Irredentism 404 Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Irredentism refers to a state’s policies aimed at annexing adjacent territory and ethnic kin living in (those) neighboring countries. As a political dynamic it lies at the intersection of domestic and interstate politics, well capturing the blurring of the boundaries between the two in the contemporary world.

The term derives from the Italian terre irredente (“unredeemed lands”), indicating the territory inhabited by Italian speaking communities left out of the state-building process in the second half of the nineteenth century (Trentino, South Tyrol, and Istria, all on Italy’s northeastern borders). In this sense irredentism can be seen as a remedial form of state nationalism that seeks to solve the mismatch between ethnic and political boundaries left by the process of modern state formation.

As pure forms of nation-states are more the exception than the rule in the contemporary political system, the potential for irredentist disputes is considerable. However, unlike in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when episodes of irredentism were far from infrequent, in postwar Europe and in the post–cold war period, irredentism has turned into a sort of “anomaly,” notes Markus Kornprobst (2007, 459), a latent phenomenon that, according to Naomi Chazan (1991), tends to manifest itself particularly at times of political reordering in the international system. Irredentist disputes have not disappeared (e.g., the Republic of Ireland, West Germany’s refusal to acknowledge its post–World War II [1939–1945] boundaries and the German Democratic Republic, Serbia’s and Croatia’s policies toward various portions of Bosnia Herzegovina in the 1990s, interstate disputes in postcolonial Africa, the Kashmir conflict), but empirical evidence has contradicted expectations about their occurrence and frequency. This has led to the opening of a new path of enquiry investigating why some conflicts escalate into irredentist disputes whereas others do not.

Donald Horowitz (1991) has observed that some conflicts, separatist and irredentist in particular, move in and out of categories. Because of the nature of the actors involved, some empirical overlapping is inevitable. At the same time, irredentism has to be kept distinct from separatism (the attempt of a group to separate from the state it finds itself in) and self-determination, namely, from attempts by one group to unify territories belonging to separate states into a new political entity (i.e., the Kurdish case).

There are two discriminating factors distinguishing conflicts that are irredentist from those that are not: (1) the role of the state (as opposed to nonstate actors such as irredentist organizations) and (2) the presence of policies that are explicitly aimed at (re)gaining/retrieving control of territories and peoples that the state claims as its own (as opposed to more vague orientations and sentiments or even claims that may or may not be sanctioned by the state).

As the phenomenon of irredentism is multifaceted, it is not surprising that the focus of scholarship has been extremely diverse. First and foremost, the question of the conditions under which an irredentist dispute arises (or fails to) and the mechanisms through which disputes are settled have received the largest share of scholarly attention. The possible causes are manifold, and the following is simply a list of some of the factors identified in the literature as triggering irredentism: the size of the community of ethnic kin (to be redeemed), the influence of the alleged homeland, contagion effects across state boundaries, ethnic security dilemmas, international toleration of state behavior, and political reordering in the international system. While identifying the causes of irredentism occupies a central position in the literature, other questions have animated the debate too: the identity of the actor raising the demand (i.e., the government of the irredentist state), the nature of the demand (i.e., boundary adjustments), and the way in which demands are presented (i.e., negotiation, declaration of war). Last but not least is the way irredentist disputes end. Settlement of irredentist disputes occurs in one of the following manners: readjustment of boundaries in accord with irredentist demands, redefinition of group action (switching to separatism), withdrawal of irredentist demands, and dispute settlement, including dejustification of the claim to land and people by the irredentist state.

Overall, the literature on irredentism has encountered three problems. First is the often interchangeable use of the concept with separatism. The two are clearly cognate phenomena but are analytically and empirically distinct, as noted above. The focus of irredentism is on the state willing to redeem lands, not on the peoples to be redeemed who may or may not be engaged in separatism. Second, the principal agent behind irredentism has to be clearly identified. Here authors have divided themselves between those who have acknowledged the centrality of the state and others who instead have pointed to the role of organizations within the home country and even minority groups themselves in the host state. Last is the lack of conceptual clarity, namely, the risk that irredentism encompasses virtually anything, from actual state policies to claims, movements, and even orientations within the very same minority groups that the state aims to retrieve.

Scholarly interest in irredentism is growing, and both large sample comparative analyses and more qualitative studies have greatly contributed to the advancement of our knowledge about why some conflicts escalate into irredentism whereas others do not.

Bibliography:

Carment, David, and Patrick James. “Internal Constraints and Interstate Ethnic Conflict: Toward a Crisis-based Assessment of Irredentism.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 39, no. 1 (1995): 82–109.
Chazan, Naomi. “Approaches to the Study of Irredentism.” In Irredentism and International Politics, edited by Naomi Chazan, 1–8. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1991.
Horowitz, Donald L. “Irredentas and Secessions: Adjacent Phenomena, Neglected Connections.” In Irredentism and International Politics, edited by Naomi Chazan, 9–22. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1991.
Kornprobst, Markus. “Dejustification and Dispute Settlement: Irredentism in European Politics.” European Journal of International Relations 13, no. 4 (2007): 459–487.
Saideman, Stephen M., and R.William Ayres. “Determining the Causes of Irredentism: Logit Analyses of Minorities at Risk Data from 1980s and 1990s.” Journal of Politics 62, no. 4 (2000): 1126–1144.

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