Part III Regimes and Doctrines, Ch.29 Theorizing Recognition and International Personality

Subject(s):

Responsibility of international organizations — Customary international law — General principles of international law — Relationship of international law & host state law — Sources of international law

This chapter examines the way in which the legal effect of recognition on international personality has been theorized. Bringing some of the most prominent theories of the relationship between recognition and international personality into conversation with some of their most recent and radical alternatives, the chapter considers why colonial patterns of inequality persist, in spite of the ‘rolling out’ of international personality globally. Is it possible that orthodox theories of this relationship have ‘determined’ these patterns in some way? The focus therefore is on international recognition (that is, inter-state recognition, as opposed to recognition of governments and belligerents), and on the personality of entities which identify (whether actually or potentially) as territorial (such as states, colonies, ‘mandates’, and indigenous peoples).