In the end, there is just no such thing as the ‘will of the people’, though the advocates of self-determination often write as though there were, and as if the state is somehow the embodiment of a collective intention. Consider the claim that the state is a historical project extending across generations. While it is true enough that states, like all human institutions, are the product of human action and interaction, they are hardly the fruit of the efforts of generations of people who could meaningfully be described as engaged, consciously or otherwise, in a shared project. To the extent
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