The article is a critical assessment of three explanations in relation to the question of which types of entities actually enjoy sovereign rights. Concluding that two of these—constitutional independence and legal criteria of statehood—are empirically untenable, it then focuses on a third, more plausible, answer: recognition as a state. Pointing out the almost consensual attitude toward the issue adopted by political scientists and finding the two doctrines of recognition formulated by international lawyers to be imbued with logical inconsistencies, the article concludes by remarking on the impossibility of discovering any clear pattern of state behaviour in this respect.