Bulletin n. 2/2015 | ||
September 2015 | ||
Abulof Uriel |
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The Confused Compass: From Self-determination to State-determination | ||
in Ethnopolitics , Volume 14, Issue 5 , 2015 , 488-497 | ||
Self-determination, a prime justificatory principle of the international society, has become a confused, and confusing, compass. At the heart of this confusion, I argue, lies the tacit submersion of self-determination in state-determination. In principle, self-determination entails the ‘moral double helix' of duality (personal right to align with a people, and the people’s right to determine their politics) and mutuality (the right is as much the other’s as the self’s). In practice, state actors have labored to tame self-determination: to control and contain this perilous principle by yielding the will of ‘the people' to the interests of powerful states, which have repeatedly impaired its moral DNA. | ||