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The Ethics of Secession and a Normative Theory of Nationalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2015

Margaret Moore
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Extract

The three major normative theories of secession are just-cause theories, choice theories, and national self-determination theories. Just-cause and choice theories are problematic because they view secession in terms of the application of liberal theories of justice or a liberal principle of autonomy, without regard for the dynamics of nationalist mobilitization and national politics. National self-determination theories can be supported by a collective autonomy argument. This is related to a particular view of the relationship between collective self-government and territory.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence , Volume 13 , Issue 2: SECESSION , July 2000 , pp. 225 - 250
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 2000

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References

1. Philpott, Daniel, “In Defense of Self-Determination” (1995) 105 Ethics 352 at 370.Google Scholar

2. Details of the groups expelled by Stalin, in the former Soviet Union are found in Robert Conquest, The Nation Killers: The Soviet Deportation of Nationalities (London: Macmillan, 1970).Google Scholar

3. Buchanan begins his book by gesturing in favour of group rights. See Buchanan, Allen, Secession: The Morality of Political Divorce from Fort Sumter to Lithuania and Quebec (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991) at 7-8 Google Scholar. It is surprising that this ends up playing very little role in the overall design of his theory.

4. International law has tended to endorse an administrative boundaries conception, at least in the post-Second World War period.

5. Nationalism typically involves two kinds of projects: national self-determination projects and nation-building projects. For a discussion of the relationship between the two, and the extent to which they cut across each other, see my “Nationalist Arguments, Ambivalent Conclusions” (1999) 82:3 The Monist 469.Google Scholar

6. In Wayne Norman's elaboration (and defence) of just-cause theory, he cites five kinds of injuries to a group that are considered to give just-cause: “(i) that it has been the victim of systematic discrimination or exploitation, and that this situation will not end as long as the group remains in the state; (ii) that the group and its territory were illegally incorporated into the state within recent-enough memory; (iii) that the group has a valid claim to the territory it wants to withdraw from the state; (iv) that the group's culture is imperiled unless it gains access to all of the powers of a sovereign state; (v) that the group finds its constitutional rights grossly or systematically ignored by the central government or the supreme court.” See Norman, W., “Ethics of Secession as the Regulation of Secessionist Politics” in Moore, M., ed., National Self-Determination and Secession (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) 34 at 41.Google Scholar

7. Buchanan, , supra note 3 at 154-55.Google Scholar

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9. Conversely, another group may be economically and socially marginalised, the victim of widespread abuses, and unjust treatment, and not be nationally mobilized. Such a group may not seek to remove themselves from the state because they are in such a weak position that the prospect of “going it alone” is not an attractive one.

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11. Ibid. at 55.

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16. Rainer Bauböck denies that this is a problem. He writes: “The first paradox of plebiscitary selfdetermination need not arise as a practical problem as long as all groups involved accept given borders as starting lines. National self-determination demands are rarely claims for the largest possible territory where a group can muster a majority, but refer more often to a particular and well-defined territory which the group regards as its historic homeland.” See Bauböck, Rainer, “Self-determination and self-government” (March 19, 1999) [unpublished] at 16 Google Scholar. He cites the partition of Ireland in 1920 as a counter-example, because the six provinces of Northern Ireland did not correspond to the historic region of Ulster and included areas with Catholic majority. Indeed, its only rationale seems to have been that this permitted the Protestant Unionists the largest area in which they were still a stable majority. However, I think that this isn't a single counter-example, but indicates a general problem with overholding states, of which the Protestant Unionists are an example (they identified with Britain). Indeed, if Bauböck's optimistic view were correct, we wouldn't expect states to so vehemently resist secession (and many of them do), nor would we expect states to try to keep groups within their territory, and under their jurisdiction, especially when the state encompasses land beyond its so-called “historical” territory. Bauböck is too optimistic: aggrandizement is a problem, especially for the overholding state, which is accustomed to a certain territory, accustomed to borders of a certain shape, and for the majority ethnic or national group in the state, which is accustomed to a pre-eminent position within that state.

17. See O'Leary, Brendan, “Determining Our Selves: On the Norm of National Self-Determination” (Paper presented to the International Political Science Ass'n, Berlin, August 1994) at 13.Google Scholar

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20. There were other members of the “Militia” scattered throughout west Texas. See “Texan Separatism: The Mountain Republic” The Economist 339:7969 (8 June 1996) 33 Google Scholar, and “Texas: The Alamo, Again” The Economist 343:8015 (3 May 1997) 25.Google Scholar

21. This point is made in a different way by Norman, , supra note 6 at 37 Google Scholar: “Choice theories are, in effect, nationalist theories shorn of the moral complications of ethnicity. Groups do not have to prove they are nations in order to qualify for a right to secede, and this allows choice theories to avoid entirely the problem of explaining why some very apolitical cultural traits should take on such enormous moral weight in arguments for secession.” I take this to be exactly right.

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23. Ibid. at 161-62.

24. McGarry, J., “Orphans of Secession” in Moore, , supra note 6 at 218.Google Scholar

25. Wellman, , supra note 15 at 163 n. 25.Google Scholar

26. Patten, Alan, “Democracy and Secession.” Unpublished paper presented to the Conference on Secession and Stability, University of Western Ontario (1998) at 16.Google Scholar

27. This distinction between individual and autonomy argument, as they apply to theories of secession, is adapted from Patten, ibid.

28. See Miller, David, “Membership and Justice” in Avineri, S. & de-Shalit, A., eds., Communitarianism and Individualism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

29. See Hurka, Thomas, “The Justification of National Partiality” in McKim, R. & McMahan, J., eds., The Morality of Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) 139 at 140.Google Scholar

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32. Mill, J.S., “Considerations on Representative Government” in Utilitarianism, On Liberty and Considerations on Representative Government (London: Everyman Library, 1994) at 394 Google Scholar. For a contemporary, and less nuanced, version of this argument, see Lind, Michael, “In Defense of Liberal Nationalism” (1994) 73 Foreign Affairs 87Google Scholar. For a discussion of this argument, see my “Normative Arguments for Liberal Nationalism: Democracy, Justice and Nationalism” in Nations and Nationalism (forthcoming 7/1 (Jan. 2001)).Google ScholarPubMed

33. Norman, Wayne, “Prelude to a Liberal Morality of Nationalism” in Brennan, S., Isaacs, T., & Milde, M., eds., A Question of Values: New Canadian Perspectives in Ethics and Political Philosophy (Atlanta, GA: Ridopi 1997) at 12-13.Google Scholar

34. This objection is implicit in Brubaker, Rogers, “Myths and Misconceptions in the Study of Nationalism” in Moore, supra note 6, 233.Google Scholar However, it is explicitly (and helpfully) reformulated by Bauböck, in “Self-determination and self-government”, supra note 16 at 10.Google Scholar

35. Brubaker, , ibid. at 238.Google Scholar

36. Ibid. at 256.

37. Ibid. at 240.

38. This model is consistent with the one advocated by Bauböck, , supra note 16 at 10-11.Google Scholar

39. This point is from Bauböck, , ibid. at 10.Google Scholar

40. As Bauböck has argued, “The existence of political boundaries is a necessary condition for self-government to flourish. But a right to change them so that all groups…. can achieve a maximally exclusive and comprehensive form of self-government undermines this very condition and is therefore ultimately self-defeating”. Bauböck, , ibid. at 11.Google Scholar

41. See here my discussion in “Territorial Dimensions of Self-determination”, supra note 6.

42. Of course, most territory, if one goes back far enough, was probably acquired unjustly. This is why a statute of limitations is necessary.

43. See “ China's Uighurs: A Train of Concern”, The Economist 354:8157 (12 February 2000) 40.Google Scholar

44. Most definitions of nations include both subjective attachment (to co-nationals) and attachment to territory. See here Miller's, five-part although quite open-ended criteria for defining a national community in Miller, , supra note 30 at 27.Google Scholar There is a similar emphasis on both national mobilization and subjective attachment in Smith, A. D., National Identity (New York and Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991) at 14.Google Scholar

45. Reference re Secession of Quebec, [1998] 2 S.C.R. 217.

46. The three questions are: (1) Under the Constitution of Canada, can the National Assembly, legislature or government of Quebec effect the secession of Quebec from Canada unilaterally? (2) Does international law give the National Assembly, legislature or government of Quebec the right to effect the secession of Quebec from Canada unilaterally? In this regard, is there a right to self-determination under international law that would give the National Assembly, legislature or government of Quebec the right to effect the secession of Quebec from Canada unilaterally? (3) In the event of a conflict between domestic and international law on the right of the National Assembly, legislature or government of Quebec to effect the secession of Quebec from Canada unilaterally, which would take precedence in Canada?

47. Buchanan, , supra note 3 at 21-24.Google Scholar

48. Ibid. at 21.

49. This was a serious problem in the October 30, 1995 referendum. The salient part of the referendum question asked: “Do you agree that Quebec should become sovereign, after having made a formal offer to Canada for a new economic and political partnership… Yes or No.” Not only is this problematic because it introduced strategic decision-making, instead of basing decisions on first-order preferences, but there is a great deal of unclarity about what being ‘sovereign’ actually involved. Polls in Quebec indicated that many more people were in favour of Quebec being ‘sovereign’ than Quebec becoming ‘a sovereign country’ and federalists in the Quebec legislature argued (unsuccessfully) for the latter formulation.

50. Kolstoe, Paul, Russians in the Former Soviet Republics (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995) at 11, 186.Google Scholar