Abstract

Apart from examining the use of the Secession Reference in three post-Yugoslav, Southeastern European countries, this article also suggests that there is a different, more general reading of the Secession Reference that could have been deployed in Southeastern Europe. Before discussing what I call the ‘spirit of the Secession Reference’, I examine an important preliminary question: what could justify the migration of such a general constitutional idea? I argue that existing justifications for the use of comparative jurisprudence are either inadequate or need to be qualified before we can make an argument that the spirit of the Reference can indeed migrate. I then turn to outlining the components of the Secession Reference’s spirit. My argument is that the Secession Reference should be approached not only as a set of particular arguments and interpretive strategies, but also as embodying a distinct way of dealing with deep national diversity. To me, the spirit of the Secession Reference comprises four components: First, it embraces radical political projects as legitimate. Second, it establishes that all contentious political issues are subject to principled negotiations. Third, in doing so, it downplays the dominant contemporary vocabulary of popular sovereignty and self-determination. Fourth, as a result of the previous three components, the spirit of the Secession Reference simultaneously respects and deflates radical nationalist mobilization