Hegemonic Beliefs and Territorial Rights

Irredentism conflicts are ravaging human lives across the globe. These co@icts arise not only from the aggressive abrogation of settled boundaries, but from real pressures to accommodate population growth, migration, changes in solidarity patterns, and increased political mobilization. Any intellectually interesting criterion for evaluating claims to territories must be formulated without ascribing decisive significance to the scriptures or beliefs of any particular people or group of peoples. Two problems arise, however, that complicate any effort to substitute a moral rule for the logically contradictory, empirically incorrect, and ethically bankrupt principle of “might makes right”. Unless there is a practical meaning to the criterion, neither movements, nor governments, nor the peoples they represent will be inclined to pay any attention to it. On the other hand, any spect$c operational, criterion, such as current habitation, land to population ratio, prior habitation, or productivity of use, will encourage “‘ethnic cleansing” or demands for impossibly constant adjustments in allocation of territory. This impossibility will drain the criterion of meaning or plunge the world into an endless and dangerous process of territorial re-demarcation. A partial solution to this problem is offered by conceiving of legitimate boundaries as hegemonically institutionalized beliefsd@icult to establish, tenacious once established, and linked via politics and economics to the real capacities of peoples, to their aspirations, and to prevailing international conceptions of right and wrong. Copyright