Strategies of Secession and Counter Secession

Whether seen as state-making or state-breaking, the obvious ingredient of secession is politics. The redrawing of political maps requires of decisions taken by those who exercise positions of governance and make choices that affect states and human communities. This chapter examines who gets what, when, and how in a secessionist crisis over territory. The argument unfolds in three parts and examines the strategies of both secessionists and counter-secessionists, distinguishes between negotiated vs unilateral cases of secession and, finally, emphasises the need of international recognition for independent statehood. The paper also argues that the proliferation of states since 1945 can only be understood as a two-level game, where movements in favour of independence (and actors in favour of status quo) compete for support at the domestic level while opposing each other for foreign sympathies and international recognition at the global level.