How Homelands Change

• Date: 01 February 2020
• Published date: 01 February 2020
• Author: Nadav G. Shelef
• DOI: 10.1177/0022002719863470
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

How Homelands Change

Nadav G. Shelef

1

Abstract

Under what conditions do nations give up parts of their national homeland? This

article answers this question using novel data that traces systematically the inclusion

of lost homeland territory in discursive definitions of the homeland for all ethnic

nationalist homelands truncated between 1945 and 1996. A survival analysis of the

continued homeland status of lost lands shows that longer-lasting democracies are

significantly less likely to continue to include lost lands within the homeland’s scope,

even after controlling for other factors thought to shape the inclusion of territory in

the homeland. Since the desire for the control of territory is at the heart of much

international conflict, understanding the conditions under which the scope of that

territory is redefined contributes to addressing an especially refractory aspect of

international politics.

Keywords

territory, nationalism, constructivism, democratic institutions

Under what conditions do nations give up parts of their homeland? Answer ing this

question matters because nationalist attachment to the homeland is associated with

significant international conflict (Toft 2003; Miller 2007; Shelef 2016; Kelle

2017). Understanding the conditions under which areas once seen as part of the

homeland—and therefore worthy of disproportionate, even irrational, sacrifice—

no longer merit such devotion could thus help address an especially refractory

aspect of international conflict.

1

Political Science Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI, USA

Corresponding Author:

Nadav G. Shelef, Political Science Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 110 North Hall, 1050

Bascom Mall, Madison, WI 53706, USA.

Email: shelef@wisc.edu

Journal of Conflict Resolution

2020, Vol. 64(2-3) 490-517

ªThe Author(s) 2019

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/0022002719863470

journals.sagepub.com/home/jcr

There is surprising variation in whethe r nations give up los t parts of the home-

land and in how long it takes them to do so. Some, like Chinese claims of Taiwan

and Syrian claims to the Golan Heights, appear to persist indefinitely. Others,

like Pakistani claims to Bangladesh, German claims to lands east of the Oder-

Neisse Line, and Italian claims to Istria and Dalmatia, have waned (though at

different paces).

This article argues that an underappreciated part of this variation stems from

whether homelands are subject to evolutionary dynamics. Rendered abstractly, evo-

lutionary processes hold that change will occur whenever there is variation between

units, differential success among these variants (sometimes called “selection”), and

time for successful variants to displace less successful ones (Dennett 1995; Lustick

2011; Ma 2016). Homelands are no exception. Where there is variation in whether

lost lands are flagged as part of the homeland between domestic political move-

ments, the differential success of a movement articulating a particular variant, and

time for the more successful variant to displace less successful ones from the range

of public articulations, the homeland’s scope will also change. In other words, over

time, sustained internal political competition contributes toward countries leaving

aside irredentist claims.

This theoretical argument is supported by a survival analysis of the continued

homeland status of lost territory in all cases of ethnic nationalist homelands trun-

cated between 1945 and 1996. This, first, large-N exploration of the withdrawal of

homeland status from lost lands shows that contexts likely to be characterized by

variation, differential success, and time are systematically associated with excluding

lost lands from the rhetorical delineation of the homeland’s extent. This result

persists when controlling for other factors that shape the withdrawal of homeland

status from lost lands.

This analysis also contributes to scholarship on territorial conflict in a second

way. Despite the consistent finding that homelands can change (e.g., Lustick 1993;

Winichakul 1994; Paasi 1996; Herb 1997; Shelef 2010; Goddard 2010), quantitative

studies of territory and conflict still tend to operationalize homelands as a time-

invariant indicator (e.g., Hensel 2001; Minorities at Risk Project 2009 (2003

release); Toft 2003; Walter 2009; Shelef 2016; Kelle 2017). The implicit assumption

that the homeland’s scope is static has hamstrung attempts to explain how territory

loses its homeland status and the impact of such c hanges on other outcomes of

interest. This article provides a systematic, time-series, cross-national measure of

the homeland status of lost lands that enables a deeper integration of the empirical

and theoretical insights that homelands can change into quantitative scholarship on

territory and conflict.

Homelands and Evolutionary Dynamics

All nationalisms require a geographical space in which the nation can control its

political destiny. The designation of some land as the “homeland” delimits the

Shelef 491