States and Statehood

Abstract

The post-war period has witnessed a remarkable growth in the number of states, from around fifty in 1945 to more than 180 in 1996. These range from the tiny city states of Monaco and the Holy See all the way up to the Russian Federation and China, respectively the world’s largest and most populous states. During the twentieth century, there have been several great waves of ‘state creation’: in the period after the First World War, again after the Second World War, and then in the 1960s. Most recently, the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s led to claims of statehood on the part of a large number of formerly subject peoples such as those of Central Asia, whilst other states such as those in the Baltic which had been suppressed by their absorption into the USSR re-emerged on to the international scene. Statehood, to put it simply, is more popular and sought-after than it has ever been, but this raises important questions about the changing nature both of states and of statehood more generally.