Nationalism, Referendums and Democracy

Voting on Ethnic Issues and Independence

Matt Qvortrup

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367228835
• eBook ISBN: 9781000044935
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Democracy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This revised and expanded edition analyses the factors conducive to holding independence and secession referendums, to winning these votes and to their status in domestic and international law. Taking into account the votes in Catalonia and Scotland, the book shows that votes on secession and independence are not a passing phenomenon but an important part of international politics.

The book includes an overview of the history of referendums on independence and a summary of the legal issues involved in doing so, as well as a chapter on referendums in unrecognised states and case study chapters exploring referendums in Kosovo, Cyprus, Kurdistan and Somaliland amongst others. By considering the ethical arguments for secession and recognition, the legal norms governing the process, and the positive and political science theory of when would-be states succeed in becoming recognized by the international community, it shows the role of referendums in the process of establishing new states, and, as a corollary, their role (if any) winning international recognition for these states.

This book will be of interest to all scholars and students of political science, law and even philosophy.

PART I

The history of referendums

1

INTRODUCTION: NATIONALISM, REFERENDUMS AND DEMOCRACY

Independence, recognition and voting

Matt Qvortrup

This book is an updated – and slightly changed – version of the book Nationalism, Referendums and Democracy (Qvortrup 2014), which, in turn, grew out of a special issue of the journal Nationalism and Ethnic Politics (Vol. 18, No. 1, March 2012).

A lot of water has passed under the proverbial bridges of independence referendums since then (just think of the votes in Scotland in 2014). Equally, there has been renewed debate about issues pertaining to independence and recognition. These developments made a new edition necessary. Hence, in the present volume, some of the original chapters have merely been substantially updated. This is true for the chapters by Matt Qvortrup, Peter Radan, Dahlia Scheindlin and Erol Kaymak. However, the sad death of our dear colleague Jean Laponce meant that we needed another chapter. Moreover, other contributors to the previous volume elected not to take part of the present volume.

In the light of political developments, it was deemed necessary, not only to focus on more recent referendums, but also to consider the effects of these on policy matters. For this reason, we invited, Mikulas Fabry and Aleksandar Pavković to write about, respectively, recognition and declarations of independence.

The structure of the book is as follows. In the first section, Qvortrup, Radan, Kaymak and Scheindlin discuss different aspects of the use of referendums on independence. Qvortrup presents a historic overview, and Radan considers when these are (and are not) legal. Scheindlin analyses a special subset, namely referendums in phantom-states, whereas Kaymak presents a case study of the developments in Cyprus following the failed referendum on the Annan Peace Plan.

In the second part of the book, Fabry and Pavković analyse and present overviews of the mechanisms by which states have declared their intentions to become independent, and how recognition is (sometimes) achieved.

Before proceeding to the chapters, it is useful to sketch out the context and to outline – albeit briefly – why these issues are more pertinent than ever.

Democracy and nationalism have a difficult relationship. Modern democracy essentially emerged at the same time as nationalism. In the years immediately after the French Revolution, new and old states based themselves on national identities. Democracy – the rule of the people – was always the rule of a particular people: the French in France, the Irish in Ireland and so on.

This nationalist tendency was underlined by the fact that the representative assemblies, rather than having the generic name ‘parliament’, always had a name in the local vernacular. Thus, the Danish Parliament was called Folketinget and its Norwegian equivalent Stortinget – in both cases using the word ‘ting’, the old Viking name for assembly. Likewise, in Ireland the Oireachtas derives from the Gaelic word oireacht, roughly translated ‘deliberative assembly of freemen’. In almost all cases, such as those of the Finnish eduskunta or the Greek Voulí ton Ellínon (literally ‘the Will of the Hellenes’), the newly established democratic bodies’ names made reference to the local people. Implicit in all these cases was the assumption that the demos was identical with the ethnos. The citizens were not merely individuals who resided in the territory of the county in question; they were also individuals who were part of an imagined community formed by people who shared (or believed to share) a common ancestry, culture and language. From the 1830s and onwards, appeals to national ‘belonging’ became a rallying cry for groups who sought their own states. In Italy, for example, the quest for national self-determination (as it would later be called) was associated with espousal of democratic legitimacy. During the Risorigimento, the unification of the previously independent ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Contributors
• PART I The history of referendums
• PART II A theory of self-determination
• PART III Case studies
• Index