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Secession: A Comparative Analytical Framework*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

John R. Wood
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia

Abstract

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Type
Field Analysis/Orientations de la Science Politique
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1981

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References

1 See, for example, University of London Institute of Commonwealth Studies, The Politics of Separatism, Collected Seminar Papers, 19 (1976)Google Scholar; Nafziger, E. Wayne and Richter, William L.,“Biafra and Bangladesh: The Political Economy of Secessionist Conflict,” Journal of Peace Research 13 (1976), 91109CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Esman, Milton J. (ed.), Ethnic Conflict in the Western World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Rowat, Donald C. (ed.), The Referendum and Separation Elsewhere: Implications for Quebec (Ottawa: Department of Political Science, Carleton University, 1978)Google Scholar; and Buchheit, Lee C., Secession: The Legitimacy of Self-Determination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978)Google Scholar.

2 Peter Lyon, “Separatism and Secession in the Malaysian Realm, 1948–65,” University of London Institute of Commonwealth Studies, The Politics of Separatism, 69.

3 Buchheit, Secession, 1–42.

4 W. H. Morris-Jones, “Note to Participants,” Univeisity of London Institute of Commonwealth Studies, The Politics of Separatism, i.

5 Rustow, Dankwart A., A World of Nations: Problems of Political Modernization (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1967), 2124Google Scholar.

6 Other reversals of the political integration process might include partition, Balkanization, absorption into another polity, and mass expulsion or migration under stress.

7 Haas, Ernst, The Uniting of Europe (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1968), 16Google Scholar.

8 It may be argued that, in some instances, so little integrative activity has occurred that loyalties cannot be said to be “withdrawn” because they never developed in the first place. Cases of new but rapidly failing federations (West Indies, Central African, Mali) come to mind. Similarly, in cases where a regional group opts to secede rather than to continue to belong to a state at the time of colonial emancipation (South Moluccans, Nagas, Katangans), it may be that loyalties to a new central regime have never existed. Nevertheless, such cases can be viewed as secessionist in so far as in each a territorially-defined group sought formal withdrawal from a political authority on the basis of a claim to independent sovereign status.

9 For example, Coser, Lewis A., The Functions of Social Conflict (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1956)Google Scholar; Smelser, Neil J., Theory of Collective Behavior (New York: The Free Press, 1962)Google Scholar; or Johnson, Chalmers, Revolutionary Change (Boston: Little, Brown, 1966)Google Scholar. Typically, none of these pre-1970s theoretical works even mentions secession as an instance of social conflict.

10 Merritt, Richard L., “Noncontiguity and Political Integration,” in Rosenau, James N. (ed.), Linkage Politics: Essays on the Convergence of National and International Systems (New York: The Free Press, 1969), 237–72Google Scholar.

11 See, for example, Gras, N. S. B., An Introduction to Economic History (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1922)Google Scholar; Whittlesey, Derwent S., The Earth and the State (New York: Henry Holt, 1939)Google Scholar; or Hartshorne, Richard, “The Functional Approach in Political Geography,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 40 (1950)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Kasperson, Roger E. and Minghi, Julian V.(eds.), The Structure of Political Geography (Chicago: Aldine, 1969), 3449Google Scholar.

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13 Regarding the United States, Hartshome wrote that “no one area ever functioned as a single core, but rather the association of a large number of regions, closely interrelated in an ever-shifting balance, forms the basis for effective unity” (“The Functional Approach in Political Geography,” 42).

14 Lattimore, Owen, “The Periphery as the Locus of Innovation,” meeting of the Political Geography Study Group, International Political Science Association,Paris, 1978Google Scholar (mimeographed)

15 See, for example, Christaller, Walter, Central Places in Southern Germany (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1966)Google Scholar; Soja, Edward W., “A Paradigm for the Geographical Analysis of Political Systems,” in Cox, Kevin R., Reynolds, David R., and Rokkan, Stein (eds.), Locational Approaches to Power and Conflict (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1974), 4371Google Scholar.

16 Kevin R. Cox, “Territorial Organization, Optimal Scale and Conflict,” in Kevin R. Cox et al., Locational Approaches, 131.

17 Ibid., 132.

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22 Wriggins, W. Howard, “Impediments to Unity in New Nations: The Case of Ceylon,American Political Science Review 55 (1961), 316CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jackson, Harold, “The Two Irelands: The Double Minority—a Study of Intergroup Tensions,” Minority Rights Group Report 2 (London: Minority Rights Group, 1972)Google Scholar.

23 Geertz, Clifford, “The Integrative Revolution,” in Geertz, Clifford (ed.), Old Societies and New States: The Quest for Modernity in Asia and Africa (New York: The Free Press, 1963), 117–18Google Scholar; Young, Crawford, The Politics of Cultural Pluralism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976), 2365Google Scholar.

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27 See Gurr, Ted Robert, Why Men Rebel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970)Google Scholar, and Davies, James C., “Towards a Theory of Revolution,” in Davies, James C. (ed.), When Men Revolt and Why: A Reader in Political Violence and Revolution (New York: The Free Press, 1971), 134–47Google Scholar.

28 Davies, 135–36. Compare with Gurr's “progressive deprivation,” in Gurr, Why Men Rebel, 52–56.

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34 See Breton, Albert, “The Economics of Nationalism,” Journal of Political Economy 72 (1964), 376–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Johnson, Harry G., “A Theoretical Model of Economic Nationalism in New and Developing States,” Political Science Quarterly 80 (1965), 169–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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40 Buchheit, Secession, 1–2.

41 See Snyder, Louis L., “Nationalism and the Territorial Imperative,” Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism 3 (1975), 121Google Scholar.

42 Isaacs, Harold R., Idols of the Tribe: Group Identity and Political Change (New York: Harper and Row, 1975)Google Scholar.

43 See, for example, Rustow, Dankwart A., A World of Nations: Problems of Political Modernization (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1967)Google Scholar; Minogue, K. R., Nationalism (Baltimore: Penguin, 1970)Google Scholar; Smith, Anthony D., Theories of Nationalism (London: Duckworth, 1971)Google Scholar, and Nationalism in the Twentieth Century (New York: New York University Press, 1979)Google Scholar.

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47 Birch, “Minority Nationalist Movements,” 337–38.

48 Horowitz, Donald L., “Cultural Movements and Ethnic Change,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 433 (1977), 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Lijphart, Arend, Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 45Google Scholar.

50 Clutterbuck, Richard, Living with Terrorism (London: Faber, 1975)Google Scholar; Wilkinson, Paul, Terrorism and the Liberal State (London: Macmillan, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies, 25–52; Nordlinger, Eric A., Conflict Regulation in Divided Societies (Cambridge: Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, Occasional Paper No. 29, 1972), 2041Google Scholar.

52 Lijphart has recently shown that consociation and federation are overlapping concepts and argues that federal systems where ethnicity is territorially based can be consociational (Switzerland) or employ certain consociational devices (Canada, India, Nigeria). Although both systems are seen as accommodating the tensions between the segments of a plural society within a single sovereign state, the case is not made that either is proof against secession. Lijphart, Arend, “Consociation and Federation: Conceptual and Empirical Links,” this Journal 12 (1979), 499515Google Scholar.

53 Esman, Ethnic Conflict in the Western World, 389.

54 In a study not of secession but of general systemic change, Flanagan includes as accelerators economic shocks (inflation, depression, natural disasters), policy outputs such as government blunders, performance failures, repressive actions, expropriations, or executions, and other dramatic events, such as assassinations, riots, or defeats in foreign wars. Flanagan, Scott C., “Models and Methods of Analysis,” in Almond, Gabriel A., Flanagan, Scott C. and Mundt, Robert J. (eds.), Crisis, Choice and Change: Historical Studies of Political Development (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 65Google Scholar.

55 Young, The Politics of Cultural Pluralism, 460.

56 See, for example, Holsti, Ole R., “Perceptions of Time, Perceptions of Alternatives, and Patterns of Communication as Factors in Crisis Decision-Making,” Peace Research Society 3 (1965), 79120Google Scholar; and George, Alexander L., “The Operational Code: A Neglected Approach to the Study of Political Leaders and Decision-Making,” International Studies Quarterly 13 (1969), 190222CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 For an expanded discussion, see Enloe, Cynthia H., Ethnic Soldiers: Stale Security in a Divided Society (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980)Google Scholar.

58 See, for example, Rosenau, James N., International Aspects of Civil Strife (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Neuman, Stephanie G. (ed.), Small States and Segmented Societies: National Political Integration in a Global Environment (New York: Praeger, 1976)Google Scholar; and Suhrke, Astri and Noble, Lela Gamer(eds.), Ethnic Conflict in International Relations (New York: Praeger, 1977)Google Scholar.

59 Deutsch, Karl W., “External Involvement in Internal War,” in Eckstein, Harry(ed.), Internal War: Problems and Approaches (New York: The Free Press, 1964), 101–02Google Scholar.

60 Pearson, Frederic S., “Foreign Military Interventions and Domestic Disputes,” International Studies Quarterly 8 (1974), 259–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 There are, as well, a few cases of bet-hedging where foreign governments lend aid in various forms to both sides in a secessionist struggle, as France did during the Nigerian civil war. See Stremlau, John J., The International Politics of the Nigerian Civil War, 1967–1970 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 224–44. Foreign governments and other international actors may also attempt to mediate a secessionist dispute, as in the case of the British government's and the Organization of African Unity's attempts to mediate the Nigerian-Biafran struggleGoogle Scholar.

62 Buchheit, Secession, 216–49.