The concept of ethnopolitical separatism, its place and role in contemporary political processes

Abstract

One of the most urgent ethnopolitical problems in our time is the growth in the number of separatist movements in different parts of the world. This phenomenon developed and gained strength in the second half of the 20th century simultaneously with the anti-colonial and national liberation movements. Moreover, it is worth noting that the movements that set as their main goal the separation of a certain part of the multinational state and the creation of an independent national-state entity in this territory, have intensified not only in the third world countries, where the colonial legacy has left a significant number of disputed borders, but also in the oldest western democracies – Great Britain, USA, Spain, Italy, France and a number of other states. The impulse to gain political independence through the proclamation of a separatist ideology is a clear sign of modern international relations. The wave of separatist aspirations of ethnic groups now and then manifests itself, and sometimes even increases in scale practically on all continents. However, until now ethnopolitical separatism remains one of the least studied and least understood political phenomena. In the most general sense, ethnopolitical separatism (otlat. Separatus – separated) is the striving of an ethnic group to isolate, separate and achieve autonomy or political independence by a certain area of the state. The complexity of the interpretation of this phenomenon is caused not only by the multi-factoriality of separatism itself, but also by the absence of established theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of separatist tendencies in political life. At the same time, the very forms of minimizing violence in the course of implementing the ideology of ethnopolitical separatism are studied within the framework of such an interdisciplinary direction as the "paradigm of conflict". Despite the fact that the conflict paradigm is often used to analyze ethnopolitical separatism, it cannot claim to be the only methodological approach to the study of this phenomenon.