Last July, Nuria Franco gave us a good review of the so-called theories of the right to secession just cause, particularly in the version advocated by its most famous member academia, millennium Allen Buchanan. In short, the idea of just cause theorists (also called remedialistes) millennium is the right (unilateral) secession is not a fundamental right that just because certain groups have to exist, but a right reparatori to grant exceptionally in populations that are victims of offenses being very specific. The catalog of offenses that would justify a unilateral secession varies millennium from author to author, but there are certain offenses (such as the illegal annexation or serious violations of basic human rights) that usually generate consensus among remedialistes. Nuria formula basically a criticism, in my opinion irrefutable in such theories: the moral value of giving to the current path of the borders without any reason in support of this attribution rule explicitly. A weakness is even worse if we consider, says Nuria, that "there are few things less democratic than the very great majority of frontiers on Earth. "
I find, however, that the article Nuria stops at an important point: what are the alternatives? In this regard, I would like to compliment the article Nuria also a critical examination of the other two types of theories of the right to unilateral secession: millennium the ascriptivisme and plebiscitarisme. For ascriptivisme, there are groups with a primary right to unilateral secession: millennium the encompassing groups or as surely call in earthly terms, the "ethnic" or "cultural nations." Groups are defined by objective characteristics (language, culture, whatever), to which it belongs or does not belong, regardless of the will. The ascriptivisme has at least three problems: Analytically, it is difficult to determine the "objective characteristics" that define these groups encompassing without constantly find counterexamples. Legally not just be clear what relationship exists between morality share a cultural identity and share a state (it is evident the relationship between language and share a share of hospital management, for example). Politically leads us to have to make decisions that reveal a dangerous trend exclusion, as if that defines the right to secede is to share a cultural identity that weakens those individuals in identity (linguistic minorities or immigrants, for example) could be excluded from a decision that affects crucial.
The other group of theories, the plebiscite, presents no such problems. The idea is simple: the right of secession is simply anyone territorially concentrated group who mainly millennium want secession. So simple, at least as regards the formulation. The implications of plebiscitarisme, however, are more complicated and have basically two major problems: the possibility of secession ad infinitum, ie, that give anyone the right to secede just getting to a stage where even the smaller units (individuals or even) claiming the right to secede from the state, pouring us a scenario of instability, anarchy and loss of all those public goods that only states can ensure robust minimally , including redistributive justice The wide leeway offered privileged minorities (for example, a wealthy upper-class neighborhood as Pedralbes) to escape the democratic game when it does not serve their interests .
The first problem, despite being a logical consequence of the theory, does not seem very plausible from an empirical point of view: as Jason Soren, in his book Secessionism, millennium of 283 "national" groups territorially concentrated in the world, only 38 % express secessionist demands. The second problem, that of permanent blackmail privileged minority, however is very predictable, as exemplified by the secession of the slave states of the USA in the mid-nineteenth century, to cite just one case.
The three on the theoretical millennium right to secede seem, therefore, doomed to a lot of paradoxes and problems difficult to resolve. In my opinion, this is a consequence of that, in the end, all three currents are applied to the development of research and theoretical earliest complex: the search for the demos, the people sovereign democracy. The nation, in modern political language. millennium Based on the idea that the "sovereign people" are "things" that are "there" and are likely to "be described & #
