PSCI5170 - Territorial Restructuring

In the two centuries since the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, the world has seen numerous partitions, secessions, annexations, and unifications, and that includes attempts, completions and repeats, but have political scientists adequately treated these features of our collective experience?
This course focuses on how and why political territories are restructured, through secessions, partitions, annexations, and unifications, and with what consequences.
We begin by addressing conceptual, definitional, and coding questions related to partitions, secessions, annexations, unifications, and adjacent phenomena.
Then we shall review explanations of these phenomena through evaluating case studies and large-N studies (students may specialize in either, or both). We will discuss whether specific and distinctive explanations of these four phenomena are appropriate, or whether general explanations are available—and satisfying.
In the cases of Ireland, British India, mandate Palestine, and Cyprus we shall review explanations, implementations, and evaluations of the consequences of the respective partitions.
We shall then address cases of failed, i.e., defeated secessions, e.g., the Confederate States of America, Kurdistan, as well as successful, i.e. accomplished, secessions, e.g., Bangladesh and South Sudan. Then we shall look at explanations of the occurrence of secessionist bids, at both the macro- and micro-level. Efforts to link general theories of conflict to secessionist or non-secessionist outcomes are welcome. The final outcomes of secessionist conflicts will be considered, examining whether a stable settlement is produced, or whether conflict recurs.
Historic cases of unifications are then considered e.g., nineteenth-century German and Italian unifications, possibly paired with some failed “pan-national” movements, as well as more recent cases of unification, e.g., Germany, Vietnam, failed reunifications, e.g., Cyprus, and possible future reunifications (e.g., Ireland, Korea, China-Taiwan).
General literature on annexation in international law, international relations and comparative politics will be examined. Have there been any decisive trends in annexations, and are these being reversed? Creeping or incremental as well as wholesale annexations will be considered. Case studies will include American, Chinese, Israeli, Russian, and Turkish annexations. We will ask why governments choose not to annex territories they control.
Normative debates will be encouraged, subject to consideration of historic evidence. This course straddles the borders between comparative politics, international relations, and political theory. Normative literature addresses whether orderly practices should be followed amid state break-ups, e.g., dividing assets, protecting citizenship rights, and border delimitation and demarcation.