The Nations We’re Not Allowed to Imagine: The Political Apprehension Behind Self-Declared States

Written by Lia Moskov

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Why do governments fear self-declared states?

A state is only real because enough people agree to pretend it is. In the late 1960s, the global stage witnessed the emergence of Rose Island, a 400-square-meter man-made platform built off the coast of Rimini, Italy, in international waters. It declared itself an independent state and sovereign nation in 1968, under the name: the "Republic of Rose Island,” and Italy quite literally blew it up. This case study on self-declared states helps us structure the question: If a state can be declared by a handful of people, what does that reveal about the nature of political legitimacy? I would argue that governments fear self-declared states not because they are powerful, but because they expose the performative, fragile, and deeply psychological foundations of sovereignty.

A state is a political and legal entity characterised by a system of governance and a set of institutions with authority over those within its borders. In order for a state to constitute as such it must have a defined territory, a permanent population, a government and the capacity to enter into International Relations. These are the four criteria of statehood, as defined by the Montevideo Convention 1933. Additionally, these criteria typically go hand in hand with a state’s longstanding history and culture passed down through its people. However, Rose Island becomes the poster boy for thin sovereignty. Yes, it has a technically defined territory and permanent population, even being almost imperceptible, but Rose Island has no history or coercive apparatus. Yet, it still gave itself a flag, language and constitution allowing it to technically meet state criteria. This suggests that the “requirements” for statehood are not metaphysical truths but collective agreements. Governments fear this because it destabilises their narrative that only certain kinds of communities can be states and reveals the absurdity of treating the state as natural or sacred. 

Political philosophers such as Benedict Anderson, who wrote extensively on “imagined communities”, argue that states are imagined because “members will never know most of their fellow members”, and they are imagined as limited because nations have “finite, if elastic boundaries beyond which lie other nations”. An example of this being the stateless-nation that is Kurdistan, a nation being defined as a psycho-cultural entity characterised as a group of people joined together by a common language and a strong sense of unity. This identity is commonly centered on ethnicity and culture. The Kurds are a nation spread across Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Iran, but they do not have a technical independent state. This helps us understand that statehood is an invention, not an inevitability. Rose Island quickly became attractive to tourists, tax avoiders and people seeking alternative jurisdictions and it is clear that Italy’s fear was economic rather than military. There was fear of potential loss of tax revenue and potential regulatory ambiguity deriving from potential offshore havens close to national territory. Governments panic when alternative jurisdictions appear, because they reveal how coercive and fragile state control actually is, reflected through Italy’s decision to respond by bombing it with explosives in February 1969.  

States rely on belief as much as law, a tiny platform like Rose Island or a free town like Christiania may not be militarily threatening, but they offer alternate political imaginaries. Christiania is a self-proclaimed autonomous anarchist community in Copenhagen, Denmark, founded in 1971. To which the government has responded by taking action in the form of proposals to sell private condominiums, which were rejected by residents who feared they would lead to the Freetown becoming a normal Copenhagen neighbourhood, and a part of the larger statehood that is Denmark, rather than an individual entity. Christiania shows how a self-governing commune can exist within a major European capital, and survive for over 50 years. Governments fear these experiments as they pose dangerous questions: Why must society be organised the way it is? Who decides the rules of citizenship? And could other models exist? The threat is ultimately ideological, micro-states decentralise the imagination. 

The Montevideo Convention, as mentioned previously, established the four state criteria and is now regarded as a part of customary international law. However this supposed law has been largely inconsistent. In the case of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), which was a mountainous, landlocked region that was internationally recognised as a part of Azerbaijan, but was governed by ethnic Armenians with Armenian support. However, following an offensive in 2023 by Azerbaijan, the region’s ethnic Armenian population largely fled and the republic of Artsakh was formally dissolved in 2024. This is interesting because Artsakh perfectly met the four statehood criteria and yet was still denied statehood for geopolitical convenience. Meanwhile, micro-states such as the Vatican or Liechtenstein have recognition with questionable “criteria”. Rose Island and Christiania expose this double standard, international law is not a neutral checklist. It is a political weapon. Governments fear self-declared states because they make these contradictions visible. 

These self declared nations set the precedent threat: If one independent state is allowed, thousands could follow. This creates something widely known as ‘The Pandora Box problem’, if Rose island is allowed, what stops other breakaway regions from declaring sovereignty? Artsakh terrifies states because it sets a precedent for ethnic, historical, or cultural separatism. Christiania suggests that localised autonomy could spread within cities, and governments fear this type of statehood because they open doors towards exit options. Democracy becomes unstable when citizens realise they can simply walk away from their own systematic constraints. If a new state can be created arbitrarily, what distinguishes it morally from existing ones? Rose Island shows how arbitrary the foundations of statehood are, Artsakh shows how arbitrary recognitions are, and Christiania shows how arbitrary legal authority is. Self-declared states force the question: Do existing states deserve their authority? The answer remains unknown but the question itself is an existential threat to political legitimacy.  

Ultimately, self-declared states are not threats to international stability; they are threats to national mythology. They force us to confront the fact that statehood is arbitrary and recognition is political. It is clear that sovereignty is increasingly becoming an imaginary concept and legitimacy is performative. Governments depend on belief, not inevitability. Perhaps the greatest danger of self-declared states is not that they exist, but that they remind us our own states could easily not.