UCLA

The right to self-determination of peoples lies at the core of much global disquiet.Disputes over the practical meaning of the right for all peoples to “pursue their economic, social, and cultural development without outside interference” can lead to domestic conflicts that harden over decades and others capable of enflaming geopolitical crises. I address these disputes by returning to the conceptual history of collective self-determination centering on two sources of contestation: first, who or what authorizes the political existence of a “people” to whom self-determination can apply; and second, the physical and discursive spaces that shape and limit the realization of self determination. I refer to these considerations as the “authorship of collective personhood.” My analysis identifies four interpretations of self-determination that differently understand the authorship of collective personhood: national, international, global, and intrastate. The national understanding, emerging from 19th-century European nationalist revolutions, sees political legitimacy as stemming from a nation’s attainment of statehood through liberation from external domination, as exemplified in the thought of Giuseppe Mazzini. International self-determination, which arose in the early 20th century, involved the creation of peoples in line with the ideological and geopolitical interests of external actors, as epitomized by the policies of Vladimir Lenin and Woodrow Wilson. The mid-20th-century global conception of the “right” to self-determination aimed to achieve decolonization through independent statehood, viewing the world as a site of war and peace, universal racial dynamics, and shared colonial “dependency.” Lastly, the intrastate transformation of self-determination is characterized by minority and indigenous peoples establishing their political identity within existing states through negotiations over self-governance over issues central to maintaining their collective cultural identity. These interpretations demonstrate how self-determination has accumulated diverse meanings, fueling contemporary conflicts as stakeholders invoke coherent, historically grounded understandings to assert their perceived entitlements. However, despite the challenges posed by this plurality of meanings, I defend an indeterminate understanding of self-determination. Embracing the malleability of self-determination is essential to ensure the enduring relevance of the notion to proffer a resilient framework for asserting autonomy amidst future, unforeseen challenges to collective identity and ways of life.