ABSTRACT
For decades federalism has been prescribed as a recipe for overcoming ethnic conflict and separatism in divided societies with geographically concentrated ethnic groups. Recently, however, some scholars have alerted instead that federalism can exacerbate the very problems it seeks to address. Both bodies of research primarily focus on the behavior of collective actors such as governments, parliamentary groups, armies, parties, social movements and guerrillas. As a result, individual citizens are mostly absent from these analyses. Researchers have paid attention to particularly problematic forms of behavior that entail a degree of contentious politics and, in particular, violence. By focusing on the consequences of ethnic conflict and secessionism, researchers have often failed to provide accounts of the intermediate mechanisms and, especially, correlative empirical evidence, about how self- rule arrangements cause both elites and ordinary individuals to engage in such forms of behavior.
