Secessions within federations, that is, independence from the existing constituent unit but not from the federation have occurred and demands for new constituent states continue. Yet to date, liberal political theory on secession has only considered external secession; it is restricted to apply to the creation of new states in the global international community. As such they have failed to incorporate the principle of federalism in moral accounts for justifying secession. Hence they are inadequate to evaluate whether a specific demand or process for internal secession in liberal federal arrangements is justified. Despite cases of internal secession being few, they raise significant questions for political theory that have not been addressed, should a federation be flexible enough to incorporate new units once it has been established? How should this occur and how can it be justified? In this paper I seek to provide some pointers to these debates by focusing on when internal secessions are morally justified in liberal democratic federal states. I offer an outline moral account based on the liberal principles commonly invoked in existing theory of secession, namely liberty, equality, sovereignty, majority rule and minority rights. And add consideration for federalism. In order to seek to address some of the shortcomings related to the application of ideal accounts to more real accounts, the basis of my account is drawn from the examination of real cases of successful internal secession.
