Democracy and National Pluralism by Ferran Requejo

Author:Ferran Requejo [Requejo, Ferran]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781280068355
Goodreads: 16750198
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2001-08-16T00:00:00+00:00

Similarly, Sunstein argues, ‘in the secession context there are strong reasons for making exit difficult’ (1991, p. 650). Of course, I agree. But, the analogy seems to work directly against Sunstein’s case. Why should the difficulty of secession come from the uncertainties of an unprecedented political stand-off? The great disanalogy between divorce and secession is that the former is within a legal framework – indeed, the idea of divorce, as opposed to mere permanent separation, just is a legal concept – while the latter remains outside of both international law,8 and the domestic constitutional law of the great majority of states today.9 Or to put it another way, international law currently gives states the right to treat their seceding regions the way husbands had a right to treat their ‘disobedient’ wives until well into the twentieth century.10 There is a big difference between making divorce or secession difficult within a legal framework, on the one hand, and allowing the stronger party to decide more or less unilaterally just how difficult it is going to be, on the other. The logical conclusion from the analogy with legalised divorce is that secessionist politics should be brought within the rule of law.

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