Best Student Paper in International Law, ISA 2024 Annual Conference

This paper examines variation in internationalized territories, or cases in which multiple external actors cooperatively govern a territory in a manner which displaces the indigenous state.  In this paper, I argue that cases of internationalization are byproducts of the state system.  I first provide an original synthesis of cases spanning from the Free City of Cracow (1815-1846) to the 1999 establishment of the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo.  I identify three distinct and historically-specific causal logics of internationalization, which I argue are associated with the transformation from a world of empires to a world of nation-states.  Problems of imperial expansion, imperial collapse, and imperial exit lead to variation in when, where, why, and how disputed territories are internationalized.  These categories are founded upon a historical materialist understanding of the development of the state and its boundaries since the emergence of industrial modernity.  The variation in the causes of internationalization produces variation in the institutional form of these settlements, namely the intended duration of these arrangements and breadth of power claimed by the intervening parties.  My argument is supported by both a medium-n analysis of my complete universe of cases as well as detailed case studies of the Shanghai International Settlement (1868-1943), League of Nations administrations in Danzig and the Saar Basin (1920-1939/35), and the United Nations Transitional Administration in Cambodia (1992-1993).  Uniting these cases under a common definition reveals a previously unstudied form of international cooperation, relevant to the territorially-based crises of today’s international system.