Domestic and International Sovereignty: The Disputes over the Status of Abkhazia, Northern Cyprus, and Taiwan

Sovereignty is a key concept in discourses regarding the disputes over the statusof Abkhazia, Northern Cyprus, and Taiwan. It helps the conflicting parties tocommunicate their positions regarding their preferred status of the contestedterritory and indicates the limits that negotiations are not permitted to transgress. Itframes a parent state’s policy of nonrecognition, intended to prevent permanentseparation, and a contested state’s policy of recognition to prevent its ownsubordination. In defending their claims, the conflicting parties do not enjoy equalconditions. The contested state’s lack of recognition weakens its position in theinternational order. The parent state will make use of this asymmetry at theinternational level to weaken the contested state’s claims to sovereignty. Thecontested state, by contrast, will try to achieve legal recognition throughinternational agreements. This is possible with regard to competences that itexercises as a de facto territorial authority. This means that the control acontested state exercises at the domestic level is transferred to the internationallevel, to strengthen its claims to sovereignty. The distinction between domesticand international sovereignty is useful for analyzing these strategies and conflictdynamics. This article analyzes disputes over the status of a breakaway territoryin terms of these two categories. In particular, it explores how nonrecognitionpolicies by parent states and recognition policies by contested states at theinternational level affect the latter’s sovereignty at the domestic level.

(PDF) Domestic and international sovereignty: the disputes over the status of Abkhazia, Northern Cyprus, and Taiwan. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362603761_Domestic_and_international_sovereignty_the_disputes_over_the_status_of_Abkhazia_Northern_Cyprus_and_Taiwan [accessed Aug 16 2022].