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13 Can. J. L. & Jurisprudence 207 (2000)
Federalism and Secession: At Home and Abroad

handle is hein.journals/caljp13 and id is 209 raw text is: Federalism and Secession: At Home and Abroad Will Kymlicka The history of ethnic relations in Western democracies contains many examples of injustice, oppression, coercion, discrimination and prejudice. Yet over the past thirty years, Western democracies have developed a number of interesting, and I believe effective, models for accommodating ethnocultural diversity. One of these models involves the use of federal or quasi-federal forms of territorial autonomy to enable self-government for national minorities and indigenous peoples. I believe that these forms of territorial autonomy are in general a success, and contain poten- tial lessons for other countries around the world struggling with issues of minority nationalism. The merits of these models have often been under-estimated, in part because many people measure success by what I believe is an inappropriate criterion: namely, the absence of secessionist mobilization. Many people believe that any reform of the state can only be declared a success if it removes secession from the political agenda, and indeed makes the very idea of secession unthinkable. By this standard, many Western countries which have adopted territorial autonomy are far from successful, since they contain active and influential secessionist movements. However, I believe that this cannot be the standard for evaluating democratic multination states. In this paper, I will try to explain why. I will begin by explaining what I take to be the main outlines of a common Western approach to territorial autonomy (section 1). There are of course many differences amongst the Western nations, but I will try to show that there have been several important areas of con- vergence in recent decades, which can usefully be seen as defining a distinctively Western approach to the issue. I will also argue that the success of this approach may be related, in a complex way, to a particular view about the legitimacy and perhaps even inevitability of secessionist mobilization (section 2). I will then explore some difficulties in trying to apply this model elsewhere in the world (sections 3 and 4). 1. Federal and Quasi-Federal Forms of Autonomy in the West As I said earlier, federal or quasi-federal forms of territorial autonomy have increasingly been adopted in the West as a means of accommodating national minorities. By national minorities, I mean groups that formed complete and func- tioning societies on their historic homeland prior to being incorporated into a larger state. National minorities can be subdivided into two categories: stateless nations and indigenous peoples. Stateless nations are nations which do not currently have a state in which they are a majority-a state literally to call their own-but which may have had such a state in the past, or which may have sought such a state. They find themselves sharing a state with other nations for a variety of reasons. They Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence Vol. XIII, No.2 (July 200 0)

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