| The question of how to effectively and peacefully resolve conflicts involving unrecognized states, which pose significant regional security challenges despite their small territorial areas, has been frequently asked since the Kosovar independence and the Ossetian War of 2008. Central to the behavior of unrecognized states in conflicts is their political systems, for many unrecognized states, having emerged from an ethno-nationalist conflict, institutionalize ethnic nationalism and politicize an ethnic identity to galvanize local support for the fledgling state as well as the war heroes that emerged. These war heroes then tend to cultivate their political capital through ethno-nationalist manipulation and mobilization. Much of the literature has already asserted that unrecognized states cannot democratize -- at least not fully. Instead, they become ethnocracies or titular democracies, serving a single ethnic group (the founding, titular one) over any others. However, this literature has provided no empirical evidence to any such assertion. This dissertation takes up the challenge of discovering how and why unrecognized states democratize.;The methodology adopted for this purpose involves a comparative historical analysis of Somaliland, the TRNC, and Taiwan. While no original fieldwork has been conducted, a thorough literature review was conducted instead, and the scholarly assertions were then supplemented by documentary evidence, newspaper reports, recorded elite or social activist statements, and the datacollected by international organizations such as the Freedom House, CIVICUS, and Amnesty International. This dissertation will argue that while democratization is plausible in the context of unrecognized states, there needs to be an alignment of international, regional, and domestic factors that capitalize on systemic shocks that undermine the authoritarian governments that unrecognized states suffer through from their founding. |
