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Bruno Coppieters
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 Associate
Professor and Head Vrije Universiteit Brussel Department
of Political Science Secession and the Use of Force: A Comparative
Analysis Belgium
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Bruno Coppieters is Associate Professor and Head of the
Department of Political Science at the Vrije Universiteit
Brussel (Free University of Brussels). He spent two years
as a doctoral researcher at the Humboldt University in the
German Democratic Republic, Eötvös Lorand University
in Budapest and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He received
his Ph.D. from the Philosophy Department of the Freie Universität
Berlin. He now lectures in the Vrije Universiteit Brussel
on the history of political thought, national conflicts
in Eastern Europe and normative political theory. He also
lectures at Vesalius College on the history of political
thought and on regions and minorities in Europe, and at
the Université Libre de Bruxelles on war and secession.
His previous research has included the history of political
thought (Hobbes, Montesquieu, Hegel), the history of pacifism
in Russia and the Soviet Union, and ethnic conflicts in
the former Soviet Union. He has been co-editor of the journal
Caucasian Regional Studies and has organized conferences
on the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict, with the participation
of scholars from the Caucasus region. His work currently
focuses on federalism and on normative studies on war and
secession.
Selected Publications:
"Federalization of Foreign Relations: Discussing Alternatives
for the Georgian-Abkhaz Conflict." To be published
as Working Paper No. 2 in the Caspian Studies Program's
Working Paper Series, Harvard University, 2003. (With Tamara
Kovziridze and Uwe Leonardy.)
Contextualizing Secession: Normative Studies in Comparative
Perspective, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003.
(Edited together with Richard Sakwa.)
Moral Constraints on War: Principles and Cases, Lanham/Md.,
Lexington Books, 2002 (edited together with Nick Fotion.)
Federalism and Conflict in the Caucasus, London,
Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2001.
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Secession and the Use of Force: A Comparative Analysis
Normative literature on secession is dealing with the conditions
under which nations may make legitimate claims for statehood.
It is also debating moral questions that are closely related
to the previous one, such as the definition of the self
in the principle of national self-determination. Furthermore,
authors are debating about whether sovereignty is and will
remain the cornerstone of the international order. The just
war tradition, which deals with the moral justification
of warfare, remains, surprisingly, remarkably isolated from
mainstream secessionist studies. This is so despite the
fact that so many secessionist conflicts turn violent and
even though similar moral arguments are found in debates
on the legitimacy of unilateral declarations of secession
and in those on the justification of the use of force.
The systematic clarification of the many connections between
the two traditions can be achieved by a comparative study
of secessionist crises. The jus ad bellum principles
of 'just cause', 'legitimate authority', 'right intentions',
'proportionality', 'likelihood of success' and 'last resort'
help to determine to what extent the use of force may be
used in a secessionist crisis and also to what extent unilateral
secession is morally justified. Furthermore, these principles
are useful in exploring to what extent unilateral steps
towards secession may be avoided through legal procedures
or other institutional means. The jus ad bellum criteria
will have to be reinterpreted in order to compare moral
arguments on the right to secession. By way of implementing
this exploration, this study will consider eleven cases
where a debate on the unilateral right to secession is taking
place. In most of these cases, a violent escalation has
occurred: Chechnya, the Basque Country, Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh,
Kosovo, Transdniestria, Cyprus, Taiwan, Montenegro, Flanders
and Quebec. It will yield a series of journal articles and
working papers exploring the various normative aspects of
one particular case or of various cases comparatively (in
2003) and a book (2004/05).
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| NCS Scholars, Midterm Meeting, Mexico. |
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NCS Scholars Lori Leonard and Seggane Musisi during first Global Health Summer Course Meeting.
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