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The controversial issue of secession has received little attention from experts of federalism. The best federal studies either evade it or dismiss it in a few lines. However, the issue of secession has been present throughout the history of federations. This book is one of the first to explore the complex relationship between federalism and secession. The authors whose work is presented here recognize the potential of federalism as a way to organize relations between several different states, peoples, nations or territories under the same government. However, they are not naïve or idealist about the ability of the federal idea to succeed in the complex situations in which it is applied. In some cases success seems assured (the United States, Switzerland, Germany, etc.), and the merits of federalism can be showcased. But there are also failures (the former Yugoslavia, or more recently Brexit) and semi-failures that have generated turbulence in recent years in devolutive systems (Scotland in the United Kingdom, Catalonia in Spain) or federative systems (Québec in Canada). This book provides a nuanced portrait of the issue of secession in federal contexts and lays the groundwork for questioning the still too fragile legacy of the great thinkers of federalism.

Le fédéralisme multinational est-il un modèle d’organisation politique viable ? La disparition de certaines fédérations multinationales comme l’URSS, la Tchécoslovaquie et la Yougoslavie, de même que la mise à mal de certaines autres expériences fédérales comme la Belgique et le Canada contrastent singulièrement avec le succès relatif des fédérations mononationales comme les États-Unis et l’Allemagne. Dès lors, l’expérience européenne est-elle prometteuse ? Au-delà d’un examen général de la question de l’aménagement de la diversité nationale au sein des régimes fédératifs, cet ouvrage se penche plus particulièrement sur les problèmes juridiques et politiques épineux auxquels sont confrontés certains pays comme le Canada, la Belgique et l’Espagne.

With the increased mobility and interdependence brought on by globalisation, governments can no longer deal effectively with what were traditionally regarded as «domestic issues» unless they cooperate among themselves. International law may once have been a sort of inter-state law concerned mostly with relations between states, but it now looks increasingly inside state borders and has become, to a large degree, a trans-governmental law. While this creates significant challenges even for highly-unified «nation-states», the challenges are even greater for federations in which powers have been divided up between the central government and federated states. What roles should central governments and federated states play in creating and implementing this new form of governance? Using the Canadian federation as its starting point, this case study illustrates a range of factors to be considered in the appropriate distribution of treaty powers within a federation. Professor Cyr also shows how – because it has no specific provisions dealing with the distribution of treaty powers – the Canadian constitution has «organically» developed a tight-knit set of rules and principles responding to these distributional factors. This book is therefore both about the role of federated states in the current world order and an illustration of how organic constitutionalism works.