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Towards a Theory of Secessionism in Liberal Democracies

This chapter uses the controlled comparison along with the additional cases considered in the previous chapter to sketch a theory of secessionism in liberal democracies. The essence of this theory is that static autonomy stimulates secessionism while dynamic autonomy staves it off. Static autonomy does not adjust to changing circumstances, which pushes members of an internal national community towards independence. In other words, static autonomy generates incentives for supporting secessionism. Differently put, the dissonance between a static institutional order and the evolving socio-political order of the internal national community generates tension, which comes out in the form of secessionism. In contrast, an autonomy that adjusts and/or expands in time keeps pace with processes of construction and expression of national identity, and of definition of national interests, as they unfold in the internal national community. An autonomy that is dynamic means that the institutional order of the internal national community remains congruent with its socio-political order. When citizens of such community expect that their collective autonomy will evolve, incentives to support secession are reduced. The chapter also discusses the sources for static and dynamic autonomy. It explains that static autonomy is more likely in states that have a mononational view of the country or where the internal national community is central to the country’s politics and economy while static autonomy is more probable in states that have a multinational understanding of the country or where the internal national community is marginal from a demographic, economic, and political perspective.