About this project
This knowledge base began as an academic paper — Selective Sovereignty: A Comparative Analysis of Frozen Conflicts in Europe — written as part of a degree programme in International Relations at Maastricht University. The paper applied the Foreign Policy Analysis framework to five cases: South Tyrol, Maastricht/Limburg, Narva, Transnistria, and Kosovo.
The website expands that work into a public resource. The five deep-analysis cases retain the full FPA treatment from the paper. A broader set of global cases provides context and demonstrates that frozen conflicts are not a post-Soviet pathology but a recurring feature of the international system.
The goal is to make serious analytical work on frozen conflicts accessible to a general audience — not to simplify the analysis, but to present it in a format that is navigable and linkable.
The five deep-analysis cases were selected on the basis of variation across the key independent variable: the policy approach taken by the host state. South Tyrol and Maastricht represent resolved cases — allowing analysis of the conditions that enabled resolution. Narva represents a potential conflict — a case where structural conditions for escalation are present but no armed conflict has occurred. Transnistria represents an unresolved frozen conflict. Kosovo represents an escalated case, examined as a warning.
The analytical framework is Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA), applied at three levels: systemic, state, and individual. This framework was chosen because it allows the analysis to move between the international environment (which constrains choices), the state level (which makes choices), and the individual level (which experiences the consequences of those choices).
Primary sources include academic literature, government documents, and field observation in Narva and Maastricht. Secondary sources include the PRCP Frozen Conflicts Dataset, OSCE monitoring reports, and the comparative autonomy arrangements literature.
There is an irony in the fact that this research was conducted at Maastricht University. The city of Maastricht was itself a frozen conflict for eight years (1830–1839), held by a Dutch garrison while the surrounding countryside aligned with the Belgian revolution. The 1839 Treaty of London partitioned Limburg between two states, dividing a coherent cultural and linguistic region.
In 1992, Maastricht became the birthplace of the European Union — the supranational framework designed to make such conflicts structurally less likely. The city that was itself a frozen conflict became the institutional home of the framework designed to prevent them. Yet even here, Limburgish autonomy sentiment continues to resurface. Resolution is a conditional equilibrium, not a permanent settlement.
Resolved
A durable settlement has been reached through a genuine autonomy arrangement, independence recognition, or other mechanism that addresses the core grievances. Resolution is classified as conditional — it must be actively maintained.
Potential
No active armed conflict, but structural conditions for escalation are present and unaddressed. The conflict has not yet frozen — it has not yet started. The risk is escalation from a latent to an active dispute.
Unresolved
Active armed conflict has ended but no durable political settlement has been reached. The core issues — sovereignty, territorial control, minority rights, recognition — remain unresolved. The conflict is suspended, not concluded.
Escalated
The frozen conflict thawed into armed conflict. Examined as warning cases: the conditions that preceded escalation are documented to inform prevention in other cases.