What are the pros and cons of changing government structure in order to address identity issues?

What are the pros and cons of changing government structure in order to address identity issues?

In her article, Dawn Brancati explores the role of decentralization in quelling ethnic conflict and secessionism. Brancati considers a large dataset of countries (including election data) over the course of several decades in the 20th century. She finds that decentralization is a useful tool for reducing ethnic conflict and secessionism, though the presence of regional parties interacts with that process. The positive effect of decentralization decreases or is eliminated as the regional party's vote share gets higher. 

Changing government structure is extremely consequential and should only be done when all options have been thought out in detail. Just as changing government structure has the potential to do good, it has the potential to worsen problems or create new ones. In the case of identity issues like ethnic conflict, the pro of changing government structure is the chance to reduce or eliminate that conflict. Decentralization has long been floated as one way to do that but Brancati demonstrates in her paper that the issue is more complicated and nuanced than that, as with all things. The cons of changing government structure are many; cost incurred may be high, the change may not have any effect at all or worse, it could complicate or worsen the situation. Government structure changes may also create new problems, foreseen or otherwise. Even when the current government structure is causing problems, stepping into the unknown may seem even worse. Better the devil you know than the one you don't, something something idiomatic expression. 

My personal inclination before reading this piece was always to believe that in cases of ethnic violence or secessionism especially, decentralization was the answer, and it was the reluctance of central governments to relinquish authority that was allowing problems to continue. That latter part may be true, but Brancati makes clear that decentralization is not the panacea we had all hoped. At the end of her piece, she mentions that regulating the strength of the regional party in the area with ethnic conflict/secessionism is probably necessary for decentralization to be (more) effective. This seems pretty unrealistic to me. A government that is unable to control a secessionist movement or clamp down on ethnic violence to the point where they are considering major structural reform is probably also in no position to control a regional party's success. The government might be able to put some kind of electoral cap on the regional party, but it seems like that would cause more problems than it solves and potentially kick off more conflict. The conclusions about decentralization and regional party strength that Brancati makes in her paper are somewhat inconvenient for the prospect of ending or drastically reducing ethnic conflict and separatism in the world. As always, nuance wins the day, and we remain without an absolute solution to a significant global problem. 

Comments

  1. WilliamJune 24, 2020 at 3:18 PM

    You're right. Basically no institutional change is a panacea for group conflict. Even increasing representation in government isn't a great solution: increasing representation for one group means decreasing it from someone else and potentially causing backlash. Brancati makes decentralization seem fairly binary, but there are lots of potential intermediary steps of partial decentralization. Are any of these worth thinking about to improve the prospects of decentralization as a method to calm ethnic/regional tensions?

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  2. AlecJune 24, 2020 at 9:36 PM

    Nathan, well said. I completely agree when you said that a government wouldn't be able to control a regional party's success if it can't even control a secessionist movement/ethnic violence. It's a tough balance unfortunately, but it just seems slightly unrealistic to be able to succeed at both. This idea of decentralization might work well in discussion, but when it comes to paper, there seems to be just too many obstacles.

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  3. Grace KlutkeJuly 8, 2020 at 9:21 AM

    I agree with your well-worded response. The choice to restructure a government is a precarious move. Leaders and constituents will never fully know how the new structure will work, and every problem solved by a change in government has the potential to bring forth new issues. All this being said, countries still choose to decentralize. South Africa and Uganda are two relatively recent examples of this. Many people believe that the choice to decentralize has been a very positive one in South Africa as it was a strong enough decision to uproot lasting systems of apartheid. Uganda still struggles with the allocations of responsibilities under the decentralized structure, but it has been argued in this case as well that the restructuring has a reunifying effect. My rambling point here is- if a country is recovering from conflict or an oppressive system, could decentralization be less of a choice and more of needed transition to first end the previous state of turmoil? I'm not sure of the answer to this, but it is interesting to consider. How much is decentralization a choice in these situations?

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