Independence and decision-making: Why do states accept to organize self-determination referendums?

This project aims to resolve a paradox: why do central governments agree to organize independence referendums if this decision puts their territorial integrity at risk? The interest of this proposal lies in the convulsive international scenario that has seen numerous secession consultations emerge over the last few years in Scotland (2014), Crimea (2014), Catalonia (2014 and 2017), Southern Brazil (2016), Kurdistan (2017), New Caledonia (2018 and 2020), and Bougainville (2019). All this without taking into account the referendums proposed by the authorities of New Caledonia (2021) and Scotland (2022?). The literature on the subject is replete with case studies, among which research on European cases abounds. However, there are few comparative empirical studies, and even fewer studies that focus on the perspective of central governments.

REFSTATE aims to analyze the decision of state governments to accept or refuse to organize a self-determination referendum (dependent variable) through a mixed methodology. On the one hand, we will statistically test seven hypotheses on a proprietary database of more than 120 cases of independence referendums worldwide between 1944 and 2022. These hypotheses are related to the quality of democracy, situations of previous violence, the degree of decentralization, the competition-proximity model, economic welfare, the peripheral nature of certain territories, and reputation theory. On the other hand, we will try to organize semi-structured interviews with a set of 40 actors (politicians, bureaucrats and experts) who have been confronted with real cases of independence referendums in Spain, France, the United Kingdom and Canada in order to understand their motivations.

The results obtained will be used to produce academic publications and presentations at conferences, as well as popularization articles for the media and reports for interested government officials.