Why Dissolution Is Better Than Secession

By Hans Sherrer

(August 19, 2009)

Secession is the separation of a geophysical area from the area governed, controlled or overseen by a political entity. A neighborhood can secede from a city, a city and its environs can secede from a county, a county can secede from a province or state, a province or state can secede from a country, and a country (or independent state that can be considered the same as a country) can secede from a confederation or union of countries or independent states. Secession involves a “redistricting” of the geographical area controlled by a particular political entity.

The driving force behind secession, and the reason it gets a degree of popular support is the idea of “regionalism.” Which is a form of home rule. People generally assume that being controlled by a political apparatus staffed by people who they believe share their basic customs, values, concerns and possibly religion is preferable to rule by people who do not.

Secession invariably results in the newly autonomous separated area supplanting the previous political regime with its own “homegrown” political apparatus. The new political regime typically mimics the form and function of the previous one, although it may differ in specifics of how its powers are exercised. That is because secessionists do not repudiate political control. Secession is a challenge by the people of the affected area to the authority of being governed by the current political regime that they consider irreconcilably unrepresentative.

Although secession can result from a rebellion against the current political regime, it rarely is the result of a genuine revolution. The thirteen American colonies seceded from England’s sphere of political control, oversight and protection, but they maintained England’s manner of governance by three distinct branches: the executive (Monarch and later Prime Minister); legislative (House of Commons and House of Lords); and the judiciary (Single trial judge with 12 jurors in accordance with English common law.).

In some cases secession results in a peaceful response by the entity separated from, and in other cases it elicites a violent response. In recent times Montenegro peacefully seceded from Serbia in 2006, even though Serbia did not agree with the separation. Montenegro had been considered a political part of Serbia since 1918. In 1991 the once independent republics that comprised the Soviet Union reclaimed their independent status by seceding. Those peaceful secessions resulted in the break-up of that political super-state. In contrast, the attempt by southern states in 1860 and 1861 to reclaim their status as independent nations with the right to form a new union that better represented their interests was violently responded to by the federal government, and those states were forcibly “reunited” with the United States after much destruction and loss of life.

Some secessions are accomplished with the support of other political organizations. The United Nations, for example, supported the creation of the country of Israel by secession from the area known as Palestine that was controlled by the British. Pakistan seceded (was partitioned) from India with the blessings of the British.

We live in a political age. Major and even minor personal, social and business “problems” are thought of in terms of being solved or at least mitigated in their severity through political action. Secession is a political solution. When voicing concerns about political action through petitioning and/or voting proves ineffective, secession is the most radical “political” solution for dissatisfied people to take. In a political framework secession is the ultimate path people can pursue in an effort to unleash themselves from what they consider unresponsive and oppressive political governance.

Jacques Ellul’s book, The Political Illusion, extensively analyzes the degree to which the idea of political action has infected and dominates the thinking of people in modern society. Statism perhaps best captures the essence of the mindset and attitudes that Ellul describes in his book. The threat of forcible intervention and enforcement underlies all State based political initiatives.

People are informed by their primary and secondary schooling and later as adults by newspapers, magazines, television, movies, etc., that society can only function by institutions that establish political remedies to all manner of situations and “problems” that occur in daily life.

However, contrary to the popular belief by people who think in “political” terms, secession is not the penultimate “solution” to a politically intolerable situation. There is a non-political response. That option is dissolution. Dissolution is a significant departure from the redistribution of political power that is the hallmark of secession. Dissolution involves the evaporation of political control over society, while secession only redraws political boundaries and possibly redistributes the political power exercised by dominant political blocks.

Unlike secession, dissolution is not tied to reliance on a political regime or structure. While secession amounts to arranging of who sits in the chairs of political power wielded over a geo-physical area, dissolution eliminates those political chairs and the positions of those who occupy them.

Dissolution is rooted in the fact that important personal, social and business interactions are ultimately and naturally governed by social customs and mores unrelated to political interference that can take the form of laws, dictates, mandates and policies. Contrary to the idea of statism, there is another path people can take to deal with societal problems – that involves “walking away” from a political solution and instead relying on cooperation and the mutual self-interest of the parties (people and/or organizations) involved. Dissolution is one of those alternate paths.

Dissolution is a practical way to deal in a given geographical area with the vexing problem of political expansion and interference throughout society.