We are sometimes vote-intoxicated: we live in countries that consider voting the legitimate means for collecting [sic] decision making for everything but the extent and the boundaries of the very political community that is supposed to make decisions by voting. The bureaucratic apparatus is happy to have people decide democratically on other peoples’ money and lives, but not to the ultimate question of the survival of a nation state in its current geographical form. Too often secessionist movements are kicked out of the “respectable” public debate by quasi-religious appeal to the apparently immortal value of “national unity”.
I think you will find in general that the political class supports “reforms” that strengthen incumbents institutions and people in power, and that it opposes reforms that strengthen ordinary individuals. Making secession and “foot-voting” easier are examples of the latter.
1. It isn’t clear to me that secession strengthens the power of individuals. Would southern secession have enhanced individual power? Whether secession is good or bad probably depends on whether the leaving or the staying polity respects individual liberty more.
2. In this country, at least, we only have one political subunit where a strong plurality is considering secession, both parties have said they will abide by that polity’s wishes, and congress has in fact held referenda in Puerto Rico. The UK has also been willing to devolve power to Scotland and to consider secession. It’s not clear to me that secession is always opposed by the political class, and whether or not it is appears to hinge more on issues of national identity than class power.
3. While liberalizing immigration is opposed by most political classes, perhaps to preserve their power, it also seems to be broadly opposed by most populaces, even though most people don’t clearly benefit from immigration restrictions. Again, I think nationalism might be more important than public choice issues here. It’s also worth pointing out that letting more people into the country might enhance the power of rulers, giving them more subjects.
4. Emigration isn’t heavily controlled by many countries, even though it often puts citizens beyond the reach of the government. You and I, for example, don’t need to get a visa from our government to travel most places, and our government will even be fairly cooperative if we want to renounce our citizenship, provided we have another one.
I’m dubious that “heavy restrictions on letting people in, light restrictions on letting people out” is the pattern you would see if western democracies were trying to preserve their power by keeping people from foot voting.
You forgot northeastern Colorado. Of course we all know that even if they did vote to secede from the rest of Colorado, neither the state nor the federal government would have any inclination to respect such a decision.
I’m not sure Kling was thinking of areas wanting to form new states or provinces under the same, powerful central government when he talked about the liberty enhancing effects of secession, but maybe I’m wrong. It’s even more difficult for me to see how those sorts of “secessions” would be, as a rule, liberty enhancing.
That said, it’s also not true that state partition proposals are always opposed by the powers that be. We’ve done it four times, creating Maine, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Vermont (Vermont arguably did it before we were a country, so maybe it doesn’t count). We’ve also divided several territories into smaller states.
The often bitter disputes I see going on between progressives and libertarians on these matters between people who have no skin in the game – neither bureaucrats or e.g. venture capitalists with a deep knowledge of the laws governing international waters (heh) – also undermines the public choice angle here.
See for example the Exiled/NSFW crowd and their libertarian opponents. The former have carved a niche for themselves unmasking and tearing down even the most marginal folks on the right (Radley Balko, Justin Raimondo).
One certainly sees many annexations under municipalities but few successions, probably more from the standpoint of efficiency than anything. Few think an additional governmental unit is anything but more overhead. One does see regional succession movements but I don’t see any opposition to voting on them, just little support for them. Successionists just want something for nothing, they want the benefits they have obtained in the past and stand to obtain in the future, if not through political means, by their location and proximity. They usually fall on economic grounds as nonviable. They want the resources they possess but cannot generally afford to acquire. They want lower taxes, not higher ones to pay for what others have acquired for them. They may wish lower benefits, but their goals would impose higher costs on others, border checkpoints fpr example, or say a foreign country that wishes to buy its way to a larger domain.