[This article is Chapter 9 of Breaking Away: The Case of Secession, Radical Decentralization, and Smaller Polities.]

When we hear of political movements in favor of decentralization and secession, the word “nationalist” is often used to describe them. We have seen the word used in both the Scottish and Catalonian secession movements, and in the case of Brexit. Often the term is intended to be pejorative.

The following is a slightly amended version of the 2023 Ludwig von Mises Memorial Lecture sponsored by Yousif Almoayyed at the Austrian Economics Research Conference, Mises Institute, Auburn, Alabama: