Are secessionists making the right arguments for independence?

Abstract

There are roughly 70 secessionist movements around the world, and all of them advance arguments for why they deserve independence. These include restorative rights, remedial rights, primary rights, a history of conflict and functionality‐based arguments. However, no one has conducted a comprehensive analysis to see how these arguments (or grievances) match reality. That is, are secessionists making the right arguments given their context? To answer this question, we utilise a data set of potential secessionist grievances to determine what normative arguments each secessionist movement ought to make given their setting. We conduct a content analysis of the normative appeals/grievances that have actually been made by specific secessionist movements since 2000. We then compare the predicted grievances against the actual grievances and summarise the patterns. The results matched our predictions where restorative rights, remedial rights and functionality‐based arguments are concerned. Our analysis returned a positive and statistically significant relationship. However, we found no evidence that those making conflict‐related arguments were more likely to exist in conflict settings. Interestingly, the findings for primary rights were the opposite of our expectations; it is the secessionists with the most political voice, not the least, that are the keenest to stress primary rights.

Emancipatory Urban Citizenship Regimes in Postpandemic Catalonia, Scotland, and Wales

“…The three cases fluctuate in their independence claims and show clearly different intensity and contexts. It remains to be seen whether these secessionists movements are making the right arguments for independence, as Griffiths and Waters pointed out in their recent article (Griffiths and Waters 2022). Again, the aim of this article is shedding light on the emancipatory urban dimension rather than focusing on the effectiveness of such secessionist claims.…”

“…Despite the fact that the 'right to decide' does not represent a de facto legislative corpus, actually even being highly contested by unionist positions (at least in Spain) who refer to it as an invention (Hayward 2022;Keating 2021c), this article sheds light on the claim that has been broadly claimed by Western secessionist civil society movements and deeply analyzed in academic rigorous events and debates (Calzada 2014;Crameri 2015;Davidson 2016;Griffiths and Waters 2022;Sanjaume-Calvet et al 2022).…”