This book examines secessionist entities that arose during and after the dissolution process of the USSR and considers them as legal subjects in their own right. By employing a novel and more innovative approach, the agency of these subjects, otherwise often ignored or disregarded, is taken into account. Drawing on the cases of the South Caucasus, the author suggests going beyond the binary concept of statehood and traditional notions of sovereignty. He advocates embracing an inclusive reading of international law, which enables to foster creative ambiguity vis-à-vis these entities as means of conflict transformation.
Abbreviations
1Introductory Remarks and Structure
2Approaching Secession
1Secession: Paradigms of Legality and Legitimacy
2Political Expediency as a Weak Argument
3The Two Main Objectives of This Work
4Definitions and Approaches
4.1Defining Secession
4.2Situations beyond the Ambit of Secession
4.3Differentiation: Non-consensual Dissolution of States
4.4Expository and Evaluative Approaches
4.5A Methodology of Law Plus
4.6Law Plus Applied
5Secession: A Play in Three Acts
5.1Secession and the Contentious Question of Territorial Integrity
5.1.1Undermining from Inside
5.1.2Undermining from Outside
5.2A Right to Secession in International Law?
5.3Secession, Secessionist Entities, and State-Building
3The Object of Investigation: The Secessionist Entity
1Some Preliminary Notes on the Choice of Terminology
2The Dilemma of Political Framing
4De Facto Independence and Its Repudiation
5Formal Declaration of Independence and Authentic Grievance
6The Absence of Recognition
7Consolidated Existence over Significant Time
8Disputed Facts
4The Appeal of Statehood in the Context of Secessionist Conflicts
5The Appeal of Law: Articulation of Interests in Legal Vocabulary
1International Law as a Level Playing Field and Its Principles
Open-Endedness
2Legitimacy as Substructure of a Legal Claim: Territorial Grievance
3Scholarly and Political Coverage of the Problem
3.1Problematic Paradigms in Legal Scholarship
3.2Problematic Paradigms in ir Theory
6The Conflicts of the South Caucasus in Focus
1How these Conflicts Are Addressed by the Scholarly Community
2The South Caucasus Conflicts: A Short Biography
2.1On the Selection of Cases
2.2Abkhazia
2.2.1Selected Conflict Factors and Escalation
2.2.2Attempts at Conflict Management
2.3South Ossetia
2.3.1Selected Conflict Factors and Escalation
2.3.2Attempts at Conflict Management
2.4Nagorno-Karabakh
2.4.1Selected Conflict Factors and Escalation
2.4.2Attempts at Conflict Management
7The Self-determination vs. Territorial Integrity Paradigm
1Introductory Remarks: The Collision of Two Values
2The Deceptive Promise of Self-determination
2.1Introduction
2.2The Self of the Secessionists
2.3Secessionist Entities Through the Prism of National Minorities
2.4The Substance of Self-determination: Imprecise Parameters
2.4.1Introductory Thoughts
2.4.2The National Minorities Avenue
2.4.3Secession as Primary or Remedial Right?
2.5The Fallacy of Remedial Secession
2.5.1The Perception of Intolerable Coexistence
2.5.2Insufficient Reflection in International Law and Arbitrariness
2.6Preliminary Conclusion: Self-determination and Secessionist Entities
3The Deceptive Promise of Territorial Integrity
3.1Introduction
3.2A Fuzzy Principle: Non-intervention in Secessionist Conflicts
3.2.1External Intervention in International Law: Procuring Secessionist
Statehood
3.2.2Territorial Integrity and Secessionist Entities: Profound Limitations
3.3A Special Problem: Humanitarian Intervention
3.4A Special Problem: Confined to the Relations among States? The Fallacy
of Doctrinal Purity
3.5The Special Problem of Uti Possidetis
3.6The Special Problem of Kosovo and Its Implications for the South
Caucasus
3.7Preliminary Conclusion: Territorial Integrity and Secessionist
Entities
8The South Caucasus Cases and the Self-determination vs. Territorial
Integrity Paradigm: Selected Questions Problematized
1Introductory Thoughts
2Secessions Fertile Soil: (In)applicable Legal Provisions and the Soviet
West Virginian Concept
3Uti Possidetis: State Boundaries Amidst Conflicting Narratives
4The Timing of Applicability of Territorial Integrity in the South Caucasus
5Disputes about Violation of Territorial Integrity: Contentious Attribution
6The Profound Accusation of Puppet States
9A Subject in Its Own Right: The Case for a European Engagement
1Introduction
2Controversial but Existing Legal Status
2.1The Futility of the Declaratory vs. Constitutive Approach of
Recognition
2.2Secessionist Entities and Their Discernible Existence
2.3Going beyond the Deadlock
3Conditions of Engagement
3.1Introduction: Setting the Stage for Engagement
3.2Inaccurate Dichotomies: State-Building vs. Non-state-building
Measures
3.3Outer Boundaries in Two Directions
3.4Refugees and idps
3.5Addressing Ethnic Diversity
3.6Democratic Governance: Internal Legitimacy
3.7Continued Dialogue with the Metropolitan State
3.8The Functionalist Philosophy behind Engagement without Recognition:
Moving beyond the Non Liquet Fallacy
10Conclusion
Bibliography
Case Law, Legislation, Other Legal Acts
Index
Benedikt C. Harzl is Associate Professor and Deputy Director of the Centre of East European Law and Eurasian Studies at the University of Graz. In 2024, he was the Botstiber Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He has published and co-edited on legal issues in the post-Soviet space, including Unrecognized Entities (Brill | Nijhoff, 2022).
