Republican theoretical analyses have paid little attention to the regulatory problems of conflicts of secession. So far, there is no republican and democratic theory of the right of secession (DST), nor has any comprehensive analysis of the current SDS been carried out from a republican/democratic point of view. This article tries to fill this second gap as a preliminary step to address the first one. In doing so, it shows how secession conflicts represent threats to two central democratic republican values: freedom and inclusion. These threats include, in particular, the threats of exclusion, blackmail of minorities, arbitrary permanent majorities and instability. The article also shows how, due to their respective pro-unionist or pro-secessionist bias, no current DST is in a position to address these threats, and briefly describes how a republican democratic DST based on a non-unilateral logic could be developed.