Balkanization

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For the linguistic usage of this term, see Balkan sprachbund.
Territorial history of the Balkans from 1796 to 2008.

Balkanization or Balkanisation is the process involving the fragmentation of an area, country, or region into multiple smaller and hostile units.[1][2] It is usually caused by differences in ethnicity, culture, religion, and some other factors such as past grievances.

The term was first coined in the early 20th century, and found its roots in the depiction of events during the Balkan Wars (1912–1913) and World War I (1914–1918), specifically referring to incidents that transpired earlier in the Balkan Peninsula.[3]

The term is

secessionism. The Balkan peninsula is seen as an example of shatter belts in geopolitics.[6]

Origins of the term

Coined in the early 20th century, the term "Balkanization" traces its origins to the depiction of events during the

Second World War (1939–1945), the term underwent significant development, expanding beyond its original context to encompass diverse fields such as linguistics, demography, information technology, gastronomy, and more. This expansion extended its descriptive reach to various phenomena, often with pejorative connotations. In response, critical scholars in the late 20th and early 21st centuries sought to denaturalize and reclaim 'balkanization'.[3]

Nations and societies

Map of territorial changes in Europe after World War I (as of 1923)
Changes in national boundaries after the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union and breakup of Yugoslavia
See also:
Eastern Question

The term (coined in the early 20th century in the aftermath of the collapse of the

Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire
.

Uses to stir opinion

Main article: Rhetorical device

Countries in Europe, where uniting quite recently historically distinct peoples or nations, have seen outspoken separatists. These have prompted

Catalan independentism.[9]

Canada is a stable country but has separatist movements, the strongest of which is the

nation-state in Quebec, which encompasses the majority of Canada's French Canadian population. Two referendums have been held to decide the question, one in 1980 and one in 1995. Both were lost by the separatists, the latter by a small margin. Less mainstream and smaller movements also exist in the Canadian Prairie, especially Alberta, to protest what is seen as domination by Quebec and Ontario of Canadian politics. Saskatchewan Premier Roy Romanow
also considered separation from Canada if the 1995 referendum had succeeded, which would have led to the balkanization of Canada.

Quebec has been the scene of a small but vociferous

independence of Quebec since 80% of the province is francophone. One such project is the Proposal for the Province of Montreal
for the establishment of a separate province from Quebec for Montreal's strongly-anglophone and allophone (mother tongue neither English nor French) communities.

In January 2007, the growing support for Scottish independence made Chancellor of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom and later Prime Minister Gordon Brown talk of a "Balkanisation of Britain".[10] Independence movements in the United Kingdom also exist in England, Cornwall and Northern England (themselves parts of England), Wales, and Northern Ireland.

In Africa

British decolonization in Africa.

Bates, Coatsworth & Williamson argued Balkanization was observed greatly in West Africa then

British East Africa. In the 1960s, countries in the Communauté Financière Africaine started to opt for "autonomy within the French community" in the postcolonial era. Countries in the CFA franc
zone were allowed to impose tariffs, regulate trade and manage transport services.

East African High Commission. Splintering into today's nations was a result of the movement towards a closed economy. Countries were adopting antitrade and anti-market policies. Tariff rates were 15% higher than in OECD countries during the 1970s and 1980s.[11] Furthermore, countries took approaches to subsidise their own local industries, but the interior markets were small in scale. Transport networks were fragmented; regulations on labor and capital flow were increased; price controls were introduced. Between 1960 and 1990, balkanization led to disastrous results. The GDP of these regions were one tenth of OECD countries.[11]
Balkanization also resulted in what van de Valle called "typically fairly overvalued exchanged rates" in Africa. Balkanization contributed to what Bates, Coatsworth & Williamson claimed to be a lost decade in Africa.

Economic stagnation ended only in the mid-1990s. Countries within the region started to input more stabilization policies. What was originally a high exchange rate eventually fell to a more reasonable exchange rate after devaluations in 1994. By 1994, the number of countries with an exchange rate 50 percent higher than the official exchange rate had decreased from 18 to four.[12] However, there is still limited progress in improving trade policies within the region, according to van de Walle. In addition, the post-independent countries still rely heavily on donors for development plans. Balkanization still has an impact on today's Africa. However, this causation narrative is not popular in many circles.

In the Levant

During the 1980s, the Lebanese academic and writer Georges Corm used the term balkanization to describe attempts by supporters of Israel to create buffer states based on ethnic backgrounds in the Levant to protect Israeli sovereignty.[13] In 2013 the French journalist Bernard Guetta writing in the Libération newspaper applied the term to:

See also

References

Citations

  1. ISBN 978-1-4051-2433-1
    .
  2. ^ "The A to Z of international relations". The Economist. Retrieved 2023-11-23.
  3. ^
    ISBN 978-3-030-77954-2
    , retrieved 2023-11-23
  4. ^ Todorova 1994.
  5. ^ a b Simic 2013, p. 128.
  6. ^ Gosar 2000.
  7. ISBN 978-3-030-77953-5
    , retrieved 2023-11-23
  8. ^ Pringle 2016.
  9. ^ a b McLean, Renwick (29 September 2005). "Catalonia steps up to challenge Spain". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 16 October 2017. Retrieved 15 October 2017.
  10. ^ "UK's Existence is at Risk – Brown". BBC News. 13 January 2007. Archived from the original on 15 October 2017. Retrieved 15 October 2017.
  11. ^ a b Bates, Coatsworth & Williamson 2007.
  12. ^ Van de Walle 2004.
  13. ^ Corm, Georges (January 1983). "La balkanisation du Proche-Orient" [The balkanization of the Middle East]. Le Monde diplomatique (in French). pp. 2–3. Archived from the original on 22 February 2019.
  14. ^ a b Guetta, Bernard (28 May 2013). "La balkanisation du Proche-Orient" [The balkanization of the Middle East]. Libération.fr (in French). Archived from the original on 28 September 2019. Retrieved 28 September 2019.

Bibliography

External links
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