What is the justifiable demos of a referendum on state secession?

• Autor(a) principal: Reinikainen, Jouni
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.21814/eps.5.1.135
• topic: Original Articles

The predominant practice for enfranchisement in referendums on state secession only grants a vote to residents of the secessionist unit, while referendums on urban secession are often all-inclusive, in the sense of enfranchising all residents of the municipality challenged by secessionism. This paper examines the justifiability of a more exclusive practice at the state level from two principles for delimiting the demos, namely the all-affected principle and the all-subjected principle. The argument of the paper is that both these principles typically sanction an all-inclusive demos at both these levels of government. However, such a demos would carry a considerable risk of majority domination of a separatist minority at the state level, a risk that is much lower at the municipal level. The paper claims this to be a conclusive argument against applying these principles on referendums on state secession and thus for retaining our current enfranchisement practices.