E Uno Plures: Secession as a Response to Constitutional Polarization

Abstract

Could voluntary or negotiated secession or separation be a solution to the problems of maintaining a single government for a highly polarized polity? Negotiated secession would convert political negotiations over the terms of domestic law into negotiations over the terms of international treaties regulating relations between separate nations. The existence of bilateral and multilateral treaties across a range of topics reduces the costs of individual negotiations because such treaties offer “off-the-shelf” models. Tradeoffs across topics can provide protections for the “minorities within minorities” problems historically associated with secession and separation. The overall model can be described as one in which the parties exchange conditions for concessions. In the end, outcomes will result from relative bargaining power and the related question of the intensity with which the polarized entities hold their views on the list of items on the policy agenda. This is not dramatically different from how outcomes result from bargaining within the polarized polity, with the important exception that secession or separation changes the default outcome from policy paralysis to pursuit of distinct policies within the separated entities.