Secession

Quebec has considerably more autonomy than Scotland does, and despite the Conquest of 1759, can hardly be considered a present victim of injustice. Yet almost everyone in Canada recognizes that the people of Quebec have the democratic right to decide whether or not to remain part of Canada, though Quebec does not have a legal right to secede unilaterally. See the Clarity Act .

Now Segolene Royal, the French Socialist presidential candidate, has stuck her nose into the matter, despite — or perhaps because of — her ignorance of the issue.

No serious injustice? Wake and smell the (Scottish) oil.

Scottish secession, and the break-up of the UK, might have all kinds of desirable consequences, including for democracy and for the effective control of resources by people, especially if Scotland were to stay within the UK.

Chris, can you expand on this point? I for one am not too familiar with the UK federal system. So I’m not sure what it would even mean for Scotland to secede yet stay within the UK. Isn’t that just its current situation — part of the UK yet separate from England? And what sorts of desirable consequences do you think might result?

[Sorry: my fault, that should have read “stay within the EU” and I’ve corrected it now. CB]

I don’t read comment 5, dealing with revenue flow, as a claim of ‘injustice’ sufficient to justify secession. I believe it’s merely a factual claim.
The fact that in the main post you use this as an example that Scots are not ‘victims of…injustice’ does not, I think, mean the commenter meant to extend the point that far. Of course, I could be wrong.

Well there’s certainly no reason to think that the revenues from Iraqi oil should flow to those parts of the Iraqi population with the good fortune to live over the oilfields (Kurds and Shia) and be denied to those with the ill-fortune to live elsewhere (Sunnis).

Why not? I wouldn’t be in favour of such an outcome, but by your logic Iraq might just as well be obliged to share its oil revenues with the Maldive Islands, or any other country that springs to mind. Iraq exists as a creation of the Treaty of Versailles, and was brought into being by forces which no longer exist, under a political dispensation which no longer exists. The people who live there were not consulted. Other countries invented by the same treaty include Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia: obviously the Slovaks enjoy a natural right to their share in the profits of the Budvar brewery.

OK, I’m just playing devil’s advocate here, but the whole discussion avoids the question of why any state should continue to exist for 20 minutes longer than suits the convenience of its inhabitants – obviously the practicalities of large scale map redrawing would be pretty damn inconvenient to many people, and that is an important factor to be considered. But that’s all it is.

But what’s so good about the status quo? Isn’t Buchanan’s position simply a defence of the status quo, however that happens to have arisen? If by some accident of history, two groups of people happen to be part of the same country, let’s call them Czechs and the Slovaks, is he saying that the Slovaks would have had no right to independence if the Czechs were to object out of simple bloody-mindedness?

There is an interesting corrolary – presumably Buchanan would say a country has no right to expel some of its territory either. So the UK is wedded to Gibraltar, come what may?

Chris B: “The last two comments are premised on the proposition that “the Scottish people” has a natural right to the natural resources of Scotland and any revenues accruing to them. It isn’t clear why we should accept such a claim anyway.”

I can see the potential in this argument, if you are claiming that all natural resources should be shared by everyone, presumably by some form of international administrative body. But if you are not proposing this, what possible alternative is there that is more just than that the inhabitants of a certain region should enjoy sovereignty over the resources? Your view has of course served British imperialism well over the years – justifying our interventions in Africa and Asia (welll everywhere actually) to control the resources.

Unless you have any viable, just alternative, I think we ought to stick for the time being to the concept that the people of a region have a natural right to the natural resources of said region.

I don’t know what the answer is, but I’d like to try to make a few points. I think one of Labour’s great mistakes in 1997 was to promise a Scottish Parliament and a Welsh Assembly. These were presented as if the Scots were getting more representation, when what they got was another tier of government, and no extra power – importantly no extra power when it comes to where government supports jobs. The way the Scottish Parliament works – effectively making certain decisions in Scotland so that Westminster MPs with Scottish constituencies don’t (but do legislate for England) – seems essentially unfair and wrong to me. Further, when people say ‘Democratically elected’ they should know that turn out for both the Parliament and the Assembly is woefully low; most voters are pretty indifferent, and the claim of democratic support here seems very tenuous. Lastly there seems to be the assumption that there is an entity called Scotland which is as well defined as the entity called ‘Chris Bertram’ which can secede if it wishes. I really can’t see why the part which secedes shouldn’t start as far south as Hadrian’s Wall or as far north as the Highland Line.

I’m also hugely uncomfortable with the ideas that states have ‘rights’. Individual rights I can understand, but states just seem like containers for large numbers of people, and they aren’t greatly different, in my view, from buses.

That said, if a seceding Scotland became properly nuclear free (in the way that a state can be, and a city like Sheffield can’t), I’d support it and probably move there. If not, then not.

This depends on your viewpoint, I suppose, but since it has just been proved that the RUC was aiding and protecting death squads in Northern Ireland, that seems like a serious injustice for people living in Northern Ireland.

Since the Act of Union was a voluntary joining of the nations, it seems clear to me that one should suppose a right to voluntarily split apart the nations. In Ireland the case is even more strong, since there was nothing voluntary at all about British rule in Ireland.

I can’t help but feel a lot of people (not you Mr. Bertram), have ulterior motives in this debate. It’s pretty clear that Scotland has been ill-served in the past 30 years (expecially in comparison to the Republic of Ireland), and large numbers of leftists in the UK fear Scottish secession because they fear (wrongly in my opinion) that that would mean Tory domination of whatever part of the UK plus England remains.

The American Civil War was always prosecuted by the Union on the basis of the attack by Confederate forces on Union forces at Fort Sumter.

Wny can’t Brittany secede, by the way? It is suffering a continuing injustice by the French states’ refusal to allow public schooling or local government in the Breton language, which almost all other European states allow and is a right supported by the UN. Despite decades of attempts to change these unjust laws, the French government continues to maintain them. (What’s good for the Quebecois goose is good for the Breton gander.)

The Quebec analogy isn’t precisely right either. Quebec fought long and hard, and made enough of a pain in the ass of itself, that most Canadians wouldn’t even contemplate the prospect of trying to keep in Canada a Quebec that had voted to pull out. People in Canada generally see that a hostile separation would be far worse than a relatively amicable one, so if Quebec did try to leave Canada, the negotiations would be over price, not “territorial integrity”. And, the current separatist movement campaigns for an independent Quebec that remains within a customs and currency union with Canada, that has freedom of movement with Canada, that retains a common regulatory law, maybe even a common citizenship… at which point one has to ask what the point of seceding is.

If Scotland contemplates independence on those kinds of terms, I have to ask what the point is there too.

As a general theory, I ask whether a separatist movement will genuinely do something different from the state it’s withdrawing from, and what real needs a separate state is expected to meet, and whether or not those needs might be equally accommodated within the existing framework. The Kosovo Albanians might well have a case that within Serbia, their legitimate need for a responsible state can never be met. The Palestinians, definitely. Although in both cases, there’s a cost to residents whose needs are better met by the existing arrangements. For Quebec and Scotland: neither foresees establishing a state with meaningfully different policies from the current one, nor is it clear that whatever legitimate gripes they have can’t be met on other terms.

But the idea that people should have their own country merely because they identify themselves differently is just dumb.

The last two comments are premised on the proposition that “the Scottish people” has a natural right to the natural resources of Scotland and any revenues accruing to them. It isn’t clear why we should accept such a claim anyway.

This is such a bizarre statement that I have difficulty coming up with a response. Do you actually mean that, in the event of Scottish independence, the government of Scotland – unlike every other nation state in the world – should not be allowed to dictate what happens to the natural resources within its borders, territorial waters and EEZ seas? Are there any other countries you think should be covered by this strange rule? Iraq, for example?

I’m course if those arguing in favor of a right to secede here think that any territorial bit where a (bare?) majority supports this has such a right. If the libertarians in the US were successful with their plan of taking over New Hampshire would they then have this right? If a bar majority in New York City wanted to become independent (tired of subsidizing the rest of the state and the country, say) would it? These seem like highly unlikely cases to me for several reasons, but they would be supported by the arguments given above so far. (The Quebec case is instructive, too, since as mentioned above most there don’t really want a seperate country- they want all the benefits of being part of Canada but many fewer burdens. It’s not at all clear why the rest of Canada should go along with that, and when reality is presented a much smaller group of people in Quebec support independence.)

Ad 19, as indeed is implicit in 22, the Act of Union was not an Act of Parliament, but a treaty. That makes a difference. I’m really curious about this point on natural resources disputed between Chris Bertram and ajay. It needs to be remembered that this is thrown into the debate so often precisely because Scotland has to put up with the argument that it is a “subsidy junkie”. I don’t understand how one can distinguish between the question of Scotland as an independent state having territorial jurisdiction over its own natural resources and whether ““the Scottish people” have some natural entitlement to the benefits that might flow to them if state boundaries were different”. Is this some sort of natural law argument?

No one seems to oppose the right to secede by mutual consent. If the Czechs and the Slovaks want to go their own way, is there a “secession theory” reason to oppose it anyway? (Maybe there is. I don’t know, but it’s not self-evident.)

If not, then I think “Right to Secession” question has it backwards. Where does the “Right to Prevent Secession” come from? If you want to Secede in order to commit grave injustices against a minority that seems like a good reason to oppose it. If you want to Secede for any non-frivolous reason, why should I have a right to stop you?

And another point: doesn’t this mean that a well-ruled colony (one not suffering any “serious injustice”) has no right to declare independence, even if its entire population demands it?

For example, one group, let’s call them “Flemings”, who are rich, healthy and fully employed might want independence so as to escape having to pay the welfare and health bills of the poor, sick and unemployed “Walloons”.

There are Flemings, and then there are Flemings, though. One might think that there’s a distinction between Killington, VT wanting to “secede” and move to low-tax New Hampshire, and the state of New Jersey not being able to help its own poor people because only 55 cents of every dollar it pays coming back from the federal government, so that the money can flow to Mississippi and Alaska.

Killian, VT

Jersey Taxes

So if Scotland were to secede on economic grounds, what stops some historical minor kingdom/barony on the east coast of Scotland that would happen to get a lions share of the oil reserves because of its geographic location from then following the same principal? I am sure you can repeat the same for any similarly localised valuable resources, especially in Europe were you have a colourful history of political ownership of almost every blade of grass that could justify hundreds of different ways of chopping up any geographic area.

I pretty much agree with Chris Bertram here. This oil thing seems to stem from a argument about whether Scotland receives subsidies or not. Setting the question of the Scottish people’s rights to stuff found in the sea, if we are looking at the matter as a question of different regions within a single state, its pretty clear that tax revenue from actual labor should count for a lot more than revenue from easy profit on a substance pulled out of the ground when we are talking about a redistribution of wealth.

“we should be reluctant to endorse a strong finders-keepers principle” – I repeat my question – what is the alternative? One alternative is what we actually have, which is that the strongest power comes in and takes over. The fairness of this doesn’t merit comment. Another conceivable alternative would be that all resources are administered internationally for all humanity, which might work, though it would be central planning on a huge scale, which we capitalists are supposed to be against. Therefore, as far as I can see, we are left with the least worst principle that those who live in the region should have sovereignty over the resource. If there is an alternative I haven’t thought of, I’d like to hear it.

So if Scotland were to secede on economic grounds, what stops some historical minor kingdom/barony on the east coast of Scotland that would happen to get a lions share of the oil reserves because of its geographic location from then following the same principle?

The ones to watch here are the shetland islands.
They’ve traditionally been the area most hostile to scottish independence & many(most?) shetlanders do not regard themselves as scottish. And why should they use their oil revenue to subsidize the scots ?

I don’t think you can upheld a right to secede, inherent in the people of an area, in the face of the Scotland/Orkney problem.

How can Scotland have the right to secede from the UK, and the Orkneys have the right to secede from Scotland and remain within the UK? That seems pretty close to a proof by contradiction. You can’t uphold a right for Scotland to secede without denying just that right to the Orkneys. So how can there be a right to secede?

That’s why, contra leederick, it is entirely reasonable to allow Scotland to secede from the UK but not to allow the Orkneys to secede from Scotland, if we think Scotland is a demos in the relevant sense and the Orkneys aren’t. Of course maybe the Orkneys do have enough of a sense of forming a distinct community to justify a right to secession there, too — I really have no idea. But it’s an empirical question, not one that can be answered by first principls.

Let’s add a bit more context. Labour supporters in England are at the moment extremely worried that Scotland will vote for independence. It would mean 1) no in-built majority of Labour MPs at Westminster 2) (probably) Scotland’s remaining oil money funding an economy independent of Westminster 3) (probably) the removal of Britain’s only naval nuclear base (at Faslane).

Much as I don’t want them to secede, I see nothing disreputable in their motivation.

From the perspective of first nations inside Quebec territory, the cultural and political vision of the separatists often looks a bit worse than “disreputable.”

One argument for allowing secession that doesn’t seem to have been mentioned is that if you make it clear to people that, subject to some sort of process (possibly involving a super majority), you will let them go on their way, you do make it easier to channel separatist urges towards peaceful means. I’m sure the decline in IRA violence has much to do with the IRA being convinced that, should Ulster vote to leave the UK and join Ireland, it would be free to do so (this has been UK Govt policy for at least 30 years but the IRA was not convinced of it – nor of course for a long time did they accept the right of Ulster rather than Ireland to decide its fate). Compare this with, say, Kashmir, where the Indian Government’s absolute refusal to consider the possibility of it leaving the Indian Union means that a Kashmiri nationalist either has to make the best of being Indian or take up the guns. There is no middle ground.

An added “benefit” (if you can call it such – my impression is that not a few Canadians and English would like nothing better than to be shot of the Quebecois/Scots) is that the need to deal with practical issues such as how you mobilise a democratic majority and then what you do with your independence when you’ve got there may constrain separatist ardour in a way that being a romantic freedom fighter does not.

@55,
The South African government’s promotion of independent bantustans might be a practical precedent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transkei). Did not work and I doubt if there’s any way of justifying it either.

re comment 63 by djw: the terms British and English are not synonomous. While the English have over the years done many bad things to the Scots, and vice versa, both nations are British, being inhabitants of the island of Britain.

Also, if one is taking the long term historical view, many of the more notable bad things that have happened in Scotland, such as the Highland Clearances and the brutal 17th century wars of religion were done by Scots to Scots (not without willing accomplices in the various central governments, of course). For some other things, such as the aggression of Edwards I-III, Henry VIII, Cromwell etc the blame is firmly south of the border.

But given that a nation-state consists of a bunch of people living on a bit of land, what solution do you propose?

If you are looking for real-life examples, ajay, you can have a look at the European Union. Some natural resources are under the joint administration of the EU, even though they can be found within the borders of one particular nation-state. That way (and it is only one of plenty I can think of), the “injustice hat France has vast areas of sunny, fertile soil and Norway (make that Sweden for my purpose) is largely barren mountains and snow” can be mitigated. It is conceivable that some fossil resources will be under the joint administration of most of the world within my lifetime. On the more general subject, I wouldn’t want to speak for Chris, but I seem to remember from previous posts of his that he looked at the statu quo with great defiance.

A question for Tom Hurka, if he’s still reading.

I seem to recall from Berna’s original consent theory of secession (which resembles what you’re putting forward, nu?) that he was willing to bite the bullet on smaller and smaller referenda. The majority of any area well-defined enough to be able to hold a vote could make a decision, subject only to technical constraints about minimum state size– constraints that don’t hold if they’re border regions opting to remain with the original state rather than would-be microstates.

Do you hold with that, too? The day after the Quebec or Scottish referendum, some substantial number of border towns or border regions (and First Nations Quebec is a border region– it’s contiguous with the ROC) organize new referenda and vote to stay with the original state.

Do they have a right to do so? Does the seceding territory have a right to stop them? Is the case at all asymmetrical from the initial secession?

My suspicion is always that consent theories that don’t bite this bullet are piggybacking on an unarticulated and implausible nationalist account– it’s *nations* that have to consent to live together– but getting rhetorical traction from sounding like principles of individual consent. The pragmatic shrug– “we should live according to consent insofar as possible, but there has to be a limit”– if it happens that the shrug always comes at the preexisting provincial-cum-‘national’ border.

A plug: the best recent treatment of this literature and these questions is Wayne Norman, _Negotiating Nationalism_, Oxford 2006.

@65
The question of what justified secession in the case of the former Yugoslavia is certainly difficult if you fail, as lurker does, to take into consideration the country’s own (1974) federal constitution. The latter recognized a right of secession to the federation’s six republics (rather than to the nations upon which five of the six republics were based,the exception being Bosnia), on the grounds that the republics – including Bosnia, with its three main national groups – had voluntarily joined the federation in 1943-5 in an act of self-determination. When the EU’s Badinter Commission recognized in 1991-2 that the Yugoslav federation was in the process of dissolution (a process initiated and led, incidentally, by Serbia), it took the obvious course of accepting the right of secession of the six republics. Pace lurker, a two-thirds majority of Bosnians did express their clear support for independence, in a democratic popular referendum, with citizens (not member of national groups as such) voting.

All this is not really difficult at all. The only serious problem relates to the status of the two ‘autonomous provinces’ of Kosovo and Vojvodina, formally within the republic of Serbia, which had since 1974 enjoyed virtually equal status with the six republics but whose autonomy had effectively been ended forcibly by the Milosevic regime in 1989-90. It would have been open to the Badinter Commission (or Western governments) to decide in 1991-2 to recognize a right of secession to eight federal units rather than just to six republics, thus sparing a lot of subsequent grief.

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.

How silly of the Scots to resent being ruled by the English in 2007 when, a mere ninety years previously, there were a few Scots in positions of power!

More relevant might be the fact that it is apparently entirely acceptable at present to suggest that Scots should be banned from being prime minister or from many of the other offices of state.

Incidentally, on the “right to secede”: does this mean that, given the Irish could vote for Westminster MPs, Ireland had no right to secede from the United Kingdom?

May I add another question and say, then, that if Scotland wish to secede and the Orkneys didn’t, what actually is so ridiculous about allowing exactly that? Geography? There are many territories in the world that are split; the US and Alaska; Angola and Cabinda Province (not a terribly good example but it exists).

The Scots position on “Scots occupy many of the key ministerial positions now” is that ultimately that doesn’t matter. Scotland is still poor, unhealthy, and saddled with nuclear weapons the vast majority of Scotland (something like 70%) doesn’t want.

The argument is that Scotland becoming independent would mean that it would pursue policies that it is unable to pursue now because the English prevent them. Like joining the euro, not funding a large military, providing better social services, not engaging in prememptive wars, etc.

The comparison with Ireland and other small countries in the EU is instructive – even if Scotland only behaved like the mean of this group, it would still be significantly better than it is doing now.

It’s also interesting that the SNP has many ethnic minority members and makes a real effort to reach out to immigrants. In fact, the SNP wants a much less punitive approach to immigration than the governing Labor party and wants _more_ immigration to Scotland.

At least in this thread, I haven’t seen any real response to the Scottish argument. I’m not sure I agree with all of it, but at least some of it is pretty compelling. It seems to me that a lot of the Scottish independence movement is driven by a desire for a better life, and that needs to be addressed by politicians in the UK if they want to prevent it.

One could sum up the Scottish problem like Winston Churchill did of the Irish and Home Rule:

“We think that the Scots have too much power in this country and not enough in their own.”

TheIrie, but right now they are elements of one single entity. And it’s not just a collection of parts, the parts joined together created something that’s in a different category of things.

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.

Jacob:

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.

I agree entirely with Chris’ last comment, with the addendum that I think Buchanan’s rejection of the primary-right-that-should-be-recognized-by-international-law piggybacks on a rejection of primary-right-as-a-matter-of-moral-principle (and that I endorse both rejections). I take a relatively permissive stance toward what secessions it would be best overall for outsiders not to stand in the way of. But that’s not a reason to refrain from denying, over and over again, the premisses of nationalist-secessionists’ arguments.

Ajay, all that’s required for the conclusion not to hold is to say that formal incorporation into the demos– that is, democratic voting rights– is a core part of being treated reasonably justly. And Buchanan says so. That does mean that the overseas French departements have no primary moral right to secede unilaterally– but I don’t find that an obviously false conclusion.

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.

…having been forcibly incorporated into another state is an injustice that justifies secession…

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

The argument is that Scotland becoming independent would mean that it would pursue policies that it is unable to pursue now because the English prevent them. Like joining the euro, not funding a large military, providing better social services, not engaging in prememptive wars, etc.

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…

@99 – the “your own people” bit is plain meaningless, it has no basis in reality.

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.