This book aims to supply a thorough and unapologetic defense of the right to secede. In particular, it argues that any group has a moral right to secede as long as its political divorce will leave it and the remainder state in a position to perform the requisite political functions.

To call this thesis a minority position is an understatement. Though the twin doctrines of state sovereignty and territorial integrity are currently undergoing a dramatic reassessment, and though most theorists now acknowledge that a group may have a remedial right to secede when it has suffered severe and long-standing injustices at the hands of its state, it remains highly controversial to suggest that a group might have a right to separate even when its state has in no way treated it unjustly. Moreover, the majority of those who champion a primary right to secede presume that such political self-determination must come under a nationalist banner. Thus, my view is doubly controversial: Not only does it allow for the unilateral division of perfectly legitimate states, it does not mandate that the separatists be a culturally distinct minority group.

It would not be surprising for an anarchist to be so open to state breaking, but I defend secessionist rights despite being a statist. As I shall argue, there is nothing contradictory or otherwise problematic about valuing legitimate states, on the one hand, and permitting their division on the other.