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Interview
4 November 2018 2.00 h

allen buchanan

Professor of philosophy and international law

Allen Buchanan

While the US professor admits that it might already be too late, the expert on secession processes argues for making a final attempt at dialogue between Catalonia and Spain

It’s understandable people should idealise the benefits of independence without seeing the downsides
I often think the best solution is not full independence but greater autonomy I think the Spanish government has been its own worst enemy The only way to unblock this situation is to get a third party involved, who can act as a neutral

The US pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy and in­ter­na­tional law, Allen Buchanan, re­cently vis­ited Cat­alo­nia. An ex­pert on the processes of se­ces­sion, the pro­fes­sor thinks that Cat­alo­nia and Spain should try to en­gage in talks, al­though he also ad­mits that it might al­ready be too late. The pro­fes­sor, who has taught at Duke Uni­ver­sity in North Car­olina, King’s Col­lege in Lon­don, and is now at the Uni­ver­sity of Ari­zona, is also the au­thor of the book, Se­ces­sion (1991), which ex­plains his ideas of the phe­nom­e­non of break-away states. Buchanan says the re­ac­tion of the Span­ish au­thor­i­ties to the Oc­to­ber in­de­pen­dence ref­er­en­dum was both vi­o­lent and mis­taken. He recog­nises the right to self-de­ter­mi­na­tion, but ar­gues for Cat­alo­nia set­tling for greater au­ton­omy. Buchanan also thinks that in­de­pen­dence would bring with it un­fore­seen po­lit­i­cal and eco­nomic dan­gers.

What do you think about the sit­u­a­tion in Cat­alo­nia?
It’s com­pli­cated, and what’s more se­ri­ous is that there is a lack of trust be­tween both sides, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to find an ac­cept­able and agreed so­lu­tion. I often think that the best so­lu­tion is not com­plete in­de­pen­dence but rather greater self-gov­ern­ment. Hav­ing said that, I also think it is re­ally hard to con­vince peo­ple on this point, when they feel frus­trated with what has gone on in re­cent times. There was an at­tempt to de­velop cer­tain as­pects of self-gov­ern­ment, but the Con­sti­tu­tional Court blocked these changes. It now seems that the Span­ish gov­ern­ment wants to talk, but there are peo­ple still in prison and in exile.
What should the next step be?
Mu­tual trust must be fos­tered. Per­haps open­ing the way for a new type of self-gov­ern­ment. I think that the gov­ern­ment in Madrid should start from scratch. They should re­lease the pris­on­ers and allow the ex­iles to re­turn home, and then try to main­tain di­a­logue so as to reach con­sen­sus as far as pos­si­ble in sat­is­fy­ing the de­sires of Cata­lans. Spain is a type of fed­eral state, but there are many types of fed­eral sys­tems. There’s one that is asym­met­ric, in which there are re­gions with more au­tonomous pow­ers than oth­ers. There are a num­ber of op­tions to ex­plore be­fore a ter­ri­tory be­comes in­de­pen­dent. My con­cern is that per­haps this has not been ex­plored enough.
You say it could al­ready be too late... Dif­fer­ent Cata­lan gov­ern­ments have tried to es­tab­lish talks with Madrid.
The re­ac­tion of the Span­ish gov­ern­ment, which has shown such in­flex­i­bil­ity, has caused a lot of cit­i­zens in Cat­alo­nia who were in favour of self-gov­ern­ment to be­come sup­port­ers of in­de­pen­dence. I think that the Span­ish gov­ern­ment has been its own worst enemy.
Be­cause of the po­lice vi­o­lence on Oc­to­ber 1?
Yes, for the way they re­acted. The Span­ish state could have been more po­lit­i­cally able. It sim­ply ig­nored the ref­er­en­dum and in­sisted that it wasn’t legal, but it re­acted with vi­o­lence and I think that dam­aged the trust needed for find­ing a so­lu­tion. The only way to un­block this sit­u­a­tion is to get a third party in­volved, who can act as a neu­tral. Yet, once again, I don’t know if it is too late to begin this me­di­a­tion. The Eu­ro­pean Union would be the nat­ural op­tion, but it re­fuses to get in­volved in the con­flict be­cause it be­lieves that other Eu­ro­pean coun­tries – which also have their own in­de­pen­dence move­ments – could then want to fol­low this same path. The Eu­ro­pean Union has other prob­lems and at the mo­ment is show­ing its weak­ness.
Do you think this is the rea­son why Eu­rope has not in­ter­vened in the con­flict be­tween Cat­alo­nia and Spain, or be­cause it doesn’t want to get in­volved in an “in­ter­nal mat­ter”?
I think it’s both things at the same time. I think the Eu­ro­pean Union is show­ing weak­ness on this point, while it also has other fronts open and this is not the most im­por­tant of them. More­over, we also have to re­alise that the Eu­ro­pean Union is made up of states, and these states are against the idea of break­ing up states. Un­for­tu­nately, I think that will con­tinue; if there is a third party to me­di­ate it won’t be the Eu­ro­pean Union. It could be a group of re­spected fig­ures from dif­fer­ent coun­tries.
There is strong sup­port for in­de­pen­dence in Cat­alo­nia.
It is un­der­stand­able that after get­ting to this point peo­ple should ide­alise the ben­e­fits of in­de­pen­dence with­out want­ing to see the down­sides. We have seen a sim­i­lar thing with Brexit. The peo­ple who voted to leave the Eu­ro­pean Union only thought about the ben­e­fits it would bring. And now they are re­think­ing it. I be­lieve that it is nat­ural that when you are in­volved in a move­ment you should tend to think about the ben­e­fits it will bring. While it might of­fend some peo­ple, it has to be said that hav­ing one’s own state does not solve all your prob­lems straight away. There will be cor­rup­tion, so­cial prob­lems to face... I wit­nessed the lat­est pro-in­de­pen­dence demon­stra­tions in Cat­alo­nia and they seemed gen­uinely peace­ful to me. And that is a good thing. But you never know when a peace­ful move­ment might turn vi­o­lent. Some­times no one wants vi­o­lence, but you can get into a down­ward spi­ral. What I’m say­ing is that right now it seems to be a civic and peace­ful mo­ment, which is a good thing, but as peo­ple be­come more emo­tion­ally in­volved you never know what might hap­pen.
Can the ref­er­en­dum agreed be­tween the United King­dom and Scot­land serve as an ex­am­ple for Spain and Cat­alo­nia?
It is a good ex­am­ple. A gov­ern­ment that is more flex­i­ble and that does not try to crim­i­nalise the in­de­pen­dence move­ment! In Scot­land, peo­ple ended up say­ing: “After all, we are not so badly off! Let’s stay!” On the other hand, in a hy­po­thet­i­cal case in which in­de­pen­dence is pro­claimed, I think it has to be on the back of a very clear process which, above all, re­spects the rights of the peo­ple who are not in favour, of the new mi­nori­ties that would be cre­ated by in­de­pen­dence. In other words: to be sure there will be no dis­crim­i­na­tion to­wards peo­ple who voted against it. And for Span­ish to con­tinue to be an of­fi­cial lan­guage.
What mis­takes has the in­de­pen­dence move­ment made?
I think it is a lit­tle too sim­plis­tic to think that in­de­pen­dence can be achieved with a ref­er­en­dum passed with a sim­ple ma­jor­ity. What we have seen in the case of Brexit is that a ref­er­en­dum that passes with a sim­ple ma­jor­ity is not enough to jus­tify such a large change. For Cat­alo­nia to split from Spain is a major change, just like Great Britain leav­ing the Eu­ro­pean Union. What I be­lieve would be ap­pro­pri­ate if the path of in­de­pen­dence is pur­sued is for there to be a two-stage ref­er­en­dum, with very clear ques­tions. In other words, a ref­er­en­dum be­fore and after, with a sec­ond ref­er­en­dum 18 months later. This way would leave enough time for peo­ple to think about what ex­actly the costs and ben­e­fits are. I think that for a change of this mag­ni­tude to make any sense, there needs to be a super-ma­jor­ity in favour of it, like two thirds of vot­ers in favour. Peo­ple need to have time to re­flect on the dif­fer­ent eco­nomic and po­lit­i­cal risks in­de­pen­dence might bring to a coun­try.
Yes, but the sit­u­a­tion in Cat­alo­nia is com­pli­cated, with po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers and with pres­i­dent Puigde­mont and some for­mer min­is­ters and politi­cians in exile...
That is why there has to be an­other at­tempt at di­a­logue with the State! And one of the con­di­tions be­fore doing that is re­leas­ing the pris­on­ers. Be­cause while there are politi­cians in prison or in exile, I can imag­ine that if I was Cata­lan I would be very scep­ti­cal when it came to ne­go­ti­a­tions, be­cause the mes­sage it gives while they are in prison or exile is that the Cata­lan pro­pos­als are il­le­git­i­mate.
Pedro Sánchez’s So­cial­ist gov­ern­ment does not seem will­ing to ne­go­ti­ate. Do you think his ex­ec­u­tive is more wor­ried about clean­ing up Spain’s image be­fore the in­ter­na­tional com­mu­nity?
I get that im­pres­sion. I think that the Span­ish gov­ern­ment is too rigid. It is too in­flex­i­ble, and that hin­ders things and make peo­ple in Cat­alo­nia de­cide that they have had enough of this sit­u­a­tion, and that the only way to achieve their ob­jec­tives is man­ag­ing to get in­de­pen­dence. More­over, what is ex­tremely com­pli­cated is that while the gov­ern­ment has ex­ec­u­tive power, and in the case that it makes a de­ci­sion, be­hind it are the courts mak­ing talks even more dif­fi­cult.
So the con­clu­sion could be that there is no sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers in Spain?
I have heard peo­ple state that, but I am not an ex­pert on the Span­ish Con­sti­tu­tion, so I can’t tell you whether that is true or not. There are some coun­tries in which ju­di­cial and ex­ec­u­tive power go to­gether, which then makes it re­ally com­pli­cated to make any changes to the Con­sti­tu­tion. There are cases of states that have come under pres­sure from other na­tional com­mu­ni­ties. Some­times that has been re­solved with in­de­pen­dence, and at other times, it hasn’t.
Can you give us an ex­am­ple?
Nor­way achieved in­de­pen­dence from Swe­den [in 1905] with the sup­port of pow­er­ful play­ers in the in­ter­na­tional com­mu­nity. At the time, the Nor­we­gian par­lia­ment sent a mes­sage to Swe­den that it would not be a good idea to use vi­o­lence against the re­gions that wanted to break away. If you want an in­de­pen­dent coun­try, it is vital to get the recog­ni­tion of other states. And how do go about gain­ing in­de­pen­dence? With in­flu­ence, with the re­ac­tions of other states, know­ing they will recog­nise you in the fu­ture, that they will help you dur­ing the tran­si­tion... You should not only think about the re­ac­tion of the gov­ern­ment in Madrid, but also that of other states, and that is also some­thing that is very dif­fi­cult to do.

in­ter­view

in­ter­view Allen Buchanan

Buchanan’s theory on the process of secession

Professor Allen Buchanan is not generally in favour of countries breaking away from others and becoming independent. It is one of the pillars of his theory on the processes of secession. Yet, in his theory there are certain causes that justify independence: the annexation of a territory, the flagrant violation of human rights, an unfair redistribution of resources within the state, or the refusal to negotiate greater autonomy. For the moment, Buchanan does not think Catalonia is one of these cases justifying a unilateral declaration of independence. Nor is the professor in favour of secession based on cultural or national differences. An advocate of dialogue, he thinks that Catalonia and Spain should make a last attempt at negotiation. Yet, the academic recognises that the situation in Catalonia is very complicated and that the attitude of the government in Madrid is inflexible. What’s more, he believes that this negotiation should be carried out after the political prisoners have been released and the exiles allowed to return home, otherwise talks held in mutual trust cannot go ahead.

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