This new handbook provides a comprehensive and multidisciplinary overview of the theoretical and empirical aspects of state recognition in international politics. Although the recognition of states plays a central role in shaping global politics, it remains an under-researched and widely dispersed subject. Coherently and innovatively structured, the handbook brings together a group of international scholars who examine the most important theoretical and comparative perspectives on state recognition, including debates about pathways to secession and self-determination, the broad range of actors and strategies that shape the recognition of states and a significant number of contemporary case studies. The handbook is organised into four key sections: Theoretical and normative perspectives Pathways to independent statehood Actors, forms and the process of state recognition Case studies of contemporary state recognition This handbook will be of great interest to students of foreign policy, international relations, international law, comparative politics and area studies. Chapter 19 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Although a great deal is known about the recognition of states, less is known about the practice of derecognition of states, namely why and how states withdraw the recognition of other contested and partially recognized states. The Derecognition of States offers a global and comparative outlook of this unexplored diplomatic practice. Using original empirical research, it addresses the complex processes, justifications, and consequences of state derecognition. In particular, it provides unique insights into five aspirant states facing withdrawal of recognition: Taiwan, Western Sahara, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Kosovo. Gëzim Visoka argues that state derecognition is a highly controversial and unstable practice that has less to do with the unfulfillment of the conditions of statehood by the claimant than with the advancement of the self-interest of the former base state and derecognizing state. The derecognition of states is not a rule; rather, it is an exception in international diplomacy, driven by political expediency and is incompatible with original rationales for granting recognition. Yet, the derecognition of states is far more important than previously recognized in shaping the reversal dynamics of secession and state creation and in influencing regional peace, geopolitical rivalries, and the international order. By analyzing the withdrawal of recognition, the book offers a window into the reversal politics of unbecoming a sovereign state and how the arbitrary beginning and the end of diplomatic relations between states take place.

As we face new challenges from climate change and the rise of populism in Western politics and beyond, there is little doubt that we are entering a new configuration of world politics. Driven by nostalgia for past certainties or fear of what is coming next, references to normalcy have been creeping into political discourse, with people either vying for a return to a past normalcy or coping with the new normal. This book traces main discourses and practices associated with normalcy in world politics. Visoka and Lemay-Hébert mostly focus on how dominant states and international organizations try to manage global affairs through imposing normalcy over fragile states, restoring normalcy over disaster-affected states, and accepting normalcy over suppressive states. They show how discourses and practices come together in constituting normalization interventions and how in turn they play in shaping the dynamics of continuity and change in world politics.

This book examines US subnational engagement in foreign relations, or paradiplomacy, with China and Taiwan from 1949 to 2020. As an alternative diplomatic history of the United States’ relations with divided China, it offers an in-depth chronological and thematic discussion of state and local communities’ responses to the China-Taiwan sovereignty conflict and their impact on US diplomacy. The book explains why paradiplomacy matters not only in the ‘low politics’ of economic and cultural cooperation, but also in the ‘high politics’ of diplomatic recognition. Presenting case studies of US states and cities developing policies towards divided China that paralleled, clashed or aligned with those pursued by federal agencies, it also identifies Chinese and Taiwanese objectives and strategies deployed when competing for US subnational ties. Conceptually, the book builds upon Constructivism, redefining paradiplomacy as an institutional fact, reflective of subnational identities and interests, rather than as a subnational pursuit of foreign markets, driven by objective economic forces. Featuring new empirical evidence and a novel conceptual framework for paradiplomacy, The United States’ Subnational Relations with Divided China will be a useful resource for students and scholars of US foreign policy, the politics of China and Taiwan, paradiplomacy and international relations.

Unrecognized states are places that do not exist in international politics; they are state-like entities that have achieved de facto independence, but have failed to gain widespread international recognition. Since the Cold-War, unrecognized states have been involved in conflicts over sovereign statehood in the Balkans, the former Soviet Union, South Asia, the Horn of Africa, and the South Pacific; some of which elicited major international crises and intervention, including the use of armed force. Yet they remain subject to many myths and simplifications. Drawing on a number of contemporary and historical cases, from Nagorno Karabakh and Somaliland to Taiwan, this timely new book provides a comprehensive analysis of unrecognized states. It examines their origins, the factors that enable them to survive and explores their likely future trajectories. But it is not just a book about unrecognized states; it is a book about sovereignty and statehood; one which does not shy way from addressing crucial issues such as how these anomalies survive in a system of sovereign states and how the context of non-recognition affects their attempts to build effective state-like entities. Ideal for students and scholars of global politics, peace and conflict studies, Unrecognized States offers a much needed and engaging account of the development of unrecognized states in the modern international system.

The secessionist entities that emerged out of the turbulent upheavals in the 1990s in the South Caucasus have, over many years and with enormous external assistance, successfully defied the jurisdiction of their metropolitan states. As entities that have attained a status of de facto statehood, they epitomize unresolved conflicts between core principles and doctrines in public international law. This study addresses the interplay between law and politics against this context and problematizes false dichotomies that have arguably hindered the transformation of these territorial disputes. The author devotes particular attention to different ways of engagement with the de facto states below the level of political endorsement.

Although the recognition of States is a common occurrence in international relations and retains a central position in discussions of international law, its nature and legal effects have remained controversial well into the twenty-first century. While some believe that recognition plays a fundamental role in the creation of statehood, others deny recognition any legal value. Regardless, debates surrounding any case where statehood is disputed will sooner or later turn to the matter of recognition, or lack thereof, by other States. This book challenges the widespread views of statehood as an absolute or empirical fact and of recognition as merely declaratory in the creation of States as the primary and original persons of international law. Drawing upon a comparative analysis of contested States ranging from Palestine and Kosovo to Somaliland and Eastern Ukraine, this book seeks to ascertain the normative value and the effects of the act of recognition in various situations, distinguishing between: cases where statehood may be inferred from applicable rules of international law, cases where statehood could only be explained by recognition, and cases where the establishment of a State is prevented by international legal norms. In addition to discussing a range of issues related to recognition, this book provides an up-to-date overview of the history of recognition, the positions of various governments, and a broad, critical summary of domestic and international jurisprudence.