International Relations
Online ISSN : 1883-9916
Print ISSN : 0454-2215
ISSN-L : 0454-2215
Volume 2011, Issue 165
Displaying 1-16 of 16 articles from this issue
New Perspectives on the Relationship among Development, Democracy and Conflict
  • Juichi Inada
    2011 Volume 2011 Issue 165 Pages 165_1-15
    Published: July 25, 2011
    Released on J-STAGE: August 05, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The relationship among development, democracy and conflict is one of the most critical issues in international society, and there is a lot of academic research that helps analyze the relationship among economic development, political systems, and security (or conflict).
    Many researches show the correlation among them and imply that there are some linkages between these factors, but those linkages are not simple and causal relations are not yet clear and still in open debate.
    As to the relationship among economic development, democracy and social stability (or conflict), the cross-national regression analyses were typical works, which showed that economic development correlated with the level of democracy, and that social instability correlated with low income and income inequality.
    On the other hand, some different analyses showed that the relationship between socio-political instability and economic factors such as low income was not so clear. Some argue that the correlation between the level of income and the degree of democracy doesn't show that democratic system is a prerequisite of economic development, but that it implies that people in a rich society tend to look for a liberal democratic system, and that there were many cases in which transition to democracy lead to economic turmoil. Others argue that there are many types of democratic systems and there is no agreement on whether a centralized system or a decentralized system is more effective for economic development, democracy, or even national integration.
    As such, the relationship among democracy, economic development and conflict is very complicated, and causal relations among them have not yet been proven in detail.
    Especially after the end of cold war, the international community began to engage into the problems of poverty, inequity, social instability, and political systems from the perspective of peace-building. Peace-building is the process to assist comprehensive state-building including security, democratic system, and economic development. Thus, the concepts of peace-building and state-building have been the key words in many studies and dialogues among donor agencies and in international community as a whole.
    It is necessary for us to make further studies for clarifying the complicated relationship among development, democracy and conflict. Those academic studies are also useful for international community to assist all aspects of these three pillars (development, democracy and stability) of peace-building and state-building more effectively.
    This volume contains 10 challenging academic articles to investigate the relationship among development, democratic systems and conflict, based on the interdisciplinary methods or comparative case studies, etc., and summarizes the new findings of them.
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  • Hirotaka Ohmura
    2011 Volume 2011 Issue 165 Pages 165_16-29
    Published: July 25, 2011
    Released on J-STAGE: August 05, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    This paper attempts to uncover the complex relationship among civil wars, economic growth, and natural resources. Whereas existing empirical studies have found that a country with abundant natural resources is more likely to experience civil war onset and slow economic growth than a country without abundant resources, they do not consider the endogenous relationship between civil war and economic growth. In short, these two variables: economic growth and civil wars: interact with each other. However previous studies tend to focus solely on the direct mechanism between natural resource and civil war, and natural resource and economic growth, despite the fact that the interaction between civil wars and economic growth indicates the probability of indirect mechanism about resource curse (e.g. natural resource increases the risk of civil war but do not directly affect economic growth). Since the endogeneity problem is considered to be serious, this paper excludes this bias by using the two-stage probit least square method to reveal the exact effect of natural resource on civil war and economic growth. The data analysis provides the following three results: (1) even after the in-depth analysis removing the endogeneity bias, the civil war has the negative impact on the economic growth and vice versa, (2) whereas oil production causes the civil war as the direct curse, it deteriorates the economic growth as the indirect curse via the onset of civil wars, (3) although the dependence on oil export directly causes the economic growth, it promotes the probability of the civil war onset through the economic downturn.
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  • Kazuya Nakamizo
    2011 Volume 2011 Issue 165 Pages 165_30-43
    Published: July 25, 2011
    Released on J-STAGE: August 05, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Does economic development invoke violent conflicts or pacify those conflicts? Does democracy bring out violent conflicts or solve those conflicts? In this article, I try to answer these questions by focusing on religious riots which happened in Indian states of Bihar and Gujarat.
    Bihar is well known for its poverty and violence. Being one of the poorest states in India for long time, Bihar has experienced many communal riots in which 1989 Bhagalpur riots have the largest scale. Contrary to Bihar, Gujarat has good reputation for its economic development, however, it experienced most brutal communal riots in 2002. To answer above questions, I analyze two riots, that is, 1989 Bhagalpur riots and 2002 Gujarat riots by focusing on economic dimension.
    In both riots, economic factor played an important role. Bhagalpur city is known for its silk industry which was dominated by Muslims. Hindu business community used riots as a best opportunity to break Muslim dominancy. In rural area, Hindu peasants utilize riots to buy Muslim lands at minimum cost. Shortly, Bhagalpur riots provided an ideal opportunity for Hindus to beat Muslim rivals.
    Economic factor also played an important role in 2002 Gujarat riots. There are two factors in case of Ahmedabad city. Economic development changed the minds of Dalits and Hindu middle class for supporting Hindutva forces. Dalits lost their job due to the change of industrial structure under the impacts of globalization. Hindu urban middle class fall in “identity crisis” which is precipitated by rapid urbanization. Their unstable conditions were utilized by Hindutuva forces which produce riots.
    Though the economic level of both states is contrasting, economic factor prepared the ground for riots. In this sense, we can say that the level of economic development is not so significant for the understanding of the riots. At the same time, it is not possible to explain riots only by economic factor, because it is the political parties that provide necessary ideologies, organizations, movements and opportunities for the production of riots. In this sense, democratic politics is the decisive factor to instigate riots. Then does democracy produce only riots?
    In case of Bihar, the political forces which strongly contain riots have been ruling for 20 years. Contrary, the state government which has direct responsibility for 2002 riots still holds power in Gujarat. We can evaluate that Bihar overcomes the “politics of violence” at least for 20 years, but we cannot say so in a case of Gujarat. However, in spite of the pressure of Gujarat government, there are a certain number of citizens who are fighting for realizing justice. We find a ray of hope in their activities for the future of Indian democracy.
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  • Hiroaki Shiga
    2011 Volume 2011 Issue 165 Pages 165_44-56
    Published: July 25, 2011
    Released on J-STAGE: August 05, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Participatory constitution making is increasingly being adopted by many post-conflict countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, South Africa, Rwanda or Uganda. Through a series of open discussions, members of the general public are educated about the role and content of the constitution and given a chance to express their opinions or submit proposals. After this phase of the process, they are given the opportunity to adopt a draft of the constitution via a referendum. Contrary to expectation, experience with this process has shown that ordinary people are enthusiastic and interested in expressing their views. Indeed, numerous scholars have credited this method of drafting a constitution with the stabilization of post-conflict countries, claiming that the democratic process and the resultant democratic constitution both serve to enhance the legitimacy of the new constitution and new political order. Similarly, major donors such as the United States and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) both actively support the process of participatory constitution making.
    However, given the numerous complexities of constitution making in ethnically or religiously divided societies after protracted civil wars, such optimism is not always warranted. For example, irrespective of the procedure used to ensure that the drafting of the constitution is “democratic”, minorities are rarely satisfied because they are predestined to loose in any democratic decision-making process, and also because democracy per se does not guarantee the protection or realization of their fundamental rights and interests. Thus, what is indispensable for the attainment of stabilization of political order in post-conflict countries is constitutional democracy under which the fundamental rights and interests of minorities are entrenched and protected from the majoritarian democracy by constitutional instruments such as a bill of rights, separation of power, and the establishment of an independent judiciary. Within this context, the success of participatory constitution making should be evaluated pursuant to the criteria of whether or not the new constitution is sufficiently fair to address the fears and hopes of minorities by entrenching their basic rights and freedoms. Overcoming this paradox of democratically deciding which components of the new constitution should be insulated from democracy is difficult and constitutes a real challenge for constitution-making process; for example, the opinions of minority groups in Uganda were virtually neglected by the majority during the participatory constitution-making process. Given the resulting deep-rooted antagonism and distrust that can develop among minorities toward the new constitution is a potential source of destabilization in any new political order, a more detailed examination of previous instances of participatory constitution making should be undertaken before any excessively optimistic evaluations are attributed to this process.
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  • Yukako Tanaka (Sakabe)
    2011 Volume 2011 Issue 165 Pages 165_57-69
    Published: July 25, 2011
    Released on J-STAGE: August 05, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    By examining the case of Timor-Leste, this paper explores motivations and opportunities to instigate political violence during the processes of democratization and state-building. By defining democratization as carrying out a first free and fair election, and state-building as constructing legitimized state institutions, the article attempts to identify which of these efforts contribute to new conflicts, even after brutal strife has ended.
    The outcomes of democratization and state-building are outlined in bipolar approaches. One approach proposes the institutionalization of state entities before the introduction of electoral democracy to attain state stability. The other approach suggests state legitimacy is achieved through the mutual reinforcement between legal institutions and citizen satisfaction of its autonomy. In modern post-conflict contexts, democratization and state-building are concurrently introduced along with third party interventions, yet violence recurs. Timor-Leste is no exception; it received one of the most cohesive third party interventions to build a new democratic state since 1999. Despite these efforts, a collision between army and police was experienced in 2006, followed by the disintegration of security agencies which resulted in high numbers of Internally Displaced Persons-equivalent to one tenth of the population.
    The Timor-Leste case shows that vertical accountability between the state and society is imperative, yet difficult to establish even during periods of high voter turnouts and vibrant political party participation. The continued violence in Timor-Leste during the 2007 parliamentary election indicates that both political parties and voters have not fully committed to their new framework for political competition.
    The state-building process stimulated social conflicts which led to the 2006 disturbance. Firstly, veterans' issues arose through incoherent disarmament, demobilization and reintegration measures. Dissatisfied by the procedures to select members to new security forces, former combatants joined anti-government associations and became sources of public unrests. The east-west division also developed from the recruitment process for security institutions. While easterners who are recognized as members of the resistance were employed to the new army, westerners were to be assimilated into the police force.
    Citizens, whose socioeconomic conditions remained severe, were frustrated with the low performance of their government. Their resentment was presented in an anti-governmental demonstration led by catholic churches, but in this case no violence was observed. Instead, gang groups composed of unemployed youths motivated by pecuniary and social rewards backed the 2006 disturbance. Later their main activities extended to communal violence in their neighborhoods. The third party intervention, mainly the UN largely met the goals of providing election support and maintaining security, but was limited to assist establishing long-term law and order.
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  • Mari Katayanagi
    2011 Volume 2011 Issue 165 Pages 165_70-82
    Published: July 25, 2011
    Released on J-STAGE: August 05, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The General Framework Agreement for Peace, the Dayton Agreement, stopped the bloodshed of a tragic armed conflict of Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereinafter “BiH”). However, BiH is still in stalemate, fifteen years after the signing of the Agreement. This paper has the purpose of clarifying effects of rehabilitation and development assistance provided to BiH as a part of international community's peacebuilding efforts. The unintended effects will be analysed in relation to the Bosnian society's structure which is underpinned by the Dayton Agreement.
    The paper will first focus on two features of political structure regulated by the Dayton Agreement: the competencies divided by the State and two entities; and the power-sharing by the three constituent peoples, Bosniacs, Croats and Serbs. The latter feature contains peculiar election systems of the tripartite Presidency and of the House of Peoples. It represents the priority of equality among constituent peoples to that of individual citizens.
    In the post-war BiH, the State had little control over economy. The economic activities were based on the territorial division of nationalist power, which was often connected to shadow economy. The people who could not expect State's protection had no alternative but to depend on such informal economy. The rehabilitation and development assistance was provided to the divided society and thus reinforced the structure of the ethnic division. In the political sphere, the international community kept calling for reforms to build a functional multi-ethnic State. It also provided relatively generous assistance, particularly for return of refugees and internally displaced persons. However, not enough attention was paid to sustainable welfare of people. This further created a comfortable environment for nationalist political leaders to maintain its economic and political control over their established interest.
    The Dayton Agreement is unfortunately playing a role in maintaining the existing ethnic division. Furthermore, the Bosnian society faces a serious problem of social exclusion as presented by the National Human Development Report 2007. Unless its citizens are respected as individuals rather than being recognized as belonging to a particular ethnic group, the Bosnian society will not be able to overcome its current division which prevents its progress towards the European future.
    In order to make the development assistance contribute to the peacebuilding of BiH, the international community has to abandon its current approach which is reinforcing the division of the society. Firstly, the assistance should not help the structure which benefits nationalist elites. Secondly, we should seek economic growth which will help people becoming independent from the nationalist elites. The way to take may be the rights-based approach which will create a new social structure between the right-holders and duty-bearers.
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  • Hidekazu Ichikura
    2011 Volume 2011 Issue 165 Pages 165_83-96
    Published: July 25, 2011
    Released on J-STAGE: August 05, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Since the end of the Cold War, most people have recognized that ethnic conflicts occur frequently in many parts of the globe, such as Aceh, Bougainville, Karen, Kurd, Mindanao, North Ireland, South Sudan, the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Most of these conflicts do not seek to seize the state's power, but rather are assaults against the central ruling authority by a region that seeks territorial autonomy and sovereignty (self-determination) through secession. Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan defined such center-region conflicts as a “stateness problem.”
    These problems often have been dealt with through an integrational or consociational approach. Over the past decade, however, they seem to have been solved by the introduction of “federacy” or “asymmetrical autonomy,” which, despite their conventional achievements in Europe, had not for many years until recently appealed to many scholars as a solution to ethnic conflicts. Such indifference among scholars derived from their misunderstanding of asymmetrical autonomy, including how it functions and in what situations it brings states integration or secession. By discussing these questions, this article attempts to provide scholars with a “new” perspective on useful institutions for resolving conflicts.
    Asymmetrical autonomy is a system that provides one or more of a state's units with more distinctive autonomy than others. This feature can, on one hand, help mitigate national minorities' feelings of discrimination and anger; but on the other hand, also can exacerbate the strife between the center and the region if centrifugal forces are already strong. The latter is the typical concern of scholars who are skeptical of asymmetrical autonomy, and they often overlook the benefits of the former. In order to elucidate asymmetrical autonomy's benefits, this article sheds light on the conditions under which it will be allowed and clarifies that it at least won't be harmful if a reciprocal channel is established between leaders of the center and the region, commitment problems are mostly solved, and universal human rights are guaranteed in the asymmetrically autonomous region.
    Asymmetrical autonomy not only mitigates, but also institutionally “entrenches,” the stateness problem. Recent asymmetrically autonomous arrangements include temporary external conditionality of self-determination, while the polity can be democratic. This arrangement contradicts Rustow's insistence that democracy should not be established before people decide which political community they belong to, and that of Linz and Stepan, who argued that a stateness problem might exist when a significant proportion of a population does not accept the boundaries of the territorial state as a legitimate political unit.
    Facing this contradiction, and reviewing the discussion above, we might need to reconsider the idea of asymmetrical autonomy as both a solution to ethnic conflict and a system to alter the framework of the relationships between democracy, nations, and states.
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  • Yuichi Sasaoka
    2011 Volume 2011 Issue 165 Pages 165_97-110
    Published: July 25, 2011
    Released on J-STAGE: August 05, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    In low-income countries, more attention is being paid to the relationship between decentralization and conflict. The collapse of centralized political systems and the rise of identity group politics in the 1990s, facing various types of inequality and social confusion, have induced researchers and development agency to conduct new studies and questioned how decentralization could work for the purpose of conflict prevention. Therefore, this paper reviews the relationship between decentralization and conflict prevention in Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya as a case study.
    Analyzing various issues such as the relationship between democratization and decentralization, the effect of conflict prevention, stateness and federalism, and ethnic groups and politics, the paper concludes that decentralization in these countries has some conflict preventive effects, but there are some supplementary factors. They are related to ethnic group characteristics, historical socio-political structure, structure and mode of behavior of political party and the support from the citizens.
    Key observations are summarized as below. First, majoritarian parliamentary democracy has the risk of political instability, if it is linked with inequality of the ethnic groups and other historical conditions. Decentralization and autonomy have been seen as ways to keep one group from monopolizing state power. Decentralization can be facilitated under one party or virtual one party system which pretends to encourage democratization. Decentralization supports democratization trends from the bottom of the society, and at the same time, contributes to forming a national patronage network linking the center and local. Conflict tends to be localized as long as ruling party thrives in the country.
    Second, decentralization brings in the stability, when it is firmly supported by the historical state-building process. While Kenya and Tanzania formed the stable national boundary due to the harsh competition of suzerainty states, the boundary of Uganda had been created by the England, and great disparity existed among ethnic groups. Furthermore, strong authority in ethnic groups was derived from the kingdom of Buganda in Uganda and the kingdom of Arab in Zanzibar respectively after the independence, while other ethnic groups resisted it. It is Zanzibar, not Buganda that enjoyed special status of autonomy, and this different treatment of two groups could explain a large extent of today's conflict risks in two countries.
    Third, devolution can convince people of creating new political legitimacy, which can eliminate all the suppressive systems derived from colonialism and stabilize the society. Devolution in Uganda and Tanzania was welcomed by the villagers because this did not resemble chief system in the past. Kenya did not introduce devolution system until recently, because chief system backed up the centralistic provincial administration system.
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  • Koichi Sugiura
    2011 Volume 2011 Issue 165 Pages 165_111-124
    Published: July 25, 2011
    Released on J-STAGE: August 05, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Since the end of the Cold War, economic development, peace, and establishment of democracy have been the primary goals of development assistance, as is delineated in the UN Millennium Development Goals. Nevertheless, the community engaged in development assistance is uncertain with regard to (1) how democracy as a political regime and democratization as a transition toward a consolidated democracy are related to development and (2) how democratization should be supported in development assistance. Therefore, this article attempts to examine how democracy has been located within the realm of development assistance and how it has transformed and to clarify the issues that democracy support confronts in development assistance.
    The first section of this article reviews how democracy is located within development assistance, focusing on the main theories that development assistance is based on, the role of democracy in these theories, and the practice of democracy support. The role of democracy and democracy support in development assistance is categorized into several models. Currently, there is a shift in the wider preference for the Post-Washington Consensus model, which attaches greater importance to economic governance assistance, toward the European Consensus model, which respects the principles of partnership and ownership, actively providing more support for democratic governance. However, the Beijing Consensus model, which separates democratization from development, is also drawing considerable attention.
    The second section examines democracy support activities under the framework of development assistance, along several points drawn from the general research on democracy support, and tries to tackle the challenges faced by development assistance. First, this article analyzes the relationship between democracy and governance and examines the methods of evaluating them. Second, the article examines what development assistance should be provided at each stage of democratic transition and consolidation and what problems should be resolved to assist democratization in a country. Finally, international actors are required to maintain legitimacy when deciding the content and approach of democracy support in order to be accepted by the people of a recipient country. Maintaining legitimacy is also necessary for improving effectiveness. This examines attempts such as the process of a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper to secure the participation of the recipient government and the stakeholders in the development assistance decision-making process, including democracy support.
    The last section of this article highlights the consequences of refraining from addressing the “political” nature of democracy and democratization by the community engaged in development. This article is concluded by calling attention to the necessity of carefully investigating the changes in international politics, which may affect the regime of development assistance and the methods of democracy support.
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  • Shinichi Mizuta
    2011 Volume 2011 Issue 165 Pages 165_125-140
    Published: July 25, 2011
    Released on J-STAGE: August 05, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    This article argues about conditions for realizing “democratic civil peace.” Since around the end of the Cold War, an approach to introduce democratic principles and practices has become a common approach by the international community to bring peace to post-conflict countries; however, the results of such interventions have been mixed.
    As implementation records accumulated, scholars eventually came to argue that hasty and unprepared democratization can hurt peace rather than promote it, and some of them started to argue that “democratic institutionalization” has to proceed first in order to harness excessive political competition and facilitate smooth democratization in post-conflict settings. Nevertheless, a question lingers: how can democratic institutionalization proceed when animosities prevail in post-conflict countries? In fact, up to date, no integrated analytical theories have developed to examine and show how and under what conditions democratic institutionalization and reconciliation of former enemies can proceed, leading to realization of democracy in post-conflict countries.
    In order to fill such a gap in the literature, I attempted to build a new theoretical framework. Setting “democratic institutionalization” and “reconciliation of former enemies” as two primary valuables, I analyzed how these variables affect each other, leading or not leading to realization of democracy. Also, I set “international intervention/support” including military intervention and development assistance as an independent variable, and analyzed how this variable affects democratic institutionalization and reconciliation, thereby affecting democratization. Employing the proposed theoretical framework, I examined cases of four countries; namely, Angola, Cambodia, El Salvador, and Namibia, first cases where the international communities led by the UN made peacebuilding interventions.
    Major findings are the following. First, I found that democratic institutionalization cannot simply proceed in hostile situations, and efforts to promote reconciliation have to proceed before democratic institutionalization can make progress. Second, I found that when there are local actors that adamantly refuse to cooperate on peace processes, effects of intervention and support by the international community are often limited, and it has never been possible to coerce peace implementation on those strong opponents. Third, I found that there are more than one threshold that the international community help post-conflict societies overcome for enabling their autonomous transition to democratic civil peace, and most ideally it is desirable for the international community to continue to support those societies with massive military and civilian presence until democratic civil peace actually materializes. However, because such large-scale and long-lasting international intervention is often times unrealistic due to limited budget, human resources, and political interests that the international community has, it needs to be selective by choosing only cases with good prospect for success when it decides on whether to proceed with intervention.
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  • Kosuke Togashi
    2011 Volume 2011 Issue 165 Pages 165_141-155
    Published: July 25, 2011
    Released on J-STAGE: August 05, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Effective peacebuilding in a post-conflict region is one of the important themes in modern international politics. There is consensus that the support for post-conflict regions is indispensable in international society, and in some cases it is even considered their responsibility.
    However, in this paper, a contrasting situation is presented where obtaining such international support for peacebuilding is difficult in post-conflict regions. The focus of this paper is on “unrecognized quasi-states,” which are political groups with an independent territory, a government, residents, and desire to be an independent state; however, they are not recognized by most states. If a post-conflict region to face such situation, obtaining bilateral and multilateral diplomatic support would be difficult, because of the ambiguity related to their legal status.
    Not many arguments have been made regarding peacebuilding for unrecognized quasi-states. This paper suggests reasons for this by explaining the features of unrecognized quasi-states, limitations of diplomacy, and support from “patron states.” Then, how can understand the case of such a state that is not supported by patron states, but has made diplomatic efforts toward Western countries in the post-conflict period? Such a case is presented here in terms of the Maskhadov regime of the Chechen Republic, and by using this example, this paper reveals why problems can occur if a post-conflict region has unrecognized quasi-states in the peacebuilding period.
    The paper is organized as follows. First the concept, origins, and survival factors of unrecognized quasi-states are summarized. Second, this paper answers why peacebuilding studies do not deal with unrecognized quasi-states. Third, the case of Chechnya is considered, and it is revealed how the Maskhadov regime attempted to diplomacy and why it failed.
    The following conclusions are presented in this paper. First, the case of Chechnya designates that if post-conflict regions transform into unrecognized quasi-states, like the Maskhadov regime, peacebuilding process becomes very difficult. In this case, armed conflict recurred. Thus, this case indicates the problem how international society should react to unrecognized quasi-states during the period of peacebuilding.
    Second, the case of Chechnya indicates that international involvement in peacebuilding has an arbitrary aspect similar to the support of patron states. J. Hughes, the British comparative political scientist, notes that a double standard exists in the policies of Western countries toward Chechnya and Kosovo. From the perspective of this paper, such a standard depends on the power balance between the central government and external actors.
    Third, S. Pegg, one of the well-known researchers of unrecognized quasi-states, considers Chechnya a successful case that will become an independent state. However, today Chechnya's case is far from successful. Thus, Chechnya would be the indicator for understanding the future of the existing unrecognized quasi-states.
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  • Yuko Ishino
    2011 Volume 2011 Issue 165 Pages 165_156-170
    Published: July 25, 2011
    Released on J-STAGE: August 05, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The purpose of this paper is to analyze the ideological background in the transition of “Greater Finland (Suur-Suomi)” idea by examining the interpretations of Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, focusing on three researchers: Kaarle Krohn, Jalmari Jaakkola and Martti Haavio.
    Today “Greater Finland” idea is often regarded as “expansionism”, but at first it was a sentiment only by Finnish intellectuals on Finnish “relative tribes”, mainly Karelians living in Russian Karelia adjacent to Finnish eastern border. This sentiment of Finnish “relative tribes”, however, was intended to unite Finnish and Karelians under Russian Empire rule. It was spread around Finnish people through diffusion of the Kalevala by a compiler Elias Lönrrot who gathered oral songs mainly from Karelians in Russian Karelia at the end of 19th century. This developed the theory that Karelians had kept Finnish national epic since ancient times.
    “Greater Finland” idea had been politicized when Russian Empire shifted policy from appeasement to deprivation of Finnish autonomy, called Russification policy at the end of 19th century. Resistance group, Aktivisti recognized Russian Karelia as a defense area against Russia, and also regarded it as a target of Finnish irredenta. This idea overlapped with independence of Finland after the outbreak of the First World War, which triggered the military action for gaining Russian Karelia just after Finish independence. Meanwhile, before and after the independence of Finland, Finnish folklorist Krohn claimed that Finland had culturally connected to Russian Karelia and Estonia in his studies.
    On the contrary, Finnish historian Jaakkola, who flourished between World Wars, denied the cultural relations between Finland and Estonia, and stressed the unity of Russian Karelia and Finland in ancient times instead. He also tried to place Finland as the European outpost against the attack of “barbarian Russia”. According to Jaakkola's opinion, heroes in the Kalevala were real people who expedited from Western Finland to Russian Karelia, and settled there. This interpretation had been a popular theory of Karelian origin until advocate of new theory in 1950's : Karelians and Finnish were different origins. His theory was made use of the military negotiation with Germany just before the outbreak of the second Soviet-Finnish War (19411944). Finnish government utilized Jaakkola's study for the justification of Russian Karelia's annexation.
    After the Second World War, Haavio claimed that Finland had come under the cultural influence of all over the world including Russia, and had had the cultural connection with Russia. Therefore the Kalevala had the nature of international epic. Now his Kalevala study was widely accepted among Finnish society which tried to build a new relationship with Soviet Union for promoting the area cooperation with Russian Karelia.
    It should be concluded, from what has been said above, that the concept of “Greater Finland” idea was changed from “Unity” to “Separation”, and furthermore to “Cooperation” in the transition of time.
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