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162 Karlo Basta political implications. This is why the discursive action by big business tends to provoke significant counterefforts by secessionist actors. The chapter makes three distinctive contributions to the study of secession. First, it underscores the role of persuasion as a strategic activity in shaping interests and preferences of the general public in secessionist contests. Second, in addition to the content of the debates, it emphasizes the importance of the agent that articulates particular messages–with the business community being particularly important for both secessionist and anti-secessionist political elites. Third, the chapter seeks to broaden our understanding of the secessionist strategic playing field by including actors that are normally left out of theoretical accounts of the politics of secession. To my knowledge, this is the first effort to theorize and conceptualize the role of business in independence referenda. The following section briefly examines the existing scholarship on the economic dimension of secession. I then focus on the strategic considerations of business community with respect to secessionist contexts. I foreground the interests, resources, and patterns of political practice of business under these circumstances. In the fourth section, I outline secessionist attempts to engage with the counter-secessionist practice of big business. The concluding section considers what the next steps ought to be in the study of the role of business in secession. I also suggest how the strategic playing field might be broadened not only in Western cases considered here but also in other regions where independentist movements operate.