Federalization & Conflict Resolution in the South Caucasus
September 20, 2000
Bruno Coppieters, professor in the Political Science Department at Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
Chair: Brenda Shaffer, Research Director, Caspian Studies Program
Discussant: Cory Welt, Department of Political Science, MIT
Summary by Emily Van Buskirk
The Caspian Studies Programat Harvard organized a seminar with Bruno Coppieters entitled "Federalization & Conflict Resolution in the South Caucasus" at the Kennedy School on September 20, 2000.
The South Caucasus is home to a number of unsettled conflicts, and a comparative federalist approach could provide ideas that would enable the region's people and leaders to bring about their peaceful resolution. This was one of Bruno Coppieters' main points at the seminar, but one that he made extremely carefully, because it is an argument that is easily misunderstood.
Coppieters warned of how cautiously one must approach any region as an outsider advising on the federalization of domestic political structures. Even if one believes that federalism as an ideology is "favorable for the democratization of the political structures," the problem is that an outsider's proposals are "often an idealization of one's own country," Coppieters remarked. The tendency for those who come from federal countries dealing with comparative federal studies is to have a "constitutional, patriotic" attitude. People tend to idealize institutions that preserve freedoms in one's own country and then try to export them.
However, as long as one exercises restraint, Coppieters argued, it is permissible to plant ideas of different federal structures (as he put it, "to intervene intellectually") in these countries in the hope of catalyzing the resolution of conflicts. In other words, while changes must come from within the region, an outsider can help by bringing information to the table. Only when the parties are ready to discuss and negotiate, however, can progress begin. The best approach for an advisor is to look for connections with the debate that is ongoing in each particular country. This works best in places where local scholars demonstrate an interest in federalism and wish to look comparatively at experiences in other countries. Two examples are Spain and Russia. The task of a comparative federalist, Coppieters reiterated, consists in providing general ideas and explanations "to show that according to this experience, we have had these particular consequences." The discussion of failed models can be equally as educational and effective as the study of successful ones.
The difficulty in resolving the conflicts in the Caucasus is the all or nothing attitude that dominates discussion there. Either a state is sovereign and a member of the OSCE and the United Nations, or it belongs to a federation, where its rights are subordinated to a sovereign state, and where it cannot make foreign policy. However, Coppieters argued, this need not be the case. There is room for different kinds of divisions of power, within a federation that can itself be asymmetrical. Coppieters argued that, at its core, "federalism is all about the distribution of competencies between various levels of power." Much research has been done, he said, "about the benefits of exclusive powers and exclusive competencies versus concurrent competencies." In other words, there are some cases when it is best not to mix up competencies-for example, in Belgium, where each administration knows exactly what its competencies are. Different distributions could be imagined for Adjaria and Georgia, Batumi and Tbilisi, or Abkhazia and Georgia, Coppieters suggested.
Comparative federalism has its advantages, Coppieters argued. In presenting experiences of different countries over time, longer-term solutions become more apparent to political leaders who otherwise have a shorter-term outlook. For example, countries can adopt electoral laws that favor the emergence of moderate leaderships: if the president or members of parliament need a certain majority or percentage of votes from all ethnic groups, moderate leaders will more likely be chosen. Leaderships involved in negotiating peace settlements are often opposed to this technique, because their power base comes from one single national community; however, if the idea is introduced and public opinion is galvanized, this can change.
Another example of a long-term outlook based on experience is in the financial arrangements of federal structures. For Nagorno Karabagh, the World Bank and Western institutions are promising a lot of funding— contingent on a peace settlement— to help with economic development. This is a good step. However, when negotiating an agreement, it is beneficial to devise a plan that is maximally efficient economically, so that federated states do not have to be bailed out by the central government or the World Bank. Comparative federalist approaches can help in this.
For comparative federalism to generate any results, people from the region must be interested in the ideas it offers, and there must be debates in the media and in other public fora. This is a real problem for the Caucasus in particular, where intellectuals have so far been more important in the development of ethnic conflicts than in their solutions. Compounding this is the general breakdown of scientific institutions. Furthermore, Western governments are willing to fund defense efforts, but have little money available to educate people in these countries about federalism. And finally, negotiations for peace have been very secretive, and solutions are communicated to the public in one sentence, which simplifies concepts: maximum autonomy, common state, asymmetrical federalism, etc.
Coppieters went on to discuss specific conflicts— all of them, Coppieters noted, with the exception of Chechnya, "conflicts which have broken up the federal relations which existed in the Soviet Union"— and possible contributions from a comparative federal approach. As for Chechnya, even today Chechen officials stick to the 1992 constitution, which has a preamble declaring Chechen independence and which says that sovereignty is indivisible. However, Coppieters argued, one can demonstrate that in the past the Chechens and the Abkhaz both defended the idea of a confederation, "The Confederation of Mountain Peoples," which was to include Georgia on an equal level. Dudayev himself thought Yeltsin had betrayed the Soviet Union, and tried for its renewal.
As with Chechnya, Coppieters noted, it is difficult to bring in comparative federalism to both Abkhazia and South Ossetia. This is because various parties in the discussion (Russians, Georgians, South Ossetians, the OSCE, etc.) are still arguing about principles that differ even on a very abstract level. However, federalism is still relevant; for example "Georgia is trying to use federalism as a method of unifying Abkhazia and Georgia." Coppieters made an interesting point on Abkhazia: the Abkhaz constitution states that sovereignty in Abkhazia belongs to the whole population. In other words, it is not defined in an ethnic sense, rather to all Abkhaz, Georgians, and others who live there. The only limitation in this regard is that the president must speak Abkhaz (although he or she does not need to be an ethnic Abkhaz). This is a reality that many can live with, Coppieters affirmed. Turning again to Nagorno Karabagh, where the rumor is that the leaderships are very close to agreement, Coppieters wondered whether Nagorno Karabagh could have a system of double allegiances, similar to Andorra, which has two heads of state. Perhaps Nagorno Karabagh could have "not two heads of state, but federal relations with both Azerbaijan and Armenia," he proposed.
Coppieters finally spoke on a general level about the concepts of sovereignty, self-determination, and how this relates to conflicts between ethnic groups in the regions of the former Soviet Union. Prior to the break up of the Soviet empire, there was a double hierarchy. All people had to obey the Communist Party. In addition, people of different nationalities "were brought into a hierarchical order where it was possible that a leader of one nation had to obey the leader of another just because he is of a particular nationality." This situation, which would be impossible in a democratic federation, fueled the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict.
In light of this situation, Coppieters suggested a variety of solutions. For example, divided competencies "according to a constitution where you have only the rule of law, and not the rule of a particular nationality." Federated states could be given treaty-making powers on the same level as the central government. Secondly, work could be done to get people discussing the concept of shared sovereignty, because it may be a stumbling block that in the Caucasus sovereignty is considered to be indivisible. An example of shared sovereignty is Northern Ireland, where citizens can have both British and Irish passports. Thus, as Coppieters noted, "people in a particular territory can have allegiances to two different countries," as could potentially happen in Nagorno Karabagh. Otherwise, working with the concept of indivisible sovereignty, one could "make a differentiation between external and internal forms of sovereignty." Or, an even easier approach, according to Coppieters, would be to speak about sovereign competencies rather than sovereignty. Or, one could avoid the use of the word sovereignty entirely, as is done in Belgium.
On the subject of self-determination, Coppieters again remarked on the Soviet tradition where this time it may prove somewhat useful in that it does not exclude a federal model. "Sovereignty was given to all the inhabitants of the particular republic, independently of the ethnic group; the source of sovereignty was popular, not ethnic," said Coppieters. This is reflected in Abkhazia, where nationhood and self-determination have a civic, rather than an ethnic basis.
Yet another solution would be to have dual citizenship within the federation, as is the case with the Oland Islands and Finland. Finland is not in fact a federation, but the Oland Islands have so much autonomy that they have their own citizenship laws and can control internal migration. In Abkhazia, this kind of arrangement could potentially prevent the Georgians and Russians from "implementing a colonization program in the region," as the Abkhaz have accused them of wanting to do.
In the discussion that followed, discussant Cory Welt of the Political Science Department of MIT pointed out that one of Bruno Coppieters' central thoughts is that "ideas matter," i.e. that you can bring ideas into the discussion and change the way they think, introducing new possibilities of solving their conflicts. He argued that a more cynical view would be that agreements could be reached by talking to the elites and simply offering enough incentives, in the form of assistance and guarantees. He then raised three questions. 1) Is it necessary to change social values and beliefs before implementing a federal system? 2) Does it matter who the leadership is that is initiating these institutional reforms? And 3) Can you institute— is it possible and just to institute— a federal system that ignores some minorities?
In his comments during the discussion, Coppieters discussed minority rights as an alternative approach to federalism. In response to a question about federalism as a way to protect the ethnic identities of small nationalities in the Caucasus, Coppieters said that, for example, in the case of Georgia, complete federalization for every ethnic group would be a mistake. Complete federalization of such a small country which contains so many ethnic groups would lead to anarchy, Coppieters argued, and would make it difficult for the international community to deal with. Therefore, for Georgia, Coppieters said that federalization of regions that had a special status in Soviet times would be most effective. At this point a debate arose about the importance of history, and whether the Soviet Union was a federation, a confederation, or a centralized state.
Finally, Coppieters brought forth further variations on federalism, for example non-territorial federalism, where one government has competencies in policy fields that are not ethnic or cultural in nature, and the other has competencies only in fields of cultural or ethnic issues. Each national community could, through its own taxation system, take care of its own cultural affairs, for example schooling in a particular language (and citizens could choose which government to pay taxes to).