Secession 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, decolonization, the right to choose, inherent sovereignty, and human rights.

The pursuit of independence can be enormously disruptive and is quite often violent. By advancing a theory that explains how sovereign recognition has succeeded in the past and is working in the present, and by anticipating the practices of future secessionist movements, Secession and the Sovereignty Game also prescribes solutions that could make the sovereignty game less conflictual.

About the Author

Ryan D. Griffiths is Associate Professor of Political Science at Syracuse University. He is author of Age of Secession. Follow him on X @RyeGriffiths.

Reviews

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 *


Awards
Winner of IEA Best Academic Book 2020 (United States).



Book Information
ISBN 9781501754746
Author Ryan D. Griffiths
Format Hardback
Page Count 246
Imprint Cornell University Press
Publisher Cornell University Press
Weight(grams) 907g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 24mm