Chapters 1 and 2 introduced the different formulations of external self-determination found in the post-Cold War international law literature. In so doing, the two chapters sought to draw attention to the corresponding difference in approaches to interpretation and the consequences for participation in the activity of interpretation and for the narration of identity. Who could speak with authority? Whose image of self and society found expression? The emphasis thus far has been on participation and identity as the results of a choice about what interpretation involves, as generated by adherence to some general view of international law and its workings. This chapter explores the opposite relationship. It suggests that the implications for participation and identity may, in part, be responsible for the persuasiveness of one vision of interpretation over another. Thus, the interlocutors and the claimants anticipated by one rendition of self-determination may be part of why that rendition is more convincing to us than another.

The chapter uses the interpretation of self-determination by two well-known authors, Thomas Franck and Rosalyn Higgins, to develop this suggestion. It shows how the image each author creates of a world on the verge of pandemonium may blind us to internal inconsistencies in their analysis of secession. That is, our recognition or acceptance of the imminence of pandemonium helps persuade us of the rightness of their interpretation and the propriety of their analysis.