Many Secessionist Movements, One International System

This chapter focuses on the strategy and tactics of secessionist movements, and the game they play with states and the international community to win their sovereignty. The chapter provides a conceptual theoretical treatment of the sovereignty game. It assesses six identifiable kinds of movements: democratized, indigenous legal, weak combative, strong combative, decolonial, and de facto, through an analysis of all contemporary movements. The chapter brings together three research areas that are usually treated separately: the work on de facto states, the scholarship on secessionist political parties in advanced democracies, and the study of secessionist conflict. Ultimately, the chapter clarifies the behavior of diverse secessionist movements and accurately predicts the tactics they adopt. It focuses on what they do to achieve independence, which is a neglected area of research, and a vital one given that secessionist behavior is destabilizing and sometimes violent.