What counts as a secession is a matter of contention, in particular among legal scholars. Some of them think that there are only a few, if any, real secessions: most of the cases in which new states are created, they argue, are cases of disintegration or dissolution of states. Others however use the term ‘secession’ to describe any withdrawal of territory from the sovereignty of a particular state (thus including decolonization and irredenta under secession).
In contrast, the concept of unification is relatively uncontested: any joining or bringing together of territories from previously different sovereign entities appears to count as unification. States created by unification usually quickly and effortlessly gain international recognition; hence, perhaps, these cases appear uncontroversial.
In contrast to unification, annexation is unilateral acquisition of a territory of one state by another, which the losing state opposes in one way or another. Due to this opposition, annexations often experience difficulties in getting international recognition.
In this paper, I shall argue that secession need not be more contested than unification and annexation. Like secession, unification involves the withdrawal of a territory and the creation of a new state or an enlargement of the old one. And, annexation, like unification, results in the enlargement of the annexing state. There are instances which in fact display some features of annexation, unification and secession. In short, these concepts may be used to describe different aspects and outcomes of a process of withdrawal of a territory from the jurisdiction and control of a single state and its transfer to another.
Aleksandar Pavković teaches political theory and comparative politics at Macquarie University, Sydney. Previously he taught at the universities of Belgrade, Melbourne and Macau. He is the author of The Fragmentation of Yugoslavia (Palgrave 2000) , Creating New States: Theory and Practice of Secession (with Peter Radan, Ashgate 2007), and of the Anthems and the Making of Nation States: Identity and Nationalism in the Balkans (with Kit Kelen, Tauris 2015). He is also an editor of the Ashgate Research Companion on Secession (Ashgate 2011) and of Separatism and Secessionism in Europe and Asia: To Have a State of One’s Own (Routledge 2013).