Declarations of Independence in Civil Wars
Keyword(s):
This chapter asks: why, given a rise in secessionism, are secessionists decreasingly likely to issue formal declarations of independence? The main argument of the chapter is that secessionists are especially sensitive to the preferences of the international community, which has expressed strong opposition to unilateral declarations of independence since the founding of the United Nations. The chapter introduces and uses an original dataset on civil wars and three civil war case studies to assess, and ultimately find support for, this claim.