Allen Buchanan holds that nations do not have a general primary unilateral right to secede. However, nations could legitimately secede if there were a special right to do so, if it were the result of negotiations and, more importantly, if some previous injustice had to be repaired. According to Buchanan, the three kinds of injustice that allow for unilateral secession are: violation of human rights, unjust annexation of territories, and systematic violations of previous agreements on self-government. I agree that nations (...) only have a general remedial right to unilateral secession. But I argue that nations also have a general primary right to self-determination not held by other cultural groups. In virtue of this general primary right, nations also have a primary right to internal self-determination. I will then argue that the "past injustices" should include a failure to comply with internal self-determination. I also want to show that this alternative version of the Remedial Right Only theory meets the constraints, imposed by Buchanan himself, upon any satisfactory institutionalization of the principles governing secession. In the end, it will appear that my own version fares much better than Buchanan's in meeting these constraints. (shrink)

The principle of national self-determination holds that a national community, simply by virtue of being a national community, has a prima facie right to create its own sovereign state. While many support this principle, not as many agree that it should be formally recognized by political institutions. One of the main concerns is that implementing this principle may lead to certain types of inequalities—between nations with and without their own states, members inside and outside the border, and members and nonmembers (...) inside the same nation state. While these inequalities may arise, I shall argue that they are not unjust. These worries are partly the results of confusing two types of interests that a national group may have—in cultural affairs and in political affairs. While a national community should enjoy rights over their cultural affairs, this does not grant them authority over other non-cultural, political affairs. Once the distinction is drawn, we can see that there are constraints on the implementation of this principle. Consequently, these inequalities justify setting limits to a group’s right of self-government, although they do not conclusively refute the right itself. (shrink)

This paper explores the question of whether there can be a right to secede from a liberal state by examining the concept of a liberal state and the different forms of liberalism that may be appealed to in order to justify secession. It argues that where the foundations of the state’s legitimacy are conceived in terms of a non-derivative right to self-determination, then secession from a liberal state may be a justified form of action for different types of groups including (...) ‘illiberal’ ones. If, however, a broader definition of political legitimacy is adopted – one that is predicated upon the liberal notions of individual moral autonomy and equality – then the right to independent statehood will generally not include a right to secede from a state that already upholds these principles. Consequently, liberal theorists of secession are forced to choose between particularizing a right of independent statehood to groups trapped in illiberal states, or acknowledging that the right to secede includes a right to establish an ‘illiberal’ state that bestows upon its citizens unequal rights and entitlements other than a right of exit. (shrink)