This book examines the conceptual and political history of the right of self-determination of peoples.

The definitive study of the doctrine of self-determination of peoples.

Focusing especially on the era since the Cold War, political scientists, other scholars, and government officials examine both empirically and conceptually the causes and impacts of people striving for self-determination and autonomy. They consider the legal, political-administrative, ethnic-cultural, economic, and strategic dimensions; and try to consider examples from all major regions. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

In this book, leading scholars re-examine the principle of national self-determination from diverse theoretical perspectives.

In analysing the contemporary International Law principles as to Self-determination of Peoples, Dr. Edward McWhinney gives a special attention to the crisis today of multinational states put together, usually hurriedly and without proper regard for foreseeable later problems in establishing a plural-constitutional order system, by the military victors in World War I in the imposed Peace treaties of 1919. The key to successful exercise of a claimed right to self-determination is Recognition by other, existing states in the World Community and today also admission to the United Nations. In examining the classical rules on Recognition of States and the recent developed practice as to U.N. Membership, the author signals the continuing antinomy of Law and Power and how high political concerns for their own conceived national interests influence or control decisions on application of the legal ground rules in concrete cases by heads of government and their foreign ministries. The author notes at the same time the attempt to consolidate and codify existing rules on a political "regional" basis, most evident perhaps with the European Union today. In addressing the claimed new legal category of "failed state" with the concomitant asserted legal right of other states to intervene, if necessary unilaterally or outside the United Nations, to impose their own "corrective" measures, he suggests that the postulated "failure" in such cases may frequently stem less from problems inherent in the state concerned than from past hegemonial actions by outside states in pursuit of their own geopolitical interests in the region. A special concluding chapter draws on the empirical record of the historical, often trial-and-error experience of the Succession states to the Versailles treaties settlements and to the assorted acts of Decolonisation of the former European Imperial, Colonial powers.

In National Identities and the Right to Self-Determination of Peoples, Hilly Moodrick-Even Khen revisits the legal right to self-determination of peoples and suggests an integrative model for securing the cohesion of the various nationalities within multinational states.

The right of self-determination of peoples holds out the promise of sovereign statehood for all peoples and a domination-free international order. But it also harbors the danger of state fragmentation that can threaten international stability if claims of self-determination lead to secessions. Covering both the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century independence movements in the Americas and the twentieth-century decolonization worldwide, this book examines the conceptual and political history of the right of self-determination of peoples. It addresses the political contexts in which the right and concept were formulated and the practices developed to restrain its potentially anarchic character, its inception in anti-colonialism, nationalism, and the labor movement, its instrumentalization at the end of the First World War in a formidable duel that Wilson lost to Lenin, its abuse by Hitler, the path after the Second World War to its recognition as a human right in 1966, and its continuing impact after decolonization.