| Summary: | This book develops a model of the conditions under which devolution of government may be the preferred settlement of an ethnic secessionist conflict in a modern state subject to the influence of a larger neighbouring state - the Big Neighbour. The actuators of Big Neighbour involvement, the conditions under which 'devolution' rather than 'repression', 'secession' or 'annexation' becomes the preferred policy option of the Big Neighbour and the different roles that the Big Neighbour can adopt in its efforts to obtain a devolutionary settlement have been discussed as the main elements of the model. By analyzing empirical evidence from five Big Neighbour situations, namely, India/East Pakistan, Turkey/Cyprus, Australia/Papua New Guinea, India/Sri Lanka and Syria/Lebanon it concludes that the vigorous involvement of a Big Neighbour state, playing one or more of the roles identified in the model, can contain the conflicting parties in their internal environment, eventually to accept devolution as compromise settlement.
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