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Quasi-states, dual regimes, and neoclassical theory: International jurisprudence and the Third World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Robert H. Jackson
Robert H. Jackson
Affiliation:
Professor of Political Science at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
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Abstract

Decolonization in parts of the Third World and particularly Africa has resulted in the emergence of numerous “quasi-states,” which are independent largely by international courtesy. They exist by virtue of an external right of self-determination— negative sovereignty—without yet demonstrating much internal capacity for effective and civil government—positive sovereignty. They therefore disclose a new dual international civil regime in which two standards of statehood now coexist: the traditional empirical standard of the North and a new juridical standard of the South. The biases in the constitutive rules of the sovereignty game today and for the first time in modern international history arguably favor the weak. If international theory is to account for this novel situation it must acknowledge the possibility that morality and legality can, in certain circumstances, be independent of power in international relations. This suggests that contemporary international theory must accommodate not only Machiavellian realism and the sociological discourse of power but also Grotian rationalism and the jurisprudential idiom of law.

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Articles
Information
International Organization , Volume 41 , Issue 4 , Autumn 1987 , pp. 519 - 549
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1987

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References

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102. The skeptic might point to the recent U.S. interventions in Grenada and Libya or the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. In the former case, however, the Association of East Caribbean states solicited it and the U.S. justified it partly on these grounds. Moreover, most of the world, including many members of NATO, condemned it. In the latter case, Libya is clearly viewed widely not only in the West but also in the nonaligned world as a rogue elephant: an unpredictable international outcast that will not reciprocate. The Soviet Union also claimed that its intervention in Afghanistan was solicited—although it had evidently enthroned the communist regime which made the request.

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118. The work of Friedrich Kratochwil already cited is particularly suggestive in this regard.