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In recent years, decentralization has become a prominent tool for conflict resolution. Since the end of the Cold War, the nature of conflict appears to have changed, as evidenced by the proliferation of civil wars and conflicts rooted in ethnic, religious and linguistic diversity (Kaldor, 2012). These ‘new wars’ have thus necessitated the development of new tools for managing and resolving ethnocultural conflicts. Political decentralization is one such tool, able to satisfy the aspirations and demands of both minority and majority groups: giving minority groups (limited) control over their own economic, political and social affairs, while also sustaining the territorial integrity of the extant state. As most violent conflicts are intrastate conflicts–fought between different groups within one country (rather than between different countries)–the potential of decentralization to facilitate the accommodation of differences, protect minority …