A Market for Sovereignty? The Roles of Other States in Self-Determination

Abstract

In two forthcoming articles, Joseph Blocher and Mitu Gulati propose a “market” for sovereignty that would reconcile the popular sovereignty associated with international law’s regulation of self-determination (secession) with the state’s traditional property-like prerogative to transfer (cede) territory regardless of the inhabitants’ wishes.In this comment on Blocher and Gulati, my interest is in commodification not as a solution, but as a set-up of the problem of self-determination: specifically, who becomes legally relevant? International law does not conceive of other states as potential bidders, buyers, backers, underwriters or investors in a people’s exercise of self-determination, but Blocher and Gulati’s proposal should provoke a fresh look. How are the sovereignty options generated in an exercise of self-determination? What rights and duties do other states have toward a people with a right of self-determination? And do the right of economic self-determination of peoples and their sovereignty over their natural resources limit the potential for other states to invest financially in a people’s independence? These questions were legally salient in colonial self-determination, and Blocher and Gulati’s unconventional proposal might usefully return them to our attention in any analytical and critical stocktaking of self-determination in international law.