Group Secession

Abstract

This chapter looks at Deliberative Peace Referendums in the context of secession—that is, where the members of a territorially concentrated group seek legal and political separation from a larger sovereign state of which the group has been an integral part. They typically do so with the aim of establishing a new sovereign state that enjoys international legal status on a par with other states in the international system. As we will see, secession is essentially unilateral: the decision to secede from the existing state rests ultimately with the seceding group. Consequently, the idea that secession referendums should be based on concurrent consent among more than one group will be out of place. Yet while the consent of the existing state may not be formally required, the degree to which the seceding group seeks to include others in its deliberations may make an important difference to how the legitimacy of the referendum is perceived—domestically, regionally, and internationally. In secession conflicts, therefore, Deliberative Peace Referendum design must reflect both the unilateral nature of the decision and the need to reach out to individuals in the existing state, the wider region, and international community. To this end, we consider (among other matters) both the structure of the ballot and the potential role of mini-publics. However, before doing so, we first discuss a prior question. Various legal and political philosophers disagree about when secession is justified. Some argue that secession cannot be sensibly justified on self-determination grounds. By corollary, they argue that the referendum should play no part in our thinking about secession conflicts. Against this view, we argue that the right to self-determination is an important public value of the sort that Rawls describes. Like all such values, it needs to be weighed in the balance against other, competing public values—which is to say that it can and should be tested through a Deliberative Peace Referendum