My immediate response to "what about the Confederacy?" is to say that yes, the people of the South had the right to secede in 1861 if they wanted to - but they didn't.
For one, there was a huge Black population - a majority in South Carolina, and at least a large minority elsewhere - who didn't get to vote, and would presumably have opposed secession.
For another, even the white population probably opposed secession in most places. Many secession conventions had a majority of delegates elected as Unionists who eventually voted for secession. I believe Texas was the only state where it was even submitted to referendum. Admittedly, the delegates would've argued that circumstances changed between their election and their vote - but even ignoring the restricted franchise, this casts their democratic legitimacy in severe doubt.
So, I believe it's quite consistent to support secession in theory but oppose the 1861 secession in practice.
Yeah, but it seems possible in principle that, say, all white citizens supported, all black citizens opposed, and blacks were a minority so it passed. I don't think that scenario would be very different, ethically, from what really happened, so I don't want to hang my opposition to what really happened on its differences from that scenario.
Personally, my response is that transaction costs are large enough to warrant enshrining a status quo bias and require a super-majority, which I seriously doubt the confederacy had. (Notably, this requirement would have prevented Brexit from passing, and I doubt Crimea had genuine supermajority support for leaving Ukraine and joining Russia)
I also have strong feelings that there should never be restrictions on emigration - if black slaves had been allowed to freely leave the Confederacy, there wouldn't have been a moral issue with it. Voting with your feet is expensive but a lot better than having no options at all.
I expect that for realpolitik reasons the USA would probably still have gone to war over it even if you satisfy all those conditions, though, since as you said, "international law" is a polite fiction with no enforcement, and that was even more true in the 19th century.
Brexit wasn't really a secession by the standards we use here. UK wasn't even fully integrated in EU when they left - they always kept a foot in the door. I was expecting at least a mention on the Basques or the Irish - much closer to what we're talking about.
Anyways, my take on this is that EU made 90% of secession topics in Europe obsolete. You don't have borders anyways, same currency, (a bit too) unified laws, there is even an EU prosecutor's office now. You secede for ... what exactly?
Which offers a pretty nice framework for judging Russia vs UA. Russia wants a lot less freedoms overall: they're specifically complaining that UA was moving towards the west, entering alliances they dislike and so on. If they just left them alone, there was absolutely nothing stopping them from offering the exact type of trade and military alliances, from lowering border passing costs and so on. Joining EU or even NATO would restrain their options almost too little to count - and brexit has proven there's even a civilized way of exiting.
My standard is "settled will", which is also an arbitrary standard that can be argued about, but suggests a character of a long-term and deep-rooted decision rather than a particular majority standard.
The approach I (formally, at the time) proposed for Scotland's independence is that they hold a referendum on whether to negotiate for terms of independence, and then, having agreed terms or failed to reach agreement, hold a second referendum on whether to accept those terms or declare independence unilaterally. This is in a situation where there are a lot of Scottish people who would like to be independent in principle but are concerned about what it would mean in practical terms, so giving them a clearer view of the practical impacts would make the second referendum a much clearer expression of the settled nature of their will.
Thank you, I was pondering how to deal with this specific issue of transaction costs on one hand and how to settle on an arbitrary number different from 50% on another, and this seems to solve it !
There was a lot of violence in the south by secessionists against southern unionists. I don't think we can say that secession would have won a fair referendum in any state.
If we go all-in on self-determination, doesn't that mean that the Confederacy had the right to secede, but black people in the Confederacy had the right to secede from it in turn?
South Africa thought differently. Now, apartheid was bad, but it was bad in large part because the Bantustans' independence wasn't real (ditto for Palestine).
For example, Norwegians are the people who live in the rugged Atlantic watershed of the Scandinavian mountains, while Swedes are the people who live in the gentle Baltic watershed of that mountain range. This distinction goes back many centuries. In 1905, 99.95% of Norwegians voted for dissolution of their union with Swedes.
That turned out successful for both peoples.
On the other hand, flat plains tend to lead to intermingled ethnicities. Sorting out flat plains can be an ugly business. Modern Poland, for example, is a homogeneous and successful nation-state. But modern Poland is also a creation of the Nazis murdering its Jews and the Soviets ethnic cleansing its Germans. That's not the fault of modern Poles, but it shouldn't be an attractive role model for the rest of the world.
I once found one historical example of where population transfers were done in a reasonably humane, well organized fashion, but I can't remember what it was. Schleswig-Holstein, maybe?
Isn’t this more of a democracy problem than a secession problem? If 60% of an area’s population want to enslave the other 40%, that’s either ok or it’s not. “You can’t do that, but only because you’re currently part of a larger polity” seems like a really weird answer to throw out in response.
It's by no means clear who should get to vote on an independence referendum: the residents of the territory pondering independence or the whole country affected?
For example, David Cameron offered Scotland a vote on independence in which the rest of the UK was to have absolutely no say. It narrowly failed.
On the other hand, in the 2001 referendum on independence from Los Angeles for the San Fernando Valley, a slight majority of Valley Girls and Guys voted for secession (50.8%). BUT the rest of the city voted overwhelmingly (80.5%) to hand on to their tax cow. And under the rules of that election, that defeated secession.
Looking at independence referenda around the world, I'm struck that successful ones tend to enjoy a bandwagon effect with a vast majority voting for secession. For example, to take an archetypal example of a successful secession movement, in 1905 99.95% of Norwegians voted to secede from Sweden.
Are you willing to concede (if the majority support it, as they appear to) that Crimea and the Eastern parts of Ukraine have that same right to secede and join Russia?
And, just to pour gasoline on the flames, if we accept the tenets of Woke that some of us are less sullied and more deserving than others, then it should be pointed out that it's the wealthiest, most elite, most educated fraction of Ukraine that embraces Europe, while it's the poor, the weak, the downtrodden, who choose Russia...
My immediate response to "what about the Confederacy?" is to say that yes, the people of the South had the right to secede in 1861 if they wanted to - but they didn't.
For one, there was a huge Black population - a majority in South Carolina, and at least a large minority elsewhere - who didn't get to vote, and would presumably have opposed secession.
For another, even the white population probably opposed secession in most places. Many secession conventions had a majority of delegates elected as Unionists who eventually voted for secession. I believe Texas was the only state where it was even submitted to referendum. Admittedly, the delegates would've argued that circumstances changed between their election and their vote - but even ignoring the restricted franchise, this casts their democratic legitimacy in severe doubt.
So, I believe it's quite consistent to support secession in theory but oppose the 1861 secession in practice.
Yeah, but it seems possible in principle that, say, all white citizens supported, all black citizens opposed, and blacks were a minority so it passed. I don't think that scenario would be very different, ethically, from what really happened, so I don't want to hang my opposition to what really happened on its differences from that scenario.
Personally, my response is that transaction costs are large enough to warrant enshrining a status quo bias and require a super-majority, which I seriously doubt the confederacy had. (Notably, this requirement would have prevented Brexit from passing, and I doubt Crimea had genuine supermajority support for leaving Ukraine and joining Russia)
I also have strong feelings that there should never be restrictions on emigration - if black slaves had been allowed to freely leave the Confederacy, there wouldn't have been a moral issue with it. Voting with your feet is expensive but a lot better than having no options at all.
I expect that for realpolitik reasons the USA would probably still have gone to war over it even if you satisfy all those conditions, though, since as you said, "international law" is a polite fiction with no enforcement, and that was even more true in the 19th century.
Brexit wasn't really a secession by the standards we use here. UK wasn't even fully integrated in EU when they left - they always kept a foot in the door. I was expecting at least a mention on the Basques or the Irish - much closer to what we're talking about.
Anyways, my take on this is that EU made 90% of secession topics in Europe obsolete. You don't have borders anyways, same currency, (a bit too) unified laws, there is even an EU prosecutor's office now. You secede for ... what exactly?
Which offers a pretty nice framework for judging Russia vs UA. Russia wants a lot less freedoms overall: they're specifically complaining that UA was moving towards the west, entering alliances they dislike and so on. If they just left them alone, there was absolutely nothing stopping them from offering the exact type of trade and military alliances, from lowering border passing costs and so on. Joining EU or even NATO would restrain their options almost too little to count - and brexit has proven there's even a civilized way of exiting.
My standard is "settled will", which is also an arbitrary standard that can be argued about, but suggests a character of a long-term and deep-rooted decision rather than a particular majority standard.
The approach I (formally, at the time) proposed for Scotland's independence is that they hold a referendum on whether to negotiate for terms of independence, and then, having agreed terms or failed to reach agreement, hold a second referendum on whether to accept those terms or declare independence unilaterally. This is in a situation where there are a lot of Scottish people who would like to be independent in principle but are concerned about what it would mean in practical terms, so giving them a clearer view of the practical impacts would make the second referendum a much clearer expression of the settled nature of their will.
Thank you, I was pondering how to deal with this specific issue of transaction costs on one hand and how to settle on an arbitrary number different from 50% on another, and this seems to solve it !
There was a lot of violence in the south by secessionists against southern unionists. I don't think we can say that secession would have won a fair referendum in any state.
If we go all-in on self-determination, doesn't that mean that the Confederacy had the right to secede, but black people in the Confederacy had the right to secede from it in turn?
I don't think secession is a good match for people who are intermixed with other people across an area.
South Africa thought differently. Now, apartheid was bad, but it was bad in large part because the Bantustans' independence wasn't real (ditto for Palestine).
For example, Norwegians are the people who live in the rugged Atlantic watershed of the Scandinavian mountains, while Swedes are the people who live in the gentle Baltic watershed of that mountain range. This distinction goes back many centuries. In 1905, 99.95% of Norwegians voted for dissolution of their union with Swedes.
That turned out successful for both peoples.
On the other hand, flat plains tend to lead to intermingled ethnicities. Sorting out flat plains can be an ugly business. Modern Poland, for example, is a homogeneous and successful nation-state. But modern Poland is also a creation of the Nazis murdering its Jews and the Soviets ethnic cleansing its Germans. That's not the fault of modern Poles, but it shouldn't be an attractive role model for the rest of the world.
Two-way population exchange like between Greece-Turkey and India-Pakistan is plausible though.
True, but they often turn into nightmares.
I once found one historical example of where population transfers were done in a reasonably humane, well organized fashion, but I can't remember what it was. Schleswig-Holstein, maybe?
But sometimes Cyprus happens later. :-(
Isn’t this more of a democracy problem than a secession problem? If 60% of an area’s population want to enslave the other 40%, that’s either ok or it’s not. “You can’t do that, but only because you’re currently part of a larger polity” seems like a really weird answer to throw out in response.
It's by no means clear who should get to vote on an independence referendum: the residents of the territory pondering independence or the whole country affected?
For example, David Cameron offered Scotland a vote on independence in which the rest of the UK was to have absolutely no say. It narrowly failed.
On the other hand, in the 2001 referendum on independence from Los Angeles for the San Fernando Valley, a slight majority of Valley Girls and Guys voted for secession (50.8%). BUT the rest of the city voted overwhelmingly (80.5%) to hand on to their tax cow. And under the rules of that election, that defeated secession.
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/2002/11/13/San-Fernando-Valley-secession-loses/65321037213944/
Looking at independence referenda around the world, I'm struck that successful ones tend to enjoy a bandwagon effect with a vast majority voting for secession. For example, to take an archetypal example of a successful secession movement, in 1905 99.95% of Norwegians voted to secede from Sweden.
South Sudan and Bougainville also had massive support for their succession votes. Above 97% in both cases I believe.
Both countries are extremely poor and South Sudan is a basket case. I support their successions though.
Careful where you are going with this argument...
Are you willing to concede (if the majority support it, as they appear to) that Crimea and the Eastern parts of Ukraine have that same right to secede and join Russia?
And, just to pour gasoline on the flames, if we accept the tenets of Woke that some of us are less sullied and more deserving than others, then it should be pointed out that it's the wealthiest, most elite, most educated fraction of Ukraine that embraces Europe, while it's the poor, the weak, the downtrodden, who choose Russia...
Pffff, that’s nothing on the conclusions being consistent on this leads you to. Consider the following:
Austria/Sudetenland/Danzig circa 1938
Biafra/Tigray/redrawing every border in Africa
Kashmir
Northern Ireland as a patchwork of mono-confessional enclaves
Israeli settlements
An Afrikaner volkstaat
ISIS (in western Iraq and parts of Syria)
Various small American cities seceding as a tourist gimmick