Functional Sovereignty in Contested Territories

Scholarship on worldwide sovereignty usually adopts a binary conception: territories both have worldwide recognition, or they lack it and stay unrecognized entities inside fragmented states.

On this seminar, we problem this binary body by introducing the notion of useful sovereignty: contested territories in observe get pleasure from various levels of worldwide sovereignty over governance features that require exterior acceptance for his or her operation. For example, we introduce a brand new dataset of useful sovereignty over automobile license plates, foreign money, passport issuance, postal service, and nationwide Web domains inside unrecognized (de facto) states. We theorize disputes over these features as not solely a matter of practicality, but in addition as contestations over symbolic assertions of sovereign statehood. Evaluation of de facto state governance over these 5 features reveals that contested territories collectively exhibit gradations of useful sovereignty, defying binary classifications. Our findings urge a larger concentrate on the sensible dimensions of sovereignty, above and past its worldwide authorized facet, for a extra grounded understanding of the politics of worldwide recognition.

Adrian Florea is Senior Lecturer (Political & Worldwide Research) on the College of Glasgow

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