Sovereign Equality and Non-Intervention in the System of International Legal Limits on External Influence on States

The expanding use of economic and digital tools to influence States heightens the need to distinguish lawful influence from interference with sovereign decision-making. The study aims to identify the legal conditions for this distinction. Its objectives are to delineate the scope of State discretion, compare judicial approaches to coercion and the legal bases for external authority, and examine State positions in United Nations General Assembly voting in 2024–2025. The scholarly contribution lies in systematising substantive and procedural criteria for assessing external influence; the practical value lies in their sequential application to the legal assessment of economic restrictions and digital operations. The study argues that adverse effects alone are insufficient to establish prohibited intervention: the assessment must identify coercive interference with a decision falling within State discretion and establish the attribution of the relevant conduct to a State. It proposes a sequence of legal assessment addressing jurisdictional grounds, existing obligations, consent, the limits of international mandates and the permissibility of countermeasures. Changes in support for resolutions reveal differences in State positions but do not, by themselves, establish changes in customary international law.