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Democratic Statehood in International Law: The Emergence of New States in Post-Cold War Practice: 46 Int Edition
Author(s): Jure Vidmar (Author)
- Publisher: Hart Publishing
- Publication Date: 28 Mar. 2013
- Edition: Int
- Language: English
- Print length: 302 pages
- ISBN-10: 1849464693
- ISBN-13: 9781849464697
Book Description
This book analyses the emerging practice in the post-Cold War era of the creation of a democratic political system along with the creation of new states. The existing literature either tends to conflate self-determination and democracy or dismisses the legal relevance of the emerging practice on the basis that democracy is not a statehood criterion. Such arguments are simplistic. The statehood criteria in contemporary international law are largely irrelevant and do not automatically or self-evidently determine whether or not an entity has emerged as a new state. The question to be asked, therefore, is not whether democracy has become a statehood criterion. The emergence of new states is rather a law-governed political process in which certain requirements regarding the type of a government may be imposed internationally. And in this process the introduction of a democratic political system is equally as relevant or irrelevant as the statehood criteria. The book demonstrates that via the right of self-determination the law of statehood requires state creation to be a democratic process, but that this requirement should not be interpreted too broadly. The democratic process in this context governs independence referenda and does not interfere with the choice of a political system.
This book has been awarded Joint Second Prize for the 2014 Society of Legal Scholars Peter Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship.
Editorial Reviews
Review
..up-to-date, systematic and authoritative coverage of state creation and recognition in the international order. The book caps its author’s series of substantial contributions to the literature on this topic. –EJIL: Talk!, Brad Roth
About the Author
Jure Vidmar is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Faculty of Law and a Research Fellow of St John’s College, University of Oxford.
