Political philosophers should think more about the theory of secession. There is a philosophical literature on secession, most obviously the work of Allan Buchanan, yet secession is still seen as a relatively niche topic. It is rare for philosophers to talk about the question of when secession is justified, even within specialist circles. Here, I want to encourage philosophers to take the question of secession more seriously as one of the greatest questions of justice.
Let me first highlight (and dismiss) part of why I think philosophers, particularly Americans, avoid this topic: the Confederacy. When Americans hear “secession,” we think of the Confederacy first (I am from Virginia so I am especially aware of this). But, to be plain, the injustice of the Confederacy’s secession should be obvious: it was unjust because they sought to defend the institution of slavery, as the South Carolina convention made perfectly clear. So, I am not going to address this question further. Perhaps it is a discussion for another time.
There are too many secessionist (or, alternatively, autonomist or separatist) movements to list out here. For some examples, though, look to the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization. They, at the time of writing this, have 44 members ranging from Taiwan, Catalonia, Tibet, Biafra, Inner Mongolia, Brittany, Crimean Tatars, the D.C. Statehood Movement and Guam, just to highlight a few. The range of claimants is striking even at a cursory look.
The deep, philosophical questions of secession do not look like the case of the Confederacy. Centrally, the question of secession is about the self-determination of peoples and what that principle demands of our political practices.
The usual question of political philosophy, to simplify, is about what a just state, if any, looks like. It does not ask, however, who deserves what state, particularly a state of their own. This is why it is particularly surprising that philosophers concerned about justice do not pay closer attention to this question. It is as if many philosophers tacitly think that any state can fulfill the need for justice.
I seriously doubt that is a feasible position though: peoples are not unified in their interests in a way that would enable this to be true. A state of any size inevitably has serious competing interests. Italy is a salient example, with political tensions between the North and South persisting for generations. At least, an argument has to be given one way or another. Is there something that binds a state together such that some regions have special obligations to give more? Is it merely the sharing of a common government that generates some special obligation to distant, perhaps even very distant, others? Again, though, my goal in this post is to motivate taking the problem more seriously, not to defend substantial views.
Let us look at an example: Catalonia, one of the most famous, persistent, and contentious of present secessionist movements. A plurality of Catalans once seemed to want their own state, though that is likely no longer the case. Some may take that to be decisive: to every people who want a state, they should get a state of their own. Perhaps. That being said, part of the motivation behind the push for Catalan independence, particularly the 2017 movement, is that they are a relatively wealthier region of Spain. Do other regions of Spain somehow deserve Catalonia’s unity? Counter-protests seem to think so. Is there something that ties the greater nation of “Spain” together? Again, perhaps, but even the good of patriotism is not a settled matter, as is nearly nothing in philosophy!
Of course, that is only one possible answer to the question, as we could, alternatively, seek communitarian or contractarian responses, such as the obligation that emerges from the shared identity persisting over time or is grounded in a prior just agreement of parties. For example, Americans might say the shared political history is what binds; we commonly point to the Declaration and the Constitution as deep political symbols. Alternatively, agreements long ago may still be saliently binding to even dissatisfied parties: for example, the Albertan independence movement is notable but unpopular, even though Alberta is consistently Canada’s most conservative province in an era recently dominated by liberals—though that may soon change.
I will spare further explanation of the dispute around Catalonia here. I mention it only as an example of how we could frame the question of secession as a question of distributive justice across groups within a given state. Who deserves what? Which peoples deserve a state of their own? Do, say, duties of redistribution apply to individuals, groups within a state, or even across states? Should rich regions of a given country be obliged to give more, even if they do not necessarily want to do that? On one hand, we might point to the self-determination of peoples and argue no, any shift of wealth should be voluntary. On the other hand, the ramifications of allowing the rich to avoid duties to others by establishing their own states seems fraught. There is a great literature around international distributive justice, yet secession is not usually the focus of that work, as usually the primary question in that literature is the distribution across countries, not which groups have a claim to get to be in the system at all.
The theory of secession is also a practical question. Secession depends on some theory of desert: who gets a state, as I claimed before. Secessionist movements are usually remedial. The claim of a secessionist movement is that there is some injustice and that the means of remedy is a new state and international recognition of that state. This claim of injustice is often distributive, as discussed before, but can also be restorative or compensatory for egregious violations of right, either through the restoration of a former land or through the granting of other lands.
The Land Back Movement is almost an example, with the core claim being that both ancestral right and the genocide of Indigenous peoples should be addressed through the granting of land back to tribe. Land Back does not endorse secession, but some movements like Land Back do. Tribes within the United States generally oppose full secession (especially given their strange legal status as sovereign but dependent nations), though there are famous exceptions to that such as the 2007 Declaration of Lakotah. With rising resource extractions, unsettled environmental disasters, and climate change, however, I personally suspect these movements will gain momentum across the Americas.
Thus, the question is interestingly both ideal and non-ideal. There are the principled questions of when secessions are justified, then further non-ideal questions as to how to go about seeking a remedy in a particular context. Even in the case of egregious wrongs, secession may not be the viable path. We usually point to the successful cases, not the unsuccessful ones. Take Kosovo. What makes, following the international majority, Kosovo a serious claimant? The ethnic cleansings by the Serbian government, most obviously. Violence, often ethnic violence, is a common motivation: South Sudan (2011) and Eritrea (1993) both, for example, emerged from generational civil wars. This, too, is central to decolonization, such as the 1962 Algerian Independence, though whether we should count decolonization as secession is questionable. There are also failed secession movements, perhaps most famously the Nigerian Civil War and the failed secession of Biafra. In all of these cases, though, various tactics were used: some groups only endorsed mostly peaceful, diplomatic resolutions; in other cases, as said before, they were incredibly violent and prolonged conflicts.
Secession is, whether philosophers like it or not, also politically timely. Lately, some discourse has turned to discussion of a “national divorce.” Some polling in the midst of the Biden presidency (2022 to be precise) indicated that a majority of the populations of conservative states would favor a peaceful conservative secession, albeit in different words (due to the stigma around the word in the U.S., as discussed earlier).
How seriously should we take that question here in the United States? I do not think very much, personally. But I also think that it is a substantial view that I should justify to myself as a philosopher. I encourage others, too, to think about these questions more. Who deserves a state and why? Why should we treat some secessionist movements unseriously? Why do I find the idea of a Second Vermont Republic to be funny? On what grounds should we take secessionists seriously, if any? I think these questions are philosophically richer than they may first appear to the yet-uninterested.
To conclude: we cannot understand justice and freedom without understanding the institutions we live under. In order to do that, we need to at least take the question of secession seriously, even if we end up arguing against it in many cases. Any complete theory of political justice which assumes the justice of states has to grapple with the question of secession.
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