Sovereign state
[citation needed] Previously, quite large plots of land were either unclaimed or deserted, or inhabited by nomadic peoples that were not organized into states.
[citation needed] However, even in modern states, there are large remote areas, such as the Amazon's tropical forests, that are either uninhabited or inhabited exclusively or mainly by indigenous people (and some of them are still not in constant contact).
Recently, the concept of the international community has been formed to refer to a group of States that have established rules, procedures and institutions for the implementation of relations.
Thus, the foundation for international law, diplomacy between officially recognized sovereign states, their organizations and formal regimes has been laid.
[9][10] Up until the 19th century, the radicalised concept of a "standard of civilization" was routinely deployed to determine that certain people in the world were "uncivilized", and lacking organised societies.
That position was reflected and constituted in the notion that their "sovereignty" was either completely lacking or at least of an inferior character when compared to that of the "civilized" people".
It is an indisputable fact that this conception, from the moment when it was introduced into political science until the present day, has never had a meaning, which was universally agreed upon.
[13] Sovereignty has taken on a different meaning with the development of the principle of self-determination and the prohibition against the threat or use of force as jus cogens norms of modern international law.
[14][15] The right of nations to determine their own political status and exercise permanent sovereignty within the limits of their territorial jurisdictions is widely recognized.
[16][17][18] In political science, sovereignty is usually defined as the most essential attribute of the state in the form of its complete self-sufficiency in the frames of a certain territory, that is its supremacy in the domestic policy and independence in the foreign one.
In The Schooner Exchange v. M'Faddon, Chief Justice John Marshall of the United States Supreme Court wrote that the "perfect equality and absolute independence of sovereigns" has created a class of cases where "every sovereign is understood to waive the exercise of a part of that complete exclusive territorial jurisdiction, which has been stated to be the attribute of every nation".
"[25] International lawyer Hersch Lauterpacht states that recognition is not merely a formality but an active interpretation in support of any facts.
[26] In 1912, L. F. L. Oppenheim said the following, regarding constitutive theory: International Law does not say that a State is not in existence as long as it is not recognised, but it takes no notice of it before its recognition.
According to declarative theory, an entity's statehood is independent of its recognition by other states, as long as the sovereignty was not gained by military force.
It is the act of recognition that affirms whether a country meets the requirements for statehood and is now subject to international law in the same way that other sovereign states are.
[41] On 9 October 2014, the US's Federal Court stated that "the TRNC purportedly operates as a democratic republic with a president, prime minister, legislature and judiciary".
The United Nations itself works with Northern Cyprus law enforcement agencies and facilitates co-operation between the two parts of the island".
[49] For example, during the Second World War, governments-in-exile of several states continued to enjoy diplomatic relations with the Allies, notwithstanding that their countries were under occupation by Axis powers.
The Soviet and Yugoslav collapses resulted in the emergence of numerous such entities, several of which, including Abkhazia, Transdniester, South Ossetia and the NKR, survived in the margins of international relations for decades despite non-recognition.
[54]Sovereignty is most commonly conceptualised as something categorical, which is either present or absent, and the coherence of any intermediate position in that binary has been questioned, especially in the context of international law.
[56] In a somewhat different sense, the term semi-sovereign was famously applied to West Germany by political scientist Peter Katzenstein in his 1987 book Policy and Politics in West Germany: The Growth of a Semi-sovereign State,[57] due to having a political system in which the sovereignty of the state was subject to limitations both internal (West Germany's federal system and the role of civil society) and external (membership in the European Community and reliance on its alliance with the United States and NATO for its national security).
Quasi-abstract objects, such as states, can be brought into being through document acts, and can also be used to manipulate them, such as by binding them by treaty or surrendering them as the result of a war.
[71][72] Harvard economist Alberto Alesina and Tufts economist Enrico Spolaore argue in their book, Size of Nations, that the increase in the number of states can partly be credited to a more peaceful world, greater free trade and international economic integration, democratisation, and the presence of international organisations that co-ordinate economic and political policies.
