This book contributes a new perspective on de facto states, and their representation, emancipation, and agency in international politics. De facto states are political communities that manifest forms of statehood but lack international legal recognition. This provokes the question: how should we understand this 'political-yet-not-legal' statehood?

This book demonstrates how de facto states are defined by their capacity to foster ‘exceptional polities’ in international relations. It argues, therefore, that classical realist theory’s central positioning of ‘the exception’ in its conceptualisation of statehood and sovereignty provides a compelling explanation for these polities’ persistence as ‘states’. This argument contrasts with the overwhelming majority of de facto states research, which paradoxically tends define de facto statehood in terms of international rules, regularities, and/or relationalities. 

Critiquing discussions of de facto statehood couched in theories of international law, in theories of international relations discourse, and in theories of decentred and everyday sovereignty, this book maintains that it is the exceptional political capacity to ‘break away’ that makes a de facto state. Illustrated by two case studies - Somaliland and Kosovo - this book’s analytical approach produces a foundational understanding and theoretical framework of de facto statehood. 

A small excerpt of this research has been published in Ethnopolitics.