Referendums and postcoloniality in Greenland : self-determination and action space as collateral damage of bounding and un-bounding demoi

Abstract

Referendums are used to constitute the ‘will of the people’ at a snapshot in time. At the same time, referendums are sometime constitutive of the self-determination of a people. More specifically, a referendum solidifies a certain bounding of a demos by legitimising a certain demarcation of who are eligible to take part in decision-making. But simultaneously the referendum creates an action space for the people by offering new opportunities in political economy and sometimes foreign policy but also delimiting what kind of affairs are within the bounds of this particular people’s decision-making. This article charts the consecution of referendums – actual and imagined – with a bearing on the (proto-)constitutional expansion and action space of the Greenlandic demos to tease out the empirical dynamics linking referendums at different scales of polity over time. As the article discusses relations within the Kingdom of Denmark and between referendums on European integration (in both Greenland and Denmark proper), Greenlandic decolonisation and expanding autonomy and a hypothetical future version of independence, it sheds new light on the bounded demos problematique in relation to multilevel integration/disintegration dynamics mediated by referendums. In sum, the article analyses how decisions made in one referendum by a demos bounded in one way have bearings on how other demoi are bounded in later referendums, and why this matters to the resulting action spaces for the people’s self-determination being (re-)shaped.