This paper assesses state recognition, the practice historically employed to regulate membership in international society, since the United States–led recognition of Kosovo and the Russian-led recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Its main goal is to succinctly examine the question of whether these two controversial episodes have signaled change in the existing norms of recognition of new states. The paper argues that there is not enough evidence for the claims of some observers and governments that unilateral secession is, as such, becoming legitimate internationally. The leading recognizing powers took great care in all three cases to reject the applicability of their decision to other situations of unilateral secession, and they have since approached those other situations as if no acknowledgment of the three territories had taken place. Nevertheless, there can be little doubt that the deeply contested nature of these cases has introduced confusion and uncertainty into the practice and that this has had, and will have, important implications elsewhere in the world, in terms of both re-invigorated claims of statehood and the potential for unilateral recognition decisions by powerful outsiders. In fact, it is extremely unlikely that Russia's recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in August 2008 would have ever occurred without the prior US-led recognition of Kosovo in February 2008.

This article examines international responses to the post-election crisis in Côte d'Ivoire, where two distinct governments were established due to contradiction between the election results proclaimed domestically and those certified by the internationally entrusted authority observing the election. Between two competing authorities, the international community stood firmly in favour of the internationally recognized president-elect as ‘legitimate authority’ while acting against the opponent whom they considered to hold ‘illegitimate authority’. Considering the principle of democracy as the underlying rationale grounding the international responses, this article identifies three mechanisms that incorporate and thus promote the principle of democracy: international election monitoring as setting mechanism, international representation as consolidating mechanism, and international intervention as enforcing mechanism. In accordance with these analyses, the current stage of democracy in international legal discourse is queried, particularly the democratic entitlement of a government in relation to determination of its international legitimacy.