Self-Determination

Self-determination is a highly contentious concept that encompasses a variety of meanings and political claims. Each of these claims is based on the theory that particular population groups possess an inherent right to control their own political institutions. The term has been used in at least three different ways. First, self-determination can refer to the collective right of a defined ethnic, linguistic, cultural, or religious community to create and administer their own state. This is often the foundation for an argument in favor of secession or irredentism, the doctrine that populations should live under the sovereignty of the country to which they are ethnically or culturally related regardless of existing juridical borders. Second, it can refer to the right of a population to decide how they will be governed and who will represent them in government, the bedrock of democratic theory. Finally, the concept of self-determination also represents the claim that all states and societies have the right to determine their own political, economic, and social institutions. In this sense, it is synonymous with the principle of sovereignty and nonintervention, reflecting one of the most important concepts in diplomatic practice and international law. More specifically, the principle of self-determination has been advanced by populations challenging the role of foreign powers in influencing their governments and its political structures. This claim has long been associated with anticolonial resistance movements and, following decolonization, with efforts by popular movements to challenge intervention by foreign powers in their internal affairs.

Although all of these approaches are viewed as paths to liberation, in practice they are often competing doctrines. Because there are often competing claims over who the “self” is in self-determination, the concept has been the source of both civil and international conflict. This occurs on a number of levels.

First, the liberal principle of popular sovereignty de-emphasizes social distinctions within the population as the political foundation of the state. Since all citizens are juridically equal, the principle of democratic decision making gives priority to the will of the majority. On the other hand, national sovereignty is based on the will of the nation and gives priority to the needs of the national community. It has been common over the past century to have competing claims of self-determination based on these differences. Whereas a national community may claim the right to secede or amalgamate to create a new state out of at least some of the territory of existing states, the principle of popular sovereignty holds that the entire population should decide whether to break up the country. Thus, although a plebiscite or referendum would reflect the popular will and likely result in a vote against creating a new sovereignty, the principle of national autonomy would demand that each community be given the right to decide for itself with whom it wishes to associate. Moreover, the principle of territorial integrity as the foundation of the modern nation-state system is inconsistent with secession except in the most extreme circumstances.

Second, what constitutes the national community that can legitimately evoke the principle of self-determination? There is no objective definition of nationality that can be applied in all circumstances. Nationalists have alternatively defined themselves in terms of culture, ethnicity, language, religion, and political association. Thus, since nations are usually self-defined, their composition is subject to contestation and even redefinition. It is therefore not always clear who gets to define what constitutes the community. In the face of competing claims, at least one group's assertion of self-determination will inevitably be denied. Moreover, there is not even agreement around the foundation of nationhood. Some, such as the German romanticists and their followers, argue that nationality is primordial—that is, it reflects the long-standing natural divisions inherent in human societies. Individuals are born into their national communities, and therefore, one's national identity is not a matter of personal choice. Constructivists like Benedict Anderson, on the other hand, argue that nations are imagined communities that reflect mental images of an affinity that its members create rather than any natural grouping based on actual historical or physical properties. This construction of nationality, Ernest Gellner adds, is primarily a product of industrialism and the alienation from the community that it produces.

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