A New Right to Secession
This chapter describes a right of secession by self-identified communities through plebiscites—a truly self-determined process. This new rule allows communities to identify themselves without reference to preexisting units. It takes the democratic aspects of self-determination seriously, prioritizing them over the diktat of borders. However, the rule is also territorial, since it requires the group to constitute a local majority. It expects political communities to be territorial in nature, just as the current system does. A community's right to define itself and its territory is the legal and moral heart of this new rule; the plebiscite is the engine. The plebiscite is the procedural and political expression of the right—the way the community announces its claim and constitutes itself as a recognizable, legally relevant unit. Indeed, the plebiscite is the mechanism by which a local majority's democratic preference is expressed and recognized.