ABSTRACT
Self-determination as, first, a proposed concept and later as a foundational principle of an
emerging new order is an invention of the modern world, the one that has evolved in the
late eighteenth century and culminated in the French Revolution. The Revolution and its
many European followers emphasized above all the centrality of the Nation and its all-
encompassing, deep relationships with all its ‘citizens’. An important corollary of this
notion was the idea that the citizens are entitled to determine their political institutions
and the policies of the national state that will emerge from their exercise of their self-deter-
mination. In other words, self-determination was organically wedded to the democratic
idea (Werther, 1992).
