Sanjaume Calvet, MarcHarguindéguy, Jean-BaptisteSánchez Sánchez, Almudena2024-06-042024-06-042024Sanjaume-Calvet M, Harguindéguy JB, Sánchez A. Self-determination vs. state sovereignty. What are the determinants of agreed-upon independence referendums in liberal democracies? Democratization. 2024;31(7):1564-88. DOI: 10.1080/13510347.2024.23317091351-0347http://hdl.handle.net/10230/60340Secession referendums can help to resolve the tension between self-determination and state sovereignty. Nevertheless, not all state governments accept holding such consultations in collaboration with secessionist movements. This article tackles this issue by focusing on the determinants of agreed and non-agreed upon independence referendums. Through a statistical analysis based on a dataset of independence referendums held in liberal democracies from 1945 to 2022 (N = 70), we demonstrate that the decision of the parent state¿s government to agree to an independence referendum depends on two factors. The first is the perception of competition and/or electoral proximity to the referendum demand. The second depends on the expectation of the low cost of an eventual secession -at least in terms of population, area and natural resources. Accordingly, we propose a general model designed to predict the disposition of a liberal democracy to agree to an independence referendum.application/pdfeng© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.info:eu-repo/semantics/article2024-06-04http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2024.2331709SovereigntyReferendumIndependenceSecessionSelf-determinationConflictsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess