Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

What Makes Autonomy Agreements Work?

2018; Oxford University Press; Volume: 21; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/isr/viy075

1521-9488

Jason Quinn,

International Arbitration and Investment Law

Nina Caspersen's latest book examines twenty autonomy agreements negotiated in self-determination conflicts after 1989, employing a more or less inductive approach to the cases to extract general lessons. Part one of the book focuses on the different categories of topics in these agreements, such as territory, security, power-sharing, and justice. Part two considers internal dynamics, such as ripeness, spoilers, inclusiveness, and external involvement. Peace Agreements will appeal most to qualitative-oriented researchers who are looking for detailed descriptive accounts of what is inside these types of agreements, and students will benefit from being introduced to key categories of content appearing in contemporary peace agreements and the excellent literature reviews found in many of the chapters. Here I focus on the way that Caspersen approaches or compares the twenty cases, the main theoretical concepts, and the most explicit causal inferences that I see being made in the book. The study begins with a classification of the twenty autonomy agreements based on “the levels of autonomy” provided in each accord (p. 22). She classifies seven agreements as high-autonomy (Bosnia, Indonesia’s agreements with both Aceh and East Timor, Papua New Guinea with Bougainville, Chechnya, Serbia’s with Montenegro, and Sudan’s with South Sudan); five as medium-autonomy (Israel-Palestine, Mali, Moldova-Gagauzia, Mindanao, and Russia-Tatarstan); seven as low-autonomy (Chittagong Hill Tracts, Croatia, Bodoland, Macedonia, Niger, Crimea, and Northern Ireland); and one as no-autonomy (Senegal-Casamance). After classifying the accords, Caspersen discusses broad trends in their success and failure. Her core argument is that “insufficient” and “ambiguous” autonomy designs are more prone to failure, especially when the territory receiving autonomy suffers a lack of “capacity” to implement and govern and when the arrangement does not include high-level “political powersharing” amongst the communities that will be impacted by the arrangement.