Armed conflict over secession has become the most common type of conflict in the international system since 1980. Jason Sorens's book is an ambitious attempt to explain why secessionist movements occur, why they sometimes turn violent, and what can be done to prevent secessionist rebellion.
Secessionism attempts to build a positive theory of secession based on three factors: identity, interest, and strategy. In practice, this book addresses contexts in which ethno-nationalist identity is already established, and although the author devotes some time to discussing identity, he does not really endeavor to add to the debate over identity creation or the principles of nationalism more broadly.
Instead, the crux of the book's arguments center on defining when it is in the interest of minority groups to seek secession, and how the strategic environment between states and minorities influences both minority group choices and state actions toward them. Sorens makes two central arguments along these lines, which culminate in the quite novel conclusion that states should constitutionalize secession. First, minorities will seek secession when they see net benefits to doing so (and Sorens then elaborates the conditions under which that is likely). Second, the credibility problem inherent in government/minority group interaction (wherein the minority cannot trust the government to favor them in the future) will lead these disputes down the road to armed conflict via the security dilemma.
These two arguments both underpin a relatively radical recommendation that comes out of the study—that governments should create a clear, legal path to secession in order to deter secessionism. Sorens argues that a right to secession (at least informally within a state) will decrease the need for secession by minority groups and lessen the chance we will see it. This argument is rooted in both the literature on the security dilemma and that on political institutions. The author argues that autonomy for minority groups (i.e., institutionalizing their self-government) will only work well when this “exit” option exists. This conclusion is a contribution to the literature on the effects of decentralization (e.g., see Dawn Brancati, Peace by Design: Managing Intrastate Conflict through Decentralization, 2009).
The scope of the book is ambitious, including tests of many hypotheses related to a number of different empirical questions. As such, one of the key difficulties of the work is its relative complexity. Chapter 1 presents a positive theory of secessionism, but the subsequent development of the hypotheses often does not link back clearly to an overarching argument. A central idea underpinning the theoretical story is that minority groups are forward looking and concerned about whether the government will mistreat them in the future. Yet only some of the hypotheses seem explicitly linked to this idea.
The bulk of the evidence provided in the book is quantitative, and the strength of these analyses varies throughout the book. Sorens provides three related analyses of secessionism, one on the level of support for secessionism (Chapter 2), one on support for secessionist parties in advanced democracies (Chapter 3), and one on instances of rebellion (Chapter 4). Much of what we see in these analyses has been found in other studies. The most important finding for Sorens's argument is on quasi-legal secession, which he defines as instances of “governments that have explicitly ruled out military suppression of democratic secession” (p. 7). In such cases, there are lower levels of support for secession and lower risk of rebellion.
The finding on legalizing secession is at odds with the ways in which we assume that governments think about secession, and indeed, how the international community has conceived of a right to secession. Conventional wisdom is that such rights would open the door for the disintegration of states. Sorens suggests the opposite. Yet his analyses as a whole do not support the assertion that legalizing or constitutionalizing secession is a clear path to avoiding conflict. According to the appendix, there are only 12 cases of this happening and in only nine countries (p. 167).
The assessment of the role of autonomy (both economic and political) in democracies (Chapter 3) adds to the debate over accommodating minority groups. Importantly, economic and political self-rule appears to have contrasting effects on support for secessionist parties. Yet the analyses of the effects of autonomy combine a variety of into indices that can be difficult to interpret and that do not allow for an examination of the effects of specific policies.
Moreover, the statistical analyses provide evidence of correlation between permitting secessionist parties (Chapter 2) and quasi-legal secession (Chapter 5), but there is limited exploration of the mechanisms thought to underpin these relationships. The small amount of case study evidence is primarily anecdotal without following a clear methodology that would allow us to better assess the role being played by these factors (see Andrew Bennett and Alexander George, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences, 2005). In particular, the discussion of policy changes related to autonomy (p. 102) provides interesting details on two cases, but not a systematic comparison that allows us to evaluate theoretical mechanisms.
Several additional criticisms can be made. While the strategic aspect of the author's approach is one of its strengths, there is limited attention to the interaction between governments and minority groups as a dynamic process. The quantitative analyses tend to focus on static factors, and importantly, the over-time changes that occur in minorities' orientation toward independence as a viable option are glossed over (see p. 10 for a categorization of minorities based on their goals).
Moreover, there is a theoretical delinking of support for secession and organizing to achieve secession (see Hypothesis 5b). It is argued that banning secessionism will increase latent support for it but decrease mobilization. This is quite difficult to test empirically since latent support is presumably largely unobservable. There is also little attention paid to the ways that mobilization occurs beyond identification of a “collective action problem.” Empirically, nationalist mobilization can come from elites or from the masses, and it would have been nice to see with more clarity how the theory predicts that mobilization will occur under different circumstances.
The role of repression is also largely absent from the considerations of minority groups. If states that commit not to fight wars over secession can make minorities feel more secure, should a commitment not to repress or abuse the group have a similar effect? There is a tacit assumption in the book that the path to security for minority groups lies in legalizing secessions and making institutional accommodations to these groups. This is certainly one potential path, but it would have been nice to see it placed in context with others, whether those be alternative institutional solutions, international guarantees, or commitments to minority and human rights conventions.
All in all, this book raises an important criticism of the conventional wisdom concerning how governments should deal with the potential for secession, and it asks us to think more critically about the link between the desires of minorities and what they might be induced to settle for short of secession. This is a thought-provoking read for anyone interested in secession.
