Sovereignty Without Territory Revisited: Recognition, Diplomatic Agency, and the Politics of Statehood in South Sudan, Somaliland, and Western Sahara

Recognition as strategic interaction is developed as an analytical lens for understanding sovereignty without territory: contested statehood, international recognition, and diplomatic strategy in South Sudan, Somaliland, and Western Sahara. It argues that international recognition does not flow automatically from legal criteria or empirical statehood, but from interaction among patron alignments, regional norms, diplomatic entrepreneurship, and perceived governance legitimacy. Drawing on a structured, focused comparison of three cases across four variables—empirical statehood indicators, patron-state alignment, regional organisation posture, and governance legitimacy—combined with discourse analysis of UN Security Council resolutions and AU communiqués and elite interviews with foreign ministry officials, the study engages debates in post-Westphalian sovereignty, constructivism, and legal positivism while developing a typology of recognition strategies available to contested entities. Three core claims are advanced. First, South Sudan's rapid recognition reflected convergence between self-determination claims, regional sponsorship, great-power acceptance, and negotiated secession. Second, Somaliland demonstrates that effective governance can produce de facto legitimacy without formal recognition when regional norms remain restrictive. Third, Western Sahara shows how prolonged diplomatic contestation and patron rivalry can sustain durable limbo despite international visibility. The study concludes that recognition diplomacy operates as a sequence of legitimacy-accumulation strategies rather than a single juridical event, and that clearer regional doctrines and differentiated forms of diplomatic access are necessary for entities caught between empirical governance and geo