Separatism, the Arab uprisings and the legacies of lost territorial autonomy

This paper considers the origins of separatist conflicts by examining the Arab uprisings of 2011. Given the internal fractionalization of Arab polities and the artificiality of their borders, many anticipated that Arab states would disintegrate. In fact, separatist conflicts only arose in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen. The paper combines fuzzy set/qualitative comparative analysis (FS/QCA) and within-case process tracing of individual cases to identify the key causal factors that generated these conflicts. It finds that separatist conflicts occurred when there was a conjunction of two conditions: (1) severe crisis during the uprising; and (2) the prior existence of failed state-building efforts and defunct states since the end of the First World War. It also shows that oil production enhances state cohesion at some times but at others motivates and catalyzes separatist gambits. This finding suggests that current conflicts are not about primordial identities or ancient hatred. Rather, they represent efforts to reinstate forms of self-rule and independence lost during the 20th century. This emphasizes the need for a macro-social, institutional approach to civil wars that can explain how historical legacies constrain or impel actors to pursue different strategies and mount different claims on the state.