Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Using game theory, we show that the concessions granted by the central government to demands for greater autonomy depend on discount rates, expected electoral gains, economic clout, and ethnic heterogeneity. We test the hypotheses on multiple cases.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: What explains national government responses to autonomy demands? The existing literature has focused on either the granting of local autonomy or complete secession from the state. In this paper, we incorporate a third possible option: Carvation?the creation of a subnational unit with its own legislature, fiscal jurisdiction, and representation in the national legislature?is a common institutional arrangement across various countries but has received little attention in the literature. We argue that studying these responses separately assumes each of these to be mutually independent of the others. We present a four-type scale for autonomy granted: (a) no local autonomy; (b) the formation of local councils to devise local policies; (c) the creation of a subnational unit with its own legislature, fiscal jurisdiction, and representation in the national legislature; and (d) complete political and economic independence from the national state. Employing a game theoretic model, we demonstrate that the type of autonomy granted depends on (a) the government?s belief of the demander?s strength, (b) the cost of war for both the government and the demander, (c) the demander?s capacity under the new type of autonomy, (d) the reputation costs the government incurs by granting new levels of autonomy, and (e) the type of autonomy under the status quo. We test our derived hypotheses on three cases from India where the outcomes have all been different: Uttaranchal (carvation), Bodoland (local autonomy), and Telangana (no autonomy).

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Government responses to self-determination challenges vary widely. Some states appear to easily accommodate demands for autonomy, while others are unable or unwilling to make such concessions. What can explain this variation? In this paper I argue that internal characteristics of both groups seeking self-determination and states decisively constrain the state’s ability to concede autonomy. I argue that the number of factions in both the group and the state determine the likelihood that a new autonomy agreement can be reached. I generate three new hypotheses relating to internal actor characteristics and state accommodation of self-determination groups. I test these, and major competing hypotheses, on a set of 145 pairs of states and self-determination groups. My empirical analysis show strong support for the theory presented here.

Publication Type: Proceeding
Abstract: Does regional autonomy exacerbate or mitigate the challenges that self-determination movements create for states? This paper argues that existing evaluations of autonomy fail to capture the how autonomy should affect local politics and how this relates to conflict. It presents a theory to explain how autonomy affects political extremism in self-determination movements and tests this theory on a set of SD movement/state dyads from 1965 – 2000. Autonomy has been successfully used to limit aspirations for independent statehood, but does not appear to limit violence associated with these demands.

Publication Type: Proceeding
Abstract: The concept of autonomy is defined and used in numerous ways in the philosophical literature, calling into question both the unity of the concept and the existence of meaningful relationships among its variants. In this paper, I set out to determine whether or not there is a core meaning to internal autonomy at least. More specifically, I define and then examine the relationship among the three most common conceptions of internal autonomy: moral autonomy, personal autonomy, and self-realization. By doing so, I discover an interior, structural relationship among the three conceptions, a hierarchy that helps us to resolve conflicts between them when they are applied. This hierarchy is crowned by (Kantian) moral autonomy, from which the other conceptions are ultimately derived and towards which they contribute. I justify this hierarchy in two ways: the first justification utilizes a process analogous to Rawls’s four-stage sequence to derive the lower conceptions from higher ones together with their associated plans and rules, while the second creates an ideal cognitive-developmental psychology, an epicyclic system using an iterative model of agency to explain the emergence of higher conceptions from lower ones. I finish the paper by suggesting how this hierarchy might be used to ground not only a multi-tiered system of overlapping communities, from universal moral community to communities of plans and skills, but also the realm of rights.