My SAIS colleague Professor Sinisa Vukovic has taken a look at the academic literature on partition as a solution to ethnic conflict, prompted by recent discussions of it in the Balkans. He writes:
I found that contemporary studies unanimously conclude that this solution is suboptimal at best, and extremely unstable compared to all other solutions. Empirical evidence shows that partition:
– Can increase the risk of violence by empowering ethnic elites if there are lingering territorial disputes, by weakening the status of residual minorities and forcing them to rebel, by activating new ethnic or ideological cleavages, by weakening the economic position of the rump or secessionist state, or by forcing contests over the control of the regime in the secessionist state. (Sambanis and Schulhofer-Wohl 2009-1)
– De facto separation (which you may associate with Dodik’s Republika Srpska de facto status in Bosnia, or the aspiration of Serbian majority municipalities in Northern Kosovo to become a ‘Republika Srpska of their own in Kosovo’) is even more problematic: only 14% of the parties to de jure partition experienced a resumption of violence within 2 years, but this frequency rose to 50% for the parties to a de facto separation, 63% for the parties bound in a unitary state, and 67% for the parties to an autonomy arrangement. And sovereign states created by partition are no more likely to go to war against one another than states created by other means. Belgrade’s insistence on an Association of Serb Municipalities with executive powers is thus a call for further destabilization in the future. (Champan and Roeader 2007)
– Partition does not help reduce the risk of war recurrence. Partitions are in fact positively (though not significantly) associated with recurrence of ethnic war.
Sambanis also has an interesting empirical finding: negotiated settlements, a strong government army, and a lengthy previous war all reduce the probability of war recurrence. Thus, if the international community’s interest lies in preventing new civil wars, it could manipulate some of these significant variables toward desirable goals. It could, for example, take steps to enhance the government’s military and support decisive war outcomes. Or it could support the negotiation of peace treaties, which reduce the threat of new violence. Again, what the international community should not do to prevent future wars is promote partition. (Sambanis 2000)
If I read this correctly, it means that if you want to avoid war in the Balkans, the right approach is to strengthen the existing countries’ armies, avoid autonomy arrangements, and end lingering territorial disputes by means other than redrawing borders along ethnic lines.