Cases: Republika Srpska and Nagorno Karabakh
Nagorno Karabakh is an Armenian enclave which is formally part of Azerbaijan but which has been de facto independent since a ceasefire agreement was signed in 1994. Republika Srpska Krajina was a Serb statelet which existed in Croatia between 1991 and 1995.
Both of these cases proclaimed their independence in the early 1990s, but their claim to statehood was initially illusory; any form of state structure had collapsed during the war and apart from some territorial control these entities came close to being failed states in every possible sense of the word: without internal and external sovereignty.
Republika Srpska Krajina remained caught in infighting and only managed to build the most rudimentary institutions before its military defeat in 1995. Nagorno Karabakh, on the other hand, has managed to create at least relatively effective state institutions and has even seen a process of gradual democratisation.
These two cases are therefore well-suited for exploring the internal dynamics of unrecognised states - struggles over dominance, attempts at state-building and political reform, strategies used for gaining recognition - and for analysing how these impact on the possibility for reaching a peaceful settlement.
|
