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Comparisons throughout this thesis have been drawn between the reality of ethnonational
conflict with de facto division, and an idealised image of a unitary and
integrated economy. Generally, the surprising conclusions reached here are that the
two communities are better off in the divided reality than they may have been in the
idealised, integrated economy (though for Turkish-Cypriots, that premise holds only
for the most pessimistic distributional assumptions - see pp.302-303). This ignores a
possible third way, experienced by some of Cyprus' nearest neighbours. Cyprus could
have continued down the road of civil war begun in 1963 and followed the path taken
by Lebanon in the 1970s. While de facto division in 1974 seemed to put an end to any
enduring hopes of an integrated whole, it also ended the prospect of continued civil
war, either ethnie or politicai (as it largely had become by the late 1960s). Partition,
throughout recent post-colonial history, has generally been perceived as negative, a
failure of vision and modernity. The negative results of ethno-national conflict in
Cyprus are ever present; however, de facto division may have provided the best
potential economie conditions, given the politicai context.
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