Editing Secession (section)

==Types of secession==
[[File:Hashim Thaci Joe Biden Fatmir Sejdiu with Declaration of Independence of Kosovo.JPG|thumb|[[Hashim Thaçi]] (left) and then-[[Vice President of the United States|US Vice President]] [[Joe Biden]] with the Declaration of Independence of [[Kosovo]]]]
Secession theorists have described a number of ways in which a political entity (city, county, canton, state) can secede from the larger or original state:<ref name="Buchanan2"/><ref name="Pavkovic-Questions" /><ref>Steven Yates, "When Is Political Divorce Justified" in David Gordon, 1998.</ref>
* Secession from [[federation]] or [[confederation]] (political entities with substantial reserved powers which have agreed to join) versus secession from a [[unitary state]] (a state governed as a single unit with few powers reserved to sub-units)
* [[Wars of national liberation|Colonial wars of independence]] from an [[Empire|imperial state]] although this is decolonisation rather than secession. 
* Recursive secession, such as [[British Raj|India]] decolonising from the [[British Empire]], then [[Pakistan]] seceding from [[India]], or [[Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic|Georgia]] seceding from the [[Soviet Union]], then [[South Ossetia]] seceding from [[Georgia (country)|Georgia]].
* National secession (seceding entirely from the national state) versus local secession (seceding from one entity of the national state into another entity of the same state)
* Central or [[Enclave and exclave|enclave]] secession (seceding entity is completely surrounded by the original state) versus peripheral secession (along a border of the original state)
* Secession by contiguous units versus secession by non-contiguous units ([[Enclave and exclave|exclaves]])
* [[Separatism|Separation]] or [[Partition (politics)|partition]] (although an entity secedes, the rest of the state retains its structure) versus dissolution (all political entities dissolve their ties and create several new states)
* [[Irredentism]] where secession is sought in order to annex the territory to another state because of common ethnicity or prior historical links
* Minority secession (a minority of the population or territory secedes) versus majority secession (a majority of the population or territory secedes)
* Secession of better-off regions versus secession of worse-off regions
* The threat of secession is sometimes used as a strategy to gain greater autonomy within the original state