page_title: Secession
section_title: Types of secession
hierarchical_section_title: Secession / Types of secession
context_page_description: Secession is the withdrawal of a group from a larger entity, especially a political entity, but also from any organization, union or military alliance. Some of the most famous and significant secessions have been: the former Soviet republics leaving the Soviet Union, and Algeria leaving France. Threats of secession can be a strategy for achieving more limited goals. It is, therefore, a process, which commences once a group proclaims the act of secession. A secession attempt might be violent or peaceful, but the goal is the creation of a new state or entity independent from the group or territory it seceded from.
context_section_description: Secession theorists have described a number of ways in which a political entity (city, county, canton, state) can secede from the larger or original state:
  Secession from federation or confederation (political entities with substantial reserved powers which have agreed to join together) versus secession from a unitary state (a state governed as a single unit with few powers reserved to sub-units)
  Colonial wars of independence from an imperial state
  Recursive secession, such as India seceding from the British Empire, then Pakistan seceding from India, or Georgia seceding from the USSR, then South Ossetia seceding from Georgia.
  National (seceding entirely from the national state) versus local (seceding from one entity of the national state into another entity of the same state)
  Central or enclave (seceding entity is completely surrounded by the original state) versus peripheral (along a border of the original state)
  Secession by contiguous units versus secession by non-contiguous units (exclaves)
  Separation or partition (although an entity secedes, the rest of the state retains its structure) versus dissolution (all political entities dissolve their ties and create several new states)
  Irredentism where secession is sought in order to annex the territory to another state because of common ethnicity or prior historical links
  Minority (a minority of the population or territory secedes) versus majority (a majority of the population or territory secedes)
  Secession of better off regions versus secession of worse off regions
  The threat of secession is sometimes used as a strategy to gain greater autonomy within the original state
caption: U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Hashim Thaçi with Declaration of Independence of Kosovo
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