Conceptualising Post-Soviet de facto States as Small Dependent Jurisdictions

Abstract

De facto states, according to the most established elaborations of the concept, by definition strive towards full-fledged, internationally recognised independence. However, in many cases, independence may actually be perceived as a second best option. This article argues that in seeking further integration with a patron post-Soviet de facto states are behaving similarly to small-sized dependent jurisdictions in other parts of the world. Conceptualising post-Soviet de facto states as small dependent jurisdictions contributes to a more nuanced understanding of their state-building project, their relationship with the patron state, their political economy, as well as their long-term path of development.

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Donnacha Ó Beacháin, Pål Kolstø, Marcin Kosienkowski, Ann Tsurtsumia-Zurabashvili, and Chiara Loda for their comments and suggestions.

ORCID

Giorgio Comai http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0515-9542

Notes

1. As acknowledged by various scholars (Blakkisrud & Kolstø, 2011, p. 179, note 4; O’Loughlin, Kolossov, & Toal, 2014, p. 494), there has been a growing consensus on ‘de facto state’ over competing expressions ‘referring to essentially the same thing’ (Pegg, 2017, p. 16). As will be argued, for most purposes, a minimalist definition of de facto state that does not include references to what an entity ‘seeks’ or ‘aspires to’ such as the one proposed by Ó Beacháin, Comai, and Tsurtsumia-Zurabashvili (2016, p. 442) is to be preferred: de facto states ‘can be concisely defined as entities that have achieved and maintained internal sovereignty over an area for an extended period, with a degree of internal legitimacy but only limited formal recognition at the international level, or none at all.’ For an extended debate of alternative definitions of the concept, see Toomla (2014, pp. 33–58); for an overview of scholarship on de facto states see, in particular, Pegg (2017).

2. Scientific surveys conducted in post-Soviet de facto states confirm that integration with the patron is preferred over sovereign independence by residents of post-Soviet de facto states (O’Loughlin, Toal, & Chamberlain-Creangă, 2013; O’Loughlin et al., 2014; Toal & O’Loughlin, 2017, p. 18). Only in Abkhazia independence was the first choice for most residents (O’Loughlin, Kolossov, & Toal, 2011). However, while it is true that ‘for Abkhazia the long-term goal is genuine sovereignty, and ongoing integration processes with Russia are an unavoidable tactical concession’ (Broers, 2015), it should be highlighted that even staunch supporters of Abkhazia’s independence favour very close ties with Russia, including sovereignty sharing agreements on fundamental matters such as defence.

3. Empirically, this trend is particularly noticeable in areas such as the Caribbean, where islands in some form of association with a patron are located in proximity (and in sharp contrast in terms of wealth and welfare) with independent sovereign states.

4. This article specifically focuses on the so-called Eurasian quartet, which has previously been object of separate study (Geldenhuys, 2009, pp. 67–106; Lynch, 2004; Markedonov, 2012). DNR and LNR, emerged from conflict in Ukraine in 2014, have not been included because their political economy has only recently started to take shape. Some of the observations presented in this article may, however, well apply to them, as well as to other de facto states, including a case such as Northern Cyprus, which clearly fits the definition of ‘small dependent jurisdiction’ presented below.

5. Considering that the main security threats to small island jurisdictions often relate to natural disasters and rising sea levels, rather than to military aggression from a parent state as is the case of post-Soviet de facto states, comparing studies on security dynamics in these different contexts is unlikely to generate meaningful insights.

6.

PITs can be defined (and distinguished from other forms) by their nationalistically distinct populations, their constitutionally unincorporated status, and their entrenched powers that they divide and share with a sovereign (core) state. They also possess most powers over their domestic affairs, some powers over foreign policy, but no powers over the external use of the military. (Rezvani, 2016, p. 271)

7. A review of the definitions of state size used in the literature between 1957 and 1999 (Crowards, 2002, p. 177) shows cutting points mostly based on a population size ranging from 250,000 to one million. The four post-Soviet de facto states included in this study, as well as the Pacific island states chosen as main terms of comparison, have all less than 500,000 inhabitants.

8. This excludes jurisdictions which are recipients of assistance for a determinate period within the scope of governance delegation agreements, i.e. ‘international treaties allowing external actors legal authority within host states for fixed terms’ (Matanock, 2014, p. 589).

9. The concept of MIRAB was initially developed in reference to Cook Islands, Niue, Tokelau, Kiribati, and Tuvalu, but has later been applied to dozens of both sovereign and non-sovereign jurisdictions; various adaptations of the model have been introduced to describe more accurately the situation empirically found in contexts where tourism or financial services have become important pillars of the local economy (Bertram, 2006).

10. Bertram & Watters place their reasoning solidly in the decolonization context; references to colonialism, albeit not totally out of place in the post-Soviet space, are intentionally omitted here in order to make the model they propose more adaptable to the cases at the centre of this article.

11. The status-neutral term ‘jurisdiction’ employed throughout this article reflects this choice, and has previously been used in reference to post-Soviet de facto states (Broers, 2015, p. 285). Berg and Kuusk (2010) have also included dependent territories among terms of comparison for de facto states.

12. For a further debate on self-determination and independence claims in this context, see, in particular, Fabry (2015).

13. Lack of economic resources seems to be a major factor, even in wealthy northern Europe:

The main stumbling block on the road to Faroese and Greenlandic statehood is that the islands would lose their financial support from Denmark. […] Neither of the two islands, at least in the near future, will be able to fully assume the financial responsibilities that statehood requires. (Ackrén & Lindström, 2012, p. 506)

14. A somewhat similar development took place with the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles, and with its smaller islands – Bonaire, St. Eustatius, and Saba – becoming ‘special municipalities of the Netherlands, and […] hence politically and constitutionally integrated into the Dutch metropolis’ (Veenendaal, 2015).

15. For a debate on shared sovereignty in French territories in the Pacific, see, in particular, Mrgudovic (2012); for Dutch jurisdictions in the Caribbean, see Oostindie (2006).

16. For an overview of the process, see, in particular, McKibben (1990).

17. In reply to a question by the Congress, the US government replied officially that ‘[i]n the view of the United States, the Freely Associated States, while having sovereignty and full self-government, will not possess the attributes of independence called for in the eligibility criteria of the United Nations Charter’ (United States Congress, 1984, p. 109).

18. Details about grant assistance change slightly among the Compacts, but the focus remains broadly similar.

19. Substantive additional non-compact grants have also been offered: ‘For example, in fiscal years 2007 through 2011, the FSM spent about 197 million USD and the RMI spent about 46 million USD in non-compact grants from agencies including Interior, Education, HHS, Labor, and the Department of Transportation’ (US Government Accountability Office, 2013, p. 10), averaging to about additional 320 USD per year per resident. The relationship is not always smooth, and issues of mismanagement and reporting have caused delays in funding allocations from the United States (Labriola, 2016, p. 198).

20. However, it should not be assumed that the Compacts are not contested. Hinck (1990) made explicitly reference to ‘economic coercion’ by the United States in his characterisation of the process that led to the Compact of Free Association that opened the way for Palau’s formal independence. A referendum in Palau needed for approving the Compact had to be conducted eight times before finally passing in 1993. Smith-Norris (2016) presented the relationship between the United States and the Marshall Islands as one of ‘domination and resistance’, in particular, in reference to the recriminations related to the nuclear tests conducted by the US in the Bikini atoll.

21. Armenia, and not Russia, is the patron in the case of Nagorno Karabakh; in spite of the fact that Armenia does not recognise Nagorno Karabakh’s independence, authorities in Yerevan actively interact with institutions in Stepanakert and officially provide financial support. The Armenian diaspora substantially complements Yerevan’s assistance (Adriaans, 2017).

22. While the increased role of Russia is frequently the object of debate in Abkhazia, it should be highlighted that it is not in contrast with long-standing claims to self-determination by Abkhazia’s de facto authorities or a last-minute capitulation to Russian pressures. On the contrary, already in 2003 Abkhazia’s minister of foreign affairs Shamba (2003) was happy to consider Abkhazia a Russian protectorate and mentioned the Marshall Islands as a positive example of how Abkhazia–Russia relations may develop. In 2003, Abkhazia’s parliament formally proposed to Russia’s federal assembly to establish an associated relationship (IA Regnum, 2003); the proposed partnership has clear elements of commonality with the treaty eventually signed in December 2014.

23. See, for example, the research by Volkova and Ostavnaya (2015) on migration and remittances in Transnistria. The fact that countries such as Moldova and Armenia feature in the World Bank’s list of ‘Top remittance receiving countries’ (World Bank, 2016, p. 13) along with MIRAB economies such as Tonga, Samoa, and the Marshall Islands also suggests that Transnistria and Nagorno Karabakh are likely to have consistent incoming remittance flows.

24. Russia has been providing this level of support to Abkhazia and South Ossetia only starting with 2008. With the expansion of Russian assistance, similarly to what happened in some island micro-states, ‘the structure of the economy has been transformed from subsistence toward subsidy’ (Connell, 1991, p. 271).

25. For example, as of 2015, the median Abkhazian pension amounted to less than 10 USD per month, while the average pensions paid by Russia in Abkhazia amounts to more than 100 USD per month. In order to be able to offer a comparable level of disbursement autonomously, Abkhazia would need a very considerable increase in its capacity to finance its own budget as well as its social fund.

26. In fact, pragmatic considerations of this kind are not unique to small island states. The ‘devo max’ option that according to opinion polls would have been the preferred option in an independence referendum in Scotland if it was included on the referendum ballot paper (Sharp, Cumbers, Painter, & Wood, 2014, p. 37) shows that also the electorate of a developed democratic country would have been willing to take, in its own way, ‘the best of both worlds.’

27. This line of reasoning has some elements of commonality with the argument originally brought forward by King (2001), who highlighted that political and economic incentives benefiting multiple interest groups (all the way from elites to pensioners) are a key factor in determining the endurance of the status quo in post-Soviet de facto states. The shady business schemes that were central to King’s characterisation 15 years ago, however, for the most part, gave way to a structure of benefits stemming from a largely formalised patron–client relationship.

28. Even an edited book on the subject that aimed to allow ‘such entities to be viewed as, if not “regular” features of the international system, at least ones of a more perennial rather than anomalous nature’ (Caspersen & Stansfield, 2011, p. 20) concludes with a chapter that focuses on options for reintegration with the parent state and explicitly refuses to take in consideration prolonged existence in their current status or further integration with the patron as plausible options (L. Anderson, 2011, p. 195).

29. Introducing his comparison between post-Soviet central Asia and Francophone Africa, Gammer (2000) made a point that applies also to the present study: ‘[this article] does not attempt to compare the states and societies of the two groups. The differences between, and indeed within each of the two groups are too numerous and obvious.’ In their introduction to a book comparing state crisis in Africa and in post-Soviet countries, Beissinger and Young (2002, p. 5) made a similar point: candidly admitting that they ‘anticipate that for some readers the Africa-Eurasia juxtaposition […] will seem odd given the enormous differences in the histories and cultures of the two regions’, they argued that ‘the utility of any comparison can be measured only by the degree to which it generates new and meaningful ideas’ (Beissinger & Young, 2002, p. 12). Isachenko and Schlichte (2007) implicitly followed their advice when they compared ‘crooked ways of state-building’ in Uganda and Transnistria.

30. Focusing, in particular, on status debates in the Dutch Caribbean, Veenendaal (2016) questions how much such consultations effectively reflect the informed preference of residents of these small polities.

31. For example, a focus on post-Soviet de facto states’ viability in terms of post-conflict violence (Bakke, 2011), is complementary, rather than in contrast to, considerations on their viability based on aid entitlement.

32. This ‘normalcy’ does not imply that external dependence and growing integration are universally welcomed in these territories. On the contrary, ambivalent feelings towards the patron are common, for example, in Abkhazia (O’Loughlin et al., 2011), as they are in some small dependent territories around the world that are constantly trying to adjust their asymmetric relation with their patron.

33. Claims to self-determination within a given territory, however, are still particularly problematic in those cases where ethnic cleansing led to significant changes in the demographic outlook of the territory object of self-determination claims.

34. In other words, frequent references to the importance of external actors throughout this article should not be understood as favouring a reductionist approach that ignores internal dynamics, which are fundamental in determining the outcome of state-building efforts. See also Caspersen (2012, p. 76).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a Marie Curie Initial Training Network within the 7th European Community Framework Programme (grant agreement number 316825).