groups receive gives them a form of arbitrary power that can constitute the former’s domination. Secondly, I argued in this chapter that the autonomy-based account cannot provide a satisfactory basis for nationalist claims to self-determination, because it can justify the claims of non-nationalist groups. This, I argued, could create territorial fragmentation undermining the nationalist idea of self-determination in a unified homeland, in turn constraining the account’s own value of the free exercise of cultural autonomy. I argued, instead, that a political justification is required to ground claims for self-determination, In the third section I discussed two instrumental accounts and argued that whilst these accounts provide a political basis to assess claims for self-determination, they provide the wrong political basis to assess these claims. I argued that instrumental accounts either provide too sectarian a justification for national self-determination in the case of the justice-promoting account or that the democracy-supporting account provides the justification for an assimilationist politics that can dominate national minorities instead of securing for them their own status of self-determination. In the section, I argued that the fairness-based account is correct to contend that some form of political treatment is required to justify claims for self-determination, however, this account provides too narrow an account of what constitutes poor political treatment, failing to capture the justified claims non-nations should be able to have for I concluded in the last section that nations are justified in making claims for not because they are nations but because they are groups subject to a remedial wrong. This, I argued, means that nations are not the only groups that can make justified claims for self-determination. However, this also means that not all nations are justified in making claims for self-determination – nations who are not subject to any remedial wrong, therefore, do not have a right to self-determination by mere virtue of them being nations. This remedial requirement is one the primary right nationalist theory of self-determination does not have – and only achieves in cases through its recourse to liberalism or democracy. In the next chapter I will examine the just-cause theory of self-determination. This is a remedial theory of self-determination. I will examine this theory to see if it can provide a satisfactory account of what constitutes a remedial wrong that can satisfactorily assess if claims for self-determination should be justified.
terms one lives under or one leaves. The same is true of nationalist theories as constitutional procedures for self-determination are a way for nations to gain political recognition if they decide that a multinational federation does not serve their cultural interests. Whereas for the just-cause theory, although constitutional procedures are envisaged as a way to condition political actors’ behaviour, for this theory the value of these procedures is not that they encourage political engagement, as it is for the republican theory, but they are thought of as a way for making living together simply possible, because of the continual spectre of political violence. For the republican theory, however, constitutional procedures for self-determination are thought of as a mechanism to perfect the collective democratic political life of citizens. Furthermore, another advantage for the republican theory of having constitutional procedures for self-determination is that it overcomes the problem of the biased when claims for self-determination are made. At present, when democratic claims for are made, they have to be negotiated between claimants and central government – the latter being the party, which has nearly always created the claimants’ domination. As there is no parity in these negotiations, central governments often either (i) offer referendums on bad terms, predetermining the outcome in favour of the status quo, such as when the terms of the 1978 Scottish Devolution Referendum were amended so that it could not pass with a simple majority, or (ii) that central government denies groups’ claims outright, as has been Catalonia’s recent experience in its negotiations with the Spanish central government. Indeed, often central governments only discretionarily permit referenda when they are confident they will win them, as was the case when the U.K. government permitted the Scottish Independence Referendum in 2014 – which produced a much narrower result than was comfortable for most anti-independence Westminster politicians. Moreover, constitutional procedures have another advantage for the republican theory because they prevent the continued domination of groups with a remedial claim – they act as a safety valve for groups, so that they are able to secede by right, rather than having to wait until it is discretionarily granted by central government, if indeed this right is granted at all. By having constitutional procedures for self-determination, these problems of discretion and the decision-bias can be overcome. Constitutional procedures for self-determination pre-commit both parties – central government and potential – to a set of terms that do not represent implicit or explicit advantages for either side. In this sense, the