A procedural model of constitutionalized secession revisited

Abstract

In a 2007 monograph I have provided argumentation in favor of a procedural model of the constitutionalization of secession, with two qualifications: (1) I have confined myself to federalized states, insofar as it is empirically confirmed that they are the most common candidates for secession politics; and (2) I have limited my argument to those polities that pass the threshold of ‘ the minimal liberal-democratic setting requirement. ’ As argued by Buchanan, any theoretical proposal aiming at moral reform – and my account had such aspirations – should avoid the pitfall of ‘ futile utopianism. ’ At the moment of writing the monograph, there was not enough empirical evidence for assessing whether it had managed to succeed in that respect. However, almost 15 years after the book publication, during which a number of events and processes falling within the ambit of secessionist politics have occurred in different places, the major tenets of my theoretical proposal can be more credibly tested. I will try to show that my theoretical account fares well in light of the aforementioned events. In particular, I will claim that: (a) despite being an exceptional case of the constitutionalization of secession, the Ethiopian case vindicates why this clause can perform its constitutional function only in a minimal liberal-democratic setting; (b) the Spanish central state’s resistance towards any form of the constitutionalization of secession of its regions – notably Catalonia – demonstrates that in the absence of the exit option the protracted secessionist conflict can in the long term create political instability and even lead to the impasse of ungovernability; (c) the Scottish referendum on independence highlighted all the virtues of the proposed procedural model, in particular its promotion of some of the most important values of liberal-democratic constitutionalism – Rule of Law, Extension of Democratic Rights, and Peace among Communities – as well as its superiority over any substantive model of constitutionalized secession; and (d) the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, in contrast, has shown all the deficiencies of the under-regulated procedural model of (quasi)constitutionalized secession.