Quasi-states, dual regimes, and

neoclassical
theory: International
jurisprudence and the
Third World

Robert H. Jackson
Quasi – State
- seemingly; apparently but not really.

- Discourse on Quasi-States are Jurisprudential rather than Sociological

Civil regimes
• International regimes may be defined as "implicit or explicit
principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around
which actors' expectations converge in a given area of international
relations.“

• "general imperative principles which require or authorize" behavior

and which "may have the status of law, of morality, of custom or
etiquette, or simply of operating procedures or 'rules of the game.'"
• "occupying an ontological space somewhere between the level of
formal institutions on the one hand and systemic factors on the
other.“

• "Statesmen nearly always perceive themselves as constrained by

principles, norms, and rules that prescribe and proscribe varieties of
behavior.“

• Sovereignty, like any other human convention, is something that can

be acquired and lost, claimed or denied, respected or violated,
celebrated or condemned, changed or abandoned, and so forth.
Decolonization

• Post-colonial Africa as an example of Quasi-states

• Effects of Colonialism
Juridical statehood in international law
• The usual point of departure for analysis of these criteria is Article 1
of the Montevideo Convention on Rights and Duties of States (1933),
which declares: "The State as a person of international law should
possess the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a
defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into
relations with other States."42
A new dual civil regime

• Divergent definitions of statehood in Europe and Africa

• The determination of sovereignty throughout the world now derived

from a Western and specifically liberal concept of a civil state which
postulated certain criteria before international personality could be
recognized.