Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Daniel Casal Author-Name: Beatriz Viladrich Sandín Title: SECESIÓN, AUTOGOBIERNO Y MODELOS DE DEMOCRACIA. Abstract: Resumen:El trabajo analiza la relación entre los modelos de autogobierno y los mecanismos de secesión. Para ello el paper parte de un análisis teórico de los conceptos de secesión, autodeterminación y la materialización que se realiza de ellos tanto en el Derecho Internacional como los sistemas políticos nacionales estableciendo una modelización de su ejercicio, en función del grado de intervención de las instituciones centrales, en dos tipos: autónoma o tutelada. Adicionalmente se analizan siete casos: Escocia, Quebec, Groenlandia, Islas Feroe, Nueva Caledonia, Aruba y Sint Marteens y se estudia si el diseño y rendimiento de sus instituciones de autogobierno los convierte en sistemas mayoritarios o consociativos. A partir de estas dos primeras aproximaciones el paper establece la relación entre el diseño de los sistemas políticos subnacionales y el modelo de secesión existente determinando como conclusión preliminar que existen elementos para poder asociar vías diferentes de acceso de autonomía al diseño de sistemas políticos subnacionales. Abstract: The main research question of the paper is to find out if the design of the political system of a subnational entity, in countries that contemplate the possibility of initiating a secession process, determines a model of independence more or less supervised from the central level of government.   To answer the main question, the paper chooses seven extraordinarily relevant cases: Scotland, Aruba, Quebec, Sint Marteens, Greenland, the Faroe Islands and New Caledonia.   These are territories that have self-government institutions and that are part of countries in which the possibility of activating a secession process is contemplated by the political system of which they are part.   The research builds a theoretical framework based in the first place on the conceptual delimitation and recognition of the right to secession, which may have the following nature: Constitutional (when it is thus recognized in the constitutional pact of a country) Awarded (when it is recognized by a normative instrument with legal rank) or Intergovernmental (when it has its origin in a pact between different levels of government). Additionally, the research defines defines each of the elements that characterize the models of majority or consociative democracy according to the methodology proposed by Lijphart (2016).   To determine whether the model of democracy that defines the institutions of self-government, from each of the selected case studies, the paper defines four dimensions that are subdivided into 7 indicators:  

1.       Cabinet type: area in which the degree of concentration of the executive power in mono-color or coalition governments is analyzed.

2.       Executive-Legislative Balance: where it is studied which institution leads the political system of self-government through indicators such as the parliamentary election of the executive, the existence of mechanisms for the withdrawal of parliamentary trust or the possibility of dissolving the legislature by the cabinet.

3.       The party system: by determining the majority or consociational bias of the system from the calculation of the Effective Number of Parliamentary Parties (NEPP) using the system of Laakso and Taagepera (1979) as well as the classification parameters of Blondel (1968) and Sartori (1976)

4.       The electoral system: determining whether it is proportional or majority.     The research shows that the self-government institutions of Quebec and Scotland resemble a Westminster model of democracy whose main characteristic is the majority bias in the functioning of its political system. For their part, Greenland, Aruba and Sint Marteens present more characteristic elements of a consociative democracy model characterized by the pact between multiple actors as a fundamental dimension of the performance of the political system.   From the conceptualization of each of the 7 case studies, as a democratic or consociative model . The paper analyzes what is the existing legal framework in the matter of secession, taking as a determining parameter to know which is the governmental level that has the final word on independence. In this way, two models can be found: supervised (when the final decision requires the participation of the central institutions of the country) or autonomous (when the last word falls on the institutions of self-government without the participation of the central power).   As the research shows, Scotland, Quebec and the Faroe Islands present supervised secession models in which the participation of institutions at the central level of government is essential. In the case of Scotland, secession is contemplated in the Edinburgh Agreement (being therefore an intergovernmental route) in Quebec the possibility of independence derives from Bill-20 better known as the Clarity Law and, finally, in the case of Faroe Islands recognition of secession is embodied in Part IX of the Danish Constitution.   In the cases of Greenland, New Caledonia, Aruba and Sin Marteens, secession is completely autonomous. This means that it is their own institutions of self-government that have the possibility to decide on independence and the creation of a new country. The secession of Greenland is recognized by its Self-Government Law (model granted) that of New Caledonia, the Noumeá Agreements of 1998 (intergovernmental model) while that of Aruba and Sint Marteens is recognized in the Charter of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (which has the rank constitutional).   Therefore, the research confirms that there is a relationship between the model of democracy, the institutions of self-government, and the mechanism of access to independence since, as can be seen, those territories with systems that tend to be majority (Quebec and Scotland) require of the central power in the final decision. While the territories with consociative institutions (Aruba, Sint Marteens and New Caledonia) depend exclusively on the position adopted by their institutions of self-government.   Faroe Islands, apparently , is the exception to the rule. The Part IX of the Danish Constitution gives the status of constituent nation of the country which entails recognition of their right to secession. However, as there is no mechanism for access to independence in the Self-Government Law, and when in 1946 the Faroese people decided to become an independent country, it was the Danish institutions that annulled the result, considering it unrepresentative. Notwithstanding the constitutional reform that the Nordic archipelago is promoting, it proposes a procedure similar to that of Greenlandic, placing the last word on access to independence in the hands of its citizens and its institutions of self-government (Ackren,, 2006).   Therefore, from the results of the research, two main conclusions can be drawn: First, that there is an apparent relationship between secession and the model of democracy.   In the political systems whose institutions of self-government tend to have a greater Westminster feature, such as Scotland and Quebec. The model of access to independence requires the participation of the final institutions in the implementation of the decision. This circumstance can be explained because the Westminster systems tend to manufacture artificial majorities, it is because they use majority electoral models that do not correctly translate the votes into seats.   In consociative systems it is observed that, with the exception of the Faroe Islands, the final decision on self-determination and independence resides in the autonomous institutions themselves because this model of democracy is characterized by a greater representativeness of the different political options, through proportional electoral systems and a greater balance between powers. Classification-JEL: R1 Keywords: Independencia Residencial, Secesión, Autogobierno, Democracia Westminster, Democracia Consensual., Independence, Secession, Self-Government, Westminster Democracy, Consensual Democracy Pages: 149-185 Volume: 1 Year: 2023 File-URL: http://www.revistaestudiosregionales.com/documentos/articulos/pdf-articulo-2647.pdf File-Format: Application/pdf Handle: RePEc:rer:articu:v:1:y:2023:p:149-185