By The Editors

Your new book, Power Politics and State Formation in the Twentieth Century, is primarily about state emergence and you argue that states do not emerge because they have achieved some kind of governance benchmark but rather they are conferred legitimacy by some external power. You write, “There are very few cases in recent history where new states unambiguously met the prevailing legal standards for membership, and yet states have proliferated.” So are you saying that such a system for granting statehood is what’s driving the rise of failed states?

That is what I’m saying. At least potentially. This isn’t a particularly novel argument; various people have argued that post-colonial states received independence with “arbitrary borders” and without the necessary prerequisites of effective governance. At the time, world leaders decided that the deficit was acceptable in exchange for the end of imperialism — dismantling the old system was more important than ensuring the capacity and stability of the new members. In fact, the United Nations ruled that a colony’s incapacity as an independent state was an unacceptable justification for maintaining imperial authority.

My argument is that the practice, which I call social promotion, wasn’t simply limited to colonies; it is pervasive. Unfortunately, we don’t know the long term consequences. New countries entering the international community without effective sovereignty, with the broad support of their more powerful peers, may be able to secure it over the long term due to their access to the “benefits of membership” like the potential for development loans; the ability to make contracts with foreign governments and firms; and through participation in important institutions like the UN or WTO. The other, and I think more likely, possibility is what you alluded to above. New countries enter into the international community without the ability to effectively govern, but they aren’t able to make up for the deficit. They are vulnerable to internal challengers and unrest. They can’t provide security or economic opportunities for their people. And perhaps most importantly, their leaders know that powerful external benefactors uphold their authority, so they are indifferent to good governance and policies that would generate popular authority because they don’t need it. If this is social promotion’s long term consequence, then the international community’s growing numbers presage the decay of sovereignty and an increase in the ranks of failed states.

So then why do stronger powers elevate states unfit for self-rule and grant them statehood?

The strongest members of the international community make their decisions about new statehood with reference to their own interests and goals. Those interests include things that we would probably find normatively desirable, like combating genocide or supporting democracy, and those that we might find less so, like weakening an enemy or dissuading activism by their own domestic discontents. When strong states interests align, they easily collude in favor of or against an aspiring new member. When they don’t, the status quo typically prevails. I don’t mean to blame strong states for their parochialism, though. Their approach to the problem of new statehood is reasonable, even if the long term consequences are problematic. Every new country entering the international community is cleaved from an existing member, so the potential for international instability can be high depending on whom the secessionists’ home state is; its size, economy and geography; and the strategic implications of any change in governing regime. In short, secessionist conflicts are particularly combustible, so it makes sense that strong states would prioritize the maintenance of international stability among themselves.

Moreover, in the heat of a conflict, it is difficult to know with any certainty how well or poorly an aspiring member will meet the requisites of statehood, yet there is often pressure for strong states to make a decision, to make a call, in order to expedite conflict resolution and limit violence. We hear arguments to this effect regarding the current conflicts in Ukraine, Iraqi Kurdistan, and eastern Libya. The idea that outsiders should allow a civil war to continue until it reaches a decisive conclusion - where we can easily identify which secessionists meet the bar for statehood and which fall short - is usually viewed as morally abhorrent and unabashedly in favor of the home state, which often has a substantial military advantage over the separatists.

You essentially write that war makes the state and that “Not every new state enters the system because of secessionism, but most in the contemporary world do.” So why is that a bad thing? Is it a moral hazard issue?

Because most states enter the international community as a result of secessionist demands, it is the essential source of dynamic membership change in the international system. New states aren’t coming into the international system as a result of unilateral decolonization, because imperialism has been discredited as an institution of governance. Nor are many existing states merging together, forgoing their individual sovereign authority. And so-called “state death” wherein a member of the international community is formally annexed and incorporated into an existing state, doesn’t happen much either. It isn’t normatively a good or bad thing, per se. The problem, from my perspective, is that we think we know how and why secession succeeds or fails and we’re mistaken. Our failure to account for the importance of external legitimacy and recognition leads to various misunderstandings about the incentives for violence in secessionist conflicts and, ultimately, sabotages effective conflict resolution.

(The leaders of the secessionist movements that are socially promoted may be more likely to choose policies or actions that would conform to moral hazard because outside actors almost never revoke sovereignty once it’s granted. I feel like I may be misunderstanding your question here, though.)

John Stuart Mill argued that states had to show willingness on their own to overthrow their oppressors to be granted self-rule, which was why he was wary of foreign interventions. Does that principle hold true for those fighting for statehood today?

While I appreciate the “can do” spirit of your portrayal of Mill, and empirically I do think that third parties are wary of becoming embroiled in civil conflicts where their interests are not centrally at stake, I’m not sure that there was ever a time where domestic conflicts over sovereignty could be wholly separated from the international. Today, the density of interactions between members of the international community and the depth and breath of international institutions is beyond what anyone might have imagined during Mill’s time. Therefore, outsiders often find important interests of their own at stake in these ostensibly civil conflicts. And even when they don’t, powerful states with broad influence find it difficult to resist weighing in on a potential new peer. Every secessionist movement is attempting to cast off what they view as an oppressive government, and whether they realize effective independence or not, the consecration of any victory through membership in the international community is dependent upon outsiders’ determinations.

Another function we can imagine of more states is that there are more potential security dilemmas and borders to bicker over. What once was an intrastate dispute, say between Sudan and South Sudan, is now an interstate one. So logically should we expect more interstate wars in the future?

I’m not a big believer in the security dilemma as a source of international war. I think that my argument points more toward the informalization of war. As states become less capable — or effective sovereignty decays — states become less confident that their neighbors can make good on their promises even when there is the will to do so. This increases uncertainty and, consequently, increases perceptions of insecurity. But it doesn’t really conform to a security dilemma dynamic - spirals and whatnot - because the decaying state is also increasingly less able to arm. I think. Instead, the implications predict more civil conflicts.

Does more states essentially mean more cooks in the kitchen and thus getting international consensus making in bodies like the United Nations that much more cumbersome? Or does it not really matter because it’s all about what Great Powers want?

As the number of states in the system increases, it is more difficult to achieve consensus when it is required, yes. This is simply true as a result of the numbers. But it would be as true of a system comprised of strong, stable states as it is in the system of incredible variance that we inhabit today. Fortunately those cases are rare. The most palpable effect on international institutions is not elusive consensus, but simple majority rule voting outcomes and shifting institutional priorities. So, for example, strong states are more inclined to recognize those newcomers that can be counted on to vote their way on contentious international issues, whether whaling for Japan or Taiwan for China or even democratization during the Cold War.

When there are more Great Powers, it is more difficult to find consensus over new statehood though, so we should expect that the international system will grow at a slower pace during multipolarity than bi- or uni-polar orders. Despite their mutual antagonism during the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union were broadly opposed to colonialism and often ended up on the side of independence for those conflicts, even if they disagreed about how the new regime ought to govern.

You liken the state system to a Greek sorority or fraternity and that there are pledges that want to join. These groups have gotten a bad rap as of late. But to expand your analogy further, one could argue: Why would anyone want to join this system in the first place? What’s the benefit if it means having to contribute to collective public good of global security, defend one’s borders, and so forth. Are there nonstate entities out there, like the Palestinian territories, Somaliland, Kurdistan or Taiwan, that might be better off not as states?

The international states system is the only fraternal order around. And being a part of it is far better than being on the outside when it comes to security and well-being (for state leaders and institutions, not necessarily the populace). It’s interesting to consider the idea that there might be competing international systems built upon an alternative foundation (the debate team, the lacrosse team), but it’s only a hypothetical. Some groups demand something short of independence, changes in political rights or regional autonomy, and nothing more. There are also communities, like those studied by James C. Scott and others, that have fundamentally rebelled against the states system itself, deciding to live entirely apart, but they are of a wholly different character than the Somalilands and Iraqi Kurdistans of the world, which in demanding secession and independence, are unabashedly demanding to be a part of the system.

I don’t think that most Palestinians agree that they would be better off without a state. They still believe that the end is worth the cost and have been reengergized at the Abbas regime’s ongoing end run around Oslo. And even though the Iraqi Kurds are not actively seeking independence, I am confident that this is a function of strategic circumstances, rather than a widespread belief among Kurds that they are better off within a united Iraq. Kurds may come to believe this, but I do not think they do now.

The costs of membership are actually not as high as they appear when sovereignty’s prerequisites are disregarded. Popular, socially promoted newcomers, in recent years East Timor and South Sudan, arrive into the system without the ability to help maintain the international order — they rely on others to do so. This is why [Stephen] Krasner argues that external recognition provides benefits without imposing any costs. Strong states assume a lot of the costs and there’s a lot of “free riding.”

You’ve written lots of about the proliferation of non-state actors like pirates and terrorist organizations. What does more states mean for these groups? I mean, where there were few states in the system, we had no shortage of profiteers and mercenaries on the high seas. Does more states mean fewer non-state actors? Or is the opposite the case?

This is well beyond the scope of this book. But if we had an international community comprised exclusively of effectively sovereign states, where all territory was under authoritative control, then we would probably have fewer wildly successful pirates, yes. Instead, we’ve got a number of ineffective sovereigns that can’t or won’t control non-state actors threatening outsiders from within their territories. In the case of piracy, the nominal authorities in Somalia begged off, arguing that they weren’t capable of stopping pirate attacks originating there. And that was half true. The nominal authorities weren’t the effective authorities in the region, so it wasn’t that there was no authority, just that the government in Mogadishu didn’t have control over the region where the pirates originated. The international community spent a lot of time and money on counter-piracy before the attacks declined precipitously in 2013.

Will we hit some equilibrium point where the number of states essentially flatlines - like we hit this optimal point?

If I am right, there is no natural equilibrium to the number of states in the international system. There are only two conditions when we would get zero growth: 1) when a critical mass of community members refuses to recognize any new members or 2) when there are no aspiring new members. The possibility of either one of these conditions obtaining for an extended period of time is close to zero.

Let’s look at secessionist conflicts today like Ukraine. Based on your reading of how states are born, should we expect a people’s republic of Donetsk soon, and if so will anybody recognize it?

It’s a very interesting conflict, but Russia has not yet recognized an independent Donetsk Republic and it’s the most critical, most likely state to do so. Only one, partially recognized, actor recognizes its independence now, South Ossetia. Widespread recognition, given most strong states steadfast opposition to the separatists, seems very unlikely.

Why does Vanuatu seem to always be one of the random states to recognize illegitimate states like South Ossetia?

Vanuatu and a handful of other states have decided to trade their recognition and sovereign authority for cash and economic development; they treat it as a commodity. They know that their legitimacy is worth something to aspiring members of the international community and have monetized it. But even though both Vanuatu and Tuvalu reportedly received cash in order to recognize the South Ossetian secessionists in Georgia, by the spring of 2014 they had both reconsidered and established diplomatic relations with Georgia instead (reportedly due to promised assistance packages from Georgia). Taiwan still pays twenty-some countries to recognize it, but neither Beijing nor Taipei will play ball with Nauru’s flip-flopping anymore. And South Ossetia is the only actor so far that recognizes the Donetsk Republic!

A bit off-topic but how would you resolve the naming dispute between Greece and Macedonia?

I have no interesting ideas.

[Photo source: Flickr Commons]

Power Politics and State Formation in the Twentieth Century: The Dynamics of Recognition
by Bridget L. Coggins
Cambridge University Press, 279 pages, $41.99

Bridget L. Coggins is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research interests lie at the intersection of domestic conflict and international relations, including studies of secessionism, rebel diplomacy, civil war and terrorism, maritime piracy, and illicit trafficking.