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Published December 1994 | public
Journal Article

Constitutional secession clauses

Abstract

Taking the view that constitutions are devices whereby people coordinate to specific equilibria in circumstances that allow multiple equilibria, we show that a constitutional secession clause can serve as such a device and, therefore, that such a clause is more than an empty promise or an ineffectual threat. Employing a simple three-person recursive game, we establish that under certain conditions, this game possesses two equilibria—one in which a disadvantaged federal unit secedes and is not punished by the other units in the federation, and a second equilibrium in which this unit does not secede but is punished if it chooses to do so.

Additional Information

© 1994 George Mason University. This research was partially funded by a grant from the United States Institute of Peace at the California Institute of Technology. We wish to thank several anonymous referees who brought to our attention a number of things that we had not previously considered.

Additional details

Created:
August 20, 2023
Modified:
October 17, 2023