Quote:
Originally Posted by August
Well I don't know about international law but reading this debate I am struck that while nations are seen by some as artificial and illegitimate constructs they bandy about equally artificial constructs themselves as if they were any more legitimate.
When you come right down to it terms like "Bavarian" or "Catalonian" mean exactly the same thing as "Germany" or "Spain" but just on a smaller scale, and the question is how small do these invented territorial subdivisions have to go before the dissenting voices within their boundaries can be legitimately ignored when it comes to things like national independence referendums?
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If you want to look at a real world example, you can look at the 1980 and 1995 Quebec independence referendums.
They were in many ways illegal since the Canadian constitution has no provision dealing with a province breaking away. However, in practice there was no way to stop the province from holding the vote, unless you follow the Spanish example, impose martial law and arrest the whole bunch, but the thinking was that this would backfire and increase support.
If the referendums had won a province wide majority, yes there were groups ready to have other refefendums to have their regions remain in Canada, which would have been a nightmare.
In the end, both votes failed so we dodged the bullet.