Dependent territories in international relations

Dependent territories — non-sovereign territories that lack political and legal equality compared to political units in the metropole proper — are a puzzling phenomenon in international relations. From a high point of about 125 dependent territories at the outset of decolonization in 1950, 35 territories today remain possessions of another state, neither independent nor fully integrated as politically and juridically equal units in the metropole proper. What explains why some territories remain dependencies? Why did some dependencies gained independence when others did not? Building on an original dataset of dependent political units administered by the Western colonial powers covering 1950–2025, this project explores the endurance of dependency in international relations. In doing so, it probes what it means to be a state by studying the political units that failed to achieve — and in many cases, explicitly rejected — sovereign statehood.