Recognition of States and Government

In December 1971, after a war and the birth of a new country on India's eastern border, the Government of India announced that it recognised Bangladesh. A new state does not apply to anyone for membership, yet its status in the world seems to depend on whether others accept it. What exactly does recognition do: does it create a state, or merely acknowledge one that already exists? And how is it different when a country's government is overthrown by a coup?

In two minutes

Recognition is the act by which existing states accept that an entity is a state, or that a new regime is the government of a state, and is ready to treat it as such; the declaratory theory says recognition only acknowledges a fact, the constitutive theory says it creates legal personality.

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