19
representative organizations show remarkable longevity while others form and disperse
quickly. For example, the Bhutan People’s Party represented the Lhotshampas in Bhutan for
14 years, while the Appeal Movement of the Co-ordination Committee (AMCC) and the
United Democratic Front represented the same group for only two and three years
respectively.
22
Greater longevity lessens the costs of organizing (discussed below) and
provides a focal point for the self-determination group to voice demands to the state.
Longstanding institutions or organizations present both group members and states with a
clear representative for the group.
23
Moreover, these institutions provide the state with an
easily identifiable bargaining partner for iterated bargaining.
Both coordinating institutions and longevity lessen the costs for groups to make
unified demands on the state. Groups with heterogeneous preferences are comparatively
more difficult to organize to make unified demands on the state. When members of a group
choose to make an autonomy demand, they need to overcome the costs of organizing other
individuals to support the demands, and their relative efficiency at this process will affect
how unified their demands on the state are. Groups with very disparate preferences at the
outset will need more organization effort to bring together to make a demand on the state.
There are three types of costs that the group incurs when it makes a demand for
greater autonomy: opportunity costs, potential costs of a violent state response, and
collective actions costs. Opportunity costs are the loss of benefits that an individual could
accrue with the time she is spending demanding greater autonomy. The potential costs of
violent state response are the risks that individuals take that the state may choose to use
violent repression as their tactic for dealing with the demands. Neither of these first two
22
Keesing’s Record of Worlds Events.
23
Institutions with a long history may also be better able to mobilize and organize new individuals because they
can use their resources to raise awareness of the self-determination demand and run recruitment campaigns.
Convention