Self-determination, custodianship, and synthesis: Telic behavior in contemporary treaty succession

This dissertation examines treaty succession, the extent to which new states take on treaties signed by their predecessor political entities. The last twenty years have witnessed the emergence of complex inheritance of international obligations by new countries, which have often invoked the practice of postcolonial and post-Soviet governments when either accepting or renouncing preexisting legal ties. Although international lawyers have perennially provided prescriptions to solve attendant predicaments in this area, the topic has rarely been addressed by international relations theorists. Through historical research, this dissertation tracks the development of and interaction between two competing telic behaviors among nascent states confronted by vexing questions about the inheritance of international obligations since the end of the Second World War. Its central findings are that, (1) during decolonization, states renounced many preexisting treaties according to notions of self-determination, aimed at autonomously defining their relationship to the international community; whereas, (2) amid the dissolution of the Soviet Union, quite divergent state behavior emerged, namely that states developed a competing approach based on custodianship to existing international legal relations. Finally, in a third period leading up to 2014, this study documents the interplay between these two purposeful forms of inheritance of international obligations, illustrating that their underlying conceptions may sometimes serve as complementary forces. Empirical research proceeds by examining dominant understandings of relevant law as well as the practice of states in three distinct periods. The conduct of states is evaluated in aggregate and through case studies. This dissertation advances a critique of recent scholarship suggesting that the practice of post-colonial states and the 1978 Vienna Convention on Succession of States in respect of Treaties have become largely irrelevant to contemporary treaty succession.