Self-determination, non-domination and constraints on territorial rights

Abstract

In Moore’s A Political Theory of Territory, the right to collective self-determination is pivotal both to the justification of territorial rights and to defining their limits. The premise of my critique is that collective self-determination can only be meaningfully achieved in a context of non-domination. Following Iris Young, I suggest that Moore’s theory would be even more compelling if it incorporated such an account. I show that her argument favors a fairly demanding interpretation of self-determination, and is in fact already responsive to domination concerns. However, I find that commitment to a non-domination principle may reveal more constraints on territorial rights than Moore currently endorses, and that it sits in tension with the premise that self-determination rights are not contingent on the realization of any other substantive ideals.