Providing minority populations with autonomy is gaining appreciation as a method of solving, managing, and even pre-empting ethnic conflict. However, in spite of the enthusiasm for autonomy solutions among academics and practitioners alike, there is reason to argue that the provision of autonomy for a minority may under certain circumstances increase rather than decrease the likelihood of conflict. In certain political conditions, autonomy strengthens the separate identity of a minority; it thereby increases its incentives to collective action against the state; and most of all its capacity to seek separation from the central state, through the state-like institutions that autonomy entails.