization in contemporary Catalan, and the conflict experienced on two axes: horizontal or territorial and vertical or bottom-up/top-down options in prescriptivism.