Secession and Civil War

Abstract

For the past two centuries, state-breaking has been the primary method of statemaking around the world. More than half the states currently represented at the United Nations emerged from the wreckage of colonial empires, the collapse of multinational federations, or the fission of existing states. The rate of state birth accelerated in the decades after the Second World War; the incidence of state death, whether through conquest, occupation, confederation, or dissolution, declined in the same period.1 Whenever a new state was recognized as legitimately occupying territory formerly claimed by another state, a process of secession could be said to have reached its successful conclusion.2 Where once 51 states had been (in 1945), 192 would be (by 2010). This near-quadrupling of the number of acknowledged states seemingly vindicated the principle of self-determination and indicated the international community’s endorsement of secession as the major means to achieve that goal. Yet in the last sixty years there have been more attempted secessions than there were accessions to the United Nations. Moreover, at least until the past decade, only a minority even of successful secessions has been peaceful.