An Italian in my office despises “his own people” living anywhere below Tuscany, says Naples is the last place in the world he would visit. People living in the Baltic states were officially a part of the same people – the Soviet People, and I’m sure some felt that way too, why not.

And your “statute of limitations” idea seems to be pretty much an equivalent of Chris’ “remedial grounds”, “recent victims of sustained injustice”.

Yeah, IMHO there is simply no hard-and-fast rules here, no defined rights, just whatever the political process (including political violence) leads to.

This is the crux of the argument, I have always thought. Not that Scotland isn’t well or fairly represented in Parliament or at Whitehall; rather, that the Union results in Scotland living under principles and policies that are not appropriate for a nation of its size. In other words, principles and policies that may well be appropriate for one of the world’s powers (declining but still powerful) but not particularly appropriate for a small, northern country.

As a person proud of his own English parents and ancestry, it’s painful for me to admit that the Union isn’t all it’s cracked up to be…

Matt: I doubt Quebec’s secession would cause injustice to anyone in Quebec.

I can assure you that aboriginal peoples in Quebec, who have treaty relations with the federal Crown but none with the province of Quebec, would be most seriously injured.

As to the ‘right of secession’ point, call me old-fashioned, but I thought the right of self-determination was generally accepted?

It certainly is. There are certainly live debates within the public international law community about the extent of the right of self-determination (specifically, which groups have it and which don’t) but customary international law provides, without question, for the right of self-determination for national groups.

Lucien Bouchard’s view that Canada is divisible but the boundaries of Quebec are inviolable is considered a joke.

Tom, it’s certainly considered a joke in English Canada; in Quebec it’s considered to be very much “on the table”, at least as a negotiating position.

All of which puts into perspective the anti-colonialist rhetoric of Scottish nationalists over the years: at the high point of Empire, Britain was led by Scots.

Britain was led by Scottish aristocrats – linked and co-opted via economic and marital ties to English interests. Douglas Haig has about as much in common with Alex Salmond or your typical SNP supporter as a herring does with a parking meter.

Also, incidentally, Beatty was not a Scot – he was born and raised in Cheshire.

Who wasn’t forcibly incorporated? By this standard every town in Italy should be able to declare independence.

The Chris/Jacob distinction isn’t being ignored. But their view implies that if the UK allows Scotland to secede, they can say ‘You have no right to do what you’re doing, and we have the right to stop you, but we’ve decided not to do so because it would cause a lot of bother.’ I just don’t see any reason to accept the first part of that as a claim about moral rights. I can see in principle an argument that international law shouldn’t recognize that moral right, because it would so often be abused. But I don’t see the argument in practice. To repeat, the arguments why allowing a prima facie (and only prima facie) right of secession would have bad effects appeal to conditions that aren’t always present, and in particular aren’t present in the cases we’re mainly discussing, Scotland and Quebec.

Australia having a proportionate number of seats at Westminster and being part of a unified democracy would be a proposal subject to fatal practical objections of a sort Paine, Jefferson, and Franklin first laid out. But it wouldn’t be the same kind of thing as being ruled from the outside by an appointed governor (as Massachusetts was by 1775).

And I think it’s entirely telling that only France has ever really tried that imperial strategy in modern times. Real empires don’t want to see the colonized outvoting the colonizers, so they don’t admit the former to the demos—and so those excluded do have a right to secede.

Furthermore, although it might be morally wrong for Britain to invade, subjugate and annexe Denmark, for example, once it had done so Buchanan would say that it was also wrong for the citizens of British Denmark to agitate for the return of their independence, assuming that the rule of the British Governor wasn’t unusually harsh.

Small number of a minority’s nationalists feel oppressed and want a separate state -> the state starts suppressing potential separatist movement -> more minority’s members feel oppressed and join the movement -> the state steps up the repression -> pretty soon the nationalists have all the remedial grounds they need. All it took to start the second war in Chechnya was a couple of explosions.

We need to distinguish between

(a) Is it generally speaking (on whatever grounds, including prudential ones) a good idea to permit secession when various conditions are satisfied.

and

(b) On what grounds should international law recognize a right of secession.

The Buchanan answer is to (b) and says remedial grounds only.

If Buchanan is correct then the Scots do not have a right to secede according to the conditions that ought to be embodied in international law.

But it does not follow from this that the UK should only permit the Scots to secede if they meet those conditions. It may be the best thing for all concerned that the Scots secede if they want to, it may be highly unwise to try to hang onto people who want to go, etc. etc.

I haven’t read much of this literature, so I don’t know Berna. The consent theory I encountered was in an article of David Gauthier’s.

But yes, I mostly would bite the bullet on smaller referenda, especially in regions contiguous with the seceded-from state. And I think that’s very much the consensus view in Canada outside Quebec, i.e., in the event of Quebec sovereignty the First Nations (and maybe even the west island) get to decide where they go. Lucien Bouchard’s view that Canada is divisible but the boundaries of Quebec are inviolable is considered a joke.

I said ‘mostly’ because I’m not committed to a pure consent view. Maybe there are other conditions a seceding group has to satisfy, e.g. maybe they can’t be seceding just to avoid contributing financially to the poorer parts of the larger state (Slovenia seceding from Yugoslavia?), though there are also difficulties with that condition. And maybe they have to already form some kind of unity, such as that of a nation or other cultural group (and I don’t see what’s so implausible about that). So I don’t have a fully worked out view.

But the Buchanan view in Chris’s original post struck me as way too restrictive. Consent/association has to play some role. If a group that meets whatever the other conditions are (as I think Quebec and Scotland clearly do) chooses to secede, I don’t see any basis for denying their right to do so.

Two practical, and related, problems. Legitimacy and unraveling. Does anyone doubt that Slovenia’s secession precipitated the unraveling of Yugoslavia? Hard to argue with their right to go. Easy to argue it allowed Slobo to have his way in the rump Republic, and thus unleashed the hell that followed. And thus perhaps we should think very carefully about tipping the scale against secession in other circumstances even where we recognize the “right” of secession.

US southern secession was the opposite of Democratic. Deep south “elections” were badly flawed, other southern states basically forced to follow in the “unraveling” pattern. Secession was certainly “about” slavery and intended to protect property rights in slaves, but it was not a slaveholders rebellion—large slaveholders were conservative and (presciently) appalled at the risky proposition of secession. Only relevant “lesson” from the subsequent civil war is might makes right.

OK, imagine a divorce. In most cases it’s not just a bunch people living in one apartment, one of them decides to split – and voila. It would’ve been nice, I admit, but it’s not like that.