What is a State?

What is a State?

It may seem easy to identify a state but contentious cases demonstrate how tricky it can be as well as how important.

Transcript

In this lesson we’ll discuss the primary actor in international law, the nation state. We’ll examine the importance of state recognition and the criteria used to determine what constitutes a state under international law.

I.               Recognition

Historically, in order to be considered a state, a country had to be recognized as such by at least one other state. This is referred to as the constitutive approach to...