Contextualizing Secession
Contextualizing Secession

Author: Bruno Coppieters

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2003-07-17

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 0191531731

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In a world where the traditional territorial organisation of the state is coming under increasing challenge from pressures from above (globalisation) and from below (struggles for federalisation and secession), the theoretical and practical questions concerning secessionist struggles become ever more acute. It is these questions that this volume addresses. Why do some struggles for autonomy take acute forms, above all violent struggles for secession (for example, Chechnya), while others remain within the framework of constitutional politics (for example, Tatarstan and Quebec)? Under what conditions does a distinct political community have the right to secede from another, and how should this process be managed? Our ten case studies seek to answer these questions on the basis of the application of just war theory to the normative and practical issues concerning the secession struggles in these regions. The Introduction sets out the theoretical issues, and then each case study provides a rich mix of theoretical and empirical material, and some of the broader issues are then drawn together in the concluding chapter. The book focuses on four key themes that are central to the ethics of secession. The first examines normative issues, in particular the tension between 'choice' theories and those based on remedial 'just cause' arguments. The second discusses the problem of violence in secessionist struggles and the ensuing relationship between just war theory and the ethics of secession. The third problem is the relationship between nationhood and citizenship, and in particular the problem of applying what has now become a conventional distinction between ethnic and civic representations of the political community. Finally, the contentious issue of sovereignty and the way that it frames debates about self-determination. With each of these themes, the application of general moral principles to particular historical contexts opens up new avenues of research. This book is essential reading for those who wish to understand both the theoretical and practical issues concerning secession struggles in the world today.

Modernity and Secession
Modernity and Secession

Author: Michel Huysseune

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2006-08-01

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 1789204275

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The northern Italian, ‘Padanian’ identity, fostered by the Lega Nord, is rooted in the long-standing tradition, in political and scholarly discourse, of casting regional differences within Italy in terms of a North-South geographic divide. Trying to come to terms, in the late 1980s and 1990s, with Italy’s (real or presumed) inadequacies – such as inefficient government, corruption, and organized crime – this imagined geography acquired political centrality in that the North became associated with the virtues of modernity and the South with the vices of un-modernity. It was not only politicians but also social scientists, who fostered and perpetuated this conceptualization of the North-South divide, thus imposing a normative hierarchy between the two parts of the country. In response to this discourse many scholars, both in Italy and abroad, have started to question this perception of the South as a “backward” and implicitly inferior society. Starting from this critical tradition, Michel Huysseune provides a new, systematic, and interdisciplinary approach that re-interprets the premises behind Italy’s imagined geography of modernity. He moves beyond an understanding of the South as a “backward” and implicitly inferior society and problematizes normative notions of modernity, thus offering a new perspective on the North-South divide, which has a significance well beyond the case of Italy.

The Routledge Handbook of Self-Determination and Secession
The Routledge Handbook of Self-Determination and Secession

Author: Ryan D. Griffiths

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-02-28

Total Pages: 833

ISBN-13: 1000833127

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The Routledge Handbook of Self-Determination and Secession explores the various debates surrounding the issues of self-determination and secession, and the legal, political, and normative implications they give rise to. Offering a broad survey of the state of the sub-discipline today, the chapters are divided into seven key parts: an Introduction, Self-Determination, Explaining and Justifying Secession, Secession Strategies, Counter-Secession Strategies, International Law and Secession, and Constitutional Law and Secession. The authors, from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, explore all the recent approaches to secession and self-determination based on strategic interaction of major actors in a secession process. This handbook will be of great interest to students and researchers from a variety of disciplines including politics and international relations, security studies, and law.

Secession as an International Phenomenon
Secession as an International Phenomenon

Author: Don Harrison Doyle

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 409

ISBN-13: 0820330086

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About half of today’s nation-states originated as some kind of breakaway state. The end of the Cold War witnessed a resurgence of separatist activity affecting nearly every part of the globe and stimulated a new generation of scholars to consider separatism and secession. With the approach of the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War, this collection of essays allows us to view one of the bloodiest conflicts over secession in modern history within a broader international context. The contributors to this volume consider a wide range of topics related to secession, separatism, and the nationalist passions that inflame such conflicts. The first section of the book examines ethical and moral dimensions of secession, while subsequent sections look at the American Civil War, conflicts in the Gulf of Mexico, European separatism, and conflicts in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. The contributors to this book have no common position advocating or opposing secession in principle or in any particular case. All understand it, however, as a common feature of the modern world and as a historic phenomenon of international scope. Some contributors propose that “political divorce,” as secession has come to be called, ought to be subject to rational arbitration and ethical norms, instead of being decided by force. Along with these hopes for the future, Secession as an International Phenomenon offers a somber reminder of the cost the United States paid when reason failed and war was left to resolve the issue.

The Foreign Policy of Counter Secession
The Foreign Policy of Counter Secession

Author: James Ker-Lindsay

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2012-10-25

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 0199698392

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At a time when the question of separatism is becoming increasingly significant in international politics, The Foreign Policy of Counter Secession is the first and only comprehensive account of the ways in which states fight acts of secession on the world stage.

Kashmir's Right to Secede
Kashmir's Right to Secede

Author: Matthew J. Webb

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-02-13

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 1136451455

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A separatist conflict has been ongoing in India-administered Kashmir since 1989. Focusing on this region, this book critiques the existing normative theories of secession, and offers a comprehensive examination of the right of sub-groups to secede. The book looks at the different accounts of the moral right to secede, and assesses both the theories themselves as well as the claims of those who want to separate Kashmir from India. Included within this analysis are the three main types of normative theory that ground the right of groups to secede in principles of national self: determination, consensual governance and rectificatory justice. Previous studies have discussed the causes behind the uprising in Kashmir against Indian authority and examined some of the legal and geo-political implications of the conflict for India and the wider region. This book provides a new way of looking at the Kashmir dispute, by asking what these theories tell us about Kashmir, and in turn what the example of Kashmir allows us to learn about these theories. It is of interest to students and scholars of South Asian Politics and International Relations.

Chechnya
Chechnya

Author: Richard Sakwa

Publisher: Anthem Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 184331164X

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A remarkable collection of essays, considering every angle of the Chechen conflict.

Contested Secessions
Contested Secessions

Author: Neera Chandhoke

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2011-12-26

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 0199088764

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This book approaches contested secession and the more Western concept of consensual secession from a political theory perspective. In particular, it focuses on the Kashmir issue as a form of contested secession and examines whether the Kashmiri people have a ‘right’ to secede.

Contested States in World Politics
Contested States in World Politics

Author: D. Geldenhuys

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2009-04-22

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0230234186

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This book investigates a phenomenon in world politics that is largely overlooked by scholars, namely entities lacking international recognition of their status as independent states. It includes case studies on the Eurasian Quartet, Kosovo, Somaliland, Palestine, Northern Cyprus, Western Sahara and Taiwan.

Mobilizing in Uncertainty
Mobilizing in Uncertainty

Author: Anastasia Shesterinina

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2021-03-15

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 1501753770

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How do ordinary people navigate the intense uncertainty of the onset of war? Different individuals mobilize in different ways—some flee, some pick up arms, and some support armed actors as civil war begins. Drawing on nearly two hundred in-depth interviews with participants and nonparticipants in the Georgian-Abkhaz war of 1992–1993, Anastasia Shesterinina explores Abkhaz mobilization decisions during that conflict. Her fresh approach underscores the uncertain nature of the first days of the war when Georgian forces had a preponderance of manpower and arms. Mobilizing in Uncertainty demonstrates, in contrast to explanations that assume individuals know the risk involved in mobilization and make decisions based on that knowledge, that the Abkhaz anticipated risk in ways that were affected by their earlier experiences and by social networks at the time of mobilization. What Shesterinina uncovers is that to make sense of the violence, Abkhaz leaders, local authority figures, and others relied on shared understandings of the conflict and their roles in it—collective conflict identities—that they had developed before the war. As appeals traveled across society, people consolidated mobilization decisions within small groups of family and friends and based their actions on whom they understood to be threatened. Their decisions shaped how the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict unfolded and how people continued to mobilize during and after the war. Through this detailed analysis of Abkhaz mobilization from prewar to postwar, Mobilizing in Uncertainty sheds light on broader processes of violence, which have lasting effects on societies marked by intergroup conflict.