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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2010
It is nearly ten years since Quebec held its referendum on Sovereignty Association and time, perhaps, for a retrospective. There were winners and losers in 1980, but the real winner may have been the idea that sovereignty may be established democratically. Governments, of course, are quick to agree that people have the right to determine their sovereignty democratically—so long as this takes place in the State of Nature invented by Hobbes for just such august occasions. Only thrice to my knowledge, however, have governments actually allowed anything even remotely close to a social contract, once in Norway in 1905, once in Wales in 1979 and again in Quebec in 1980.
1 Goldstick, D., “The National Right to Self-Determination”, in French, S. G., ed., Confederation: Philosophers Look at Canadian Confederation (Montreal: Canadian Philosophical Association, 1979), 70.Google Scholar
2 It is possible to argue against this position by urging war as, for example, Fanon does in the colonial situation, but from within the democratic tradition I should think it very difficult to escape the conclusion.
3 Copp, D., “Do Nations Have the Right of Self-Determination”, in French, Confederation, 86.Google Scholar
4 Ibid., 86.
5 Ibid.
6 Taylor, , “Atomism”, Philosophy and the Human Sciences, Philosophical Papers, Vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 187–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
