{"id":179,"date":"2013-12-02T14:21:00","date_gmt":"2013-12-02T14:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.sps.ed.ac.uk\/jwi\/?p=179"},"modified":"2017-10-02T12:04:06","modified_gmt":"2017-10-02T12:04:06","slug":"does-scotland-have-a-right-to-secede","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sps.ed.ac.uk\/jwi\/2013\/12\/02\/does-scotland-have-a-right-to-secede\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Scotland have a right to secede?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Scottish Government<\/p><\/div>\n

What is perhaps most striking about the debate regarding Scottish independence is not what people are saying but what they are ignoring.\u00a0 When one brings the philosophical literature on secession to bear on the public debate one notices that a number of points are being assumed that require defence.\u00a0 In this article, I wish to address a crucial assumption made on both sides, by the No camp as much as the Yes camp, by the UK government as much as the SNP: the assumption that Scotland has a right to unilaterally decide it\u2019s future.<\/p>\n

What gives Scotland a moral right to secede anyway?\u00a0 One plausible view of secession is that an area of a state only has a right to secede if it is suffering serious forms of abuse.\u00a0 Something close to this view is defended by perhaps the most prominent theorist of secession, Allen Buchanan<\/a>.\u00a0 It is also the view invoked in the world\u2019s most famous secessionist document, the US Declaration of Independence.\u00a0 According to the Declaration, \u201cGovernments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes\u201d.\u00a0 Secession can only be justified in light of \u201ca long train of abuses\u201d.\u00a0 It was the long train of abuses that George III had supposedly inflicted against the thirteen colonies that, in the eyes of the Founding Fathers, justified their bid for secession.\u00a0 What \u201clong train of abuses\u201d can the residents of Scotland complain of?<\/p>\n

Alex Salmond might try to construct a list of this sort<\/a>.\u00a0 But what about David Cameron?\u00a0 It was Cameron, recall, who signed the Edinburgh Agreement<\/a> that set the referendum in motion.\u00a0 Cameron clearly does not think that Scotland has suffered a long train of abuses, so why did he sign the agreement?\u00a0 Why did he not adopt the stance taken by the Spanish Prime Minister<\/a>, Mariano Rajoy, in relation to Catalonia and refuse to permit a referendum to take place?<\/p>\n

One obvious response is that the Scottish independence referendum is what democracy demands.\u00a0 The SNP won the 2011 Scottish Parliamentary election. It would have been undemocratic to deny Scottish residents an independence referendum when they had signalled, by voting SNP, that the referendum is something they desired.\u00a0 But if a referendum is to take place, why should only Scottish residents be given a vote?\u00a0 Much has been written on the fact that the 753,286 Scottish people living outside of Scotland will not be able to vote in the referendum<\/a> (while the 366,755 English people living in Scotland will) but little has been written on the arguably more important fact that non-Scottish people living outside of Scotland cannot vote.\u00a0 Why shouldn\u2019t the people of England, Wales and Northern Ireland get a vote as to whether their state is divided?\u00a0 To say that it is not an issue that affects them is simply untrue.\u00a0 It does affect them: militarily<\/a>, economically<\/a> and, for many, emotionally since they regard the union with Scotland as important to their national identity.\u00a0 In short, the democracy argument for secession quickly lands us in what some philosophers have termed the \u201cboundary problem<\/a>\u201d: the fact that before we can decide something democratically we must first decide who belongs to the demos.\u00a0 One candidate solution to the boundary problem, the \u201call-affected-interests principle<\/a>\u201d, would not endorse a Scotland only electorate.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>The Founding Fathers thought that secession could only be justified in light of a “long train of abuses”. What “long train of abuses” can Scotland complain of?<\/p><\/div>\n

Perhaps a better argument for restricting the vote to Scottish residents is that Scotland is a nation and as a nation it has a right to self-determination.\u00a0 Here we encounter the principle of national self-determination over which so much ink, and blood, has already been spilled.\u00a0 I have nothing to say regarding the principle apart from to note one of its obvious drawbacks: its inability to resolve matters when more than one nation claims a portion of territory.\u00a0 Many people, inside and outside of Scotland, believe that there is such a thing as a British nation, not just a British state.\u00a0 (For the state\/nation distinction see\u00a0here<\/a>).\u00a0 Assuming that they are right, does the British nation not have just as much of a right to national self-determination as Scotland?\u00a0 If so, shouldn\u2019t everyone who belongs to the British nation get a vote, not just those in Scotland?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s try another tack.\u00a0 Perhaps, we could view Scotland as some sort of giant club.\u00a0 Ordinarily, people can set up clubs \u2013 golf clubs, debating societies, whiskey-tasting associations etc. – if they so want.\u00a0 And ordinarily it is up to the members of clubs to decide which other clubs they wish to affiliate to.\u00a0 So why can\u2019t Club Scotland decide whether or not it is affiliated to Club UK?\u00a0 Club UK should have no say in the matter.\u00a0 It is not up to umbrella organisations to decide whether or not their affiliates stay affiliated.\u00a0 (Or to use another analogy, invoked <\/span>here<\/a>, one does not, in modern times, need one\u2019s spouse\u2019s consent in order to get a divorce).\u00a0 This \u201cfreedom of association argument\u201d seems to do better than the democracy and national self-determination arguments in justifying the restriction of voting rights to Scottish residents.\u00a0 Unfortunately it also has at least one strange implication.\u00a0 For if any group of people can secede by invoking a right to freedom of association, then there seems no reason why seceding groups must be the size of nations.\u00a0 Edinburgh could declare independence from an independent Scotland.\u00a0 Leith could declare independence from an independent Edinburgh.\u00a0 And so on.\u00a0 In fact, in the Scottish case, this objection from repeated secession has particular resonance since the MSPs for Shetland and Orkney have discussed the possibility of <\/span>seceding from Scotland<\/a>, in the event of Scottish independence. The philosophers who endorse the freedom of association argument are happy to <\/span>embrace the possibility of repeated secession\u00a0(see here<\/a> and here<\/a>), or <\/span>something close to it<\/a>, but most will balk at it.\u00a0 It is clearly not something that the SNP would favour, anymore than the UK government.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Despite mass support for a referendum within Catalonia, Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, has refused to grant one. Photo by Pere prlpz.<\/p><\/div>\n

We remain then at a loss as to how the Scottish independence referendum can be justified.\u00a0 Nevertheless, many people will still maintain that it is justified and that the alternative approach, modelled by Spain, of denying a region a vote on its future, even after it has signalled its desire for one, is mean spirited, if not unjust.\u00a0 Cameron got it right, where Rajoy got it wrong.\u00a0 This certainly was the view taken by my students when we debated the matter in class some weeks ago.\u00a0 And indeed, there does seem to be something to be celebrated in the fact that this referendum is going ahead.\u00a0 In many parts of the world, secessionists are treated as criminals, subject to arrest, torture and other human rights abuses.\u00a0 Secession is granted only after many years of violence and sometimes not even then.\u00a0 When David Cameron met Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa<\/a>, at the Commonwealth summit last month, there was a marked contrast.\u00a0 Rajapaksa presided over a military victory against secessionists; preventing the break up of Sri Lanka and, the UN claims<\/a>, killing thousands of civilians in the process.\u00a0 Cameron is prepared to permit the break up of the UK without a single shot being fired.\u00a0 This contrast too seems to be to Cameron\u2019s credit.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the best that can be said on the subject is something like the following.\u00a0 Where the borders between existing states lie is, in truth, rather arbitrary. \u00a0Today\u2019s world map is largely the product of a history of conflict, colonialism, ethnic cleansing and gunboat diplomacy.\u00a0 In this context, perhaps what we should be looking for is not so much some ideally just principle for refashioning the borders of states, but rather some means by which decisions regarding territory and secession can be made that will keep most people happy or at least minimise violence.\u00a0 Since many seem to believe in the principle that large and distinctive areas, such as Scotland and Catalonia, should be able to unilaterally determine their own futures, then perhaps this is the rule that we should urge states to adopt.\u00a0 But notice that this argument for the \u201clet the disputed area decide\u201d rule is parasitic on people\u2019s belief in that rule; it cannot justify that belief.\u00a0 If there is a deeper argument for why, as a matter of principle, it should be left to Scotland, Catalonia or any other region to decide its future, the argument remains mysterious.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What is perhaps most striking about the debate regarding Scottish independence is not what people are saying but what they are ignoring.\u00a0 When one brings the philosophical literature on secession to bear on the public debate one notices that a number of points are being assumed that require defence.\u00a0 In this article, I wish to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sps.ed.ac.uk\/jwi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sps.ed.ac.uk\/jwi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sps.ed.ac.uk\/jwi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sps.ed.ac.uk\/jwi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/79"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sps.ed.ac.uk\/jwi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sps.ed.ac.uk\/jwi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1028,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sps.ed.ac.uk\/jwi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions\/1028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sps.ed.ac.uk\/jwi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sps.ed.ac.uk\/jwi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sps.ed.ac.uk\/jwi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}