The Politics of State Recognition: Norms, Geopolitics, and the East Pakistan Crisis

Does the Russian war in Ukraine presage a change in the rules of the game for secessionisms around the globe? In this article, we explore how the Russian war in Ukraine and the contested international order from which it emerges can affect state contestation and secessionist movements through changing opportunities in the international order. International recognition plays a crucial role in state creation. The Great Powers of a given historical moment have the capacity to raise sovereignty expectations since having “friends in high places” has been essential to obtaining statehood, alongside de facto control of the territory. However, the liberal international order in place since 1945 has given way to a more contested landscape that opens new opportunities for different recognition patterns, which change how secessionists evaluate their optimal strategy for state contestation. The effects have already been notable in conflicts such as Transnistria, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Kosovo, and many other territorial disputes, even “frozen conflicts” over the globe, from Western Sahara to Taiwan. We explore how Russia has created and exploited secessionist claims in eastern Ukraine to justify military aims in the Russian war in Ukraine. Based on a detailed review of the evolution of these claims, we draw different scenarios on the potential effects of a changing world order on state contestation. Our research suggests that the theoretical understanding of secession and secessionists’ optimal strategies need to be reviewed, taking into account the changing contested international order.

An Inflection Point or Business as Usual? Secessionism as State Contestation in Ukraine

Sanjaume-Calvet,

Daniels

2024

Contested Statehood in a Contested International Order: Furthering a Research Agenda

Knotter

2024

This article serves as the introduction to this Special Forum on Contested Statehood in a Contested International Order. The articles in this Special Forum (SF) are premised on the argument that the persistent ontological and epistemological contestations over the nature of such state-like polities are strongly intertwined with recent ontological and epistemological contestations of the broader international order. To introduce such an intellectual project, this paper sets out the themes that inform this SF’s analyses of the relationships between international order and contested states. I first pay heed to the manner in which existing scholarship has already studied the embeddedness of state contestation in their broader international environment. Subsequently, this paper acknowledges that the study of international order itself is becoming a rather saturated field of research, and it therefore refrains from adding too many thoughts about the nature, virtues, and vices of (the transformation of) international order per se. Instead, this paper’s final section will outline three broad “themes of contestation” that intersect between scholarship of contested statehood and international order and that broadly underpin the research contributions to this SF. These three themes revolve around violent and/or peaceful modes of international ordering, inclusive and/or exclusive modes of international ordering, and particularistic and/or universalistic modes of international ordering.

The International Norm–Practice Relationship, Contested States, and the EU’s Territorial (Un)Differentiation toward Palestine and Western Sahara

Bouris,

Fernández-Molina

2024

This article addresses the relationship—and incongruences—between international norms and practices in EU foreign policy with a particular focus on the EU’s dealing with situations of contested statehood resulting from foreign occupation. To this purpose, we revisit the literature on the international norm–practice nexus, dynamics, and mismatches—including debates on hypocrisy—and we conceptualize territorial (un)differentiation from the perspective of both norms and practices. We then examine the extent to which and how normative change and practical change have taken place, and mutually interacted, in the EU’s territorial (un)differentiation toward Israel–Palestine and Morocco–Western Sahara. We draw on the scholarship on the international norm life cycle, which we also replicate as an analytical framework to empirically track the processes of emergence, cascade, and internalization of practices. Based on our case studies, we argue that, while emerging EU territorial differentiation toward Israel–Palestine has resulted from a process in which normative change and practical change have become entangled in a feedback loop, and the norm–practice gap has tended to be closed, in the case of Morocco–Western Sahara there has been substantial normative change but practices have remained unaltered, which has led such gap—and the perception of EU hypocrisy—to widen.