The elemental unit of analysis in international law has classically been the state. Sovereign equality follows from the conception of the preinstitutionalized international system as a "state of nature", which knows neither authority nor obligation, and therefore offers no basis for law governed conduct other than natural duty and consent. Whatever the implications of power relations for the terms of arrangements to which the units might agree to bind themselves, each recognized unit is equal in its formal status.
The state, in this context, exists only as an abstraction, a unit of an equally abstract system. Its legal personality must be represented by a concrete institution. That institution is an apparatus of rule over a territory and population, an apparatus often referred to as "the state" in another sense of that term. It is an institution that, in Max Weber's famous words, "(successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory". In international law parlance, this institution is properly known as "the government," as distinct from the abstraction that is "the state". (Max Weber, 1958)
Much of normative political theory is concerned with the question begged by the Weberian maxim: what is the difference between legitimate authority and mere coercion? At first glance, normative theory might appear to be beside the point, since "legitimate" may be understood in descriptive (i.e. sociological) rather than normative terms legitimate in the eyes of the subjects, however unconvincing (on the merits) to the outside observer. Nonetheless, the international system requires, at the very least, criteria to evaluate whether, in a given case, the description is an apt one. Only in this way can the international system's ground rules for interaction with the state -- interaction undertaken through the state's putative government -- become operative. To evaluate the legitimacy.........
