Three Questions about National Secession

Abstract

This chapter frames the central question: How and under what conditions do national-secession projects become significant campaigns by getting on the global agenda, give rise to intractable disputes with their central governments over independence, and sustain protracted intense struggles? It then introduces the programmatic analytic approach that focuses on the strategy of national-secession campaigns to coordinate their imagined nations around the common goal of independence. Too weak to achieve their goal of independence through a contest of arms with their central governments, most national-secession campaigns focus their efforts on propagation of their programs so as to await opportunities when the international community imposes independence on the central government or when the central government collapses.