Subnational Tyrannies of the Majority — AAS in Asia Annual Conference 2024

I presented my new research project on subnational majoritarianism at the Association for Asian Studies in Asia (AAS in Asia) Annual Conference in 2024.

This abstract summarizes my talk:

By addressing ethnic minorities' demands for self-determination, regional autonomy promises to avert civil war and secure democracy in multi-ethnic states. However, some self-determination movements themselves propagate exclusionary measures and abuse autonomy to discriminate against ethnic outgroups within their claimed regions. In turn, this may generate severe conflict and democratic deficiencies at the subnational level. As both scholars and practitioners promote regional autonomy as a peace-building tool, these undesirable side-effects merit increased attention. Subnational majoritarianism by self-determination movements not only violates the rights of "minorities within minorities" but can undermine the very goals which regional autonomy aims to achieve in the first place. The proposed project addresses this gap. At its core is a new global dataset (1946-2023) that maps the potentially exclusionary measures that self-determination movements propagate and implement vis-à-vis ethnic outgroups who settle in their claimed territory. Using this new data source, I examine (1) the causes of subnational majoritarianism by self-determination movements and (2) institutional safeguards to mitigate it once self-determination movements attain regional autonomy. In a second step, I examine the consequences of subnational majoritarianism for (3) regional democracy, (4) subnational ethnic conflict, and (5) self-determination movements' chances of obtaining concessions from the national government.