Secession theorists attempt to assess the demands of some groups to full political independence from a larger state. However, in theorising the right to secession, they often conceptualise political events - such as the Scottish Independence Referendum - in terms of either a cessation of a contract or a formalised relationship between parties (separation). In this article I argue that this approach to secession is misconstrued and prevents us from asking morally and politically significant questions. By neglecting the political dimension of secession, it wrongly makes us conceptualise the referendum in terms of an 'exit'. Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt, the article argues instead that an account of secession as a political event should be developed and investigates what the key features of such an account would look like.
