Abstract
The philosophical debate on secession has hitherto revolved primarily around the question of self-determination rather than that of distributive justice. Normative theorists of secession have approached the question of secession mostly in terms of the right that the secessionist group has to secede. Much less attention has been paid to the extent and the nature of obligations or duties that the seceding group might have toward the group it is leaving behind. At best, secession theorists have introduced clauses to the effect that secession should not undermine the remainder state’s viability nor violate prior arrangements of reciprocal cooperation. While these clauses certainly reflect a certain concern for distributive justice, I argue that they are insufficient in two respects: (i) they are problematically minimal in what they require, and (ii) the justification given for these clauses accounts only for part of the normative picture. In this paper, I address these two shortcomings by arguing that (i) the seceding group might have significant duties of distributive justice toward the remainder group, and that (ii) these duties are associative in nature and stem from a concern to secure non-domination within the pre-secession polity. What is gained from my non-domination account, then, is that it is analytically more comprehensive and normatively more accurate. In arguing for claims (i) and (ii), the paper contributes both to the debate on secession as well as to the conceptualization of associative duties and of non-domination.
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Notes
On November 9, 2014. Madrid has systematically rejected Catalonia’s attempts to hold an official referendum on independence, declaring it unconstitutional.
The results of the 1995 referendum on the independence of Quebec were 49 % yes and 51 % no.
This economic claim is consistently very clearly articulated in the cases of Catalonia, Flanders, and Padania, and sometimes to some extent in the case of Scotland as well.
Since they seceded respectively from the Congo in 1960 and from Nigeria in 1967, Katanga and Biafra have been reincorporated into these states (in 1963 and in 1970, respectively).
One exception is Ypi et al. (2009), who have addressed the question of associative duties as it arises in the context of former colonial ties. A related exception is Moore (2015), who likewise suggests, this time in the context of secession, that reciprocity duties incurred under a given political association subsist even after the association is dissolved.
So it is quite possible (indeed, very likely) that to fully achieve distributive justice, for example, we need to broaden our ontology beyond the confines of the state. That would simply take us beyond the scope of this article, which deals with economic secession, and not with other aspects of distributive justice. But none of the claims made in this article implies that there are no other duties of distributive justice (see footnote 15).
One exception to the general lack of attention to distributive justice in the normative debate on secession is Allen Buchanan, who argues that considering the question of distributive justice in the context of secession reinforces the case for a remedial theory of secession (see Buchanan 1991, 114–124; Buchanan 1995, 53–63; Buchanan 2004, 396–400). By contrast, the account I offer in this article is quite compatible with non-remedial secession, as I explain in Sect. 3.5.
The threshold corresponds to a net monthly income of 2100 Euros for a couple with two children; and of 1600 Euros for a single parent with two children.
Élodie Blogie, “Environ 420.000 enfants vivent sous le seuil de pauvreté en Belgique,” Le Soir, posted online June 12, 2014, last accessed July 16, 2015: http://www.lesoir.be/570190/article/actualite/belgique/2014-06-12/environ-420000-enfants-vivent-sous-seuil-pauvrete-en-Belgique.
Though the OECD establishes a country’s poverty line at 50 % of the median income—which means that wealthier countries have a higher poverty line while poorer countries have a lower one—the actual material conditions of Walloon children in this case would worsen as a result of the Flemish withdrawal, even if fewer Walloon children might qualify as poor according to the lower, Wallonia-specific poverty line, as calculated by the OECD.
Oxford dictionary entry for “precarious,” last accessed July 16, 2015: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/precarious.
Indeed, having to choose between the two could create a situation of domination either way: favoring self-determination over distributive justice can create a situation of economic domination for the remainder group (as I argue in this article); favoring distributive justice over self-determination can create a situation of cultural or political domination for the secessionist group (as I argue more specifically in other work). Thus a consistent and coherent account of secession based on non-domination must take into account the relevant interests of both the secessionist and the remainder groups, as I suggest here.
A more demanding version of the reciprocity account might likewise manage to make secession and distributive justice compatible (Moore 2015), but as foreshadowed above and detailed below, such an account, as reciprocity-based, still could not capture the problematic power dynamics of domination that might obtain in the pre-secession polity, thereby failing to account for a significant part of the normative picture of distributive justice in the context of secession (more on this in Sect. 3.4).
For example, personal, professional, institutional, national, or global.
This is of course not to deny that there can be distributive duties of a non-associative nature, such as global distributive duties. Recall that my point in taking the polity as the relevant unit of analysis is methodological, not substantive: I am not arguing for the priority of compatriots over foreigners in matters of distributive justice; I am considering the case of the polity simply because the state is the relevant unit of analysis in the case of secession. Moreover, it is not clear that associative distributive duties necessarily conflict with global distributive duties: for interesting discussions, see Butt (2008), Kolodny (2002), Seglow (2010), Ypi et al. (2009).
If the duties do not disappear, then something else is really doing the justificatory work and the allegedly required virtue or value becomes superfluous. In their discussion of associative duties of distributive justice in the context of colonialism, Ypi et al. (2009, 121) suggest that the type of cooperation generating associative duties should be understood in a weak, descriptive sense (mere interaction between associates), rather than in a strong, normative sense (mutual advantage as fairness and reciprocity), as the latter sense, they point out, yields the implausible conclusion that we can avoid associative duties by treating fellow associates in a clearly non-cooperative manner, for example by exploiting them or oppressing them. The argument I make here converges with Ypi et al.’s on this point, and indeed it seems that the non-domination account I propose here is well-suited to capture the normative stakes Ypi et al. seem to have in mind in terms of what generates associative duties: namely, not any special virtue or value of the association, but problematic power differentials within the association. In other words, if what is relevant to trigger associative duties are power differentials in interaction, then the account of associative duties seems more precisely to correspond to one of non-domination than to one of cooperation.
This is not to say that it is morally required to secure non-domination only within the polity, since the polity by itself does not exhaust the many different types of context in which domination might obtain, as noted at the outset of this section (see footnote 14).
In his recent work, Pettit prefers to refer to arbitrary interference as “uncontrolled” interference, in order to avoid potential misunderstandings (2012, 58). Since the terminology is clearly defined here, I stick with the initial phrasing of “arbitrary” interference.
Hence not all instances of unequal power or dependence need constitute domination.
Thus my account differs from Frank Lovett’s. Lovett defines domination as a function of the degrees of dependency, imbalance of power, and arbitrariness: D = f(d, p, a), where d, p, and a are three distinct, individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for domination to obtain (see Lovett 2010, 119; Lovett 2009, 821). By contrast, on my account, only d (the quantitative aspect) and a (the qualitative aspect) are distinct, individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for domination, because d is itself a function of p, so p is subsumed under d (i.e., d is explained by p: d is the explanandum and p the explanans). A further difference between my account and Lovett’s is that Lovett does not use the quantitative–qualitative distinction in his definition of domination. He speaks of the degrees of d, p, and a, seemingly characterizing domination wholly in quantitative terms.
Aside from contributing to the conceptualization of domination, my point about forced exit costs will be significant when contrasting my non-domination account with the reciprocity account (see Sect. 3.4).
I understand distributive justice straightforwardly as concerning the just distribution of goods and services, including subsidized ones (e.g., housing, roads, childcare, or health care) and including natural resources. All the potential objects of robust distributive duties mentioned here indeed properly fall under the category of goods and services.
On this view, associative duties arise because the association has the special virtue of reciprocity (see Sect. 3.2).
Moore (2015, 132–133), following Joseph Heath, suggests that this is the case in the context of non-remedial secession (the domestic scenario I describe here indeed mirrors non-remedial secession, though it obviously does not reach the same conclusion as Moore and Heath).
If what generated associative duties was the legitimate character of the polity, then associative duties would not arise in an illegitimate polity. Yet as explained in Sect. 3.5, associative duties do arise in illegitimate polities; they are simply overridden because of the polity’s illegitimate character. Note, importantly, that associative duties in illegitimate polities are overridden only for the victimized group, not for the victimizing group: see footnote 17. All of this follows from my account of associative duties, introduced in Sect. 3.2, which is an instrumental account, based on a concern to secure non-domination, rather than an intrinsic account, based on a special virtue or value of the association (e.g., legitimacy). On my instrumental account, the mere existence of an associative relationship is sufficient to trigger associative duties, in order to address problematic power differentials within the association and to secure non-domination, as illustrated in Sect. 3.5.
See footnote 7.
These two types of mechanism—internal and external—are consistent with Pettit’s point that the constraints required to secure non-domination can stem either from the agent over whom power is exercised (internal mechanism) or from third parties (external mechanism): see Pettit (1997, 55, 63, 187–188).
See also footnote 12.
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Acknowledgments
Earlier versions of this article were presented at the American Philosophical Association, McGill University, and the University of Colorado at Boulder. I am thankful to audiences at these events for useful questions and discussions. Special thanks are due to Aberdeen Berry, Pablo Gilabert, Bob Goodin, Robert Kopperud, Jacob Levy, Catherine Lu, Carmen Pavel, Lea Ypi, and an anonymous reviewer for very helpful comments or conversations. I gratefully acknowledge the tremendous work of my research assistant, Zoé Schoen. This research was supported by the Fonds de Recherche du Québec—Société et Culture.
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Catala, A. Secession and distributive justice. Philos Stud 174, 529–552 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0695-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0695-2