The emergence of dominant political party systems in unrecognized states John Ishiyama, Anna Batta University of North Texas, USA article info Article history: Available online 5 April 2012 Keywords: de facto state Dominant party systems Fuzzy-set QCA Militarization Secessionist war abstract In this paper, we address the question of why in some de facto states something like “dominant party” politics has emerged, whereas in others there at least appears some form of real political competition. We empirically assess some of the commonly cited factors that affect the character of politics within de facto states (the wealth of the entity, the militarization of society, the level of ethnic homogeneity, and political institutional features). Using Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), a method developed specifically to deal with the “small N problem” in empirical inquiry, we apply this framework to 13 post-secessionist unrecognized states. Ó 2012 The Regents of the University of California. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. There has been a growing literature on the politics of “de facto” (Bahcheli et al., 2004; Pegg, 1998) “unrecognized” (Caspersen and Stansfield, 2011; Protsyk, 2009) or “quasi” (Kolstø, 2006) states – or those entities, that have achieved de facto independence (including territorial control), but have not gained substantial international recognition, although they have demonstrated an aspiration for full, de jure independence (Caspersen, 2011:3–4; Caspersen 2009). As several scholars in this volume have already pointed out, the de facto states, such as Transnistria and Abkhazia, often portray themselves as consolidated democratic states, and that “as part of their strategy for gaining recognition, unrecognized states are also claiming that they embody democratic values” (Caspersen, 2011: 73) Their strategy is to look like a state, and a democratic one, in order to attract international recognition and legitimacy. An important way to appear democratic is to establish a competitive system of political parties. Indeed there has been a longtime and fairly widespread consensus that political parties are an important part of the consolidation of democracy. Although it has long been acknowledged that sudden changes can affect the development of political parties, the general relationship between secession, political party development, and democratization is generally poorly understood in places like Somaliland, Southern Sudan, Kosovo, Kurdistan, as well as the post-Soviet cases. Examining the development of political party systems in these de facto states is important for three reasons. First, the party system may provide some indication as to whether these states are developing real democratic features or not. Second, these cases allow for the examination of how intense international pressures interact with “domestic” political factors to affect party systems’ development (a unique scholarly opportunity). Third, the way in which parties develop in these states will affect how their political statuses are ultimately resolved, either via reintegration in some form with the state from which they seceded, or amalgamation with another state, or as outright independent, sovereign, entities. Further, although there have been an increasing number of recent studies that have sought to investigate the internal politics of these de facto states, most of these works have either been primarily theoretical (Caspersen, 2011) focused on only individual cases (Protsyk, 2009) or have compared individual case studies (Caspersen and Stansfield, 2011; Kolstø 2006; Bahcheli et al., 2004) rather than engage in empirical quantitative comparative investigation. Part of the limitation is the relatively small number of cases that qualify as de facto states (even historically) relative to the fairly large number of Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Communist and Post-Communist Studies journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/postcomstud 0967-067X/$ – see front matter Ó 2012 The Regents of the University of California. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.postcomstud.2012.03.006 Communist and Post-Communist Studies 45 (2012) 123–130