Who rules where over whom when the fighting stops? Advancing research on war to peace transitions and post-war environments

我的博士论文解释了政治行为者如何试图解决分离主义战争后的实际控制问题（即当一个自决运动已经争取脱离一个公认的国家，目的是形成自己的国家或加入另一个国家）：在哪里将控制的行为者之间的领土边界下降，谁将生活在这些边界内？换句话说，当战斗停止时，谁在哪里统治谁？本文探讨这些问题是如何解决的：什么解释国家和分裂主义者的战后领土和人口控制战略？为什么这些问题很重要？领土和人口控制是政治秩序的基础，也是由国家组成的国际体系的基础：解决控制人口居住领土的竞争性要求可能是根本的政治问题，研究向战后环境过渡期间使用的控制策略就是研究正在形成的政治秩序。这些问题，以及我为回答这些问题而开发的理论框架，是我的建议的核心，也是我的研究的学术贡献及其对处理暴力分离主义冲突的政策制定者和实践者的价值的基础。我在奖学金的第一个目标是巩固我的研究成果与专著和期刊文章。我的第二个目标集中在我的研究对政策和实践的影响，并加强我对武装冲突的原因和后果的未来研究的基础。使用阿布哈兹和科索沃战争后果的理论建设调查，我的论文表明，在向战后环境过渡的过程中，重要的是国家和分离主义者如何建立，挑战和维护“实地事实”。我展示了目标如何解释用于控制领土和人民的战略，并认为在从战争到战后环境的过渡中，国家和分裂主义者形成的目标反映了他们在战争结束时的相对立场以及他们对修改的偏好或保留事实上的控制：国家想要收复失去的领土，分离主义者想要分离主义实体完全和永久分离，但战后环境的限制阻止或拖延了他们实现这些最大目标。当战斗已经停止，但既没有完全恢复战前的现状，也没有完全分离分离主义领土时，国家和分离主义者试图通过选择人口和领土控制战略来实现其有限的目标，这些战略旨在使实地的事实与预期的结果相一致，通过关注行为体的目标及其控制领土和人口的战略，我的研究解释了政治行为者在战争结束后的关键时期做什么以及为什么做，并帮助我们了解战后秩序的形成和冲突后政治巩固的动态。这对以下两个方面都很重要：1）它对政治科学与和平与冲突研究的学术贡献，我将通过专著和期刊文章做出贡献，2）我的研究如何影响决策者和实践者分析当代分离主义冲突的方式，然后设计和实施应对措施，以管理冲突和建设和平，我的博士论文也被几篇会议论文和工作论文所补充和发展，这些论文将我的研究扩展到新的领域，如战后的地方动态和种族政治在未被承认的事实上的国家的环境，国际组织（IOs）的分离主义冲突的管理，内部武装冲突和国际关系之间的关系，以及研究武装冲突的方法和伦理。

My PhD thesis explains how political actors try to settle questions of de facto control in the aftermath of secessionist wars (ie when a self-determination movement has fought to break away from a recognised State with the aim to either form its own state or join another state):where will the territorial boundaries of control between the actors fall and who will live within those boundaries? In other words, who rules where over whom when the fighting stops? The thesis investigates how these questions are settled: what explains state and secessionist postwar territorial and demographic control strategies?Why do these questions matter? Territorial and demographic control are the foundations of political order and the basis of an international system constituted by states: resolving competing claims to control populated territory is perhaps the fundamental political problem and to study the control strategies used during transitions to a postwar environment is to study political order in the making. The questions, and the empirically-grounded theoretical framework I developed to answer them, are at the heart of my proposal and underpin the academic contribution of my research and its value for policymakers and practitioners dealing with violent secessionist conflict. My first aim in the Fellowship is to consolidate the output of my research with a monograph and a journal article. My second aim focuses on the impact of my research for policy and practice and on strengthening the foundations of my future research on the causes and consequences of armed conflict.Using theory building investigations of the aftermaths of wars in Abkhazia and Kosovo, my thesis shows that what matters in a transition to a postwar environment is how states and secessionists go about establishing, challenging and preserving the 'facts on the ground'. I show how objectives explain the strategies used for controlling territory and people, arguing that in a transition from a war to a postwar environment, states and secessionists form objectives that reflect their relative positions at the end of the war and their preferences for revising or preserving de facto control: states want to reincorporate lost territory, secessionists want the full and permanent separation of the secessionist entity, but constraints in the postwar environment prevent or delay them from achieving these maximalist objectives. When the fighting has stopped but neither the full restoration of the pre-war status quo nor the full separation of the secessionist territory has been accomplished, states and secessionists attempt to meet their constrained objectives by selecting demographic and territorial control strategies intended to align the facts on the ground with an intended outcome.By focusing on actors' objectives and their strategies for controlling territory and populations, my research explains what political actors do and why in the critical period after a war ends and helps us understand the formation of postwar orders and the dynamics of political consolidation after conflict. This matters for both 1)its academic contributions to Political Science and Peace and Conflict studies, which I will make through the monograph and journal article, and 2)how my research can influence the ways in which policymakers and practitioners analyse contemporary secessionist conflicts and then design and implement responses to manage conflict and build peace, which I will communicate in the policy brief and develop further in the workshop.My PhD thesis is also being supplemented and developed by several conference papers and working papers which extend my research into new areas such as the local dynamics and ethnic politics of postwar environments in unrecognised de facto states, the management of secessionist conflict by International Organisations (IOs), the relationship between internal armed conflicts and international relations, and the methods and ethics of studying armed conflict.