  If it is true that a range of legitimate interests is relevant to determining the nature of the moral right to secede, and if the extent that these interests are impacted by secession depends on the existing institutional resources, including not just those of the remainder state and the new state, but also those of regional and international organizations, then it follows that a theory of the moral right to secede must take into account existing institutional realities at all levels. Buchanan’s latest work on secession delves into just this—he argues that the moral right to secede is institution-dependent in the sense that whether a group has the moral right to secede depends on the nature of existing institutions and whether or not they can adequately mitigate the risks that secession would pose to various morally important interests. This means that properly theorizing the right to secede requires empirically-backed premises that characterize a) the range of morally significant interests at risk in various cases of secession and b) the ability or inability of existing institutions to mitigate those risks. If this is true, then it seems that both remedial right only and primary right views are incomplete, as neither provide these important empirical premises.