As we approach the millennium the world is experiencing civil wars, many of which are being waged over the issue of secession. This book offers a comparative view of nine historic separatist movements, some of which have achieved the break-up of an empire or state, and others that to date have not. Separatist struggles occur in waves that tend to coincide with upsurges of democratization. Several chapters explore this connection, making comparisons with economic and geopolitical causes. The authors analyze the long-term effects of secession and they attribute much of today's separatism to the demagoguery of politicians losing legitimacy in post-communist states, for whom nationalism is a convenient populist ideology. A broader explanation, however, points to the failure of modern democracies to develop constitutional mechanisms reconciling the expression of particular identities with the universalism of citizenship and the book reviews proposals toward that end.