ABSTRACT
Social scientists often attempt to discover and specify the conditions under which a particular social process or event takes place. Among the theories of secession advanced so far, some seek to establish such causal links between attempts at secession and various features of the secessionist regions, or of the political movements within these regions, while others do not. In view of this, we can classify explanatory theories of secession as: non-causal, causal and causal/predictive. Apart from this causal aspect, the theories to be examined here differ among themselves in other ways. According to Wood's model, secession is the outcome of a dynamic interaction of a series of conditions and collective actions. Wood analyses this dynamic process into the following components: the preconditions of secessions, the response of central government, direct precipitants of secession and the resolution of secessionist crises by armed conflict.
