Description
Book SynopsisSecession and the Sovereignty Game offers a comprehensive strategic theory for how secessionist movements attempt to win independence. Combining original data analysis, fieldwork, interviews with secessionist leaders, and case studies on Catalonia, the Murrawarri Republic, West Papua, Bougainville, New Caledonia, and Northern Cyprus, Ryan D. Griffiths shows how the rules and informal practices of sovereign recognition create a strategic playing field between existing states and aspiring nations that he terms the sovereignty game.
To win sovereign statehood, all secessionist movements have to maneuver on the same strategic playing field while varying their tactics according to local conditions. To obtain recognition, secessionist movements use tactics of electoral capture, nonviolent civil resistance, and violence. To persuade the home state and the international community, they appeal to normative arguments regarding earned sovereignty, decolonizat
Trade Review
Griffith's book is grounded in theory, but its greatest value lies in the extensive fieldwork the author has undertaken in places ranging from Catalonia and West Papua to Iraqi Kurdistan and New Caledonia. Griffiths offers a corrective to the work of other researchers who tend to treat these movements with suspicion or hostility: he engages with them on their own terms, and bolsters his analysis of macro-international relations theory with a nuanced understanding of complex realities on the ground.
* Times Literary Supplement *
Ryan D. Griffiths's Secession and the Sovereignty Game makes an important theoretical and empirical contribution to our understanding of secession and is an asset for those interested in the study of this issue. Griffiths's Secession and the Sovereignty Game makes an important contribution, both empirically and in terms of theory building, to our understanding of this phenomenon.
* H-Net *
Table of Contents1. Many Secessionist Movements, One International System
2. States, Secessionist Movements, and the International Recognition Regime
3. A Theory of Secessionist Strategy and Tactical Variation
4. Catalonia: Drawn in Blood
5. Murrawarri: Earth, Sky, and Ancestry
6. West Papua: The Morning Star
7. Bougainville: A Nation that Has Come of Age
8. New Caledonia: The Melanesian Tricolor
9. Northern Cyprus: The Red Banner Reversed
10. A Macroanalysis of Secessionist Tactics
11. The Causes and Consequences of Bad Strategy and Poor Tactics
12. The Future of the Sovereignty Game
