Recognition Of Governments: Legal Doctrine And State Practice, 1815-1995 (studies In Diplomacy)

when President Carter completed the process of 'normalizing relations' with the People's Republic of China by formal recognition of the Beijing government. I thought that a study of recognition of governments would attract little attention, particularly for the political scientists among whom I was trying to make a career, a belief based on the state of international relations scholarship in the USA at the time. Though vaguely aware of a distinctive 'British school' of international relations with greater interest in institutions, I knew that the proposition that institutions are epiphenomenal was one of the few points on which members of the contending realist, behaviouralist, and Marxian schools of international relations theory in the USA could agree. I drew two articlelength studies from rr y research notes in 1980-81 then moved on to other projects. The suggestion that increased interest in international institutions on both sides of the Atlantic would extend to a study of recognition of governments came from Provides a systematic comparison of legal scholars' views and governments' practice regarding the occasions for, criteria for, and effects of recognition. It traces the evolution from the 19th century practice basing recognition mainly on effective rule to more frequent use of additional criteria in the interwar and early Cold War, to the reassertion of the primacy of effective rule since 1970 and places it in the context of contemporaneous changes in world politics. M.j. Peterson. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 253-279) And Index.