Derecognition Diplomacy: a Study of Morocco’s Foreign Policy on the Western Sahara

Abstract

International recognition, and its revocation, derecognition, have important legal and practical implications. This article addresses the issue of derecognition as a foreign policy strategy answering the question: what are the strategies that origin states pursue to achieve the derecognition of contested states? Analysis of the foreign policy of Morocco towards the Western Sahara shows that origin states do indeed seek derecognition as a policy goal, primarily using economic and domestic political tools. International law and identity linkages appear to play a more rhetorical than influential role. Power politics is notably absent from recogniser state decision-making, but lack of great power interest may foster the sense of ambiguity under which derecognition thrives. This article provides a theory of derecognition foreign policy; a taxonomy of recogniser states into holdouts, reversers and cyclers; and a plausibility probe of the relationship between recogniser states and their associated foreign policy tools.