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Full-Text Articles in Law
Self-Determination In The Post-Cold War Era: A New Internal Focus?, Gregory H. Fox
Self-Determination In The Post-Cold War Era: A New Internal Focus?, Gregory H. Fox
Michigan Journal of International Law
Review of International Monitoring of Plebiscites, Referenda and National Elections: Self-Determination and Transition to Democracy by Yves Beigbeder
Why Redraw The Map Of Africa: A Moral And Legal Inquiry, Makau Wa Mutua
Why Redraw The Map Of Africa: A Moral And Legal Inquiry, Makau Wa Mutua
Michigan Journal of International Law
The author argues in this Article that the post-colonial state, the uncritical successor of the colonial state, is doomed because it lacks basic moral legitimacy. Its normative and territorial construction on the African colonial state, itself a legal and moral nullity, is the fundamental reason for its failure. The author argues that, at independence, the West decolonized the colonial state, not the African peoples subject to it. In other words, the right to self-determination was exercised not by the victims of colonization but their victimizers, the elites who control the international state system.