New working paper on independence referendums

EUDO Citizenship has published a working paper asking who should vote and who should be offered citizenship in the upcoming Scottish referendum. In the paper, a group of EUI academics “consider the interrelations between eligibility criteria for participation in independence referendum” and reflect on other separatist movements in Catalonia, Flanders and Quebec.

One of the contributors to the paper is Professor Rainer Bauböck, who holds a chair in social and political theory at the Department of Political and Social Sciences.  Bauböck and his fellow authors are keen to discuss the electorate in the Scottish referendum process, “This includes EU and Commonwealth citizens residing in Scotland but excludes Scottish-born persons living in London, elsewhere in the EU or in third countries. At the same time, the Scottish government has published a White Paper in which it spells out who would eventually become Scottish citizens in case of a ‘Yes’ vote, which would include many of the latter but not the former.”

The authors, Bauböck says, “defend a wide spectrum of opinions” with the aim of exploring a precedent for other regions around the world currently considering independence.

This EUDO Citizenship paper was published in the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies working papers series, and is available to download as a PDF via Cadmus.