De Facto States and Land-for-Peace Agreements

Territory and Recognition at Odds?

Eiki Berg, Shpend Kursani

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000518597
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Paz y desarrollo global

This book presents an analytical framework which assesses how 'land-for-peace' agreements can be achieved in the context of territorial conflicts between de facto states and their respective parent states.

The volume examines geographic solutions to resolving ongoing conflicts that stand between the principle of self-determination (prompted by de facto states) and the principle of territorial integrity (prompted by parent states). The authors investigate the conditions under which territorial adjustments can bring about a possibility for peace between de facto states and their parent states. It does so by interrogating the possibility of land-for-peace agreements in four de facto state–parent state pairs, namely Kosovo–Serbia, Nagorno–Karabakh–Azerbaijan, Northern Cyprus–Republic of Cyprus, and Abkhazia–Georgia. The book suggests that the value that parties put on land to be exchanged and peace to be achieved stand at odds for land-for-peace agreements to materialise. The book brings theoretical and empirical insights that open several avenues for discussions on the conservative stance that the international community has held on territorial changes in the post-1945 international order.

This book will be of much interest to students of statebuilding, state formation, secessionism, political geography, and international relations.

1 Sovereignty contestations and emergence of de facto states

Sovereignty and the territorial state

DOI: 10.4324/9781003041436-2

Sovereignty has usually been associated with the Westphalian model of the state system that had an institutional arrangement through which political organisations operated (Krasner 1995, 119). Unlike the vertically arranged power hierarchies among superiors and subordinates, the sovereignty of a territorial state was strictly based on land occupation and territorial possessions. As a coercive-wielding organisation operating over some extended populated territory, a territorial state came to reflect the exclusive use of physical force within some type of geographic territory (Tilly 1990). During the various periods of the territorial state’s emergence and development, conquest was a rule rather than an exception. Where one authority’s spatial rule ended and the other one’s began was ambiguous. Might, rather than right, sat the boundary standards between authorities’ territorial claims and wishes. The ability to defend one’s authority over a territory and population be that by amassing and centralising the coercive apparatus or capital shaped the territorial state’s forms and attributes (Tilly 1990). Although a common referent for the emergence of the modern state system, the Peace of Westphalia (1648) does not represent the exact point when a clearly delineated sovereign (and hence territorial) state emerged. The blurry and fluid boundaries of political authority and territorial rule preceded and succeeded the Peace of Westphalia (see Ruggie 1993; Osiander 2001). Arguably, the modern understanding of sovereignty did not exist until the 18th century when the territorial state occupied geographical space horizontally.

However, the Peace of Westphalia (1648) has come to symbolise what we would suggest here both the coupling of sovereignty and the territorial state and at least an attempt at establishing clearer boundaries between sovereign authorities. To begin with, the establishment of the Westphalian system in many ways sets a certain standard of conduct among ruling authorities, one which called for mutual respect of clearer boundaries between authorities’ territorial outreach. Populations trapped within territorial domains of sovereign states would eventually turn into citizens. With a bellicose past developed within the confined space of Europe, the Westphalian modern states eventually came to embrace some common rules and institutions for the conduct of their relations, thus acknowledging (to some level) the separate existence from one another.

This gave rise to what Bull and Watson (1984) called the international society of states, which, from a society fashioned in Europe, eventually spread across the globe. The Westphalian state system, so understood, became populated by entities which, above all acted or were imagined so to act as ‘bordered power containers’ (Giddens 1985, 4), constituted by contractual relationships and premised on the will and the freedom of its constituents. The Westphalian international society followed a principle—states are sovereign and, therefore, no one is entitled to govern over them without their consent. The same principle paved also the ground for evolving state sovereignty as the most desired quality for peoples and political communities. Once it was achieved, states were supposed to yield this authoritative power possession in ways generally accepted by the members of the society of states.

The evolving and geographically expanding principles of Westphalia took their subsequent toll on the emerging international system and the understanding and acceptance of sovereignty. The contemporary international order has come to rest on two core premises: that sovereign states are entitled to exercise almost exclusive supremacy over their citizens and that independence of sovereign states is understood in relational terms (Jackson 2007). A widely cited definition of sovereignty refers to ‘a normative conception that links authority, territory (population, society) and recognition’ (Biersteker and Weber 1996, 3). As such, sovereignty means having supreme authority and being rightfully entitled to exercise that authority. In absolutist terms, one either is or is not a sovereign, and no shades of grey are possible (James 1999). Accordingly, sovereignty is inalienable, and it is determined not only by the effective control over a given territory but also, and most crucially, by its recognition and legitimisation by the international society of states. Sovereignty thus becomes a limited property with rights and powers emerging from a recognised sovereign status rather than the possession of de facto (i.e., not necessarily recognised) sovereignty entrenching those rights and powers (Grant 1999). If a sovereign state is in a position to enforce its will domestically, and the enforcement is recognised internationally, we can say that such a sovereign entity becomes an equal participant in the international society of states. In a way, sovereignty has become a constitutive characteristic of the state and the apparent foundational principle of the current international order (Kuus and Agnew 2008).

Mainstream international relations (IR) theories take the sovereign state as the primary unit of analysis and an organising principle of world politics. The conception of the sovereign state as a territorial unit bolsters the assumption that the state is the singular subject of international politics. This view is also largely expressed among the followers of the English School of IR. They consider the international society as constituted by sovereign states, each of which is endowed with a common personality that carries with it certain rights, duties, obligations, and where the authority of such personality is confirmed by an act of recognition (Bain 2003). The society of states is imagined as a sort of privileged club of recognised entities and an ‘inclusive arrangement in which there are no barbarians, savages, infidels, or pagans, standing outside what is now a universal political order’ (Jackson 2000, 13). However, there is also a variation in how political entities exhibit sovereignty, which vests the Westphalian sovereignty only as an ideal-typical referent of state sovereignty. For instance, Berg and Kuusk (2010) have capitalised on the notion of relative sovereignty to demonstrate ‘the differences of being sovereign’ among sovereignty claimants. Just like ‘identifying a class of properties as “essential” to statehood, thus demarcating “sovereignty” from deviant cases and eliminating obnoxious borderline cases by searching for ever more fine-grained qualitative difference’ (Bartelson 1995, 14–15). This renders sovereignty a descriptive concept that mirrors a corresponding state of affairs in reality (Aalberts 2004, 248).

Additionally, in the field of political geography, Agnew (2005, 437) argues that ‘sovereignty is neither inherently territorial nor is it exclusively organised on a state-by-state basis’. A similar view is expressed by Murphy (2002, 193–4), who condemns state-centric perspectives in the face of highly visible sub-state and extra-state movements and forces. He calls for a move beyond the general understanding of the variable geography of sovereignty, thus positioning political entities according to their varying degrees of internal authority and external recognition. Indeed, situations of shared sovereignty (more than autonomy, less than independence), the rise and demise of the nation-state, and the emergence of supranational organisations suggest how widespread exceptions to the rule of absolute, indivisible sovereignty exercised equally by all states can be. In Agnew’s (2005, 443) view

even the seemingly most Westphalian of states, then, are riddled with authoritative power networks whose extension beyond territorial boundaries can render claims to absolute state sovereignty moot but whose continuing presence inside the boundaries is critical to their apparent credibility.

Many empirical observations suggest that the ideal-typical imagination of the Westphalian sovereign state has never been applied to the real world. Take the United States for example. It could be said that the US sovereignty stretches over its 50 constituent states and other dominions such as Puerto Rico, the territories of American Samoa, the Virgin Islands, to name but a few. However, it would be reckless to assume that the US sovereignty applies in equal degrees over all of the territories it claims to have under its sovereign rule and protection (Nichols 2008). David Lake (2003) has also attempted to empirically capture deviations in how sovereignty can be observed, suggesting that sovereign units in world politics often fall under hierarchical networks and structures depending on the issue area and the very units participating in the international system. Nevertheless, the principles of territorial integrity and non-interference provide a regulatory framework that allows us to at least seek a balance between the two (internal/external) sides of sovereignty—either in a Hobbesian manner, that is, in terms of whether a state is recognised by its counterparts, or in a Lockean one, which sees in the sovereign a body constituted by the people who, at any time, may choose to revoke the authority or jurisdiction of their creation.

Regardless of its varying forms and applications in different contexts, state sovereignty is far from being irrelevant as a matter of international politics. As a status and legal standing, sovereignty covers authority and right. As ‘an enabling act’ from international society (Taylor 1999, 559), sovereignty gives ‘a right to be heard’ in international affairs (Jackson 1999, 455). Whether sovereignty is also founded in power and capability (in addition to law) is a matter of recognising sovereignty-creating acts supported by empirical evidence on the ground. As a whole, it is possible to single out entities that are sovereign from those that are not while identifying different sources of state sovereignty: constitutional independence, empirical attributes of statehood, and recognition as a state (Kurtulus 2005, 51). For example, constitutional independence, on the one hand, applies to absolute conditions since ‘a constitution is a set of arrangements which has the force of law’ (James 1999, 40). Empirical attributes of statehood, on the other hand, reveal sovereignty exercises in practice and refer to situations existing in a matter of degree or relative terms (Clapham 1998). Hence the view that ‘a conception of legal rights reflects the materialisation of these rights...