Constitutionalizing Secession in Federalized States: A Procedural Approach

This book is a thorough and professional study about secession. Starting from the perspective of contemporary political philosophy, the book explores the relevance of this issue for the theory and practice of federalism, as well as its status under current public international law, and concludes with a comparative constitutional analysis of the subject matter. In the final chapter, it provides a constitutionalized procedure of secession, based on fundamental liberal-democratic values. The book argues that a liberal-democratic response to the secession controversy might consist of the constitutionalization of a right to secession. While a number of recent works in political theory point to the fact that, under certain circumstances, the moral right of a group to secession should be recognized, only a few of them are ready to defend the institutionalization of that right through the instruments of constitutional law. This topical and thought-provoking book is a welcome contribution to the ongoing debate on secession and will be of interest to academics in a variety of disciplines, such as law, history, politics, international relations, philosophy and applied ethics, and to politicians and constitution-drafters.