The Limits of the Principle of Self-Determination

                MR Albert[pic 1]

        albertdu93@hotmail.fr                        Prof. J. Zeloum

Modern normative political theory

Political Essay: The limits of the principle of self-determination

« The independence of a country is not made through the presence of a few strong men at its head but because the people want it” according to Abla Farhoud, Lebanese writer. It is a simple quote but it asks however a lot of questions in the matter of independence. What does it mean to be independent? How can the independence of a country or a region be achieved? Moreover and especially is the will of the people really in the center of such a process of independence? If not what else is necessary? The question of the independence of a country will be the central question of this essay. It will be associated with the case of Catalonia, big region of Spain that claims its independence for some time now. Theoretically speaking, there are a lot of authors who have been struggling with that issue, economists, as long as politicians or even philosophers. The question of independence is an old one and can be associated to the question of the freedom of nations. In order to understand the case that interests me the most, I will focus my essay in the first part to the analysis of the principle of the right of the nations to self-determination as long with the theories that lies behind it. In a second part I will try to expose the limits of such a concept, theoretically but also empirically with the case of Catalonia.

In this first part, I will try to expose as clearly as possible the concept of self-determination of the nations as long with the concept of the normative significance of territorial boundaries. The second one will be analyzed through the article Ayelet Banai “Political Self-Determination and the normative Significance of Territorial Boundaries”.

First of all, before I expose the theories of Ayelet Banai about the normative significance of boundaries, there is one concept that needs to be further explained. The question of self-determination of the people is indeed very important when the independence of nations is at stake. So what it exactly the right, if it is indeed a right? This right of the nations to self-determination is a right of international right according to which every nation possesses the free and sovereign right to decide what shape its government will take independently from foreign influence. This right was proclaimed for the first time during World War I and then affirmed after Word War II in the United Nation Charter in 1945. In that Charter the article 1(2) affirms that it is a purpose of the organization to “develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self determination of peoples...” And according to article 1(1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1976), “all peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of this right, they freely determine their political status, and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.” Of course this right is open to interpretation due to his lack of precision in the terms used. For instance “peoples” can be understand a lot of different ways. That is why it can be summoned or not according to the situation and the country or nation that tries to invoke it. I will not go further in the explanation of that right wright now and it will further analyzed later but it had to be mention in this first part in order to understand what is at stake here, that is to say the freedom to choose its government in a nation. But a nation is not defined uniquely by its political shape, indeed, some other phenomenon occur; what makes a country if not its territorial boundaries?

The question of the importance of territorial boundaries is a central one in the article “Political Self-Determination and the Normative Significance of Territorial Boundaries” written by Ayelet Banai. One of the big questions raised here is to determine whether or not those boundaries “should play a role in defining the scope, content or justification of principles of justice”. First of all it is important to point out that the author uses tree different interpretations of self-definition: a political one, a national one and a democratic one. In each one the justification is different and thus the normative claim is also different. Indeed the political claim is presented “as a claim by a group with a shared political identity to establish (or maintain) separate political institutions with jurisdictions over identifiable territory”, while the national claims takes its meaning in the shared nationality of the peoples and the democratic one follows the idea that the normative claim takes its justification from the value of democracy. Every one of these logics can be followed, but the political significance will be preferred in order to answer to pre quoted question. The boundaries are been given here a territorial meaning: they are “delineating units of territorial jurisdiction”. Questions of distributive justice, fair reciprocity, or autonomy are inclined to determine that boundaries possess constitutive power in the scope of the principle of justice. Therefore it shows that boundaries do play a role in the process of self-determination, especially with the political interpretation although it would work with the two other interpretations as well. But the definition used quoted before is strictly territorial which can be misleading.

If it has been shown that the territorial boundaries do play a role in the process of determination of the independence of a country, it is not clear what involves the right to self-determination of the nations. The theory previously exposed cares to see boundaries as units of territorial’s determination.

It is possible to apply that theory to an empirical example. Countries that have been created around nations after the decolonization are a good example in order to illustrate the role and the significance of boundaries. Indeed in those countries, they was usually a unite will of independence that helped build a political identity. After the colonization, the peoples of the colonized countries unite themselves against the settlers and build countries in a certain way but with pre-existent boundaries. Of course in some countries this led to a political unbalance, but that is another topic. The point is that yes territorials boundaries are capital in order to build a country and thus gain its independence. In this context one can ask: what about the secession theory? The question of boundaries and self-determination takes from my point of view another meaning when the subject at hand is not countries with a nation and some boundaries that are trying to gain their independence but specials regions which are a part of a bigger territorial unit and attached to a central authority. If the concept of self-determination were to be analyzed under that scope, the terminology of the used words would be more important. Indeed if according to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1976), “all peoples have the right of self-determination”, who are these peoples? What makes an entity, a group, an organization or even a nation for that matter entitled to such a right?  Certainly that article does not concern individuals and some argue that minorities are also rejected by this right like Hurst Hannum in “The Right of Self-Determination in the Twenty-First Century”. The problem that one could raise is that the lack of terminology has been exploited by minorities and is being invoked every time a group of people claims more independence. Under the name of a righteous right, parts of countries ask for more independence and detachment from the central authority especially in the late twentieth century and the twenty-first century. Scotland and Catalonia are two very speaking example because of their omnipresence in the currents news.