In response, autonomy was rediscovered as a potential remedy for claims to self-determination (Kymlicka 2007). While post-communist governments throughout Central and Eastern Europe remained cautious at best and at worst openly hostile to such ideas, Western mediators welcomed autonomy with more enthusiasm. They rejected the claim that autonomy was nothing more than the secessionist stepping stone to independence, but saw autonomy as a possible instrument to accommodate secessionist movements without jeopardizing the continued territorial integrity of an existing state. In 1990, the member States of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), as was the case at the time, were still cautious when they “took note of the efforts made to protect the ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious identity of certain national minorities and to create the conditions for them by making them appear as one of the possible means of achieving these objectives. appropriate local or self-government administrations corresponding to the specific historical and territorial circumstances of these minorities and to the policies of the State concerned” (Article 35(2) of the Copenhagen Document of the 1990 CONFERENCE on the Human Dimension of the CSCE). But in 1991, the governments of the Member States of the European Community (EC) went even further and supported autonomy as a means of resolving minority issues and conflicts of self-determination when they created the conditions for the recognition of the new Central and Eastern European States resulting from the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the separation of Czechoslovakia and the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Two declarations on European political cooperation, one addressed to the whole of Central and Eastern Europe, the other to Yugoslavia, to the rights of minorities and, to a certain extent, to the autonomy of national minorities, were prescribed in the context of the price that the States of that region must pay for diplomatic relations with the Member States and the institutions of the EC. This request was based on the work of the EC Peace Conference on Yugoslavia. At this conference, the EC Member States attempted to bring about a consensual dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Serbia was the only republic to vigorously oppose this approach. In order to address Serbian concerns, two successive peace plans presented by Lord Carrington, President of the Conference, provided for autonomous arrangements for Serb communities living outside the borders of the Republic of Serbia within the disintegrating Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

[2] This is not an exhaustive list of cases. For an analysis of some examples and general trends in the spread of self-reliance regimes in the context of conflict resolution, see the contributions in Weller and Wolff (2005). Recent conflict settlements such as sudan, Iraq, Papua New Guinea/Bougainville, the Philippines/Mindanao, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Moldova/Gagauzia and Ukraine/Crimea establish autonomous regimes that combine horizontal and vertical forms of power-sharing and power-sharing to establish stable political and institutional processes conducive to the resolution of conflicts of self-determination. Vertical power-sharing and power-sharing are proving to be necessary additions to autonomy in two respects: systems of autonomy cannot be established in certain territorial entities without them, and if these entities do not become a place of power, no power can be shared at the sub-state level. Power-sharing and power-sharing in the Bosnian Croat Federation, Bougainville, the Muslim Autonomous Region of Mindanao and South Sudan would therefore not be possible if these regions had not been established as right-wing political entities and had not been given powers later. The cases mentioned in this article are all similar in that they include claims of self-determination by territorially concentrated identity groups that were suitable for the establishment of complex power-sharing systems with regimes of autonomy at their core. Some of them have been relatively stable over time (i.e. over ten years): Belgium, Brussels, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Crimea, Gagauzia and South Tyrol. At the beginning of the second decade following the conclusion of the 1998 agreement, Northern Ireland achieved not only a very significant reduction in violence, but also a relatively stable political process.

Others, including Bougainville and South Sudan, are too short-lived to provide reliable data on their long-term stability, and could also see a consensual secession of the state`s autonomous entity in accordance with their respective colonies. Mindanao has had only partial success in pacifying a troubled region of the Philippines. Thus, autonomy under more complex power-sharing regimes or, in rarer cases, remains an essentially democratic, stabilizing approach, reducing violence and therefore highly desirable for resolving conflicts of self-determination. In a sense, therefore, many contemporary theoretical interpretations of autonomy lag behind current practical conflict resolution efforts that have gone beyond many “purist” approaches to conflict resolution and prevention recommended by various schools of thought. This is not to say that autonomy has lost its relevance as a mechanism for conflict resolution. On the contrary, autonomy is more than ever a required component of most of these regulations and provides a framework within which other conflict resolution mechanisms can gain prominence and deploy their potential to contribute to stable and lasting democratic solutions to conflicts of self-determination without secession. Autonomy is not a new phenomenon, and it has not been studied too little. Even if the application of autonomy regulates in the sense that they are defined here, only in the 20th century. There are earlier precursors, including Hungarian autonomy in the Habsburg Empire after the compromise of 1868, the gradually eroded autonomy that Poland had within the Russian Empire after the Congress of Vienna (so-called Congress of Poland), and the Grand Duchy of Finland between 1809 and 1917, also within the Russian Empire. A second more specific trend is the combination of autonomy, in particular with power-sharing at the level of central government and/or within the autonomous unit. However, this only tells half the story. It is the specificity of these two macro-political techniques of conflict resolution – autonomy and power-sharing – and the range of “complementary” mechanisms – be they specific electoral systems, laws on human rights and minority rights or coordination and arbitration mechanisms – that must do justice to the specificities of the particular case to which they are applied, but must also and above all fit together.

This means that there are limits to the extent to which the design of complex power-sharing colonies can be randomly chosen from the available menu of mechanisms and techniques. This can be illustrated by concrete examples and on the basis of broader comparative observations. The broader implementation of self-government regimes as mechanisms to deal with conflicts of self-determination has been complemented by increased scientific interest and results in this regard, with several important scientific papers on autonomy published over the past decade. [1] With regard to norm-setting, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE, successor to the CSCE) has also maintained an interest in this issue. Its Lund recommendations offer perhaps the most comprehensive reference to autonomy as a means of good governance and state-building in an authoritative international document. In addition, the United Nations General Assembly has devoted itself to this subject – so far too delicate – with Liechtenstein`s initiative for self-determination through self-government, which wants to offer autonomy as an alternative to secessionist claims to self-determination. The United Nations Working Group on Minorities has also been cautious on the issue of autonomy. From this degree of variation between the case studies, a number of analytical and empirical conclusions can be drawn about the continued importance of autonomy as a mechanism for conflict resolution. Empirically, there are four important lessons.

First, autonomy will only serve its purpose of contributing to conflict resolution if it goes hand in hand with the separation of powers along a vertical structure of institutions. It can then serve as a useful substitute for the formal horizontal sharing of power at the national or regional level, provided that national or regional ethnic demography creates appropriate homogeneous areas and substantial powers are transferred from the Centre. Secondly, in none of the cases mentioned has any attempt been made to create heterogeneous entities as subjects of territorial autonomy. Heterogeneity, where it exists, has been addressed by the concordan sharing of power within the autonomous territorial unit. Third, coordination between the different vertical layers of authority and the establishment of clear hierarchies are important to ensure that the vertical stratification of authority remains meaningful and can contribute to the long-term sustainability of a particular conflict.