Nations Outside Their Borders: How Extraterritorial Concessions Reinforce Sovereignty

Abstract

National borders are essential for the existence of every sovereign state, providing it with a territorial identity and giving order to the international system in which it participates. But a state is dynamic, and stable borders can be obstacles to its constantly evolving demographic, economic and political aspects. By freezing the geographic dimensions of a nation that is changing in all other respects, its borders honor a set of circumstances that existed only at a critical moment in its past. They profoundly influence the state’s evolution by defining the space where it happens, but they may become misaligned with the state’s perceived sovereign interests as this evolution continuously alters how its territory is employed.