Matthew Hoddie – författare

Among the more frequent and most devastating of conflicts, civil wars - from Yugoslavia to Congo - frequently reignite and even spill over into the international sphere. Given the inherent fragility of civil war peace agreements, innovative approaches must be taken to ensure the successful resolution of these conflicts. "Strengthening Peace in Post - Civil War States" provides both analytical frameworks and a series of critical case studies demonstrating the effectiveness of a range of strategies for keeping the peace. Coeditors Matthew Hoddie and Caroline A. Hartzell here contend that lasting peace relies on aligning the self-interest of individuals and communities with the society-wide goal of ending war; if citizens and groups have a stake in peace, they will seek to maintain and defend it. The rest of the contributors explore two complementary approaches toward achieving this goal: restructuring domestic institutions and soft intervention.Some essays examine the first tactic, which involves reforming governments that failed to prevent war, while others discuss the second, an umbrella term for a number of non-military strategies for outside actors to assist in keeping the peace.

The recent efforts to reach a settlement of the enduring and tragic conflict in Darfur demonstrate how important it is to understand what factors contribute most to the success of such efforts. In this book, Caroline Hartzell and Matthew Hoddie review data from all negotiated civil war settlements between 1945 and 1999 in order to identify these factors.What they find is that settlements are more likely to produce an enduring peace if they involve construction of a diversity of power-sharing and power-dividing arrangements between former adversaries. The strongest negotiated settlements prove to be those in which former rivals agree to share or divide state power across its economic, military, political, and territorial dimensions.This finding is a significant addition to the existing literature, which tends to focus more on the role that third parties play in mediating and enforcing agreements. Beyond the quantitative analyses, the authors include a chapter comparing contrasting cases of successful and unsuccessful settlements in the Philippines and Angola, respectively.

This book considers the relationship between territorial autonomy arrangements and ethnic conflict. As a means of ethnic conflict management, autonomy arrangements enjoy wide support among policymakers and academics. Countries ranging from the Sudan, the Philippines, and Britain have in recent years each experimented with the establishment of autonomy arrangements as a means of promoting peaceful interethnic relations. Philip Roeder’s study, Where Nation States Come From: Institutional Change in the Age of Nationalism, criticizes the use of territorial autonomy arrangements. Roeder contends that provisions for autonomy typically fail to manage tensions effectively between rival ethnic communities. Roeder further argues that provisions for autonomy actually enhance the likelihood that countries will experience interethnic tensions and dissolve along communal lines.This volume offers a critical examination of Roeder’s claim of a causal relationship between autonomy arrangements and increasing interethnic tensions. It presents case studies of territorial autonomy in the developing states of India, Nicaragua, Cameroon, and China. The case studies suggest that autonomy arrangements may in fact have pacifying effects under particular circumstances. The book concludes with a rejoinder by Roeder in which he offers a vigorous defense of his theory.This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnopolitics.

Ethnic Realignments offers a fresh look at the phenomenon of rapidly changing ethnic identity claims. By focusing on the countries of Australia, China, Malaysia, and India, Matthew Hoddie provides a comparative study arguing that government policies designed to favor one ethnic group over another can influence individuals among the disfavored group to change their "identities" and recast themselves as members of the favored group. Hoddie employs a statistical methodology to lay out the conditions and factors that lead to these ethnic identity changes, thereby contributing to the ongoing debate concerning the malleability of ethnic identity. Ethnic Realignments is a significant work for scholars interested in the politics of ethnicity and the effectiveness of affirmative action policies.

Ethnic Realignments offers a fresh look at the phenomenon of rapidly changing ethnic identity claims. By focusing on the countries of Australia, China, Malaysia, and India, Matthew Hoddie provides a comparative study arguing that government policies designed to favor one ethnic group over another can influence individuals among the disfavored group to change their "identities" and recast themselves as members of the favored group. Hoddie employs a statistical methodology to lay out the conditions and factors that lead to these ethnic identity changes, thereby contributing to the ongoing debate concerning the malleability of ethnic identity. Ethnic Realignments is a significant work for scholars interested in the politics of ethnicity and the effectiveness of affirmative action policies.

Power Sharing and Democracy in Post-Civil War States examines the challenge of promoting democracy in the aftermath of civil war. Hartzell and Hoddie argue that minimalist democracy is the most realistic form of democracy to which states emerging from civil war violence can aspire. The adoption of power-sharing institutions within civil war settlements helps mitigate insecurity and facilitate democracy's emergence. Power sharing promotes 'democratization from above' by limiting the capacity of the state to engage in predatory behavior, and 'democratization from below' by empowering citizens to participate in politics. Drawing on cross-national and case study evidence, Hartzell and Hoddie find that post-civil war countries that adopt extensive power sharing are ultimately more successful in transitioning to minimalist democracy than countries that do not. Power Sharing and Democracy in Post-Civil War States presents a new and hopeful understanding of what democracy can look like and how it can be fostered.