Federalism as a Tool of Conflict Resolution

<p>Looking at the growing use of federalism and decentralization as tools of conflict resolution this book provides evidence from several case studies on the opportunities and challenges that territorial solutions offer when addressing internal conflicts within a variety of countries. </p><p>Federalism has been used as a tool of conflict resolution in a number of conflict situations around the world. The results of this have been mixed at best with some countries moving slowly to the paths of peace and recovery while others have returned to violence. This volume looks at a number of case studies in which federalism and decentralization have been promoted in order to bring opposing groups together and protect the territorial integrity of different countries. Yet it is demonstrated that this has been incredibly difficult and often overshadowed by wider concerns on secession de and re-centralization and geopolitics and geoeconomics. While federalism and decentralization might hold the key to keeping war-torn countries together and bringing hostile groups to the negotiation table we nevertheless need to rethink under which conditions territorial autonomy can help to transform conflict and when it might contribute to an increase in conflict and violence. Federalism alone so the key message from all contributions cannot be enough to bring peace – yet without territorial solutions to ongoing violence it is also unlikely that peace will be achieved. </p><p>The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of <i>Ethnopolitics.</i></p>