Mediamax's interview with Matt Qvortrup, Professor at the University of Cranfield, the author of "Referendums and Ethnic Conflict” book

Dr. Matt Qvortrup is a Professor at the University of Cranfield in Britain, the author of newly published “Referendums and Ethnic Conflict”. He is an internationally recognized comparative political scientist and constitutional lawyer, with extensive experience as a diplomat, as a civil servant and as a broadcaster.

Winner of the PSA Prize for best paper in 2012, Dr. Matt Qvortrup has previously been a visiting Professor at University of Sydney and a fellow at the London School of Economics. Described by the BBC as “the world’s leading authority on referendums”, he has worked as a consultant for the UNESCO, the US State Department, Elections Canada, the Danish Ministry of Cultural Affairs, and the Australian Parliament. He a regular contributor to the BBC World and has written Op-Eds for The Times, Guardian, the Scotsman, the Sun and the Glasgow Herald.

- First of all, let me congratulate you on your new book “Referendums and Ethnic Conflict”. What is the main idea of the book?

- There are two main ideas of the book. The first one is that when you want to have a referendum, you should have negotiations first. In that case, referendum can solve the existing problems. Sometimes a referendum could make matters worse, if it is used almost like a weapon in the conflicts. If you take Bosnia as an example, a referendum was held but they really did not know what to do after it and then a conflict broke out. On the other hand, in Northern Ireland we had negotiations and the referendum, then people gave their approval to that decision. So it’s widely argued when people can use and cannot use referendums to solve ethnic conflict.

The other argument of the book is about the appropriate time of these referendums. A referendum is typically the reflection of people's will, but politicians also use referendum as a strategic weapon. One of the things that we often see with the referendums is that when the politicians are on the back foot when they appear on the threat and they know that they have the cause that’s very popular, then they put that cause to a vote.

If we take the recent example of Crimea, then the government in Crimea, which were under pressure, and the government of Moscow had discussions about what would happen with the Russian-speaking people in Crimea within Ukraine and then they thought what referendum would be the popular thing to do. I think possibly the same could be said in case of Nagorno Karabakh. The government in Nagorno Karabakh in 1991 was under the political pressure, it was quite uncertain what was going to happen, the Azerbaijani threat was very keen. So given the background of this particular pressure and around 99% who would probably support this, it was an obvious thing to do.

- Karabakh also held the Constitution Referendum in 2006.

- The referendums both in 1991 and in 2006 are interesting examples of how to use the referendum. I think, with my very limited knowledge of Nagorno Karabakh, the 2006 referendum was a symbolic act in the gulf of sea of referendums where we have referendums on constitutions. We had the same actually in South Ossetia and then the aim of referendum is for people to rally around, it’s for them to feel we got something that we got in common and nationalism.

You have the football team, you have the flag, you have a lot of symbols and the vote on constitution is one of those mechanisms solidified the unity of a state, even not recognized by the other countries.

- Let’s talk about the correlation between ethnic conflicts and referendums. Can we say that referendum is one of the possible ways to resolve a conflict peacefully?

- It is one of the ways to resolve the conflict peacefully but it requires that you have negotiations first. Referendums sometimes make matters worse actually and my favorite example is Northern Ireland. The referendum was held in Northern Ireland in 1973 on whether Northern Ireland should remain part of the United Kingdom or join with the Republic of Ireland to form a united Ireland. The majority basically wanted that referendum, the other - the Roman Catholic population meant only 6,463 voted in favor of a united Ireland boycotted.

As is known, in 1991 in Nagorno Karabakh there was also a boycott and then those who lose the referendum if they had a chance to say things first, if they had another chance to negotiate, then they often resort to violence and war. So that’s it, if you have referendums and you just use it and you know you have a majority, your chances are bolder to get things through by referendum, but sometimes it actually leads to conflicts and referendums in that sense can be a bad thing.

For instance, in Northern Ireland the Irish Republic used to be in the terrorist organization IRA and the British Government said them to negotiate and compromise. And then was put to people and that basically led to the resolution of the conflict. We also see similar negotiations about the power sharing or negotiated settlement in Montenegro. Montenegro is an example of how a state seceded from Yugoslavia without any violence because they held negotiations first with the government in Serbia and the government in Montenegro, they agreed on the rules, there wasn’t clash for mediation and then they had a referendum and Montenegro is a new state now.

On the other hand, the Bosnians urged on by the European communities especially the French president, so a vote might be a democratic thing but it doesn’t resolve the conflict.

- The outcomes of referendums are more likely to be peaceful when the parties agree on the legitimacy of the referendum. We have such examples in Northern Ireland in 1998 and South Sudan in 2011. But these examples are exceptions. In most cases, it is very difficult to negotiate, because there were ethnic cleansings or the clashes between parties on such a large scale that negotiations under such conditions are really impossible.

- Sometimes negotiations are really difficult. Sudan or Northern Ireland were engaged in war for 30 years. In Northern Ireland, the parties were really far apart and they just divided by ethnic conflicts. Then they perhaps pushed and forced to negotiate, so it’s basically a prerequisite for any kind of politics to have negotiations. At the same time, if people are not allowed to accept what has been negotiated, then of course, it would be seen as illegitimate.

South Sudan' s case was a very difficult one. I took part in the negotiations as an envoy with the U.S. State Department officials and we were sitting there and created a lot of rage and people broke out again and again. If you have a majority it’s very easy to just to get things through and say something like “I have a majority, and I am right.”

However, that doesn’t settle the conflict forever: for a real solution you have to overcome the differences, both sides will have to make concessions. So the important thing about referendum is that they don’t go without discussions.

- In one of your interviews you said that “Independence referendums may seem exceptional and unique, but they are neither”. What did you mean?

- When the Soviet Union collapsed, several countries had referendums on whether to become independent states. Some countries, for example Ukraine, gained independence after a referendum. We also had examples of that some units had voted “yes” in referendums, but didn’t become independent states like Tatarstan. Wherever you look in the world with the possible exception of Latin America, we have had a lot of referendums are coming to be, a lot of nations are coming to be after referendums.

Norway is another example. People think Norway has always existed, but Norway voted for secession from Sweden only in 1905. Indonesia had a referendum to be a state in 1935. Iceland voted to become an independent country in 1944 and Mongolia did the same in 1945. So wherever you look in the world actually independence referendums are quite common. The only referendums people are commonly aware are about treatises or constitutional changes but actually there have been over 50 referendums after World War II.

It should be noted that a referendum could also lead to war. The first independence referendums were held in Texas, Tennessee and Virginia in 1861. All voted for secession, but their wishes were not granted and were resolved on the battlefield in the American Civil War. So one could argue that referendums on independence have their history goes to the Victorian Age or the middle of the 19th century.

For example, 43 ethno-national referendums held from the French revolution to the end of the First World War, a majority were in the category of right-sizing referendums. The remaining referendums were, respectively, 13 difference-managing referendums and 7 secession referendums.

- Once you mentioned that most referendums on independence have predominantly taken place in non-democratic counties, such as Eritrea, South Sudan and East Timor and mentioned only Montenegro as an exception. But now we have upcoming Scottish and Catalan referendums, we have some recent developments in Venice. Don't you think that the situation has changed in Western countries too?

-Well, we still have referendums there but it is still predominantly in countries without a long track record and probably not in the Western world. The Scottish referendum has been brewing for a long time and then suddenly a nationalistic government came to power and raised that issue. The interesting thing about Quebec, Catalonia and Scotland is that actually there is no clear majority for independence. If you take places like Crimea or South Ossetia, even if the referendums were held really fair and they followed all procedures and so on, you would probably have an over 90% majority. But in Scotland, Catalonia and Quebec it’s barely a majority. It’s probably not a majority at all who are ready to vote for the independence. Sometimes parties just feel that they must have a referendum to win the next election.

- You said that to argue against a referendum is almost like arguing against democracy. In that case why is this issue so complicated and contradictory both in terms of politics and international law? Why do some countries accept some referendums and new independent countries, other – not? Are we talking only about a political expedience?

- I wouldn’t necessarily say that, because democracy is not just a majority vote. I just quoted the professor Vernon Bogdanor, who used to be my supervisor in Oxford, who mentioned in one of his books that “arguments against democracy are also arguments against referendums” and “arguments against referendums are also arguments against democracy”. In my opinion, democracy is not just a majority vote, democracy is also a discussion, so I am more with Thomas Masaryk than with Vernon Bogdanor on that issue.

As for a political expedience, we should never underestimate it. If you take the Ukrainian Constitution that says in Article 73 that issues of altering the territory of Ukraine are resolved exclusively by an all-Ukrainian referendum. So, there will obviously be people who never wanted , say, Kiev to secede, and they would be having a vested interest putting it into the constitution. In one of his letters, Karl Marx wrote that “the world would be a very strange place if chance didn’t play a role, if things didn’t just happen by chance”. When people are drawing up constitutions, then obviously there will be things that they might be more concerned such as budget, poor people, economic hardships, and the constitution was a way of having rules to feel that you are not threatened. One of the research I am doing at the moment is the research on one of the procedures of drawing up constitutions. I think Marx was right, saying that sometimes things just happen. And of course, people would want to look after but sometimes just a problem comes along and they have to find a way of dealing with it. And of course the good politicians are the ones that can find the way to resolve the issue.

Aram Araratyan talked to Dr. Qvortrup