Pacific Affairs: An International Review of Asia and the Pacific

Volume 73, No. 1

 

Abstract: Control Democracy, Institutional Decay, and The Quest for Eelam: Explaining Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka
By Neil Devotta

 

Abstract

Despite their utility within specific contexts, theories centered on religion, colonialism, and caste and class cleavages are inadequate to explain Sri Lanka's complex and protracted ethnic conflict. Consequently, a more overarching framework, which argues that the two phases of Tamil mobilization political and military and the eventual push towards secession are a consequence of institutional decay, is utilized. The majority attempt to create a Sinhalese ethnocracy by marginalizing the minority Tamils within the context of a "control democracy" and the concomitant institutional decay is thus responsible for the durability and near intractability of Sri Lanka's bloody civil war. A devolved political structure that allows for a high degree of Tamil self-determination within a united Sri Lanka is called for in order to ensure the island's communal groups voluntarily coalesced.