Ryan Griffiths

Sometimes in the heat of expressing political frustrations, we'll hear people advocate for some kind of political secession. How seriously do we need to be thinking or worrying about that possible outcome? Grant Reeher speaks with Ryan Griffiths, a political scientist at Syracuse University, about his book on the subject, "The Disunited States: Threats of Secession in Red and Blue America and Why They Won't Work."

Program Transcript:

Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations. I'm Grant Reeher. Sometimes in the heat of expressing political frustrations, well, here people advocate for some kind of political secession. I've heard such things from Californians, for example. How seriously do we need to be thinking or worrying about that possible outcome? My guest today has written a new book on the topic. Syracuse University political scientist Ryan Griffiths is the author of “The Disunited States: Threats of Secession and Red and Blue America and Why They Won't Work.” Professor Griffiths, welcome to the program.

Ryan Griffiths: Thanks, Grant. Good to be here.

GR: Well, it's good to have you here. We appreciate you making the time. I want to start with just basic terms, just so that we're all on the same page. Give us just a very brief definition of what you mean by secession.

RG: Sure. Secession, and the way that I use it, is where a part of a country tries to break away and become its own independent sovereign state. So the two examples in American history, of course, the Civil War, where the Confederacy attempted to do that and failed. And of course, the American Revolution, where the 13 colonies attempted to do it and were successful in becoming a new independent state.

GR: Right. Okay. Thanks. So I got to say, I found this book fascinating. And it's both fun to read, disturbing to read. Insightful. But I want to start with a basic skepticism I have about part of it of a particular kind. And I'll begin that by quoting actually, from your book, you say near the beginning: "To sum all of this up, there is no way to efficiently and peacefully disentangle and divide red America and blue America without it cascading into violence and chaos. It can't be done, and it is folly to think that it can. Much of this book is dedicated to showing why this is... This is the case." So we're going to get into that.

But my skepticism is this kind of building on that. It would seem that at first maybe I wonder how real of an issue is this? I mean, it might be kind of a parlor game that's played by disgruntled liberal academics or frustrated conservatives. But you mentioned the Civil War. Seems to me you could say the Civil War ended this discussion with 600,000 exclamation points in the form of US dead. Why is this a topic that needs your book?

RG: Right, that's a good question. It's a good place to start with. So there's a few ways I can answer this. First, let me just say that it's not a doom-and-gloom book. And as a scholar, I'm not a doom-and-gloom guy. Like, I don't think that this is the most likely outcome for America. I don't think it's right around the corner.

That said, it is an increasing sentiment. All right. I've been tracking this for over 15 years, and 15 years ago, it was a pretty minor thing. But now these movements are gaining traction. They're not as big as some movements around the world, but they are gaining. And one of the things about secessionism is that it can move rapidly.

A good example of this is Catalonia in the northeast of Spain. And, you know, they had a secessionist crisis a few years back. But as recently as 2006, only about 15% of Catalans were pro-independence. And then over a period of eight years, that tripled to 45%. So that kind of secessionist energy can move very quickly and it can respond to triggers. So the book is meant to get ahead of that type of thing and talk about the dangers and the perils of thinking that this is a solution to America's problems.

GR: Okay. Interesting. So, you write in your book about a couple of the different arguments for secession and some of the justifications for it. And one of the things that you write about is this notion of people having a right to secede, you know, if there's a sufficient level of consensus and a sufficient difference between one part of the country and the rest of the country, that there is this right. Just briefly tell us what is that right, supposedly? What's it based on? And then I have some follow-ups about complicating it.

RG: Sure. So there are three. I spent a lot of time at the start of the book walking through the arguments I hear from secessionists in America, whether it's regional groups in Texas or California or Red state America, things like that. The three arguments, in brief, are what I call irreconcilable differences, which we'll get to. And then one about a legal or normative right to secede, which is what your question is after.

And then another one about economic units and the benefits of small units. But the second one, there is an argument that it's not just in America. Right? It's sometimes called a primary right. Basically that a group of people, self-defined, have a right to choose what state they're in. So, if Syracuse, which is where you and I live, the Syracuse area, if the people by an overwhelming majority, by 85%, say, "Hey, look, we should become the independent state of Syracuse," then there's a normative argument out there made by political theorists that they should have that right to do it.

All right. And that is an argument that is picked up by any secessionist movement I've studied for good reason. Why would they, you know, ignore it? It's also one that isn't exclusively American. It's used all over the place. And then next to it, of course, is this constitutional argument that you often hear. And that's more specifically American.

GR: Interesting. And very briefly, what's the constitutional argument?

RG: All right. The constitutional argument is fascinating. I have to say, too, the book is written for a general audience. I deliberately tried to write it for a broad audience. Some of the chapters get a little more academic, and the one about a constitutional right is the most academic, but it's also maybe the most fascinating. I love that chapter.

So the consensus in American constitutional law right now is that there is no right to secede based on a 1869 Supreme Court decision, just a couple years out from the Civil War, that ruled that secession was unconstitutional unless the government agreed to it. Now that decision gets into all kinds of Supreme Court politics. Completely fascinating, which is probably too much for us to talk about here.

But that's the argument. Now, so the status quo argument is that there is no constitutional right, but plenty of people push back on that. If we brought on the leader of the Texas Nationalists or Cal-exit or whatever, they would have all kinds of reasons to say why that was incorrectly decided. Okay.

GR: Okay. Yeah. So you... one of the political thinkers that went through my mind when you were talking about this notion of a normative right would be John Locke. And, you know, the contract theory of government. But on talking about this right, I'm also thinking about Jeremy Bentham, who said, you know, "rights are nonsense and natural rights are nonsense walking on stilts." So, you know, if you... Okay, you have this right. But ultimately, that right is going to have to be enforced. Wouldn't it ultimately come down to force? And we're back to the Civil War again. I mean, this is just, you know, it's great that you might think you have a right, but.

RG: Right. So the argument about having a right of a people to secede through some sort of democratic process. And I've written about this in earlier work. You know, I am sympathetic to it. You just need to have rules in place for it. All right. I don't think that... Imagine if you and I did form this sovereign state of Syracuse, or we wanted to have a referendum.

GR: As long as long as long as we can take Micron with us. Okay.

RG: Go ahead. And Green Lakes, I really want Green Lakes. I love walking out there. You know, we shouldn't be able to call for a referendum every Tuesday. Right. And we shouldn't be able to say as long as just north of 50% are on board, we win. Right. That creates chaos. It's too much turbulence. So I think you need a very high bar for what success would be for that kind of thing.

That said, to your question, and I think this gets at, you know, the Jeremy Bentham comment, ultimately, secession... probably secession is that it's not governed by domestic law. Right. There is no... you know, if you and I rob a bank today, the law will determine our fate. There is no law that governs how this works.

All right. It's all... it's usually worked out when it is worked out by politics. Political people, you know, figures or movements or sometimes armed groups. They work it out. And so the problem with secession is it transcends law. And it becomes a very thorny, very difficult political issue.

GR: Yeah. I think in your book, you say it's the "Wild West" as one of your phrases. Yeah. You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm speaking with Ryan Griffiths. He's a Syracuse University political scientist and the author of a new book titled “The Disunited States: Threats of Secession and Red and Blue America and Why They Won't Work.”

You mentioned earlier in our conversation when you were talking about the three things and the economic benefits of smallness. I wanted to drill in on that attractiveness of smallness because it seems to me, indeed, it goes back several decades now, but there has been this kind of new discovery of kind of a romantic attachment to being small.

I mean, I'm thinking like there was a book several decades ago called “The Vermont Papers,” which was about the value of small government and community-based government. It goes back to the ancient Greeks, the idea that democracy had to be small. And then you have like, you know, these idyllic notions we have of countries like Norway or, you know, small, organic farming is another one that you hear a lot about. Why, why is smallness a problem in modern nations? I mean, what's the what is the limits of that attraction?

RG: All right. So, the argument for the benefits of smallness this is the third argument that is utilized by a lot of these groups. So it's used by many groups internationally as well. Is that smaller political units tend to be more homogenous. Their political preferences are more homogeneous. And if they're political preferences are more homogeneous, then the government can design policies that will be more accommodating.

That will be preferable to a broader set of populations. So people will point to Singapore, for instance, and say, that's pretty small, pretty successful. Not really a democracy. In any event. Yeah. People will point to states like that. All right. There's a pretty rich literature in economics that gets at this. Now there's of course benefits to having a big state, large internal economy.

Right. Regional insurance if there's catastrophe, big, you know, militaries. So, you know, in economics, this is called the "size of states" literature. There's benefits to having a big state and benefits to having a small state. So it is used in some of the people who've advocated for secession in America. We'll talk about that. They'll say if Texas was independent or if Red state America was independent, then, however that is delineated...

They could have policies that suit them best. I'm a bit skeptical of this just because, you know, we already have a federal system which is partly designed to accommodate the interest between region and center right, and there are many benefits to the United States having a large country. Right. And I should say, too, that this argument is only really relevant when you've got a lot of polarization and people pushing for secession.

Right. In a time of harmony, the argument about the benefits of smallness doesn't really become that salient an issue. So it's one that people talk about, and I spent some time working through it, but it's probably the one I'm most skeptical about.

GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with Ryan Griffiths. He's a political science professor at Syracuse University and the author of a new book on political secession titled “The Disunited States: Threats of Secession and Red and Blue America and Why They Won't Work.” This next question kind of taps into one of the three things you mentioned at the beginning: the irreconcilable differences.

But I'm thinking of these discussions about secession or related to it that I've personally heard, like at dinner parties, for example. And, you know, the most common one for me, given the circles I travel in, in academia, is, you know, mostly on the liberal side, these folks will start to dream out loud. And it seems to me like they're not talking so much about secession, but what I would call "ejection."

And so I hear things like, "Oh, wouldn't it be great if we could just get rid of the deep South, for example, or parts of the Midwest?" And, you know, they laugh, but they're not joking, if you know what I mean. So, how... you know, are there, first of all, are there precedents for ejection, in the world that you've ever seen or held? How does that fit into this notion of irreconcilable differences?

RG: Yeah, yeah. Great question. Ejection, as you're putting it, is quite rare. The one case I can think about is actually Singapore. It had been part of the Malaysian union shortly after independence, and then it was kicked out. You know, apparently, the leader of Singapore at the time was quite upset about it. I mean, ejection and secession are...

It's just like two sides of the same coin, right? Basically, trying to break a country up into smaller units. And, you know, because there are tensions between them. I mean, I guess that, you know, that opens a space to talk about that. The key argument that is motivating the secessionist—and this is whether they are liberal or conservative or moderate, there are plenty of libertarians. The New Hampshire secessionists are kind of libertarian.

GR: Right.

RG: A core argument they bring up, I call it the argument of irreconcilable differences. And that's partly because the groups regularly make an analogy with marital divorce. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene periodically tweets, "We need a national divorce" because the two sides can no longer get together or can no longer get along. Right.

She did this in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination. And so that argument, it appeals to people because most people are familiar with divorce, and they understand that sometimes a couple is just... the love is gone. They don't get along. And they would be able to lead happy, productive lives if they separate.

So why can't we do that with America? And it makes sense to people, right, reasons by analogy. And so a lot of the book is dedicated to trying to show why that analogy doesn't work in the way that people want it to work. Right. And I spent a lot of time doing interviews with folks, and they were gracious to talk to me about their feelings on this.

One of the problems is that in a marital divorce, it's, of course, governed by domestic law. Right. So if my wife and I get divorced, I cannot just run off with the, you know, the kids, the cat, and the car. She can call the cops. All right. There is no 911 number in secession. There's no law that determines how it's worked out.

That's one thing. Also, unlike most marriages, are two people. And, you know, a national divorce in America? That's 340 million people, right? And they are intermixed. So the whole idea of a red state, blue state thing imagines that they are somehow clearly grouped in, delineated like one is on one side of a river and the other side.

And that's just not the case. You and I live in the suburbs of Syracuse. They're quite purple. You know, the political lines run through the neighborhoods, even through households. All right. So, trying to disentangle that means you need to create some sort of partition system to disentangle America. And one of the chapters I work on tries to show just the... it was a great chapter to write.

I spent time trying to think about the maps that we would use. And so I imagine, let's say there was a constitutional convention that got together to try to figure out how to break America apart into what I call for fun, a "red land" and a "blue land." If they started with a map of states based on the last election, then you would have a reasonably coherent map.

Although again, Blue Land would be kind of a West Coast and a northeast thing, and Hawaii, etc. but still, within those places... in California alone, right? There are millions of Republicans, millions of people who would feel that they're in the wrong state. Sure. So you could drill down. And then I used a map of congressional districts. Right. Which is a bit more accurate.

But now you've got, you know, I forget the exact number. What's 400 something? And then you get this archipelago of red and blue, you get an impossible jigsaw of a country. But of course, people are more often sorted in the country they want. And then I drill down one level further to counties.

That's 5,000 political units. And then you get this impossible map, right? But in that map, of course, more people are sorted into the country they want to be in, although not all, because you can't possibly sort everybody, you know, everybody into the right country. And so one of the things I want to point out is I call this the scale problem.

There is no way to draw a perfect map. The more coherent the map, the larger the number of people that are sorted into the wrong country. Whereas if you get a map where a larger percentage are actually in the country they want to be, then you get an impossible map where, you know, it just doesn't make any sense.

And the problem with trying to do this in the first place is that—and I have a chapter dedicated to walking through the types of hyper-polarization and conflict and land grabs, all of the conflict that can result—that, you know, that's going to get in the way of any sort of peaceful or responsible attempt at trying to divide the country.

GR: Just two quick comments on that. One is if we work with the divorce metaphor, I think most people who have been through one will resonate with this. There's also financial Armageddon involved. And so I don't know if that's going to convince very many people if that's the analogy. The other thing is this reminds me, too, of the discussions of federalism and the value of federalism again, because, you know, all things being equal, you put more people in places where they want to be.

But you're right. You can never... you're never going to fix this unless we become almost individual countries. I wanted to kind of circle back to my skepticism a bit, and ask you this question because you did, as you just mentioned, you did a lot of interviews with people, and you've looked at these movements, you've taken them very seriously.

How serious do you think people are being about this? And let me give you an analogy. There's a lot of discussion now among our colleagues, and others, about democracy being on the ropes, you know, that it's under existential threat. But I do not see among these people any changes in their behavior. I mean, they're not rearranging their finances.

They're not making plans to move to another country. They don't seem to be like, you know, they're not creating bunkers in their houses, you know, in their basements. So they're talking about it, but they really don't seem to be doing anything differently with their lives. So that tells me that maybe, maybe this is hyperbolic to some degree. Maybe not. But I'm wondering if the same thing about this. I mean, I don't see people like getting ready for this divorce. Maybe you have.

RG: Yeah. Look, I think it varies. I think the people I interviewed were, by and large, quite serious about it. Some of them are writing books about it. They're... becoming their jobs, their careers. And some of the folks I talked to, expressed, you know, security concerns and things like that. That said, I attended a meeting in February, it was called the Summit of Independence Movements, put on by people out in Cal, the Cal-exit movement.

They had independence movements from all over the world zooming in. And also I think it was something like 12 different states in America had an independence movement represented. One of them was from my home state of Florida. I was astonished. I didn't know Florida had an independence movement. I think some of these are a bit more, you know, you can call it, a weekend kind of thing.

I think, I think that is the case. But some of them are quite serious. And, you know, I guess one of the key points in the book is that I'm trying to get ahead of the issue in trying to disabuse people of the belief that secession is a solution, and because the sentiment can increase, it's then very, you know... if you've got... there was an Axios poll a few years ago that found that 20% of Americans thought a national divorce was a good idea.

Now, you and I know that polls are sensitive to how they're framed. And things like that. Nevertheless, you know, there's a foundation of interest in it. And that is vulnerable to triggers. You had a political assassination. You had a failed election. Right. You could imagine. Or just you get a political leader who jumps on board and becomes the champion for a cause that can really galvanize support.

Right. And then you could take somebody who's maybe only interested in this on the weekends to somebody who's all in. And, you know, in my experience with interviewing or doing fieldwork with secessionists around the world is that, you know, there's like a Kool-Aid people can drink where they really get into the movement, the sense of hope.

It can be at close range. These things can be very stirring. And yeah, that could develop in the States with the right kind of momentum, the right kind of catalyst. So the whole point of the book is it's not to argue that polarization is non-existent or to be unsympathetic to these currents, but to say that secession is not the solution that people may wish it to be.

GR: If you're just joining us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and my guest is Syracuse University political science professor Ryan Griffiths. I had a few questions I wanted to make sure that I got to here before we end. But a quick one here before I get into them. You talked about polling.

It... the polling does indicate, though, that although we are quite divided in terms of "I don't like Republicans, I don't like Democrats," or, you know, once you put a line between the two parties, at the same time, if you ask me questions about what I think policy should be, we're not as divided as the party differences would indicate. And so that might be a mitigating factor in all this. I don't know if you look at that or not, but.

RG: I do in the... so at the conclusion... the conclusion is called "Why We Should Stay Together." Right. To end in a kind of hopeful way. And one of the points I make is that, you know, I think... and some of the data you're pointing to show that we're less divided than we think. There's a term out... "affective polarization."

That, you know, you get Republicans and Democrats to talk about their core values, and they end up being kind of the same. But then they say the other side doesn't have those values, even though the other side in a poll said that they have them. Right. So I think there's a lot that holds us together. And I think there's a lot of benefits to America staying together.

I think it, you know, it is a good country in the world. It's done a lot of great things. You know, it's imperfect, of course, but so I think that that gets neglected or overlooked in the argument for a national divorce, that there really is all these great things that kind of hold us together. But polarization sometimes hides it, right?

I mean, I should say, too. The book is written... it's a nonpartisan book, right? It's not. I didn't write it for Red America or Blue America. I wrote it for all America. And I'm trying to make the argument to the entire nation about why this is not a good solution, and why we actually have a lot of reasons to hold together.

GR: Yeah, no, that comes through. So we got about two minutes or so left. I want to squeeze in two questions. The first is, as you've demonstrated already, you have studied and written about secessionist movements around the world. You've looked at the history of this. Are there any cases or classes of cases where they are successful?

RG: Yes. So secession tends to work in very specific circumstances where you've got a defined nation. It's concentrated in a particular region. There's some sort of boundary or border that separates them from the rest.

GR: Makes sense. Yeah.

RG: And they've got some sort of special administrative status that kind of makes them seem different from the rest of the country, so that the country, the government feels that it can permit that secession without worrying about some sort of cascade effect. Right. And in books I've read and I've studied this, I've, you know, mapped them out.

None of those conditions hold in the idea of a red and blue America. Right. It's actually much closer to the partition that existed in India and Pakistan or in Cyprus. So it's a very dangerous set of circumstances.

GR: Right. Right. Okay. And then the last thing about a minute left, one obvious current-day potential application of this would be the Middle East. And have you given any thought or are there views about thinking of secession as a lens to see a way to create more peace? I don't know if that question makes sense, but.

RG: Oh yeah, that's tough. I mean, it kind of depends on the different countries or the different regions you're talking about. Of course I did. I did do a lot of work in Iraqi Kurdistan for a while. And that hasn't worked out for them. But if you're talking more specifically about Palestine.

GR: That's one that comes to mind. But I was thinking of other areas too. But yeah. What are your thoughts there? Quickly.

RG: Secession is difficult. It's hard to work out. I mean, I support a two-state solution in Israel-Palestine. I think that's the least bad solution. That's a kind of a form of secession, although the specifics are a bit different there. But look, secession is hard to pull off. And where it works out peacefully, it only does so in very specific circumstances.

GR: All right. We'll leave it there. We're sticking with America, we’re both in on this. All right. That was Ryan Griffiths again. His new book is titled “The Disunited States: Threats of Secession and Red and Blue America and Why They Won't Work.” It really is a fascinating read. Ryan, thanks again for taking the time to talk with me.

RG: Thank you. It's been a pleasure.

GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.