This ethnographic study examines the paradox of South Sudan's internationally recognised sovereignty coexisting with a profound lack of territorial consolidation, investigating how external validation interacts with domestic state capacity. It aims to analyse the mechanisms through which international recognition influences, and is utilised within, the daily practices of governance in a fragmented polity. The research employs a multi-sited ethnographic design, drawing on 14 months of fieldwork (2022–2024) involving participant observation within government ministries and humanitarian coordination forums in Juba and Central Equatoria State, with comparative engagements in Bentiu and Malakal, alongside 87 in-depth interviews with bureaucrats, international advisors, and local administrators. The findings reveal that international recognition functions not as a catalyst for centralised capacity but as a performative status, enabling a theatre of statecraft centred on diplomatic rituals and policy drafting in the capital while substantive administration is absent. This performance is sustained by the international architecture, including UNMISS and aid flows, which often assumes core state functions. Consequently, sovereignty operates as an externally conferred resource that insulates political elites from the imperative of building a national administrative project, thereby entrenching governance fragmentation. The study contributes a practice-oriented framework for understanding sovereignty in post-conflict Africa, moving beyond legal-institutional analysis. Its principal conclusion is that South Sudan embodies a model of sovereignty without territorial consolidation, where international recognition can inadvertently sustain the very governance weaknesses it seeks to resolve.
Abraham Kuol Nyuon (Ph.D) (Thu,) studied this question.