Standards of State Recognition

The United States uses a variety of standards of recognizing other state and has a choice of various paradigms in its view of the world. Now if you notice, I used the word “state” to describe a country instead of the word “nation.” There is a huge difference. The word ‘state’ is a legal entity with a permanent population, defined territories and a government capable of exercising sovereignty. On the other hand, a nation is a collection of people on the basis of culture, language or ethnicity see themselves as part of the same group. An example would be the state of Iraq but within that state, there is the Kurdish nation, the Turkmen tribes, the Sunni nation and the Shiite groups – all different ethnic, religious or cultural groups within the state of Iraq. Now sovereignty is defined as the supreme authority to govern a state’s internal affairs and manage its foreign affairs with other states. However, that is not the same thing as state recognition. A state recognition another state’s right to exist is state recognition but that does not mean that the two states will establish diplomatic relations or respect the other state’s national sovereignty.

Standards of Recognition

One of the biggest used standards for state recognition is Effective Control. Effective control means that the states should recognize the government which exercises effective control over all or nearly all of a state’s territory and the obedience of a bulk of its population. However, in a world of multilateralism and competition voices of authority, it can become confusing as to who is in power. This is especially true in Africa, countries like Congo or Somalia, where different groups claim to be in power and takes the role of the government. In this situation, the standard that is used is called the Purposes and Principles standard. When more than one authority claims to be the government entitled to represent a state, the validity question should be considered in light of the purposes and principles found in the United Nations charter. Now as widely practiced as it is, there are certain opponents of the practice of state recognition, mainly in the form of the Estrada doctrine. Estrada doctrine says that recognition of governments is an insulting practice and implies some sort of judgment being passed on the internal affairs of another nation.

So where does the US stand?

To tell you the truth, the United States of America takes a unique position on state recognition. The USA exercises a wide array of standards for recognition, but mainly it is a hybrid of the policies mentioned above. The decision to use a certain principle is determined case by case, especially when dealing with non-democratic or authoritarian regimes. However, the US is more reluctant to recognize non democratic regimes and governments but will only do so if vital national interests or international policy takes priority. This is stemmed from the wilsonian view that those who take control by force should not be recognized as legitimate regimes.