Functional Sovereignty in Contested Territories

Scholarship on international sovereignty generally adopts a binary conception: territories either have international recognition, or they lack it and remain unrecognized entities within fragmented states. In this article, we challenge this binary frame by introducing the notion of functional sovereignty: contested territories in practice enjoy varying degrees of sovereignty over governance functions that require external acceptance for their operation. To illustrate, we introduce a new dataset of functional sovereignty over vehicle license plates, currency, passport issuance, postal service, and national Internet domains within unrecognized (de facto) states. We theorize disputes over these functions as not only a matter of practicality, but also as contestations over symbolic assertions of sovereign statehood. Analysis of de facto state governance over these five functions shows that contested territories collectively exhibit gradations of functional sovereignty, defying binary classifications. Further, we draw conceptual and empirical distinctions between functional sovereignty and proximate phenomena, including statehood, rebel governance, and global governance. Our findings urge a greater focus on the practical dimensions of sovereignty, above and beyond its international legal aspect, for a more grounded understanding of the politics of international recognition.