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The equality of states: contemporary manifestations of an ancient doctrine*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 October 2010

Alan James
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Extract

Whatever else the twentieth century is remembered for, one development which will assuredly rank high on the international list is the huge change which has occurred in the world's political configuration. In one quick but limited burst immediately after the First World War, the multinational empires which lay within Europe were largely recast in the shape of about a dozen successor states. And in the decades following the Second World War a series of more wide-ranging happenings on the other four continents saw the dismantling of colonial empires in a manner and on a scale which was truly heroic. Within one life span, the great European-based imperial edifices, which had hitherto seemed so permanent a part of the firmament, either collapsed or were abandoned. In their wake came getting on for 100 new states, leaving the map makers hard put to keep up with the tumble of events. Only now, as the century enters its final years, is the pace of this historical process relaxing.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 18 , Issue 4 , October 1992 , pp. 377 - 391
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1992

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References

1 Whitaker's Almanack is a valuable source on some of these matters. Relevant figures, with illustrations, may also be found in Kubalkova, V. and Cruickshank, A. A., International Inequality (London, 1981), pp. 23–30Google Scholar.

2 For historical material on the doctrine, see Dickinson, Edwin DeWitt, The Equality of States in International Law (1920; New York, 1972), chapters II, III, and IVGoogle Scholar.

3 Quoted in Peter Butler, F., ‘Legitimacy in a States-System: Vattel’s Law of Nations’, in Donelan, Michael (ed.), The Reason of States (London, 1978), p. 52.Google Scholar

4 Article 2, and ibid, paragraph 1.

5 Sir Abubakar Balewa, quoted in Stremlau, John J., The International Politics of the Nigerian Civil War 1967–1970 (Princeton, N.J., 1977), p. 16Google Scholar.

6 For a vigorous assault on the idea of equality, principally on the ground of’the truth that not all States have identical rights under international law’ (p. 9), see Baker, P. J., ‘The Doctrine of Legal Equality of States’, The British Year Book of International Law 1923–24, vol. 4 (London, 1923)Google Scholar.

7 A work which focuses on (to quote its subtitle) ‘The Tension between the Concept of Great-Power Primacy and the Concept of Sovereign Equality’, is Robert Klein, ‘The Idea of Equality in International Polities’, PhD thesis, University of Geneva, 1966. It covers the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth. s See, generally, James, AlanSovereign Statehood: The Basis of International Society (London, 1986), Part I.Google Scholar

8 U.K. Public Record Office, FO 371/146635, JB1015/126, translation of an article in Spiegel for 22 June 1960.

10 Hancock, W. K., Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs. Volume 1: Problems of Nationality, 1918–1936 (London, 1937), p. 261Google Scholar.

11 An interesting illustration of this point is provided by the recent admission to the United Nations of the European ministates (as they are often called), Liechtenstein (1990) and San Marino (1992). In the early 1920s, while there was no questioning of their status as sovereign states, they had been rebuffed by the League of Nations, probably on account of their size: see Gunter, Michael M., ‘Liechtenstein and the League of Nations: A Precedent for the United Nations Ministate Problem?’, American Journal of International Law, 68, no. 3 (July 1974), pp. 496–501CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 See Gore-Booth, Lord, Satow’s Guide to Diplomatic Practice (5th edn, London, 1979), chapter 4Google Scholar.

13 This is expressed in Article 52 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (1969): UK Cmnd. 7964 (Treaty Series No. 58 (1980). But the provision is also seen as expressing a general principle of international law which is applicable to states irrespective of whether they have adhered to the Convention.

14 See, generally The Concept of Jus Cogens in International Law (New York, 1967)Google Scholar.

15 Article 25.

16 Britain, at least, circulated a limiting ‘interpretation’ of what she had accepted.

17 United Nations Charter, Article 2.4.

18 In this connection it is interesting to note that there seems to be a positive correlation between international disapprobation of Serbian armed activity in Bosnia-Herzogovina and acceptance of the latter as a sovereign state; see The Times, leading article, 23 April 1992.

19 On the pressure to lessen international economic inequality, and the response to it, see Tucker, Robert W., The Inequality of Nations (New York, 1977), Part II, Sections IV–VII inclusive, and Part IVGoogle Scholar.

20 As P. J. Baker conceded in ‘The Doctrine of Legal Equality of States’, ‘it is only in so far as they have been independent that States have been really equal’ (p. 4).