Decentralisation, Subsidiarity and Secession -
the Road to Freedom
by Karl-Peter Schwarz
The current political crisis in Spain – caused on one side by the radicalization of the Catalan independence movement, on the other by the harsh countermeasures undertaken by the central authorities – shows once again the inherent dangers of illiberal or semi-liberal constitutional arrangements which deny the citizens the right of secession. We may expect more conflicts between the right of self-determination and the constitutional provisions of centralized states. What happens in Spain today could happen tomorrow not only where large national minorities strive for independence, for instance, the Hungarians in Romania and Slovakia, but also in the UK and in Italy. A very brief insight in the recent history of secessions may help to gain a deeper understanding of one of the hottest topics of European politics.
In June 1991 Prague hosted an international conference, which was considered animportant opportunityfor a decisive step towards a free and united Europeafter thecollapse of the communist regimes. On the table was averyambitious plan drafted by the French President Francois Mitterrand andbacked bythe Czechoslovak President Václav Havel. As a foreign correspondentin Prague,I have covered the conference for an Austrian newspaper.
Mitterrand proposednothing less than a „European Confederation“ whichshould associate all states of the continent, including Russia, in a commonand permanentorganization for exchanges, peace and security. It shouldbe independentfrom the US, and a waiting room for the new democracies inEastern andCentral Europe not yet prepared or allowed to enter the 12-nationEuropean Community. The final goal envisaged by Havel and Mitterrand was a free continentfrom theAtlantic to the Ural. The borders would be opened, but they wouldnot bechanged.
1991 wasa decisiveyear in the transition to a new order in Europe. Although, it was uncertainhow it could develop, there was a full agreement amongWestern policymakersthat it had to respect the territorial integrity and theactual outerand inner borders of all post-communist states. After the collapseof communism,the specter of nationalism frightened the leaders of the Westmuch morethan anything else. As recently declassified documents fromthe GeorgeBush Presidential Library show, the US president and his advisers„did muchto prolong the life of the Soviet Union, worried about the rise ofthe futureRussian president Boris Yeltsin and the drives for independenceby leadersof other Soviet republics“. (1)
Gorbachev,much applaudedby Western leaders and media, evidently shared their worries.In January1991, without formally declaring a state of emergency, he let theKGB takeany measures to stop the Soviet republics on their way towardsovereignty andindependence. Special units assaulted the Vilnius television tower,which washeld by Lithuanian freedom fighters. Fifteen people died in the attack. Interior Ministry troops opened fire in Riga, the capital of theLatvian republic, killing four. Troops of the Interior Ministry and the Sovietarmy hand in hand patrolledthe streets of Soviet cities.
Yugoslavia appearedstill as a minor problem.
In June 1991,the USadministration and the Western European governments were strictlyagainst thepartition of Yugoslavia which could have been considered as aprecedent casefor the Soviet Union and, subsequently, perhaps for Spain andthe UKtoo. Instead of pressing the Yugoslav leaders towards negotiations for a peaceful division of the federation they insisted in preserving thestatus quo, thereby enhancing the power of the Serbian leaderSlobodan Milošević(2)The Yugoslavwar would finish only seven years later, in 1998. More than 120.000 soldiers and civilians would then have lost their lives.
Even whenthe warbroke out the Western leaders tried to preserve the existing borders.Their ignorancewas astonishing, they were completely overwhelmed by the situation. Theyknew little about the history and the ethnic, linguistic,cultural andreligious particularities of the countries of the Western part of the Balkan peninsula, let alone of Easternand South-Eastern Europe as a whole. The Iron Curtain not only divided Europe, it also concealed the substantial differences between thenations inside the communist bloc.
At the French embassy in Prague during Mitterrand’s andHavel’s conference, I remember Jacques Lang, then French minister of culture, asking a French diplomat: “Parlezvoustchéchoslovaque?“. Of course, he didnot,andneither didthe Czechs and the Slovaks. Moreover, neither did the Croats and the Serbs, theSlovenians, Macedoniansand Albanians speak “Yugoslavian”.
National referendain Slovenia and Croatia showed overwhelming majorities forleaving Yugoslavia. The Serbian minority in Croatia proclaimed its own statehood.Two weeksafter the Prague conference, on June 25, Slovenia and Croatiadeclared theirindependence. On June 26, the Yugoslav Army bombed the Sloveniancapital Ljubljana. In the same time the constitutional negotiations between Czechsand Slovaksstuck in a legal and political impasse. The end of Czechoslovakiawas near. Only a year later the Slovak National Council, the regionalparliament, wouldproclaim the sovereignty of the Slovak Republic.
And yet, in 1991 and 1992 the fiction of the immutability of borders continued, in politics as in the mass media. The Austrian ambassador in Prague complained that my ratherskeptical articleson the survival chances of Czechoslovakia would harm therelations betweenPrague and Vienna. He was sure that the Federation would never breakup. Czechs and Slovaks separated only a year later in a peaceful, business-like „velvet” divorce, motivated mainly by fiscal considerations. The Slovaks wanted a confederation, and the Czechs were not ready to burden their economic transition with additional expenses. Fortunately, Czechoslovakia was not yet in the European Union, otherwise the Commission would have tried with allmeans toblock the separation as it did in the case of Scotlandand Catalonia.
Madridis playingan extremely dangerous game. If a constitution does not allow alegal andpeaceful solution sooner or later violence will arise. “Armed self-determination movements are the primary cause of ethnic violence inthe worldtoday, and, since the 1980s, at least half of all ongoing civil warsin anygiven year have been secessionist. “(3) Millions of people diedbecause theirright of self-determination was denied.
In 1991the BadinterArbitration Committee, set up by the Council of Ministers ofthe EuropeanCommunity, proposed the partition of Yugoslavia in independentstates onthe principles of the inviolability of the Yugoslavfederation’s former internal borders. The new states had to ensure the rights of thenational minorities, but the minorities did not have the right to choose whether they preferred to stay or toleave.
Theunintended consequencesof this decision were vast. Denying the unhampered rightof self-determination, the international community fueled the bloody warbetween Croatiaand the Serbian insurgents in the Krajina, the guerrilla warof theAlbanians for the independence of Kosovo and the still simmeringconflicts betweenthe Serbian populated northern part of Kosovo and the Governmentin Prishtina.
Warand bloodshedprobably could have been avoided or at least reduced ifthe internationalcommunity had insisted on letting the people freelyand withoutpressure from outside decide to which of the post-Yugoslav republicsthey wantedto belong. Or whether they wanted to set up an independentpolitical unityfor themselves. Such plebiscites should have been organized not onthe basisof ethnic affiliation but on a strictly territorial principle down tothe levelof districts and villages in order to minimize the risk thattheir inhabitantswould be assigned to a state against their will. This wouldhave beenparticularly important for multi-ethnic Bosnia. One could object that such a procedure would have been complicated and time-consuming, however only these measure would have allowed to defuse the situation.
In any case, internationalpolicy makers could have known better had they studied the causalrelation betweenviolence, war and the rejection of self-determination which hadbeen masterfullyanalyzed by the Austrianeconomist Ludwig von Mises. In 1927 von Mises published his book “Liberalismus“, which was regretfully translated into English only in 1962 as “The Free and Prosperous Commonwealth” (4). It contains themost comprehensivestudy of the foundations of a free society in the traditionof classicalliberalism. In Chapter 3, entitled “Liberal Foreign Policy “,Mises emphasizedthe importance of the right of self-determination as “theonly feasibleand effective way of preventing revolutions and civiland internationalwars“. Right of self-determination, as defined byMises,means“whenever the inhabitants of a particular territory, whether it bea singlevillage, a whole district, or a series of adjacent districts, makeit known, by a freely conducted plebiscite, that they no longer wish toremain unitedto the state to which they belong at the time, but wish either toform anindependent state or to attach themselves to some other state, theirwishes areto be respected and complied with.“
Misesreferred thisright to the inhabitants of every territory, not to a nation, an ethnicor areligious group: “The right of self-determination of which we speak isnot theright of self-determination of nations, but rather the rightof self-determination of the inhabitants of every territory large enough toform anindependent administrative unit. If it were in any way possible togrant thisright of self-determination to every individual person, it would haveto bedone.“
It should be noted, that there is only one state in Europe, which recognizes the right of self-determination inthe Misesiansense, and that is the Principality of Liechtenstein. Article 1 defines the Principality as a Statethat is „based upon theprinciple ofenabling the people residing within its borders to live in peaceand freedom. “
Article 4 affirms one of the conditions of a life in peace and freedom. It reads asfollows: „Individualcommunes have the right to secede from the State. A decisionto initiatethe secession procedure shall be taken by a majority of thecitizens residingthere who are entitled to vote. Secession shall be regulated by alaw or, as the case may be, a treaty. In the latter event, a second ballot shall be held in the commune after the negotiations have been completed. “(5)
If we were to compare Liechtenstein’s with the Spanish constitutionwe arrive at a different situation. Section 1.2.of the Spanish constitution reads „National sovereignty belongs tothe Spanishpeople, from whom all State powers emanate.“
In Section 2.:„The Constitution is based on the indissoluble unity ofthe SpanishNation, the common and indivisible homeland of all Spaniards; itrecognizes andguarantees the right to self-government of the nationalities and regionsof whichit is composed and the solidarity among them all.“
In otherwords: TheKingdom of Spain recognizes and ensures the right of self-governmentminus theright of secession insofar it does not contradict the will of the„Spanish peoplefrom whom all State powers emanate “. The integrity andthe interestof the Kingdom overrule the rights of the nationalities and regions. Recognition for secession has been explicitly excluded through„the rulingof theSpanish Constitutional Court of September 2008 which stated that theonly demosin Spain is the Spanish nation.“ In June 2010, the ConstitutionalCourt struckdown key elements of Catalan autonomy referring to the„indissolubleunity ofSpain“. The government„only permits autonomous governments tohold referendumsthat have been approved by two-thirds support in the Cortesin Madrid. Those that have taken place in Catalonia have no legal validity. “(6)
To name just a few states withstill unresolvedand potentially dangerous national minority issues, the Romanian,the Serbianand the Slovak constitutions have similar unitarianand centralist provisions. If theprevalent functionof constitutional rule making is to reduce the risks that arisein politicallife those countries have still a long way in„optimizing constitutionalism” (7). As long as the unhampered right of self-determination isnot guaranteed separatist movementshave no other choice but to goagainst theconstitution. This was the case in almost all historical secessions,from Switzerlandin the 13th century and the US in the 18th century up tothe dissolutionofthe Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. Asalways intimes of crisis legitimacy prevails over legality.
Unfortunately, theSpanish constitution still reflects the spirit of French 18thcentury absolutism,which inspiredKing Philip V. in reforming the monarchy. In the Spanish War of Succession, the Catalans had supported the HabsburgArchduke Charlesagainst Philip, Duke of Anjou, the first member of the French Houseof Bourbonto rule as king of Spain. The Catalans were defeated,Barcelona capitulatedon the 9thof September 1714, king Philip punished them by repealing their rightsand introducingthe centralist French system. This was the end of many centuriesof Catalanself-rule. From that time on Spain was a unified and highly centralized political entity.Franco’s victoryin the Civil War 1939 saved the country from communism andmilitant atheism, but it was also a decisive victory of Spanish nationalism againstthe minoritynations. For more than four decades Catalonia was governed bya militarydictatorship, even the use of the Catalan language was prohibited.However, underthe umbrella of the Catholic Church Catalan identity survived, andCatalan nationalism„re-emerged at the end of Franco’s dictatorship in 1975 morefirmly rootedthan before the civil war. “(8)
Classical liberalismwas born in opposition to the predominant Absolutism of the 18th century. It defends theright of self-determination against totalitarianand authoritarianregimes, on the right and on the left side of the political spectrum. Classical liberalsargued forsecession based on the notion of natural law, from which individual rights would arise, or they used - like Ludwig von Mises - utilitarian arguments. (9) From a liberal point of view, subsidiarity, decentralization and secession will open the road to freedom.
Obviously classical liberalism of all shapes does not see secession as an end in itself and does not support it under any circumstances. The Austrian-Hungarian monarchy, for instance, protected individual freedom and individual rights of its citizens far better than the national states, which came into being after the First World War. The point of reference is always the individual citizen and his right to choose. Small independent states have a lot of advantages, they are more peaceful, less protectionist, and more prosperous. Hence small state means less state.
Self-determination is also an intrinsic part of theCatholic Church’s social teaching. In 1931 Pope Pius XI issued the encyclical„QuadragesimoAnno” against theincreasing dangers for freedom in which he defined the principle ofsubsidiarity asfollows:
„Just as itis gravelywrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by theirown initiativeand industry and give it to the community, so also it isan injusticeand at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right orderto assignto a greater and higher association what lesser andsubordinate organizationscan do.“(10)
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith specified in its„Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation“(Libertatis conscientia) under prefect Joseph card. Ratzinger in 1986 that„neither the State nor any society must ever substitute itself for the initiative and responsibility of individuals and of intermediate communities at the level on which they can function, nor must they take away the room necessary for their freedom. Hence the Church’s social doctrine is opposed to all forms of collectivism. “(11)
According to a famous definition by Max Weber the state is a human community that successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory, including the monopoly of taxing its inhabitants. It is in the interest of every political class to expand this territory if possible or at least to keep it as it is, exploiting its natural and human resources to its own advantage. Autonomist, separatist and secessionists movements not only question the legitimacy ofthe state, they threaten to withdraw a considerable part of its income too.
God had to inflict ten biblical plagues onto Egypt before the Pharaoh let his people go, as it is told in the Book of Exodus, the most ancient history of secession. But it is also written that Moses and Aaron had to overcome the resistance of a considerable part of the people of Israel rather reluctant to leave and still ready towork for the Pharaoh. Voices in the desert mourned the good old days when the people „sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full “. (12)
To leave a political community is never an easy decision. Secession is only the ultimate act of self-determination when all other options fail. It is expensive to build a state. In many cases geographical, geopolitical and economic considerations speak clearly against such an endeavor. Sometimes secessionist movements are simply instruments of foreign aggression. History knows several examples of „faked secessionism“, among them the insurgence of the Sudeten-Germans in 1938 ordered by Hitler, and the Soviet or Russian led and armed secessions in Abkhazia, Transnistria, the Crimea and in the eastern part of Ukraine.
National diversity and strong cultural distinctiveness alone are never sufficient to provoke secessions. As Western democracies are neither supposed to violate human rights nor to exercise discrimination on the ground of racial, national, cultural or religious diversity, there must be other reasons for the growing popular desire for independence in countries like Italy and Spain. Catalonia is highly industrialized. Spain has 46,5 million inhabitants, 7,5 million live in Catalonia. Last year they generated 19 percent of the Spanish GDP and26percent of all Spanish exports. The regional GDP(204,2 billion Euro in 2015) is the highest in Spain. But unlike the Basque countries Catalonia does not enjoy autonomy. Powers that in federal states like Germany are shared between the central government and regional ones are monopolized by Madrid. Catalan tax payers transfer every year 17 billion Euro to the central government. No wonder that the idea of independence is gaining more and more support also among the immigrants. Almost 40 percent of the inhabitants of Catalonia were born abroad, half of them outside of Spain.