Poverty Research - Background Papers

About

Countries

Data & Research

Learning

News

Projects & Operations

Publications

Topics

Home > Data & Research > Research > Programs > Poverty Research > Publications > Background Papers

Explaining the demand for sovereignty

Author:	Sambanis, Nicholas; Milanovic, Branko;	Collection Title:	Policy Research working paper ; no. WPS 5888
Country:	World;	Date Stored:	2011/11/28
Document Date:	2011/11/01	Document Type:	Policy Research Working Paper
Language:	English	Major Sector:	Public Administration, Law, and Justice; Health and other social services
Rel. Proj ID:	1W-Economics Of Secession: Inequality, Globalization And Self-Dete -- -- P077354;	Region:	The World Region
Report Number:	WPS5888	Sub Sectors:	Other social services; General public administration sector
SubTopics:	Regional Economic Development; Economic Theory & Research; Peace & Peacekeeping; Population Policies; Post Conflict Reconstruction	TF No/Name:	BBRSB-BB RESEARCH SUPPORT BUDGET
Volume No:	1 of 1

Summary: Why do groups want to secede and where are we most likely to see demands for self-determination? This paper proposes an economic explanation whereby a tradeoff between income and sovereignty implies that, other things being equal, richer regions are more likely to want more autonomy and conflict arises due to a disparity between desired and actual levels of sovereignty. The authors provide simple empirical tests using new data collected at the level of second-tier administrative subdivisions in 48 decentralized countries. They find a positive association between, on the one hand, relative regional income, regional population share, natural resource endowment, and regional inter-personal inequality and, on the other hand, observed sovereignty levels. Ethnically distinct regions have lower sovereignty, but this association is only conditional on controlling for the interactive effects between ethnic distinctiveness and regional inter-personal inequality.


Official Documents Official, scanned versions of documents (may include signatures, etc.)
File Type		Description	File Size (mb)

	PDF 39 pages	Official version*	2.73 (approx.)
	Text	Text version**

	See documents related to this project

* The official version is derived from scanning the final, paper copy of the document and is the official,
archived version including all signatures, charts, etc.

** The text version is the OCR text of the final scanned version and is not an accurate representation of the final text.
It is provided solely to benefit users with slow connectivity.

Permanent URL for this page: http://go.worldbank.org/BJ29S40NT0