TY - CHAP
T1 - Life and death of states
T2 - Secession as birth and not suicide: De-transcendentalizing a political taboo
AU - I Ninet, Antoni Abat
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 selection and editorial matter, Antoni Abat i Ninet; individual chapters, the contributors.
PY - 2023/1/1
Y1 - 2023/1/1
N2 - Secession (a word from Latin: secessionem – se ‘apart’ and cedere ‘to go’) is an unresolved and polemic political question that flourishes in every process of withdrawal. The lack of a common understanding of the meaning of secession places the epistemic and legal debate in the sphere of legal realism, legal penumbra, and anomie. Legal uncertainty and the cognitive bias of the secessionist phenomenon (understood as a political failure, a disease, and something to avoid) incentivizes most states not to regulate a way out of their political entity. This chapter offers a different perspective on secession, a less pejorative and hostile understanding of the phenomenon which I believe is a necessary previous step to engage a debate on a possible juridification of the ius secessionis. The starting point is the application of a traditional metaphor in political sciences that considers states as persons with life cycles, aiming to inexorably link secession with birth and not death. The chapter follows analyzing from a comparative etymologic exercise the definition of secession and it ends by exploring how the concept is understood today and its potential development in the next years. My proposal aims to break the taboo that surrounds the phenomenon; some of the epic and the drama. This is in order to de-transcendentalize secession without building up a totem that conceives secession as a magic solution for all the political and social tensions of the political entity.
AB - Secession (a word from Latin: secessionem – se ‘apart’ and cedere ‘to go’) is an unresolved and polemic political question that flourishes in every process of withdrawal. The lack of a common understanding of the meaning of secession places the epistemic and legal debate in the sphere of legal realism, legal penumbra, and anomie. Legal uncertainty and the cognitive bias of the secessionist phenomenon (understood as a political failure, a disease, and something to avoid) incentivizes most states not to regulate a way out of their political entity. This chapter offers a different perspective on secession, a less pejorative and hostile understanding of the phenomenon which I believe is a necessary previous step to engage a debate on a possible juridification of the ius secessionis. The starting point is the application of a traditional metaphor in political sciences that considers states as persons with life cycles, aiming to inexorably link secession with birth and not death. The chapter follows analyzing from a comparative etymologic exercise the definition of secession and it ends by exploring how the concept is understood today and its potential development in the next years. My proposal aims to break the taboo that surrounds the phenomenon; some of the epic and the drama. This is in order to de-transcendentalize secession without building up a totem that conceives secession as a magic solution for all the political and social tensions of the political entity.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85169385045&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.4324/9781003311461-3
DO - 10.4324/9781003311461-3
M3 - Chapter
AN - SCOPUS:85169385045
SN - 9781032318073
SP - 19
EP - 33
BT - Constitutional Law and Politics of Secession
PB - Taylor and Francis AS
ER -
